Congress, when they appointed you to the important and delicate mission in which you are engaged, discovered their respect for your abilities, while they meant by their instructions to guard against any inconvenience into which you might hastily run, by directing you before you declared your character, to take the advice of a Minister, whose residence at the Court of Petersburg (independent of other circumstances) gave him advantages, which an absolute stranger could not enjoy. The letters that have passed between you, confirm the propriety of this restriction. The conclusions of the Marquis de Verac on the plan of the proposed mediation are sound and just; and if you have disregarded them, there is no doubt but the event has before this time justified them to you. He has, probably, shown you the answer of France to the proposals of the mediators. You will have remarked therein, the same reasoning extended in such a manner, as fully to have convinced you that the distinction he has drawn between our treating _at the same time_, and our treating as an independent nation, are very well founded. It will serve too, Sir, to show that your suspicions on another point are groundless. To suppose that France would go to war for our independence, and yet not wish to see that independence recognised, is a solecism in politics. Surely every acknowledgment of this kind raises our hopes and depresses those of the enemy, and places the justice of the war, both on the part of France and of us, in a fairer point of view. But, Sir, I do not enlarge on this subject; your instructions ought to be your guide, and they evidently show, that at the time they were given, Congress meant that you should treat the Minister of France at the Court of Petersburg, with the most unreserved confidence, and that you should not declare your mission till he thought the moment favorable. They still retain the same sentiments, every day having convinced them that France makes but one interest with them in establishing their independence. That she should be delicate about advising us to solicit the notice of other Courts, is not to be wondered at, since she must partake, in some degree, of the humiliations that our ill-timed solicitations subject us to. The whole of your communications with the Count de Vergennes, marks a delicacy on the other side, about advising upon a measure, which the instructions of your sovereign should direct. It is easy to see his opinion and his apprehensions of appearing to have disapproved what Congress had thought might be advantageous to them. I conclude this, Sir, by requesting you, if you have not yet made a communication of your powers, to delay doing it till the Marquis de Verac shall agree in sentiment with you that it will be expedient, or until you shall receive farther instructions from Congress.