I have the honor of enclosing to your Excellency a copy of a manifesto, which the avowedly savage intentions of our enemies have compelled Congress to make. The previous resolution will show your Excellency with what reluctance Congress has adopted retaliation. As long as it was possible to impute the barbarities committed, to the unauthorised malignity of individuals, they entreated forbearance. But when a solemn avowal on the part of his Britannic Majesty’s Commissioners, of their determination to exercise the extremes of war, and to desolate for the sole purpose of destroying, had deprived them of the apology they had too generously made for the actions of their enemies, their duty to the people, to humanity, to the nations, called from Congress this resolution of retaliation. This conduct of our enemies will, like all their other follies and persecutions, knit more firmly our confederation. The inhuman purpose of massacre and desolation, upon a pretext of our being mortgaged to France, which the very treaty to which they allude expressly contradicts, has armed every heart and hand against them. It has confirmed the wavering, animated the timid, and exasperated the brave. The laws of nations are the Common property of all civilized people. Our liberties, which _were_ the object of the war, are secure; we are _now_ fighting the battles of humanity and of nations, against the avowed and bitter enemies of both. I have the honor to be, with the greatest respect, your Excellency’s, &c. ARTHUR LEE. TO COUNT DE FLORIDA BLANCA. Paris, December 27th, 1778. Sir, I have the honor of enclosing to your Excellency a manifesto from Congress, in answer to that of his Britannic Majesty’s Commissioners. You have also enclosed a copy of a former resolution of Congress on this subject, from which it will appear how earnestly they have shunned this shocking extremity. As long as it was possible to impute the barbarities committed to the unauthorised intemperance of individuals, Congress exhorted the suffering people to lenity and forbearance. But when they became acts of authority, avowed and ordered, Congress must not only stand justified before God and man, but would have been culpable in the eyes of both, had they longer withheld the order for retaliation. Permit me to hope, that your Excellency will represent these things to his Majesty, and that they will produce an immediate declaration, which is most likely to arrest the sanguinary progress of our enemy, and compel them to relinquish the devastation of our country for the defence of their own. I have the honor to be, &c. ARTHUR LEE. TO COUNT DE VERGENNES. Chaillot, January 3d, 1779. Sir,