Amid all the cruel embarrassments of his situation, however, he never abated one jot of heart or hope, nor for one moment lost sight of the imperial future which he so clearly foresaw for the country that was adding sixty thousand children to her numbers annually. In this same letter, he let Jay know that in his opinion no amount of present distress should induce the United States to make the concessions to Spain that she was disposed to hold out as the price of her assistance. "Poor as we are," his indomitable spirit declared, "yet, as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with them to buy at a great Price the whole of their Right on the Mississippi, than sell a Drop of its waters. A Neighbour might as well ask me to sell my Street Door." Loyal, too, to Congress he remained from first to last. The worst that he was willing to say in a letter to Thomas Ruston of its rash conduct in flooding the world with bills that for all it knew might never be paid was a quiet, "That body Is, as you suppose, not well skill'd in Financing." Less than two months after his letter to Jay, we find him again appealing to Vergennes for pecuniary aid with which to enable Congress to co-operate with the French forces in America, and, a few weeks later, when the vitality of the American cause was at its lowest point, he again takes up, on fresh calls from Congress, the same tedious refrain. The letter written by him to Vergennes on this occasion is one of his supplicatory masterpieces. He lays before the French Minister evidence that the spirit of the United States is unbroken, and that the recent success of the British in Carolina was chiefly due to the lack of the necessary means for "furnishing, marching, and paying the Expence of Troops sufficient to defend that Province." He tells him that Lafayette had written that it was impossible to conceive, without seeing it, the distress that the troops had suffered for want of clothing; and that Washington, too, had written to him that the situation of the United States made one of two things essential to them, a peace, or the most vigorous aid of their allies, particularly in the article of money. For the aid, so necessary in the present conjuncture, he said, they could rely on France alone, and the continuance of the King's goodness towards them. And then he concluded with these affecting but not altogether artless words: