6th. Hospital department. In this you will charge all instruments, medicines, &c., &c., appertaining to that department. 7th. Merchandise general. In this you will charge such articles of stores as do not fall within the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth heads, if any such there be, and also any articles which you shall be doubtful as to the account they ought to be carried to. 8th. Transport service. In this you will charge the purchase, freightment, hire, insurance, and the like, of ships or vessels for the purpose of bringing any articles to America. 9th. Contingent service. In this you will charge the expense of land transportation, expresses, storages, and other like articles; also all those things which do not fall properly under some other general head. 10th. Prisoners and Americans in Europe. In this you will charge all moneys paid for or to American prisoners or other Americans; taking care to designate and specify these charges and the parties as that those who are able may be called on for repayment. The names and usual places of abode will, as far as they are attainable, be of importance. 11th. Foreign officers. In this you will charge all sums advanced or paid to foreign officers coming to or returning from America. 12th. Interest of debts. In this you will charge all sums paid on the interest bills of exchange issued from the several loan offices, and any other interest moneys which may have been paid. 13th. Bills of exchange. In this you will charge all sums paid on bills of exchange drawn by order of Congress. It is not impossible that in the course of your business you may find it necessary to raise some other such general accounts, and if so you will raise them accordingly. You will take care to attend strictly to the propriety of all charges made, and to the validity of the vouchers by which they are supported. You will examine very particularly into the accounts of armed vessels fitted out in Europe on account of the United States, especially of those wherein any individuals shall appear to have been interested. And you will bring those persons to account into whose hands any prizes or moneys for the sales of prizes may have come, so that justice may be done as well to the public as to the cap. tors concerned therein. Whenever you finally settle an account you will take care to he possessed of the several vouchers, which, together with the account, are to be kept in your consular office until further orders; but you will transmit quadruplicate copies of the general accounts by safe conveyances as soon as possible. I am, sir, your most obedient, &c., ROBERT MORRIS. J. Adams to Dana.* PARIS, December 6, 1782. DEAR SIR: You may easily guess from your own feelings what mine may be in communicating to you the intelligence that the preliminary treaty, to be inserted in the definitive treaty, was signed the 30th November by the plenipotentiaries on each side. We have tolerable satisfaction in the Mississippi, the boundaries, and the fisheries, and I hope not much to regret with regard to the Tories or anything else. Mr. F., Mr. J., and Mr. Laurens, as well as myself, are of opinion that this is the proper time for you to communicate to the ministry where you are your mission. But I believe we shall write you a joint letter upon this subject. Meantime, I have the honor to be, &c., JOHN ADAMS. Franklin to Vergennes.t PASSY, December 6, 1782. SIR: I have the honor of returning herewith the map your excellency sent me yesterday. I have marked with a strong red line, according to your desire, the limits of the thirteen United States, as settled in the preliminaries between the British and American plenipotentiaries. With great respect, etc., B. FRANKLIN. La Fayette to Franklin.‡ ON BOARD THE CENSURE, UNDER SAIL, MY DEAR SIR: However certain it appears that peace is near at hand, I have thought that personal considerations ought to give way to motives of public utility. I am therefore sailing with the fleet, and until peace is ascertained will continue in promoting the views which you have decided to be the most advantageous to America. In this affair it is useless to observe that my personal interest has been by me entirely given up. God grant this may prove of some service to our noble cause. In case my return to Paris in a few weeks might be of use, pray give your letter to Count de Vergennes and to Marquis de Castries with a particular recommendation. My best respects wait upon your colleagues, whom I beg you will acquaint with my departure and the motives of it. My compliments to your grandson and Dr. Bancroft. Most respectfully, etc., * 8 J. Adams' Works, 17. +8 Bigelow's Franklin, 223. LA FAYETTE. MSS. Dep. of State. Laurens to Cornwallis.* PARIS, December 9, 1782. MY LORD: Often since the 31st of May last your lordship must have charged me with want of decency and good manners for a seeming de. linquency to an address of that date which your lordship intended to honor me with. The bare apprehension has added to my unhappiness, notwithstanding my feelings of assurance that your lordship will acquit me upon the instant of being informed that only a few minutes have passed since Mr. Oswald called upon me with the letter and an apology for having mislaid and detained it so long. Believe me, my lord, though I was at a distance from Passy, I was not unmindful of accomplishing your lordship's release from parole in exchange for my discharge. My feelings on that occasion were always alive. I was never satisfied with my own enlargement till I had written pressingly to Dr. Franklin, and had finally delivered my opinion upon an appeal from the Doctor, intimating that he would do "what I should think best." Without a moment's hesitation I signified my ideas both of the expediency and necessity of satisfying the well-grounded expectations of the British ministry. Your lordship will find that the release followed, or that it was the consequence of previous applications on my part, and of Mr. Oswald's assurance that an exchange was expected, that he himself had treated with me while I was a prisoner in the Tower of London for that purpose, by desire of the administration; a fact to which many others might be added, confronting an assertion respecting this affair in a late letter from the British commissioners at New York to General Washington, highly injurious to candor; but as I am sure your lordship could not possibly have been privy to the ground of that transaction, I forbear to enlarge upon the subject; nor do I mean to touch the