ference to the Department of
Foreign Affairs, are in course to go through this office. The
necessity of carrying them into effect is too obvious to need
observations.

While we hold an intercourse with civilised nations, we must conform
to laws, which humanity has established, and which custom has
consecrated among them. On this the rights, which the United States or
their citizens may claim in foreign countries must be founded.

One of the resolutions passed Congress in consequence of a convention
about to be concluded between his Most Christian Majesty and the
United States of America, which affords an additional reason for
paying it the earliest attention. Your Excellency and the Legislature
will see the propriety of rendering the laws on these subjects as
simple, and the execution of them as expeditious, as possible, since
foreigners, who are the great object of them, are easily disgusted at
complex systems, which they find a difficulty in understanding, and
the honor and peace of a nation are frequently as much wounded by a
delay as by a denial of justice.

Another resolution relates to your boundaries, and is designed as one
means of ascertaining the territorial rights of the United States
collectively, which can only be accurately known by each State's
exhibiting its claims, and the evidence on which they found them. Your
Excellency will therefore be pleased to direct, authentic copies from
your records of all grants, charters, maps, treaties with the natives,
and other evidences, to be transmitted to this office, as soon as you
can conveniently collect them. I could wish, that the copies might be
proved, by having the great seal of your State annexed.

I have the honor to be, &c.

ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.

* * * * *

TO GOVERNOR RUTLEGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

Office of Foreign Affairs, Philadelphia, }
February 19th, 1782. }

Dear Sir,

I wish to avail myself of the opportunity Colonel Ternant affords me,
to convey the agreeable intelligence contained in the enclosed letter
from Mr Harrison, our agent at Cadiz. Many other objects present
themselves, on which I would write could I do it without detaining
Colonel Ternant, who only waits for this.

I propose to have the honor of writing more at large by the next safe
conveyance. In the m