The body of the people have great confidence in the sincerity of France; but if these contrary opinions should be suffered to gain ground, as they most assuredly will if something is not done to prevent it, when all the world sees and declares as they do, that it is the best policy of France, if she considered her own interest alone in the conduct of the war, to keep a superior naval force upon the coast of the continent of North America, I leave your Excellency to judge what a melancholy effect it will have upon our affairs. There is no event, in my opinion, which would have so direct a tendency to give force and extent to opinions so dangerous to both nations, as the calling off from the continent your naval force, during the winter, and not keeping a superiority there through the year. I scruple not to give it as my opinion, that it will disunite, weaken, and distress us more than we should have been, disunited, weakened, or distressed, if the alliance had never been made. The United States of America are a great and powerful people, whatever European statesmen may think of them. If we take into our estimate the numbers and the characters of her people, the extent, variety, and fertility of her soil, her commerce, and her skill, and materials for shipbuilding, and her seamen, excepting France, Spain, England, Germany, and Russia, there is not a state in Europe so powerful. Breaking off such a nation as this from the English so suddenly, and uniting it so closely with France, is one of the most extraordinary events that ever happened among mankind. The prejudices of nations in favor of themselves, and against all other nations, which spring from self-love, and are often nurtured by policy for unworthy purposes, and which have been ever certainly cultivated by the English with the utmost care in the minds of the Americans, as well as of the people of every other part of their dominions, certainly deserve the attention of the wisest statesmen, and as they are not to be eradicated in a moment, they require to be managed with some delicacy. It is too often said in France, where the prejudice against the English has not been fostered into so much rancor, because France never had so much to fear from England, as England has from France, "That the Americans and the English are the same thing," not to make it appear, that there are some remnants of prejudices against the Americans among the French, and it must be confessed there are some in America against France. It is really astonishing, however, that there are so few, and it is the interest and duty of both to lessen them as fast as possible, and to avoid with the nicest care, every colorable cause of reviving any part of them. I beg your Excellency to excuse this trouble, because the state of things in North America has really become alarming, and this merely for the want of a few French men-of-war upon that coast. I have the honor to be, &c. JOHN ADAMS.