In the midst of this confusion and terror, my credentials arrived from Paris, through a hundred accidents and chances of being finally lost. As soon as I read my despatches, and heard the history of their escape by post, diligence and treck-schoots, it seemed to me as if the hand of Providence had sent them on purpose to dissipate all these vapors. With my despatches, arrived from Paris intimations of their contents, for there are no secrets kept at Paris. The people, who are generally eager for a connexion with America, began to talk, and paragraphs appeared in all the gazettes in Dutch, and French, and German, containing a thousand ridiculous conjectures about the American Ambassador and his errand. One of my children could scarcely go to school without some pompous account of it in the Dutch papers. I had been long enough in this country to see tolerably well where the balance lay, and to know that America was so much respected by all parties, that no one would dare to offer any insult to her Minister, as soon as he should be known. I wrote my memorial and presented it, and printed it in English, Dutch, and French. There was immediately the most universal and unanimous approbation of it expressed in all companies, pamphlets and newspapers, and no criticism ever appeared against it. Six or seven months afterwards a pamphlet appeared in Dutch, which was afterwards translated into French, called _Considerations on the Memorial_; but it has been read by very few, and is indeed not worth reading. The proposition to the President being taken _ad referendum_, it became a subject of the deliberation of the sovereignty. The Prince, therefore, and the whole Court, are legally bound to treat it with respect, and me with decency, at least it would be criminal in them to treat me or the subject with indecency. If it had not been presented and printed, I am very sure I could not long have resided in the Republic, and what would have been the consequence to the friends of liberty, I know not. They were so disheartened and intimidated, and the Anglomanes were so insolent, that no man can say, that a sudden frenzy might not have been excited among the soldiery and people, to demand a junction with England, as there was in the year 1748. Such a revolution would have injured America and her allies, have prolonged the war, and have been the total loss and ruin of the Republic.