This collection includes an unpublished manuscript treatise in four notebooks (approximately 110 pages total), without indication of authorship, probably dating from the late 1760s. The text advocates free trade between Britain and the American colonies, encouragement of American manufacturing, a better understanding of the needs and desires of American settlers, limitation of taxation, and abolition of British legislation reserving white pines for British ships. Text is on rectos only, with occasional additions on the facing versos. Scattered throughout the notebooks are several loose paper fragments with contemporary notes and critiques in a different hand.

The manuscript is written in the same hand as an 8-page autograph letter signed (Philadelphia, November 30, 1777) by one Thomas Howard. The letter is addressed to Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1709-1786), on British military policy and difficulties in the American Revolution: "The country is so very strong, and the general enmity so very prevalent against us, that we find infinite difficulties whenever we are separated for any length of time from our shipping..." The author of the letter, and almost certainly of the manuscript treatise, was Colonel Thomas Howard (1735–78), a commander of the First or Grenadier Guards in America. He wrote the letter in Philadelphia during the winter of 1777–78, when British forces occupied the city and Continental forces were encamped at Valley Forge.