In the meanwhile you will employ yourself in the manner, which your instructions and my last letter advise. I can see no other line in which you can be useful in your present station. As you will have much leisure on hand, I must beg you to write weekly to this office in cypher, and to write with freedom whatever it may be useful for us to know, particularly all changes that may take place in the administration and the measures of Russia. I will not repeat what I have said on this subject in my last, a quadruplicate of which is enclosed, as is also a cypher. This letter will be consigned to Mr Adams, who will take means to forward it to you by a safe hand. I am in great pain on account of your letter of the 28th of July, a duplicate of which is arrived. The original has miscarried; should it have fallen into improper hands it may do us very essential injury. I need not tell you how impatient I shall be to hear that this has reached you, since I cannot use my cypher till I receive a line from you written in it, nor can I write with freedom to you till I have a cypher. Since the reduction of York, nothing important has passed in the military line. The enemy keep possession of New York, Charleston, and Savannah, though they have not strengthened either of the garrisons. They are consequently much weakened; if, as we expect, we shall have a naval support, we have no doubt of being able to expel them this campaign from the continent. Our effective force, exclusive of militia, which we can call in as we want them, including four thousand five hundred French troops, amounts to about twenty thousand men.