your Excellency, that the present conjuncture is critical; that there is some danger lest the Congress should lose its influence over the people, if it is found unable to procure the aids that are wanted and that the whole system of the new Government in America may thereby be shaken. That if the English are suffered once to recover that country, such an opportunity of effectual separation as the present may not occur again in the course of ages; and that the possession of those fertile and extensive regions, and that vast seacoast, will afford them so broad a basis for future greatness, by the rapid growth of their commerce and breed of seamen and soldiers, as will enable them to become the terror of Europe, and to exercise with impunity that insolence which is so natural to their nation, and which will increase enormously with the increase of their power. I am, with great respect, your Excellency's, &c.,

B. FRANKLIN.

TO COUNT DE VERGENNES.

Passy, March 6th, 1781.

Sir,

By perusing the enclosed instructions to Colonel Laurens and myself, your Excellency will see the necessity I am under of being importunate for an answer to the application lately made for aids of stores and money. As vessels are about to depart for America, it is of the utmost importance that the Congress should receive advice by some of them, of what may or may not be expected. I therefore earnestly entreat your Excellency to communicate me, as soon as possible, the necessary information.

With sincere esteem, I am, &c.,

B. FRANKLIN.

JAMES LOVELL TO B. FRANKLIN.

March 9th, 1781.

Sir,

I forward gazettes, journals, and some particular resolves of Congress, via Amsterdam.

The arrival of the Ariel has given us despatches from you, long expected, of June 1st, August 9th, December 23d. Congress had, before the receipt of your letters of February 19th, written to Mr.

Adams, January 10th, and signified their concurrence in opinion with Count de Vergennes, as to the time and circumstances of announcing his (Mr. Adams's) powers to Great Britain. They had also on December 12th expressed their sentiments upon his letters of June 24th, enclosing to them his correspondence relative to the act of March 18th, calling in the old paper money.

I send you extracts from the Journals for your fuller information on these points, and I shall forward yet for a time all acts of Congress intended for your guidance whenever they are finished; but I most earnestly look for the appointment of a Secretary for Foreign Affairs, agreeably to their determinations of January 10th. Such an officer may authoritatively communicate his opinions, and in many ways make your station more easy and reputable to you, than it can have been under great want of information of our circum

TO M. DE RAYNEVAL, SECRETARY TO THE COUNCIL OF STATE.

Sir,

Passy, March 11th, 1781.

I have examined the list of supplies wanted in America, which I received yesterday from you, in order to mark as desired what may be most necessary to forward thither. As that list is of old date, and I do not know what part of it may have been already procured by other channels, and I understand by my letters that a new list has been made out, which is given to Colonel Laurens, and though mentioned to be sent to me also is not yet come to my hands, I have thought it may be well for the present to order the making of a quantity of soldiers' and officers' clothing, equal to one third part of what has been demanded from page 31 to page 42 inclusive; and to collect and get ready also one third of the other articles mentioned in said pages, which I have marked with a red line in the margin, the whole to be sent by the first good opportunity. I think it would be well also to send five thousand more good fusils, with fifty tons of lead, and two hundred thousand flints for fusils. If these could go with the fleet, it would be of great service. More powder is not

necessary to be sent at present, as there goes in the Marquis de la Fayette the remainder of the two thousand barrels granted last year, and also two hundred tons of saltpetre, which they will make into powder. For the other articles that may be wanted, as Colonel Laurens will come fully instructed, as well by the list given to him as from his own observation and experience in the army, and from the information he will receive from General Washington, with whom and the Marquis de la Fayette he was to consult before his departure, I conceive it will be best to wait a little for his arrival.

I return the lists; and having, by some unaccountable accident, mislaid and lost the paper you gave me, containing what Count de Vergennes said to me yesterday, I must beg the favor of you to repeat it, and send it by the bearer. I am ashamed to give you this trouble, but I wish to be exact in what I am writing of it to Congress.

With the greatest esteem, &c.,

B. FRANKLIN.

TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.

Passy, March 12th, 1781.