veracity of the commissioners, who no doubt wrote as they had been instructed. Even the instruction, I charitably hope, was rather the effect of inadvertency than of premeditated detour. I have the honor to be, &c., HENRY LAURENS. Livingston to the President of Congress.t OFFICE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, SIR: I have the honor to inform Congress that the minister plenipo. tentiary of France communicated to me the contents of a letter received on Saturday from Count de Rochambeau, by which he was apprised that the Count, in pursuance of his instructions, had ordered the troops * MSS. Dep. of State; 1 Sparks' Dip. Rev. Corr., 727, with verbal changes. + MSS. Dep. of State; 6 Sparks' Dip. Rev. Corr., 205. under his command to embark, and that they were to proceed with the fleet to the islands. The legion and a detachment of about six hundred men, together with the convalescents, are to remain on the continent. The whole may amount to about sixteen hundred men. The minister further informed me that in consequence of his representations on the subject he had received assurances that such a force should be detached from the West Indies as would be adequate to the protection of the trade upon this coast during the winter. The enclosed extract of a letter from Boston contains an account of the success of the British in relieving Gibraltar. Though it is not official, it is to be feared it is too well founded. I have the honor to be, &c., ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON. J. Adams' Journal of Peace Negotiations-Continued.* DECEMBER 9, 1782. Mr. Oswald came in. We slided from one thing to another into a very lively conversation upon politics. He asked me what the conduct of his court and nation ought to be in relation to America. I answered, the alpha and omega of British policy towards America was summed up in this one maxim, see that American independence is independent, independent of all the world, independent of yourselves as well as of France, and independent of both as well as of the rest of Europe. Depend upon it, you have no chance for salvation but by setting up America very high; take care to remove from the American mind all cause of fear of you; no other motive but fear of you will ever produce in the Americans any unreasonable attachment to the house of Bourbon. "Is it possible," says he, "that the people of America should be afraid of us or hate us?" "One would think, Mr. Oswald," says I, "that you had been out of the world for these twenty years past. Yes, there are three millions of people in America who hate and dread you more than anything in the world." "What," says he, "now we have come to our "Your change of system is not yet known in America," said I. "Well," says he, "what shall we do to remove those fears and jealousies?" "In one word," says I, "favor and promote the interest, reputation, and dignity of the United States in every thing that is consistent with your own. If you pursue the plan of cramping, clipping, and weakening America, on the supposition that she will be a rival to you, you will make her really so; you will make her the natural and perpetual ally of your natural and perpetual enemies." "But in what instance," says he, "have we discovered such a disposition?" "In the three leagues from your shores and the fifteen leagues from Cape Bre senses?" 3 Sparks' Dip. Rev. Corr., 724. ton," says I, "to which your ministry insisted so earnestly to exclude our fishermen. Here was a point that would have done us great harm and you no good; on the contrary, harm; so that you would have hurt yourselves to hurt us; this disposition must be guarded against." "I am fully of your mind about that," says he; "but what else can we do?" "Send a minister to Congress," says I, "at the peace; a clever fellow, who understands himself, and will neither set us bad examples nor intermeddle in our parties. This will show that you are consistent with yourselves; that you are sincere in your acknowledgment of American independence; and that you don't entertain hopes and designs of overturning it. Such a minister will dissipate many fears, and will be of more service to the least obnoxious refugees than any other measure could be. Let the King send a minister to Congress and receive one from that body. This will be acting consistently and with dignity in the face of the universe." "Well, what else shall we do?" says he. "I have more than once already," says I, "advised you to put your ministers upon negociating the acknowledgment of our independence by the neutral powers." "True," says he, "and I have written about it, and in my answers," said he, laughing, "I am charged with speculation; but I don't care, I will write them my sentiments. I won't take any of their money. I have spent already twelve or thirteen hundred pounds, and all the reward I will have for it shall be the pleasure of writing as I think. My opinion is, that our court should sign the armed neutrality, and announce to them what they have done with you, and negociate to have you admitted to sign, too. But I want to write more fully on the subject, and I want you to give me your thoughts upon it, for I don't understand it so fully as I wish. What motives can be thrown out to the Empress of Russia? Or what motives can she be supposed to have to acknowledge your independence? And what motives can our court have to interfere or intercede with the neutral powers to receive you into their confederation?" "I will answer all these questions," says I, "to the best of my knowledge and with the utmost candor. In the first place, there has been, with very little interruption, a jealousy between the court of Petersburgh and Versailles for many years. France is the old friend and ally of the Sublime Porte, the natural enemy of Russia. France, not long since, negociated a peace between Russia and the Turks; but upon the Empress' late offers of mediation, and especially her endeavors to negociate Holland out of the war, France appears to have been piqued, and, as the last revolution in the Crimea happened soon after, there is reason to suspect that French emissaries excited the revolt against the new independent government which the Empress had taken so much pains to establish. Poland has been long a scene of competition between Russian and French politics, both parties having spent great sums in pensions to partisans, until they have laid all virtue and public spirit prostrate in that country. Sweden is another region of rivalry between France and Russia, where |