Ship Westmorland
Jany 5th 1822
To His Excellency
Sir Thos Brisbane
Governor of New South
Wales &c &c &c
Sir/
	When I had the pleasure of conversing with your Excellency at Government House; your Excellency was pleased to manifest your very kind intentions and anxious desire to promote the comfort of the Missionaries at New Zealand and also to forward the great objects they have in view; which are nothing less than the Eternal as well as the temporal happiness of those wretched Cannibals, your Excellency was pleased to intimate at that time; that it would afford you much pleasure to present us with a Breed of Cattle and Sheep. It is a matter of the greatest importance, and worthy of your Excellencys most serious consideration. There are seven families residing at New Zealand permanent servants of the Honorable Church Missionary Society. Cattle and Sheep will add much to the comfort of each, and enable us, as they increase to furnish the natives with the same. And as it will become our duty, so we shall be careful to point out to them the sourse [sic] from whence the[y] sprang; and to whom they must for ever stand indebted. I hope therefore, your Excellency will permit me in my own name and [f] those of my Brethren, and on behalf the [sic] poor Heathen, to return your Excellency my sincere thanks for your kind attentions to our welfare We shall at all times receive any favor your Excellency may be pleased to confer upon us with humility and gratitude, and we shall feel ourselves highly honoured if your Excellency will be pleased to receive any communication from us respecting the Moral and Religious state of the Heathen around us May your Excellency long live as an highly honoured instrument in the hand of Jehovah; to afford protection to His Church and people; and like the kindly showers of heaven, dispense blessings of every sort, and upon all Classes of society wherever you go: until that day shall arrive, in which you shall give up an Earthly form for an Heavenly inheritance, and change a Temporal for an Eternal weight of glory.
I have the honor to 
Subscribe myself your
Excellencys faithful and
Obedient Servant
John Butler
J.P. [f]
P.S. I hope your Excellency will permit me to ask the favour of a Flag to hoist on a Sunday as the natives know that when the Flag is hoisted they are not to work.