How Congress will dispose of me, I do not know. If it is intended that I shall return, this will be very agreeable to me; and I think that this is the most probable opinion, because Mr Deane's "Address" was on the 5th of December. Congress soon after resolved to enter on foreign affairs and go through them. The Alliance sailed on the 14th of January, and there is no resolution arrived here respecting me. I think, therefore, that it is my duty to return, and that is my present determination; but whether I shall go to Amsterdam, and from thence to St Eustatia, or to Spain, and thence home, or in a French man-of-war to Martinique, or an American frigate to America, I have not decided. Some hint that I am to go to Holland, others to Spain. This last implies the removal of Mr Lee, which would give me much pain on many accounts. I think him a faithful man and able. Yet what the determination will be upon the complaint of Mr Deane, I cannot say. This is a subject which I cannot write or talk about; I would not feel such another sensation to be made a prince. I confess I expected the most dismal consequences from it, because I thought it would render business and confidence between us three totally impracticable; that it would destroy all confidence between this Court and us, and that it would startle Spain; that it would alienate many in Holland from us, and that it would encourage the Ministry in England and disconcert opposition so much, that they would even make another vigorous campaign, besides all the evils it would produce among you. But the arrival of Dr Franklin's commission has relieved me from many of these fears. This Court have confidence in him alone. But I think they were cautious, even of him, when he had two colleagues, to whom he was obliged to communicate everything, one of whom was upon as bad terms with him as with Mr Deane. I have had a kind of a task here, as Mr Lovell expresses himself; determined to be the partizan of neither, yet to be the friend of both, as far as the service would admit. I am fixed in these two opinions, that leaving the Doctor here alone is right, and that Mr Lee is a very honest and faithful man.