The undersigned commissioner appointed by your honorable board to attend, with his colleagues, at a meeting with commissioners from the other states in the union held in the city of Annapolis for the purpose of taking into consideration the trade of the United States begs leave to report that such meeting did accordingly take place the proceeding whereof are herein enclosed.

You commissioner also begs leave to report that no commissioners having been appointed by the State of Virginia for the purpose of conferring with those of Maryland and Pennsylvania concerning the commercial regulations of the three states, and it being impossible to have a conference with the Maryland commissioners at that time, two communications were made in writing copies whereof are also enclosed.

It will be proper further to inform your honorable board that a meeting with the commissioners to be appointed by Virginia and with your commissioners upon the latter business is earnestly desired by the commissioners of Maryland and as the immediate interest of Pennsylvania and the well being of the United States may be promoted by a liberal and judicious arrangement at such a meeting it is much to be wished that it may take place.

Your commissioner conceives it necessary for the satisfaction of your honorable board, as well as for his own justification to state the particular circumstances under which he found himself in the execution of each of the duties assigned to him. Difficulties probably not to be obviated, prevented the commissioners of the eastern states from arriving at Philadelphia in their way to Annapolis as early as they wished, and all your commissioner’s colleagues being engaged in public business, they justly conceived that they should more faithfully discharge their various duties to the State by continuing in Philadelphia ’till some of the eastern commissioners should appear. In the meantime the public and private engagements of several of the commissioners assembled at Annapolis were such that it became impossible for them to remain beyond the period when the adjournment took place. Under these circumstances your commissioner trusts that the steps which he ventured to take in the absence of his colleagues will not meet the disapprobation of Government, but that they will be ascribed to his anxious desire to prevent two commissions so important to the state and to the nation at large from being entirely unproductive of beneficial consequences.