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Sir

The Assurances that you have been pleased to give me "that the Officers and Men taken onboard British Merchant Ships and carried into Philadelphia have not been detained as Prisoners of War, but permitted to depart as opportunitys offered" together with an extract I have at the same time received from the Minutes of the Council of Safety at Philadelphia "that an equal number of Such Prisoners being Subjects of the King, Shall be delivered to me, or some other of His Majesty's Officers, when the Council have it in their power" has induced me to give immediate orders that every Prisoner now on board the Ships under my Command here Shall be Set at liberty without delay; being of nothing more ambitious than to prove myself upon All occasions desireous of releaving the distressed — I have the Honor to be sir [&c.]