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To the Right Honourable JOHN, Earl of DUNMORE, his Majesty' s Lieutenant and Governour-General of the Colony and Dominion of VIRGINIA, and Vice Admiral of the same:
My LORD: We, his Majesty' s dutiful and loyal subjects, the Council of Virginia, with the most heartfelt joy and unfeigned pleasure, beg leave to offer our congratulations to your Lordship on your safe return, after the fatigues and dangers of a troublesome expedition.
Your Lordship' s vigorous opposition to the incursions and ravages of an Indian enemy, hath effectually prevented the desolation of a growing back country, and the horrours of human carnage. The scene of war was remote from us; our properties and estates were not immediately exposed to the miseries consequent thereon; but though not equally interested, we sensibly participate in the blessings that are derived to our fellow-subjects in that quarter of the Colony, from the prospect of a permanent peace. The lenity you exercised towards the Indians, when they expected the cruelty of the victor, hath attached them to you from principle; and unless the intrigues of Traders, or the insidious arts of the enemies to this Government, should again foment differences, we flatter ourselves the present tranquillity will not speedily be interrupted. You have taught them a lesson which the savage breast was a stranger to — that clemency and mercy are not incompatible with power; and that havock and bloodshed are not the inseparable concomitants of success and victory.
Permit us, my Lord, to express our lively satisfaction at
To which his Excellency was pleased to return the following Answer:
GENTLEMEN: I am in the most sensible manner obliged to you for this Address. The motives which induced me to exert my efforts to relieve the back country, from the calamity under which it lately laboured, would have been disappointed of one of their principal ends, if it had not met your approbation; and this very honourable testimony which you are now pleased to give me of it, conveys the highest gratification to me.
The cordiality of your expressions on the occasion of the addition to my family, and the distinguishing mark of the notice which you so kindly take of Lady Dunmore, attach me to you by the strongest ties of gratitude and the warmest affection.
Address of the Council of Virginia to Governour Dunmore
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the addition to your family, by the birth of a daughter, and to assure you it is greatly heightened by the promising hopes that your Lady' s recovery will be unattended with danger. We should be wanting in respect to her Ladyship, to omit any opportunity of testifying our esteem for her; an esteem that her exemplary piety and true dignity of conduct will ever command.