an to step
in to its relief, on your application, without waiting a formal
authorization from the National Assembly. As the case was unforeseen, so
it was unprovided for on their part, and we did what we doubted not
they would have desired us to do, had there been time to make the
application, and what we presumed they would sanction as soon as known
to them. We have now been going on more than a twelvemonth, in making
advances for the relief of the colony, without having, as yet, received
any such sanction; for the decree of four millions of livres in aid
of the colony, besides the circuitous and informal manner by which we
became acquainted with it, describes and applies to operations very
different from those which have actually taken place. The wants of the
colony appear likely to continue, and their reliance on our supplies to
become habitual. We feel every disposition to continue our efforts for
administering to those wants; but that cautious attention to forms
which would have been unfriendly in the first moment, becomes a duty to
ourselves, when the business assumes the appearance of long continuance,
and respectful also to the National Assembly itself, who have a right to
prescribe the line of an interference so materially interesting to the
mother country and the colony.

By the estimate you were pleased to deliver me, we perceive that there
will be wanting, to carry the colony through the month of December,
between thirty and forty thousand dollars, in addition to the sums
before engaged to you. I am authorized to inform you, that the sum of
forty thousand dollars shall be paid to your orders at the Treasury of
the United States, and to assure you, that we feel no abatement in our
dispositions to contribute these aids from time to time, as they shall
be wanting, for the necessary subsistence of the colony: but the want of
express approbation from the national legislature must ere long produce
a presumption that they contemplate perhaps other modes of relieving the
colony, and dictate to us the propriety of doing only what they
shall have regularly and previously sanctioned. Their decree, before
mentioned, contemplates purchases made in the United States only. In
this they might probably have in view, as well to keep the business
of providing supplies under a single direction, as that these supplies
should be bought where they can be had cheapest, and where the same sum
will consequently effect the greatest, m