Here are returned in the last cartel a number of French sailors, who had engaged with Captain Cunningham. Were taken in coming home in one of his prizes, and have been near two years in English prisons. They demand their wages and share of prize money. I send their claim, as taken before the officers of the classes at Dunkirk. I know nothing of the agreement which they allege was made with them. Mr Hodge perhaps can settle the affair, so that they may have justice done them. These sort of things give me a great deal of trouble. Several of those men have made personal applications to me, and I must hear all their stories, though cannot redress them. I enclose also the claim of two gunners, upon a prize made by the Boston, Captain Tucker. I am persuaded that Congress wish to see justice done to the meanest stranger that has served them. It is justice that establishes a nation. The Spanish Ambassador here delivered me several complaints against our cruisers. I imagine that all the injuries complained of are not justly chargeable to us, some of the smaller English cruisers having pillaged Spanish vessels under American colors, of which we have proof upon oath. And also, that no such American privateers, as are said to have committed those robberies after coming out of Nantes, have ever been known there, or in any other part of France, or even to have existed. But if any of the complaints are well founded, I have assured the Ambassador that the guilty will be punished, and reparation made. The Swedish Ambassador also complains of the taking of a ship of his nation by Captain Landais, the master of which lays his damages at sixty thousand livres. I understand it was his own fault that he was stopped, as he did not show his papers. Perhaps this, if proved, may enable us to avoid the damages. Since writing the above, I have received the following further particulars of the action between Commodore Jones and the English men of war. The fortyfour gun ship is new, having been but six months off the stocks; she is called the Serapis; the other of twenty guns is the Countess of Scarborough. He had before taken a number of valuable prizes, particularly a rich ship bound to Quebec, which we suppose he may have sent to America. The English, from mistaken intelligence, imagining he had a body of troops with him to make descents, have had all their northern coasts alarmed, and have been put to very expensive movements of troops, &c.