se one would wish to respect, it
is not without some difficulty that I have taken the resolution to
write to you. The dangers to which I have been exposed cannot have been
unknown to you, and the guarded silence you have observed upon that
circumstance is what I ought not to have expected from you, either as a
friend or as President of the United States.

"You knew enough of my character to be assured that I could not have
deserved imprisonment in France; and, without knowing any thing more
than this, you had sufficient ground to have taken some interest for my
safety. Every motive arising from recollection of times past, ought to
have suggested to you the propriety of such a measure. But I cannot find
that you have so much as directed any enquiry to be made whether I
was in prison or at liberty, dead or alive; what the cause of that
imprisonment was, or whether there was any service or assistance you
could render. Is this what I ought to have expected from America, after
the part I had acted towards her, or will it redound to her honour or
to yours, that I tell the story? I do not hesitate to say, that you have
not served America with more disinterestedness, or greater zeal, or more
fidelity, than myself, and I know not if with better effect. After the
revolution of America was established I ventured into new scenes
of difficulties to extend the principles which that revolution had
produced, and you rested at home to partake of the advantages. In the
progress of events, you beheld yourself a President in America, and me a
prisoner in France. You folded your arms, forgot your friend, and became
silent.

"As every thing I have been doing in Europe was connected with my wishes
for the prosperity of America, I ought to be the more surprised at this
conduct on the part of her government. It leaves me but one mode of
explanation, which is, _that every thing is not as it ought to be
amongst you_, and that the presence of a man who might disapprove, and
who had credit enough with the country to be heard and believed, was not
wished for. This was the operating motive with the despotic faction
that imprisoned me in France, (though the pretence was, that I was a
foreigner,) and those that have been silent and inactive towards me
in America, appear to me to have acted from the same motive. It is
impossible for me to discover any other.(1)

"After the part I have taken in the revolution of America, it is
natural that I feel inte