These mortifying disappointments oblige us, though reluctantly, to call upon France for further assistance. Your solicitations will be infinitely useful to your country, if they procure for it what I will venture to pronounce essential to their safety. In this spirit, the instruction, which I do myself the honor to enclose, has passed Congress, and a second resolution, which I also enclose, which leads to such information as will enable you to convince the Court of France, that their navy can nowhere be more effectually employed to distress the common enemy than in America. I own this consideration is a great relief to my feelings, when we make these importunate demands for money; and I hope it will enable you to press them with some degree of dignity. That France can aid us is not to be doubted, for it is certain she never carried on a war that distressed her finances less. She has no expensive subsidies to pay; her money is expended either at home, or in a country from which it returns. Her army is not greatly increased, and her commerce under the protection of her fleets enjoys a security, that it seldom has experienced before. I would not, however, have you suppose, that this is the language I hold here. I know too well the necessity of making every exertion, which in our present impoverished situation we are capable of; and I neglect no means, which my present station puts in my power to call forth. Congress have taken every wise measure for that purpose, and I firmly persuade myself, that we shall be able to form the most vigorous co-operation with such force as his Majesty may please to send out. I am confident that the peace must be made in America. Every blow here is fatal to the grand object of the present war; to the hopes, to the wishes, and to the pride of Great Britain. Other conquests she expects to have restored upon a peace; what is lost here she knows to be lost forever.