erty to differ in opinion from your Excellency,
when you say, in the present circumstances, it is very doubtful
whether the Ministry of her Imperial Majesty will acknowledge a
Minister from the United States of America, more especially when I
reflect upon the principal reasons you assign for this opinion. I can
no longer consider myself as "the Minister of a power, which has not
as yet, in her eyes, a political existence." It is difficult to
conceive upon what ground her Imperial Majesty could propose that a
Minister appointed for the express purpose, by the United States of
America, in Congress assembled, should be admitted into a Congress to
be held for settling the pretensions of the belligerent powers, if she
did not admit the political existence of that body, and consider it as
a complete sovereign. The fact is undeniably true, and no fallacy of
our enemies can invalidate it, that the United States of America have
been, ever since the 4th of July, 1776, a free, sovereign, and
independent body politic. Your illustrious Sovereign made this
declaration in the face of the whole world, more than three years
since; and I flatter myself the time is now come, when other
sovereigns are prepared to make the same, if properly invited to do
it. Neither can I imagine, that her Imperial Majesty will now give
herself much concern about any groundless complaints, which the Court
of London may make against such a public mark of respect for my
sovereign, as my open reception in the character of its Minister would
be. I cannot but consider her Imperial Majesty's line of conduct, in
this respect, decided by the above proposition, which she made as
mediator between the belligerent powers. No one could more deeply
wound the Court of London. She must have contemplated as probable, at
least, what I think might have been almost certainly predicted,
namely, the rejection of her mediation by the Court of London, on
account of that very proposition, and have resolved upon her measures
in consequence of it. She could never have committed the honor and
dignity of her Imperial Crown to so improbable a contingency, as the
Court of London accepting her mediation upon the terms upon which it
was tendered.

Having seen Britain in vain attempting for more than six years, the
reduction of the United States, without being able in all that time to
conquer one of them; finding them to continue inflexibly firm through
all their variety of fortune in the