which certainly is destitute of all foundation, and which would reduce it simply to a real suspension of hostilities on the part of the Republic only; to which the Republic can never have consented, neither directly nor indirectly. Besides this last argument, the petitioners ought to observe, in the first place, that by means of a good harmony and friendship with the United States of America, there will spring up, not only different sources of business for this Republic, founded solely on commerce and navigation, but in particular the manufactures and trade will assume a new activity in the interior cities; for they may consume the amount of millions of our manufactures in that new country, of so vast extent: In the second place, abstracted from all interests of commerce, the friendship or the enmity of a nation, which, after having made prisoners of two English armies, has known how to render herself respectable and formidable, if it were only in relation to the western possessions of this State, is not and cannot be in any manner indifferent for our Republic. In the last place, it is necessary that the petitioners remark farther in this respect, that several inhabitants of this Republic, in the present situation of affairs, suffer very considerable losses and damages, which at least hereafter might be wholly prevented, or in part, in case we should make with the United States of America, with relation to vessels and effects recaptured, a convention similar to that which has been made with the Crown of France the last year; for, venerable Regents, if a convention of this nature had been contracted in the beginning of this war, the inhabitants of the Republic would have already derived important advantages from it, considering that several ships and cargoes, taken by the English from the inhabitants of this State, have fallen into the hands of the Americans; among others, two vessels from the West Indies, richly loaded, and making sail for the ports of the Republic, and both estimated at more than a million of florins of Holland; which, captured by the English at the commencement of the year past, were carried into North America, where, after the capitulation of General Cornwallis, they passed from the hands of the English into others.