As a late and particular letter from me to your Excellency is now on the way to America, and as I purpose to write again very fully by the successor of M. Mirales, I decline saying much in this letter, which I shall send by a circuitous and hazardous route.
I have accepted bills to the amount of between eleven and twelve thousand dollars. They arrive slowly, and I am very glad of it. No news of Mr Laurens; I regret his absence. I hope the terms for the sale of the bills on me will not be lowered. Remittances have really become necessary. Distressed American seamen cost a great deal. The house of Le Couteulx has advanced money for them at Cadiz.
I had yesterday an application from the director of a hospital at St Andeira, desiring to be informed whether I would be responsible for the ordinary expenses of receiving and curing a New England master of a vessel, who had escaped from captivity pennyless, having one of his legs so injured by iron fetters as to be in danger of losing it. These are calls of humanity, and I entreat Congress to enable me to obey them, and to establish specific regulations for the conduct of these affairs.
The surrender of Charleston is the subject of much speculation, and many unfavorable conjectures. I have received no public letters since I left America, except one from the Committee, enclosing the resolutions for drawing bills on me.
Never letter could have been more welcome than the favor your Excellency honored us with of the 25th of the past month, since it expressed a true concern about the bills drawn on Mr Laurens, and your approbation of our conduct. As we from the beginning acted from principle in the American cause, and never will prevaricate, this is only from the same motive, but we shall be sorry if we should not be supported, and that it is out of your Excellency's power to do it. We cannot judge how far those drafts may go, and if we had not expected that your Excellency, as well as Dr Franklin, would have been willing and able to answer for a trifle, (one or two hundred thousand guilders) in such a matter as this, it would have been a folly to undertake it.
Dr Franklin wrote to us, that people would be satisfied to have the bills enregistered, but we found the contrary; several of them would have them duly protested, and until today we have again accepted them all; but how it will go further we do not know. We were very sensible to the hint your Excellency was pleased to give us, of making a loan here. We might from time to time have got some money in that way, if properly authorised; and our good will and influence certainly would have brought it further than it had been done by the House, which was formerly intrusted with it, and we have long ago desired a loan should be opened in our hands, but we never could properly obtain it. A trifle of allowance, and chiefly the largeness of the sum, which was required from us to answer for at once, prevented it; so we did not think proper to mention it again. We can and may work for glory, but on a large scale we cannot sacrifice our own interest. Every catastrophe in favor of or against America, has with our public a great influence. So the capture of Charleston would be very much against us at this moment for such a purpose; and though we could not flatter ourselves to go any length with it, a very particular circumstance might revive the American spirit; and it would even require some time before such a power was brought into due terms, whereon we could engage anything.
