, and
myself, for a limited term only. That term has expired, and the other
two gentlemen returned to America; so that no person is commissioned at
this moment to renew those conferences. I may safely, however, assure
your Excellency, that the same friendly dispositions still continue, and
the same desire of facilitating and encouraging a commerce between the
two nations, which produced the former appointment. But our nation is,
at this time, proposing a change in the organization of its government.
For this change to be agreed to by all the members of the Union, the new
administration chosen and brought into activity, their domestic matters
arranged, which will require their first attention, their foreign system
afterwards decided on and carried into full execution, will require very
considerable length of time. To place under the same delay the private
claims which I have the honor to present to your Excellency, would be
hard on the persons interested: because these claims have no connection
with the system of commercial connection, which may be established
between the two nations, nor with the particular form of our
administration. The justice due to them is complete, and the present
administration as competent to final settlement as any future one will
be, should a future change take place. These individuals have already
lingered nine years in expectation of their hard and perilous earnings.
Time lessens their numbers continually, disperses their representatives,
weakens the evidence of their right, and renders more and more
impracticable his Majesty's dispositions to repair the private injury,
to which public circumstances constrained him. These considerations, the
just and honorable intentions of your Excellency, and the assurances you
give us in your letter, that no delay is wished on your part, give me
strong hopes that we may speedily obtain that final arrangement, which
express instructions render it my duty to urge. I have the honor,
therefore, of agreeing with your Excellency, that the settlement of this
matter, formerly begun at Paris, shall be continued there; and to
ask that you will be pleased to give powers and instructions for this
purpose to such persons as you shall think proper, and in such full form
as may prevent those delays, to which the distance between Copenhagen
and Paris might otherwise expose us.

I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most profound respect,
your Excellency's most o