g the means which are in our hands.

It is improper for us, however, to enlarge farther upon this project,
important as it may be, being well assured, that your noble and great
Lordships see those grievous consequences more clearly than we can trace
them.

The merchants continue to recommend their commerce and navigation to the
constant care and protection of your noble and great Lordships, and to
insist only, that in case these offers of the court of England should
be, at any time, the cause that the affair of the admission of Mr.
Adams, in quality of Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of
America, should meet with any difficulty or delay on the part of the
other confederates, that your noble and great lordships, conformably to
the second article of our requisition, inserted in this request, would
have the goodness to think upon measures which would secure this
province from the ruinous consequences of such a proceeding.

_To the foregoing was joined the Address presented to the Burgomasters
and the Council, which is of the following tenor._

NOBLE, GREAT, VENERABLE, AND NOBLE AND VENERABLE LORDS!

The undersigned merchants, citizens, and inhabitants of the city of
Amsterdam, have learned with an inexpressible joy, the news of the
resolution taken the 28th of March last by their noble and grand
Mightinesses, the lords the States of Holland and West-Friesland. Their
noble and grand Mightinesses have thereby not only satisfied the general
wishes of the greatest and best part of the inhabitants of this
province, but they have laid the foundations of ulteriour alliances and
correspondencies of friendship and of good understanding with the United
States of America, which promise new life to the languishing state of
our commerce, navigation, and manufactures. The unanimity with which
that resolution was decided in the assembly of Holland, gives us grounds
to hope that the States of the other provinces will not delay to take a
similar resolution; whilst the same unanimity fills with the most lively
satisfaction the well intentioned inhabitants of this city, and without
doubt those of the whole country, in convincing them fully that the
union among the sage and venerable fathers of the country increases
more and more; whilst that the promptness and activity with which it
hath been concluded, make us hope, with reason, that we shall reap, in
time, from a step so important and so necessary for this Republic, the