Thus no part of the affair was done without my "_knowledge and concurrence_," except the sending a million and a half of the specie to Holland. This was indeed a secret to me. I had heard of that sum's being ready there to embark, but I always till lately understood it to be a part of the Dutch loan, which I am about to mention, or I should certainly have opposed that operation. What Colonel Laurens really obtained, and a great service I hope it will prove, was a loan upon interest of ten millions, to be borrowed on the credit of this Court in Holland. I have not heard, that this loan has yet produced anything, and, therefore, I do not know that a single livre exists, or has existed in Europe, of his procuring for the States. On the contrary, he and you have drawn from me considerable sums, as necessary for your expenses, and he left me near forty thousand livres to pay for the Alliance, and, moreover, engaged me in a debt in Holland, which I understood might amount to about fifteen thousand pounds sterling, and which you contrived to make fifty thousand pounds. When I mentioned to him the difficulty I should find to pay the drafts, he said, you have the remainder of the six millions. He gave me no account of the dispositions he had made, and it is but lately I have learnt that there is no remainder. To gratify you, and to get that ship out, which could not have stirred without me, I have engaged for the vast sum abovementioned, which I am sure I shall be much distressed to pay, and therefore have not deserved at your hands the affront you are advised to menace me with. And since I find you make it a point of reflection upon me, that I want to apply money to the payment of my engagements for the Congress, which was obtained by Colonel Laurens for other purposes, I must request, that you will upon this better information take occasion to correct that error, if you have communicated it to any other person. By the letters you showed me, that had passed between Mr Adams and you, I perceived he had imbibed an opinion, that Colonel Laurens had, as he expressed it, done more for the United States in the short time of his being in Europe, than all the rest of their Diplomatic Corps put together. I should never have disputed this, because I had rather lend a little credit to a friend, than take any from him, especially when I am persuaded he will make a good use of it; but when his friends will make such suppositious credit a matter of reproach to me, it is not right to continue silent.