dness has anticipated my design.

You will not impute it to a proper want of respect for your
sentiments and opinions, if I presume to raise some doubts, and to
make some reflections upon them. For whether they come from the
Marquis de Verac, or from the Minister of France, they make an equal
impression upon my mind, and it is at present a matter of indifference
to me. The wisdom of her Imperial Majesty, in making it, as you
express yourself, "from the moment the first hostilities commenced, a
point of honor to hold the balance perfectly equal between the
different parties, taking particular care not to manifest any kind of
preference, by carefully avoiding every advance, which could indicate
the slightest partiality in favor of either of the belligerent powers
to the prejudice of the others," cannot be too much admired. But it
would be paying an ill compliment to that penetration, for which her
Majesty is so justly celebrated, to suppose, that she did not also
from that very moment clearly discover the importance of the American
revolution, at least to all the maritime powers of Europe, and that it
was the only basis, upon which could be erected her favorite and just
system, of equal freedom and commerce and navigation to all nations.

She might hope to obtain this great end, and to acquire the glory of
mediating between the belligerent powers at one and the same time.
Upon this supposition, that exact neutrality she has hitherto held,
was both wise and necessary. It was necessary above all, that she
should abstain, with the greatest care, from manifesting a particular
inclination for the cause of America. It seems her system of politics
must have undergone an essential change, and that it has now become
absolutely impossible for her Imperial Majesty any longer to conceal
her particular inclination for the cause of America, since she, in
conjunction with the Emperor has proposed, that the Minister of the
United States, should be admitted into the Congress for settling the
pretensions of the belligerent powers, and there to debate himself,
and discuss their proper interests. This is to rank America (as in
fact she stands) among the belligerent powers, and, in a manner, to
acknowledge her independence. It is making a much larger stride
towards it, I confess, than I expected would have been made in the
first plan of pacification. That they must come to it at last, I have
been long firmly persuaded.

I must take the lib