ch might occasion an injury to him; and the
rather, as I presumed that, at this time, there did not exist the same
reason for wishing the arrival of a minister in America, which perhaps
existed there at the date of your letter. Count Adhemar is just arrived
from London, on account of a paralytic disease with which he has been
struck. It does not seem improbable, that his place will be supplied,
and perhaps by the Chevalier de la Luzerne.

A French vessel has lately refused the salute to a British armed vessel
in the channel. The _Charge des Affaires_ of Great Britain at this court
(their ambassador having gone to London a few days ago) made this the
subject of a conference with the Count de Vergennes, on Tuesday last.
He told me that the Count explained the transaction as the act of
the individual master of the French vessel, not founded in any public
orders. His earnestness, and his endeavors to find terms sufficiently
soft to express the Count's explanation, had no tendency to lessen any
doubts I might have entertained on this subject. I think it possible the
refusal may have been by order: nor can I believe that Great Britain is
in a condition to resent it, if it was so. In this case, we shall see it
repeated by France and her example will then be soon followed by other
nations. The news-writers bring together this circumstance with
the departure of the French ambassador from London, and the English
ambassador from Paris, the manoeuvring of the French fleet just off the
channel, the collecting some English vessels of war in the channel, the
failure of a commercial treaty between the two countries, and a severe
_Arret_ here against English manufacturers, as foreboding war. It is
possible that the fleet of manoeuvre, the refusal of the salute, and the
English fleet of observation, may have a connexion with one another. But
I am persuaded the other facts are totally independent of these, and
of one another, and are accidentally brought together in point of time.
Neither nation is in a condition to go to war: Great Britain, indeed,
the least so of the two. The latter power, or rather its monarch, as
Elector of Hanover, has lately confederated with the King of Prussia and
others of the Germanic body, evidently in opposition to the Emperor's
designs on Bavaria. An alliance, too, between the Empress of Russia
and the Republic of Venice, seems to have had him in view, as he had
meditated some exchange of territory with that r