ry well understand that my commerce with you is carried on in
Europe, that it is in the ports of Europe I make and take returns.
However well bottomed my house may be, and however I may have
appropriated many millions to your trade alone, yet it would be
impossible for me to support it, if all the dangers of the sea, of
exports and imports, were not entirely at your risk. Whenever you
choose to receive my goods in any of our windward or leward islands,
you have only to inform me of it, and my correspondents shall be there
according to your orders, and then you shall have no augmentation of
price, but of freight and insurance. But the risk of being taken by
your enemies, still remains with you, according to the declaration
rendered incontestable by the measures I shall take by your deputy
himself. This deputy should receive as soon as possible, full power
and authority to accept what I shall deliver to him, to receive my
accounts, examine them, make payments thereupon, or enter into
engagements, which you shall be bound to ratify, as the head of that
brave people to whom I am devoted; in short, always to treat about
your interests immediately with me.

Notwithstanding the open opposition, which the king of France, his
ministers, and the agents of administration show, and ought to show to
every thing that carries the least appearance of violating foreign
treaties, and the internal ordinances of the kingdom, I dare promise
to you, gentlemen, that my indefatigable zeal shall never be wanting
to clear up difficulties, soften prohibitions, and, in short,
facilitate all operations of a commerce, which my advantage, much less
than yours, has made me undertake with you. What I have just informed
you of is only a general sketch, subject to all the augmentations and
restrictions, which events may point out to us.

One thing can never vary or diminish; it is the avowed and ardent
desire I have of serving you to the utmost of my power. You will
recollect my signature, that one of your friends in London some time
ago informed you of my favorable disposition towards you, and my
attachment to your interest. Look upon my house then, gentlemen, from
henceforward as the chief of all useful operations to you in Europe,
and my person as one of the most zealous partisans of your cause, the
soul of your success, and a man most deeply impressed with respectful
esteem, with which I have the honor to be,