f their advice and information; and it may
be prudent through them to obtain the sense of the Court of France
thereon.

2. You shall communicate the general object of your mission to the
Minister of his Most Christian Majesty at the Court of Petersburg, and
endeavor through his mediation to sound the disposition of her
Imperial Majesty, or her Ministers, towards these United States.

3. If the result of your inquiries should point out a fair prospect of
an honorable reception, you are to announce your public character, and
deliver your letters of credence in the usual form.

4. You are to manifest on all proper occasions the high respect, which
Congress entertain for her Imperial Majesty; for the lustre of her
character, and the liberality of her sentiments and her views; and
particularly you are, in the strongest terms, to testify our
approbation of the measures, which her Imperial Majesty has suggested
and matured for the protection of commerce against the arbitrary
violations of the British Court. You will present the act of Congress
herewith transmitted, declaring our assent to her Imperial Majesty's
regulations on this subject, and use every means, which can be devised
to obtain the consent and influence of that Court that these United
States shall be formally invited, or admitted, to accede as principals
and as an independent nation to the said convention. In that event,
you are authorised to subscribe the treaty or convention for the
protection of commerce in behalf of these United States, either with
her Imperial Majesty conjunctly with the other neutral powers, or if
that shall be inadmissible, separately with her Imperial Majesty, or
any one of those powers.

5. You are to impress her Imperial Majesty and her Ministers with a
sense of the justice of our cause, the nature and stability of our
union, and the solemn engagements by which not only the States but his
Most Christian Majesty, are reciprocally bound to maintain the
sovereignty, rights and jurisdiction of each of the thirteen States
inviolably; and the utter impracticability of our acceding to any
treaty of peace with Great Britain, on the principles of a _uti
possidetis_, or on any other terms than such as shall imply an express
or tacit acknowledgment of the sovereignty of each and every part, and
which shall be consistent with the letter and spirit of our treaty of
alliance and friendship and commerce with his Most Christian Majesty.
You shall r