Your lordship knows my security of conscience was the first condition that I expected from this Government, which then you thought so innocent as you conceived the proposition altogether impertinent, but now I hope you will perceive the contrary. Nor (is) it difficult, out of the laws sent over by your lordship, or these that are from hence proposed to you, to find just grounds for to fear the introdusement of laws prejudicial to our honors and freedome,
 

witness that one act whereby we are exposed to a remedyless suffering of all disgraces and insolences that either the passion or malice of succeeding governors shall please to put upon us,....
 

This and many other absurdities I doubt not but your lordship will finde and correct upon the perusall of our learned lawes. Among which there is one that confirms the trade with the Indians for all commodities to be exported unto your lordship...
 

Your Lordship knows I cam not hither for to plant Tobacco but have to my no little prejudice hitherto employed myself and Servants in Public works....
 
 

The building of the mill was, I assure your lordship, a vast charge unto mee, for besides the labor of all my own servants for two years, I was at the charge of diverse hirelings...

all which, besides divers materials for it at excessive rates, is all utterly lost by the ignorance of a foolish millwright who set it upon a stream that will not so much in six weeks as will grind six bushells of Corn, so that the colony is any whit the better for all the Pains and cost I have been at
 

Yet do I not deserve the less of Maryland, for I spared no cost nor labor for to make good to the utmost what was expected from me, nor will I yet desert it for if I be not too much discouraged by your lordship; I intend to...remove the Mill to a better stream.
 

...

in the meantime, I am building of house to put my head in, of sawn timber framed a story and half high, with a cellar and chimnies of brick to encourage others to follow my example, for hitherto we live in cottages....
 

I was this year determined to have waited upon your lordship in England, and one way or other to have concluded this fateful difference about the trade....
 

if your lordship nor your Country will afford me no other way to support the great expenses that I have been and daily am at for my subsistance here, but what I must fetch out the ground by planting this stinking weed of America, (then) I must desert the place and business, which, I confess. I shall be loath to do, so cordiall a lower am I of them both, yet if I am forced to it by discourteous injuries, I shall not weep at parting nor despair to find heaven as near to other parts, as Maryland.