University of Virginia Library

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE REGENT OF PORTUGAL.

SIRE,

In the long conflict which terminated by severing the ties that attached the ancient colonies, now the United States of America, to the mother country, Great-Britain, the Portuguese government, equitable in its policy to the former, and faithful to its alliance with the latter, could only have been expected to preserve a strict neutrality. Some time after the conclusion of that war, it was my destiny to have been employed on a public mission to her most Faithful Majesty, for the purpose of cementing and consolidating the friendship of our two governments and nations. Commercial and friendly relations, I will dare to say mutually beneficial, of an enlarged and valuable nature were formed. To have been the the first Minister from the Unites States of America to Portugal; to have been instrumental in opening an extensively advantageous intercourse between the inhabitants of the two countries; to have never been involved in any unpleasant discussion; and to have enjoyed the uninterrupted favour of the Royal Family of Braganza, when accredited as a diplomatic agent near its chief for more than seven years, are circumstances which will continue to be remembered, with conscious pleasure, to the latest period of my life. And never shall I hesitate to acknowledge, with manly gratitude, the liberal and amicable conduct of the cabinet of Lisbon towards the United States as a nation, and myself as their representative. Nor ought my acknowledgments to be expressed with less deference or cordiality for the distinguished treatment which I experienced in the particular audience recently accorded by the Prince Regent of Portugal to me, in my private character, when he signified his great satisfaction at being presented with the following Poem.

The Poem, which treats of the national industry of the United States, was composed on the delightful banks of the Tagus, while I was thus honourably occupied on a public mission, and when my days were pleasantly passed in the enjoyment of health, happiness,

---

92

Actuated by a lively sense of such enviable distinction, I offer sthe tribute of sincerity in inscribing this Poem as a testimony of respect for a “just Prince;” an appellation which I had the most satisfactory reasons for applying when I took leave of the Court of Lisbon, in 1797, and which has since been confirmed by almost innumerable titles. If, Sire, I have ever wished for a capacity of paying a still larger tribute of honour where it is most due, it was that your princely and personal virtues might be as advantageously known to the remotest posterity as to the existing generation.

With these sentiments of your munificent public and exemplary private conduct,