It is really difficult to say what epithets ought to be given to this speech. When a Minister of a great nation can rise in its great Council, and with so much cold blood, so much solemnity, and such appearance of reflection and deliberation affirm such things, what shall we say? The absurdity of his distinctions is not less remarkable, than the grossness of his misinformation respecting facts, that Congress will not treat, but the several Assemblies will. Is not Congress the creature of the Assemblies? Do not the Assemblies create the members of Congress every year? Cannot they annihilate them every moment? Cannot the Assemblies instruct their members of Congress? Cannot the people instruct their members of Assembly? But it is endless to remark. The same system of fraud and misrepresentation, which first deceived Great Britain into this controversy and war with America, still deceives them into the continuance of it, and will deceive them to their ruin. This should be the less afflicting to America, as, since there is every reason to think, that Great Britain will be hereafter our natural and habitual enemy, disposed to war with us whenever she can, the more completely she is exhausted, humbled, and abased before the peace, the securer we shall be forever after. I have the honor to be, &c. JOHN ADAMS. _P. S._ The Chargé des Affaires of Denmark has notified to the Ministry at Stockholm, the 28th of April, that this Court had acceded to the armed neutrality, to which the Empress of Russia had invited it, and he has requested, in consequence, in the name of his sovereign, his Swedish Majesty, to enter into the same confederation. Although no positive answer has as yet been given him, it is nevertheless not at all doubted, that Sweden will concur with the other neutral maritime powers, to restrain the excesses of the armed ships and cruisers of the belligerent powers; an excess of which the rencounter of the frigate Illerim, with a cruiser from Mahon, furnished a new example, as was remarked at the head of the relation, which the Court has published of it. J. A. * * * * * TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS. Paris, May 20th, 1780. Sir, As my English papers, containing the debates on the 6th of this month on General Conway's motion, are lost in the sea, I shall give Congress the several accounts of them from the foreign gazettes. That of the Hague gives the following account of the General's discourse. "Two powerful motives have induced me to undertake the formation of this bill; the indispensable necessity in which we find ourselves to make peace with America, and the favorable disposition in which I suppose America to be.