Since you have done the nation so much right and yourselves so much honour as to declare that ‘the people (under God) are the original of all just powers’, and given us thereby fair grounds to hope that you really intend their freedom and prosperity; yet the way thereunto being frequently mistaken, and through haste or error of judgement, those who mean the best are many times misled so far to the prejudice of those that trust them as to leave them in a condition nearest to bondage when they have thought they had brought them into a way of freedom. And since woeful experience has manifested this to be a truth, there seems no small reason that you should seriously lay to heart what at present we have to offer for discovery and prevention of so great a danger. And because we have been the first movers in and concerning an Agreement of the People as the most proper and just means for the setting the long and tedious distractions of this nation occasioned by nothing more than the uncertainty of our government, and since there has been an Agreement prepared and presented by some officers of the Army to this honourable House, as what they thought requisite to be agreed unto by the people (you approving thereof) we shall in the first place deliver our apprehensions thereupon.