SILAS DEANE.

* * * * *

TO THE COMMITTEE OF SECRET CORRESPONDENCE.

Paris, 3d December, 1776.

Gentlemen,

My letters from Bordeaux and since, to which I have received no reply,
will give you my situation, but lest some of them fail, I will briefly
in this give you the history of my proceedings. Immediately on my
arrival, I sent forward your bills, a large part of which were
protested, and intelligence arriving of the loss of Canada, and that
Carleton was even on the frontiers of the Colonies, and at the same
time the formidable armament gone and going over, made every one here
give up the Colonies as subdued. To have tried for a credit under such
circumstances would have been worse than useless; it would have been
mortifying, as a refusal must have been the consequence. Mr Delap
generously offered to advance five or six thousand pounds, but when I
considered it was already more than four months since you began to
prepare for remitting, and that next to nothing was received, I really
found myself embarrassed, and hoping every day for some relief, I
suspended engaging, and came up to Paris, having previously sent Mr
Morris's letter to his different correspondents, not one of which
appeared inclinable to be concerned in a credit.

I sent ---- to procure the goods in Amsterdam, if to be had, but found
our credit worse there than in France. A gentleman here offered me a
credit for a million of livres, but it was, when explained, on the
following conditions. I must produce direct authority from the
Congress, with their promise of interest; all American vessels must be
sent to his address; and until this could be secured him I must
provide a credit, or in other words a security in Europe. Here you are
sensible my negotiation ended. I then contracted for the supplies of
the army, and crowded into the contract as large a proportion of
woollens as I well could, sensible that with them you might do
something, and hoping your remittances might still arrive, or some
intelligence of the situation of your affairs, for I thought I judged
rightly, that if in six or seven months you were unable to send out
one third the remittances, the returns must be equally difficult. On
this ground I have been anxiously waiting to hear something from you.
Meantime I shipped forty tons of saltpetre, two hundred thousand
pounds of powder, via