Schiedam, la Brille, and Medemblick, which have taken it ad referendum, the final resolution being deferred; but it will be adopted as reported next week, at least by the majority, which is sufficient in this case.

His Excellency Mr. Adams departed this morning, the 16th of October, for Paris. In taking leave of the President and Secretary of their High Mightinesses the States-General, he did me the honor to present me as Chargé d'Affaires of the United States; which is an indispensable custom. He had before advised the Grand Pensionary of it, to whom I shall make to-morrow a visit of politeness in consequence.

October 18th. A young officer (De Witte) convicted of high treason, for having attempted to assist the enemy in an invasion of the coast of Zealand, was about to be tried by the High Council of War, which is wholly dependent on the Prince, when the States of Holland solemnly signified to the Prince that he ought to cause prosecution to be stayed before this tribunal as incompetent, and carry it up before the Court of Justice of Holland and Zealand. This High Council of War is, besides, odious to the nation, and regarded as tyrannical and unconstitutional.

I have not spoken in this letter of our treaty of amity and commerce with this Republic, signed finally by both parties the 8th of this month, because Mr. Adams will give you this detail better than I can. I shall content myself with saying that I have every reason to be persuaded that he is satisfied with the zeal with which I have fulfilled the tasks which he has required of me, in the operations which have preceded this signature, and pray God that the United States may gather from it the most abundant fruits.

October 22d. I am anxious to see an answer to the extract I sent to your Excellency, agreeably to the wish and permission of Mr. Adams, of a certain letter which he wrote me. For, so long as I am not openly recognised and suitably sustained by Congress, my precarious condition here is cruel, in the midst of the Anglomanes, who wish to see me perish ignobly, and in the bosom of a family whose complaints and reproaches I fear more than death. Mr. Laurens, in his hasty passage through this country, was perfectly sensible of it. He knows that I serve the United States constantly, without respect of persons. "You have been slighted," are his own words; and when I testified to him my regrets for his departure from

Europe, he had the goodness to add, that these regrets were contrary to my interest. Permit me, sir, to commend them to you, and, if Mr. Laurens has returned to you safely as I hope, on the arrival of this will you express to him the sentiments of the most affectionate respect which I retain for him, as well as for all the great men in America, who have served under the sublime principles which have animated me as well as them, and in which I, as well as they, will live and die.

I am, with great respect, &c.,

DUMAS.

TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.

Sir,

The Hague, November 15th, 1782.

Yesterday morning, after a conference with his Excellency the Duc de la Vauguyon, I went in a post chaise to Rotterdam and Dort, in order to advise our friends in these two cities of some changes about to be made in the instructions of their Ministers Plenipotentiary at Paris, to deprive the English Minister of all pretext for conferring with those of the other belligerent Powers without them. I succeeded to the satisfaction of his Excellency, and our friends were duly informed and disposed, when they received this morning, while I was returning, letters on this subject from the Grand Pensionary. My journey has gained the time which would have been lost if they had, on reassembling here, taken the thing ad referendum

November 17th. I had the pleasure to receive this morning, on behalf of the Ambassador, absent at Amsterdam, the news of the readmission of M. Van Berckel, First Pensionary of Amsterdam, to the Assembly of their Noble and Grand Mightinesses, where he will reappear on the 20th, radiant as the sun, disjectis nubibus.

There has arrived a circular letter from Friesland, to take away from the Prince the direction of affairs. I shall have it, and will add it to the gazettes.

November 18th. On my return Friday evening I found, sir, your favors of the 5th and 12th of September, to which I can only answer succinctly, that the present may not be delayed.

I have thought a long time how much it might be advantageous both for Congress and for me, as you observe, sir, if I could enter

into a minute and frequent detail of all that passes here within the sphere of my action. But let Congress remember at last that qui vult finem, vult media, being both essential and subsidiary. I labor all day. Often I have scarcely time left to note briefly for myself what is done or said. I am alone. It is necessary to copy the same despatches four times, if one would hope for their arrival. I could have many things to say on all this. But to what good, if Congress does not say it also? I have not put my light under a bushel. I have made it shine constantly before both worlds, for the service of the United States, since they have called me here.

If the truths I transmit come more slowly than the falsehoods of the enemy which they may serve to contradict, it is because they may forge stories as they please, but not the truth which arrives when it can, and which, besides, cannot always be hazarded prematurely, still less be foretold, especially when the enemy might profit by it.

