a cargo seized and sent to America as English property is reclaimed, partly on the supposition that free ships make free goods. They ought to do so between England and Holland, because there is a treaty which stipulates it; but there being yet no treaty between Holland and America to that purpose, I apprehend that the goods being declared by the Captain to be English, a neutral ship will not protect them, the law of nations governing in this case, as it did before the treaty abovementioned. Tell me, if you please, your opinion. Tell me, With sincere esteem and affection, I am ever, B. FRANKLIN. TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS. The Hague, May 21st, 1780. Sir, The express sent to Petersburgh, with the answer of the StatesGeneral, has not yet returned. In the meantime, it is known here, by a despatch of the Resident of the Republic at Petersburgh, that the news of the Provincial Resolution of Holland, which always gives the tone to the others, has caused there a very agreeable sensation, not only to the Court of Russia, flattered to see the Republic enter into its views, but also to the foreign Ministers resident there; and that the Prussian Minister, above all, expressed himself very strongly on the insolence of the English, and on the indignity of their procedure to the Republic; in fine, that the system of the armed neutrality to humiliate the English gains force more and more at the Court and among the Powers, which is very visible in the conversations among the Ministers. I wrote some days ago to Amsterdam, to advise them to offer to the State every fifth sailor of their merchant ships, in order to take away the pretext of the scarcity of sailors in the fleet of the Republic; and I recommended to them to prevent evil-minded persons presenting a counter address. They answered me that the address demands of the States the prompt protection of commerce, and offers them whatever they may wish to draw from that commerce, whether it be the every fifth or third seaman; and that though all have not signed it, no one will dare to oppose it. This address will be presented next week, and if I can have a copy of it soon enough, I will add hereto a copy or translation. We flatter ourselves soon to see Mr. Laurens arrive here, as we have been assured. It is time for the politics as well as for the credit of America that some person as distinguished as himself should come here. He cannot yet display a public character; but his presence will do none the less good among the friends of America in this country. I wish he was already with us. I was going, sir, to close this packet when I received the visit of M. Van de Perre, partner of M. Meyners, who form together the most eminent commercial house at Middlebourg, in Zealand. He begs me to support the claim that he has made through Messrs. I de Neufville & Son, and by another way also to Congress, on the ship Berkenbos, bound from Liverpool to Leghorn, and loaded with herrings and lead for Dutch and Italian account, taken by John Paul Jones, captain of the Continental frigate Alliance. M. Van de Perre is of the most distinguished family in Zealand, Director of the East India Company, nephew of M. Van Berckel, First Counsillor Pensionary of Amsterdam, the brave Republican of whom all my letters make mention, and who is the great friend of Americans. I have no need to say any thing more to recommend the affair of this vessel to Congress. I have the honor to be, &c., DUMAS. JOHN ADAMS TO C. W. F. DUMAS. Paris, June 6th, 1780. Sir, I thank you for your letter in answer to mine of the 21st of May, and for your kind congratulations on my arrival here. Mr. Brown, with whom you took your walks in the neighborhood of Paris, has been gone from home some weeks, on his way hence. I should have had much pleasure if I had been one of the party. I nave rambled in most of the scenes round this city, and find them very pleasant, but much more indebted to art than to nature. Philadelphia, in the purlieus of which, as well as those of Baltimore and Yorktown, I have often sought health and pleasure in the same way, in company with our venerable Secretary, Charles Thomson, will in future time, when the arts shall have established their empire in the New World, become much more striking. But Boston above all, around which I have much oftener wandered in company with another venerable character, little known in Europe, but to whose virtues and public merits in the cause of mankind history will do justice, will one day present scenes of grandeur and beauty, superior to any other place I have ever yet seen. The letter of General Clinton, when I transmitted it to you, was not suspected to be an imposition. There are some circumstances which are sufficient to raise a question; but I think none of them are conclusive, and upon the whole I have little doubt of its authenticity. I shall be much mortified if it proves a fiction, not on account of the importance of the letter, but the stain that a practice so disingenuous will bring upon America. When I first left America such a fiction, with all its ingenuity, would have ruined the reputation of the author of it, if discovered, and I think that both he and the printer would have been punished. With all the freedom of our presses, I really think that not only the Government but the populace would have resented it. I have had opportunities of an extensive acquaintance with the Americans, and I must say, in justice to my countrymen, that I know not a man that I think capable of a forgery at once so able and so base. Truth is indeed respected in America, and so gross an affront to her I hope will not, and I think cannot, go unpunished. Whether it is genuine or not I have no