charge with having
decided the very point in controversy. A secret agent, if his
character was declared to the Russian Minister, would in a less degree
have the same effects, and reduce them to the necessity of
embarrassing themselves by dissimulation, or permitting us to
entertain unfavorable sentiments of their impartiality by directing
you to withdraw.

Your eager desire to render essential services to your country had in
some measure biassed your judgment, and led you to see this matter in
a different light from that in which it would have appeared to you, if
your patriotism had permitted you coolly to weigh and consider
circumstances. It appears by your letters of the 28th of July, the
15th of September, and 15th of October last, which have been received
and read in Congress, that you entertain serious thoughts of making an
immediate display of your powers to the Russian Ministry,
notwithstanding the cautions given you by the Count de Vergennes, the
opinion of Dr Franklin, and the advice of the Marquis de Verac, whom
you are expressly directed to consult; whose lights you are interested
to avail yourself of, and to sound the dispositions of the Court of
Petersburg.

Congress, when they appointed you to the important and delicate
mission in which you are engaged, discovered their respect for your
abilities, while they meant by their instructions to guard against any
inconvenience into which you might hastily run, by directing you
before you declared your character, to take the advice of a Minister,
whose residence at the Court of Petersburg (independent of other
circumstances) gave him advantages, which an absolute stranger could
not enjoy. The letters that have passed between you, confirm the
propriety of this restriction. The conclusions of the Marquis de Verac
on the plan of the proposed mediation are sound and just; and if you
have disregarded them, there is no doubt but the event has before this
time justified them to you. He has, probably, shown you the answer of
France to the proposals of the mediators. You will have remarked
therein, the same reasoning extended in such a manner, as fully to
have convinced you that the distinction he has drawn between our
treating _at the same time_, and our treating as an independent
nation, are very well founded. It will serve too, Sir, to show that
your suspicions on another point are groundless. To suppose that
France would go to war for our independence, and yet not w