As to peace, we know not here what has been done about it at Paris. My opinion is that two or three more campaigns will be infinitely more salutary to the American Confederation than a patched-up peace, which shall leave the enemy possessor of Canada, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland; whence he would not cease nor be slow to vex you by all manner of means, perhaps to divide you, which will be worse. But let us wait what Parliament says at the end of this month. Then we may be able to say of the Congress of Peace what the poet Rousseau, in his Ode to Fortune, said of a hero becoming a man again:

Le masque tombe, George reste,

Et le Romaine s'évanouit.

And so much the better, I think, for America and for this Republic. I am, with very great respect, sir,

DUMAS.

P. S. I thank you, sir, for the excellent letter of Mr. Payne to the Abbé Raynal. If it is possible, I shall publish it in French.

TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.

The Hague, December 12th, 1782.

Sir,

Some days ago I was about to prepare a new despatch, touching affairs on the carpet here, when an unforeseen event prevented

me. It is nothing less than a conspiracy which might be termed Catilinarian, if there had been an able Catiline in it; but they only had the intention of the Roman, without his sagacity.

We were congratulating ourselves here on the despatches from Paris, which informed the Grand Pensionary, much to the regret of the conspiracy, of the news of the signing of preliminaries between the Ministers of the United States and Great Britain. We were only surprised at the oath of secrecy exacted of the members of the Assembly before communicating to them the contents of despatches so well suited to reassure and relieve the nation of the fear, which, to excite discontent, it had been industriously endeavored to inspire, that it would be deceived and abandoned by the other Powers, when on the 5th and 6th, the festival of St. Nicholas, famous in this country, which they seemed disposed to make another St. Bartholomew's, the conspiracy broke out and failed. Persons were sent about, during these two days, with the Orange cockade in their hats. and an address of thanks in their hands, applauding the good management of the marine, and at night about thirty men, paid and intoxicated, made a noisy procession through the streets and squares, to endeavor to raise the populace, who, however, would not sign, nor join the seditions, to make an attack, as they foolishly expected, on every person obnoxious to them. Saturday, 7th, they endeavored, in order to renew the scene the following Monday, to gain the peat carriers, who answered, that the troubles of 1748 had taught them to be more wise for the future. The evening of the same Saturday they hinted secretly to the Pensionaries of Dort and Amsterdam (remaining in the city) that they must not depart on their peril. But they, disregarding the danger, immediately went to require the Grand Pensionary to convoke an extraordinary Assembly on Monday. He obeyed in spite of himself, and despatched couriers during that night.

On Monday morning, the 9th, the Assembly adopted by the large majority of sixteen against two cities, (la Brille and Enkhuisen,) and to the confusion of the nobles and the Stadtholder, who were present, a resolution (a true quousque tandem) in which the Court and the officers of justice, municipal and provincial, are strongly censured for having looked on without interfering, and in which the Provincial Court of Justice is ordered to prosecute the affair criminally; and the Counsellor Deputies to provide that, for the future,

like disorders shall not be committed. The same day the Provincial Court of Justice assembled in consequence, and named two commissioners of its own body, and another fiscal, not suspected, to attend to the examination of the conspiracy. The Counsellor Deputies have likewise named a commission to effect what is enjoined on them. From these two commissions are excluded the old Provincial Fiscal of Justice, who has, besides, a quasi gout, and the Grand Bailiff of the Hague, who, on the part of the Nobles, is of the Council of Deputies, and who prudently declined before rejection, for both are under censure by the resolution.

The Court, alarmed at the consequences which they feared from all this, engaged M. Thulemeyer, Envoy of Prussia, to act for them, who, in continuation of a certain measure, which he took about two months ago by order of his Court, has been this morning to the Deputies of Dort, Haerlem, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, to tell them "that his Majesty has learned with displeasure the dissensions which have place in the Republic, that, without wishing to meddle in the domestic affairs of the Republic, the interest that his Majesty takes, equally, in the welfare of their High Mightinesses and of the Prince, his kinsman, does not permit him to look with indifference on any diminution of the rights of the Stadtholder; and that he would guaranty that this Prince should not abuse his prerogatives; and he hoped by this step that harmony would be reëstablished." Amsterdam has answered, "That they were surprised to find the King so misinformed; that, for themselves, they did not know that they had ever diminished the rights of the Stadtholder, and that the Stadtholder himself had never complained of it to the States; that this would no doubt have been done, if the fact had been true; that, as for the rest, they would write to their city what the Envoy had said to them, that it might, if it should judge proper, write directly to the King, to inform him better, and put his Majesty, also, in a way to know those who had thus imposed on him."

This answer evidently confounded the Envoy. The other cities have answered the same in substance.

* The expression in italics was added by the Envoy in his address to the gentlemen of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, because those of Dort asked him if the King pretended to meddle in the domestic concerns of the Republic? Haerlem was not able to receive him.