The commissioners were empowered to treat with such bodies politic or corporate, assemblies of men, person or persons, as they should think meet and sufficient for the purpose of considering the grievances supposed to exist in the government of any of the colonies respectively; to order and proclaim a cessation of hostilities on the part of the king's forces, as they should think fit; and also to appoint governors of provinces. These powers were to be transferred to Sir Henry Clinton in case Sir William Howe, one of the commissioners, should be disabled from exercising them. This did occur, and Sir Henry Clinton acted as a peace commissioner for a time beyond the limitation of the first commission, which was June, 1779. Having failed with Congress, the commissioners appealed to the public in a manifesto offering to the colonies at large or separately a general or separate peace, with the revival of their ancient governments, secured against any future infringement, and protected forever from taxation by Great Britain. The geographical situation of Vermont, bordering on the great thoroughfare from Canada southward, her controversy with the neighboring colonies, and the unfriendly attitude of Congress toward her, especially invited the overtures of the British agents. In March, 1779, Lord George Germaine, Secretary of Colonial Affairs, wrote to General Haldimand: "The minister says, the separation of the Inhabitants of the country they style Vermont from the Provinces in which it was formerly included is a Circumstance from which much advantage might be derived, and sees no objection to giving them reason to expect, the King will erect their country into a Province." The first overture was made, under the direction of Sir Henry Clinton, by Colonel Beverly Robinson, afterward engaged in the plot with Arnold. In March, 1780, he wrote to Ethan Allen, to whom the letter was delivered in July in the streets of Arlington by a British soldier disguised as a Yankee farmer. Robinson began by saying that he had been informed that Allen and most of the inhabitants of Vermont were opposed to the wild and chimerical schemes of the Americans in attempting to separate the continent from Great Britain, and that they would willingly assist in uniting America again to the mother country. He invited Allen to communicate freely whatever proposals he wished to make, and thought that upon his taking an active part, and embodying the inhabitants of Vermont in favor of the crown, they might obtain a separate government under the king, and the men be formed into regiments under such officers as Allen should recommend. Allen at once laid the letter before Governor Chittenden and a few of the leading men, who all agreed that it was best to return no answer.