doubt of the truth of the facts, in general; and I have reasons to believe that if the secret correspondence of Bernard, Hutchinson, Gage, Howe, and Clinton, could all be brought to light, the world would be equally surprised at the whole thread of it. The British administration and their servants have carried towards us from the beginning a system of duplicity in the conduct of American affairs that will appear infamous to the public whenever it shall be known. You have seen Rodney's account of the battle of the 17th of April. The sceptre of the ocean is not to be maintained by such actions as this, and Byron's and Keppel's. They must make themselves more terrible upon the ocean to preserve its dominion. Their empire is founded only in fear-no nation loves it. We have no JOHN ADAMS. news. I have the honor to be, &c., PROTEST OF THE CITY OF AMSTERDAM. Extracted from the Resolutions of the Council of that City of the 29th of June, 1780, and inserted in the Acts of the Provincial Assembly of Holland, at the Hague, July 1st, 1780. The Deputies of the city of Amsterdam, in the name and on the part of their constituents, in order to justify themselves to posterity have declared in the Assembly of their Noble and Grand Mightinesses that their Committee is of opinion that it is necessary, without loss of time, to write on the part of their High Mightinesses to M. de Swart, their resident at the Court of Russia, and charge him to enter into a conference, the sooner the better, with the Commissioners of her Imperial Majesty of Russia, and of other neutral Powers in the place of his residence, and elsewhere where it shall be judged suitable, in order to conclude together a convention for the mutual protection of the commerce and navigation of neutral Powers, on the basis of the declaration made by her Majesty to the belligerent Powers, and of the resolution adopted on this subject by their High Mightinesses on the 24th of April last, adding to it only that said M. de Swart shall take for the rule of his conduct the simplicity which her Imperial Majesty of Russia herself has proposed in the explanations which she made on five points at the request of his Swedish Majesty, and which M. de Swart has communicated to their High Mightinesses, to the end that with such a provisional convention they would be well pleased to decree together the reciprocal protection of the merchant ships of each other, which, fortified with the requisite papers, shall be nevertheless insulted on the sea; so that these merchant vessels, being in reach of one or more vesselsof-war of one of the allied Powers, wherever it may be, they may receive, in virtue of such an alliance, any assistance; and that at the same time the contracting Powers engage to put to sea, provisionally, all the vessels-of-war they can, and to give to the officers who shall command them necessary orders and instructions that they may be able to fulfil these general, salutary, and simple views. And that, further, as to arrangements to be made for the future, which may require more particular detail, and which cannot be adjusted with the expedition which the present perilous state of the navigation of the neutral Powers in general, and of this Province in particular, demands, M. de Swart will reserve all this for a separate article, of which her Imperial Majesty of Russia made mention in the above named explanations, and that he will declare in regard to this that their High Mightinesses have given thereon their final and precise orders, in which they will constitute one or more Plenipotentiaries who will be able to treat of the necessary arrangements on this subject with the neutral Powers. That said Constituents, to give greater weight to their present advice, add further to the above, that if this advice was rejected, and if the affair was negociated on the basis of the previous opinion, exhibited on the 23d of June last, in the Assembly of Holland, the consequence of it will be that the Russian squadron, which, according to orders of her Imperial Majesty of Russia, must have already put to sea, will appear in the seas bordering on this country without giving any protection to the commerce of this country; while, on the other side, though commerce has been a long time charged with double duties, their High Mightinesses, mean time, grant it no protection, because the Colleges of Admiralty of this country profess themselves unable to do it, or at least to put to sea sufficient convoys to avoid affronts like those which the squadron under the orders of Rear-Admiral de Byland had lately endured. That from this total failure of protection to the navigation of this country, on the one side, and from the continual insults of which their High Mightinesses every day receive grievous complaints, on the other, there must naturally ensue an entire suspension of the commerce of this country; and thence, it is easy to foresee that this commerce will be diverted and take its course by other European channels, and that the burdensome impositions with which it is charged, in order to obtain means for its protection being continued, will precipitate its ruin. That in this confusion of affairs, and in the extreme necessity in which they find themselves, to take advantage of an offer of assistance and succor so generously and magnanimously made and proposed by her Imperial Majesty of Russia to this State, on a footing so easy and so little burdensome; the Lords Constituents will leave posterity to judge of the weight of the reasons alleged by some members of the Assembly of their Noble and Grand Mightinesses in the deliberation on this subject, as if the acceptance of said means for the necessary protection of the commerce of this |