your
Excellency's most obedient and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXXII.--TO LE COMTE BERNSTORFF, January 21, 1788

TO LE COMTE BERNSTORFF, _Minister of Foreign Affairs, Copenhagen_.

Paris, January 21, 1788.

Sir,

I am instructed by the United States of America, in Congress assembled,
to bring again under the consideration of his Majesty, the King of
Denmark, and of his ministers, the case of the three prizes taken from
the English during the late war, by an American squadron under the
command of Commodore Paul Jones, put into Bergen in distress, there
rescued from our possession by orders from the court of Denmark,
and delivered back to the English. Dr. Franklin, then Minister
Plenipotentiary from the United States at the court of Versailles, had
the honor of making applications to the court of Denmark, for a just
indemnification to the persons interested, and particularly by a letter
of the 22nd of December, 1779, a copy of which I have now the honor of
enclosing to your Excellency. In consequence of this, the sum of ten
thousand pounds was proposed to him, as an indemnification, through
the Baron de Waltersdorff, then at Paris. The departure of both those
gentlemen from this place, soon after, occasioned an intermission in
the correspondence on this subject. But the United States continue to
be very sensibly affected by this delivery of their prizes to Great
Britain, and the more so, as no part of their conduct had forfeited
their claim to those rights of hospitality, which civilized nations
extend to each other. Not only a sense of justice due to the individuals
interested in those prizes, but also an earnest desire that no subject
of discontent may check the cultivation and progress of that friendship,
which they wish may subsist and increase between the two countries,
prompt them to remind his Majesty of the transaction in question; and
they flatter themselves, that his Majesty will concur with them in
thinking, that as restitution of the prizes is not practicable, it is
reasonable and just that he should render, and that they should accept,
a compensation equivalent to the value of them. And the same principles
of justice towards the parties, and of amity to the United States,
which influenced the breast of his Majesty to make, through the Baron de
Waltersdorff, the proposition of a particular sum, will surely lead him
to restore their full value, if that were greater, as is belie