Sir,

I had the honor of receiving, on the 13th of last month, your Excellency's letter of the 1st of January, together with the instructions of November 28th and December 27th, a copy of those to Colonel Laurens, and the letter to the King. I immediately drew a memorial, enforcing as strongly as I could the requests that are contained in that letter, and directed by the instructions, and I delivered the same with the letter, which were both well received; but the Ministry being extremely occupied with other weighty affairs, and I obtaining for some time only general answers that something would be done for us, &c., and Mr. Laurens not arriving, I wrote again, and pressed strongly for a decision on the subject, that I might be able to write explicitly by this opportunity what aids the Congress were, or were not, to expect, the regulation of their operations for the campaign depending on the information I should be enabled to give.

Upon this, I received a note, appointing Saturday last for a meeting with the Minister, which I attended punctually. He assured

me of the King's good will to the United States, remarking, however, that, being on the spot, I must be sensible of the great expense France was actually engaged in, and the difficulty of providing for it, which rendered the lending us twenty-five millions at present impracticable; but he informed me that the letter from the Congress, and my memorials, had been under his Majesty's consideration, and observed, as to loans in general, that the sum we wanted to borrow in Europe was large, and that the depreciation of our paper had hurt our credit on this side of the water; adding, also, that the King could not possibly favor a loan for us in his dominions, because it would interfere with, and be a prejudice to, those he was under the necessity of obtaining himself, to support the war; but that, to give the States a signal proof of his friendship, his Majesty had resolved to grant them the sum of six millions, not as a loan, but as a free gift. This sum, the Minister informed me, was exclusive of the three millions which he had before obtained for me to pay the Congress drafts for interest, &c., expected in the current year. He added that, as it was understood the clothing, &c., with which our army had been heretofore supplied from France was often of bad quality and dear, the Ministers would themselves take care of the purchase of such articles as should be immediately wanted, and send them cver; and it was desired of me to look over the great invoice that had been sent hither last year, and mark out those articles; that, as to the money remaining after such purchases, it was to be drawn for by General Washington upon M. d'Harvelay, Garde du Tresor Royal, and the bills would be duly honored; but it was desired they might be drawn gradually, as the money should be wanted; and as much time given for the payment after sight as conveniently could be, that the payment might be more easy.

I assured the Minister that the Congress would be very sensible of this token of his Majesty's continued goodness towards the United States, but remarked, that it was not the usage with us for the General to draw, and proposed that it might be our Treasurer who should draw the bills for the remainder; but I was told that it was his Majesty's order; and I afterwards understood, from the Secretary of the Council, that, as the sum was intended for the supply of the army, and could not be so large as we had demanded for general occasions, it was thought best to put it into the General's hands, that it might not get into those of the different Boards or Committees,

who might think themselves under a necessity of diverting it to other purposes. There was no room to dispute on this point, every donor having the right of qualifying his gifts with such terms as he thinks proper.

I took with me the invoice; and, having examined it, I returned it immediately with a letter, of which a copy is enclosed, and I suppose its contents will be followed, unless Colonel Laurens, on his arrival, should make any changes. I hope he and Colonel Palfrey are safe, though, as yet, not heard of.

After the discourse relating to the aid was ended, the Minister proceeded to inform me that the Courts of Petersburgh and Vienna had offered their mediation; that the King had answered that it would to him, personally, be agreeable, but that he could not yet accept it, because he had allies whose concurrence was necessary; and that his Majesty desired I would acquaint the Congress with this offer and answer, and urge their sending such instructions as they may think proper to their Plenipotentiary, it being not doubted that they would readily accept the proposed mediation, from their own sense of its being both useful and necessary. I mentioned that I supposed Mr. Adams was already furnished with instructions relating to any treaty of peace that might be proposed.

I must now beg leave to say something relating to myself, a subject with which I have not often troubled the Congress. I have passed my seventy-fifth year, and I find that the long and severe fit of the gout which I had the last winter has shaken me exceedingly, and I am yet far from having recovered the bodily strength I before enjoyed. I do not know that my mental faculties are impaired ; perhaps I shall be the last to discover that; but I am sensible of great diminution in my activity, a quality I think particularly necessary in your Minister for this Court. I am afraid, therefore, that your affairs may, some time or other, suffer by my deficiency. I find, also, that the business is too heavy for me, and too confining. The constant attendance at home, which is necessary for receiving and accepting your bills of exchange, (a matter foreign to my ministerial functions,) to answer letters, and perform other parts of my employment, prevents my taking the air and exercise which my annual journeys formerly used to afford me, and which contributed much to the preservation of my health. There are many other little personal attentions which the infirmities of age render necessary to