[Draft] 1. - We cannot but feelingly report that it should have been thought improper to admit us to a declaration of our sentiments on a subject with which our future welfare is so intimately connected. - It 2. would be uncandid to suppose that our Countrymen considered our being in the field a crime that [should] deprive us of our unalienable rights: We impute it to an in [inadvertous] [illegible] it. 3. Although we apprehend thus we have been insured in this important transaction, yet we beg permission to express our firm reliance on your honourable - the legislature as our fathers and guardians; we perfectly believe that your attention to the rights of the members of the commonwealth will ever be so universal, as to comprehend that part of them who are necessarily [absent] in arms; to obtain and secure for themselves and all their countrymen the equal rights of citizens. 4. Indeed it is impossible to return under the dominion of a power which has given such numerous and flagrant proofs of unjust ambition and indictive rager. 5. and be obliged to relinquish the attempt to acquire an object, in which they have [purposely] lavished their blood and treasure. 6. and if in place of creating obstacles, the offspring of diffidence, the patriotism of 1775 should revive, all fancied difficulties would be overborne, and the process become easy to obtain the full member of men required.