[coyxe] THE TALBOT PAPERS 185 
owe to your Excellency, & of offering our most sincere thanks and 
acknowledgements for the. attention you have been pleased to shew to 
this Province. 
_ The pride and pleasure which we feel from the behaviour of our 
gallant Militia, is greatly heightened when we consider that their con- 
duct is honored with your approbation, and that you are pleased to 
testify your sense of their services in ordering clothing for a considerable 
proportion of their number; an act of benevolence and humanity, which 
will make a deep and lasting impression on their minds, and stimulate 
them to preserve that high character which they have always acquired. 
But we should indeed be much wanting to your Excellency, as well as 
to ourselves, if we did not on this occasion with gratitude acknowledge 
the obligations which this Province lays under to the valor and dis- 
cipline of his Majesty’s regular Forces, whose courage and conduct on 
the most trying emergencies, have done honor to the name and to the 
character of a British Soldier. 
We are particularly gratified (and offer our most sincere thanks 
and acknowledgements) for the vigorous exertions which have been 
made, and are still carrying on towards the strengthening our Provincial 
Marine, by order of your Excellency, fully convinced that to maintain 
a superiority on the Lakes is an object of the first importance to this 
Province. 
Thankful for that success which has hitherto crowned his Majesty’s 
arms under your command, we earnestly wish for its continuance, enter- 
taining the pleasing hope, that by our own conduct, and the exertions 
of our brave defenders, we in this Colony, by the blessing of God, may 
long remain under the protection of our Parent State a free, brave, 
and loyal People. 
To which his Excellency was pleased to return the following 
Answer : 
To the Magistrates and other Inhabitants of the Town of York. 
Gentlemen, 
I am highly sensible of your sincere thanks and acknowledgements 
for the attention which you consider me to have evinced to the welfare 
and preservation of this valuable Province. 
Not only my duty, but also the express Commands of his Royal 
Highness the Prince Regent, govern my conduct, in regulating and 
improving those objects which excite your approbation, and in express- 
ing the high respect I entertain of the gallant and patriotic behaviour 
of your Militia, I express the Sentiments of your Sovereign, and your 
