University of Virginia Library

TO EDMUND RANDOLPH.[1]

Dear Sir,—Your favor of the fifteenth, being more
fortunate than the preceding one, came safe to hand
yesterday. The loss of the mail is the more provoking,
as it is said to have contained a packet from New
York, which had been intercepted on its passage to
England and carried to North Carolina.

The illicit trade with the British lines has been
pushed so far, under the encouragement of the enemy,
as to threaten a deep wound to our finances. Congress
have renewed the exhortation to the States on
this subject, and recommended to the people, through
them, a patriotic co-operation with the public measures.
This trade, we have also discovered, is carried
on with considerable effect, under collusive captures.
This branch of the iniquity falls properly within the
purview of Congress, and an ordinance for its excision
is in the hands of a committee.

A letter from Mr. Adams, of the eleventh of April,
informs his correspondent that five of the seven provinces
had decided in favor of a treaty with the United
States, and that the concurrence of the remaining two
might be expected in a few days. A Leyden paper,

of a subsequent date, reduces the exception to a single
province. It would seem, from a memorial from
the merchants to the States General, that this resolution
had been greatly stimulated by an apprehension
that a sudden pacification might exclude their commerce
from some of the advantages which England
may obtain. The memorial appeals to the effect of
the American trade on the resources of France,
and to the short and indirect experience of it, which
Holland enjoyed before the loss of St. Eustatia, as
proof of its immense consequence. It observes, also,
that the ordinance of Congress against British manufactures
presented a precious crisis for introducing
those of other nations; which ought to be the rather
embraced, as nothing would be so likely to dispose
Britain to the independence of America and a general
peace, as the prospect of her being supplanted in the
commercial preference expected from the habits of
her lost provinces.

The present conjecture with regard to the fleet
mentioned in my late letters, is, that it conveyed a
parcel of miserable refugees, who are destined to exchange
the fancied confiscations of their rebellious
countrymen, for a cold and barren settlement in Nova
Scotia or Penobscot.