I have recd your Letter and packet of the 12th of September and am much obliged to you for them. I am very anxious to hear more fully from you, as you are so good as to give me reason to expect. Before this can reach you, you will certainly have seen the Kings Speech. I heartily wish that that or any thing else may put the contending parties into a disposition of reconcilement. On the Debate of the Address, Lord North said with great emotion, to this effect. Would to God that all things were as they were in 1763, if the Authority of this country could likewise be replaced in to the same state that it was in, in the year 1763, but that an unconditional repeal of all the acts since 1763, without some honourable satisfaction to the authority of this Country would leave this Country much disgraced. Then follow as of course angry accusations of America, as meaning nothing but independence and insult to this Country. Your friend Mr. Hartley who offered last year a draught of a letter of requisition as a plan of settlement and accomodation desired to offer a proposition to Ld. N upon the new ground that he had taken, for Ld. N had declared that we were not now at war for a revenue, but in support of our Authority resisted. The Substance of Mr. H’s proposition was that if there was any sincere desire for peace he would endeavour to join issue with Ld. N and to offer such terms of accommodation, by which, if ministry would consent to replace America to the year 1763 he should on the other part propose that America should give full satisfaction to the point of honour. That he thought himself founded to engage for every thing that could in reason be required from the Americans under that declaration in their petition to the King, that they did not wish even for reconciliation, notwithstanding all their distresses, upon terms inconsistent with the dignity of Great Britain. That taking his ground from this declaration, he should propose a recognition, not in words but in fact, which should effectually replace the Authority of this Country (be it more or less without any invidious line drawn) where it was in 1763. The test proposed was the enrolling some act of parliament by the assembly of each province, supposing that the act of Parliament in view should be formed upon principles of justice and such as the Colonies would have received with a silent and thankfull Compliance in 1763. All recognitions in words being unavoidably both invidious and insidious, that, therefore a test bringing no line of Authority or of obedience into Question was the only safe proposition. You Americans shall be as you were in 1763 if you will likewise admit an act of test, such as you would not have had the least scruple to have admitted in 1763. We will throw a veil over all the theoretical disputes of rights of subjects either as Colonists or men at large. We will not discuss the rights reserved or supposed to be reserved at your emigration whether tacitly or explicitly. We wish that mutual concessions on both sides should bring the two parties together. We will on our part replace you where you were in 1763, if you will admit and register in your assemblies such an act of Parliament, as you yourselves shall confess that you would have admitted in 1763. It is not an unreasonable request to make to America, that they should treat an act of Parliament flowing from general principles of humanity and justice, with a different reception, to what has been given to acts of grievance. It is certainly dangerous to disturb questions of the extent [of] Empire or obedience because after that, even acts of acquiescence may be construed to involve hazardous concessions, supposed to be included in the principles which have been brought under contest. But in the State of human affairs we must not always be too scrupulous. Something must be given up for peace. A Civil war never comes too late. Take your situation as it was in 1763, for better and for worse. In the present miserable prospect of things, I conceive that to be a fair and equitable bargain. The object of the act of Parliament to be proposed to you, may be perhaps in the event the abolition, but at present can only be considered as the first step to correct a vice, which has spread thro the continent of North America, contrary to the laws of God and man, and to the fundamental principles of this Constitution, from which yours are derived. That vice is slavery. It would be infinitely absurd to send over to you, an act to abolish slavery in one word, because however repugnant the practice may be to the laws of morality or policy, Yet to expell an evil which has spread so far and which has been suffered for such length of time, requires information of facts, and circumstances, and the greatest discretion to root it out. (Upon this subject pray look to a note in Mr. Duche’s sermon on July 7 1775 before the Battalion of Militia p 16 17 And moreover the unavoidable length of settling such a point, would defeat the end, of its being proposed as an act of compromise to settle the present unhappy troubles. Therefore the act to be proposed to you as a auspicious beginning, to lay the first stone of universal liberty to mankind, should be what no American could hesitate an instant to comply with, viz that every slave in America should in all cases be entitled to his trial by jury. Will you not receive and enroll such an act as this, and thereby reestablish peace and harmony with your parent state? Let us all be reunited in this as a foundation to extirpate slavery from the face of the earth. Can they who seek justice and liberty for themselves refuse to give justice and liberty to their fellow creatures? This is the Substance of Mr. Hartley’s proposal. The first step in the execution would be to suspend the Massachusets charter act, by which means every colony would be in a full competence to enroll the required act. The Plan therefore would be