ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON TO JOHN JAY.

Philadelphia, November 23d, 1782.

Dear Sir,

I have before me your letters of the 25th and 28th of June. I
congratulate you on your safe arrival at Paris, where I venture to
hope your residence will on many accounts be more agreeable than it
was at Madrid. Nothing can be more pleasing to us than your
determination to write very frequently, since I am sorry to say, that
we have not yet been favored with such minute information on many
points of importance, as we have reason to expect. Both Dr Franklin
and yourself dwell so much in generals in your last letters, that had
it not been for a private letter of the Marquis to me, Congress would
have remained ignorant of points, which they have thought sufficiently
important to make them the foundation of those resolutions, which are
herewith transmitted to you.

You need be under no apprehensions, that Commissioners from the Court
of Great Britain will be allowed to negotiate with Congress; their
sentiments on this subject are sufficiently manifested in the
resolutions, that are sent to you and Dr Franklin with this. And the
case of Mr Burgess, which you will find in one of the papers of last
week, and in my letter to Dr Franklin,[8] will afford you some
evidence of the extreme caution of particular States on this head.

That in the mass of our people, there is a great number, who though
resolved on independence, prefer an alliance with England to one with
France, must be a mere speculative opinion, which can be reduced to no
kind of certainty. If we form our judgment from acts of government, we
would suppose that no such sentiment prevailed; they all speak a
different language. If from the declarations of individuals, we must
entertain the same opinion, since independence and the alliance with
France, connect themselves so closely together, that we never speak of
them separately. The mass of the people here are not so ignorant of
the common principles of policy as to prefer an alliance with a nation
whose recent pretensions, and whose vicinity renders them mutual
enemies, to that of a Prince who has no claims upon them, and no
territory in their neighborhood, at least till the principles of his
government shall be changed, and he gives evident proofs of the want
of justice and moderation.

I think it unnecessary to repeat to you what I have already written to
Dr Franklin, presumin