ted will be defective, but
this being made a part of my duty, I shall endeavor to execute it in
the best manner I am able.

It is to be observed, that the Dantzickers, the Prussians and the
Russians are improving the present opportunity, which the Dutch war
affords them of increasing their own navigation, with the utmost
industry; and the great rise of freights enables them to do it with
much advantage. What effect this may have upon the sovereigns of the
two last countries, to slacken their pace towards the acknowledgement
of the independence of ours, which would lead to a speedy peace, I
cannot say. The subjects of the Emperor are reaping the same
advantages from the war.

An opportunity by water from hence to Amsterdam now presents itself,
and this being the safest way, I shall send my despatches under cover
to the care of Mr Adams, and shall desire him to break them up, and
read them before he forwards them for America, as the best means of
making him fully acquainted with all that has yet taken place here,
especially with the sentiments of the French Minister, which appear to
me to deserve our particular attention. Though I am no better
satisfied with the reasons given in support of his opinion, in his
second letter, than I was with those in his first, yet I thought it
not prudent to press him any further, with my opposition to them, and
that it was quite sufficient to give him to understand that I still
intended to adopt the measure mentioned in my second letter. He
possibly may have other reasons for his opinions, which he chooses to
keep to himself, but surely such cannot serve as rules by which to
regulate my conduct while I remain ignorant of them, nor can I imagine
it to be my duty, or the expectation of Congress, that I should
blindly fall into the sentiments of any man, especially when I think
this backwardness to give proper support to our cause at the Courts of
Europe, may be accounted for on other principles. That it does
actually exist, I can now no longer doubt. However, Congress will make
up their own judgment upon this point from the letters of the Minister
himself, and from other facts, with which they are much better
acquainted than I can be.

I confess, that had the proposition of the mediators been laid before
me to form my opinion upon, unaccompanied with the strictures of the
French Minister, I should have laid my finger upon three words only in
it, viz. _en meme tems_, and considered the o