"The importance of this subject to the United States, and in some measure to the common cause, will I hope apologize for my troubling your Excellency with these remarks, and for requesting, that the embarrassments in question may be removed, in such a manner as may be most agreeable to his Majesty. "I have the honor to be, &c. JOHN JAY." To this letter I never received any answer whatever. After waiting six or eight days I asked M. Gardoqui, who almost daily applied to me on the subject, what could be the reason of so much delay in a case, that admitted of so little doubt. He said he could only account for it by supposing, that the Minister had sent for the original order to prevent mistakes. I asked whether these royal orders were not regularly recorded at the time they were issued. He told me they were not. For my own part I rather suspect that this order treated us as an independent nation, and that the Minister found it difficult to establish any general regulations respecting our prizes or commerce, without meeting with that obstacle. M. Gardoqui informed me, that one of the Judges permitted him to read it, but would not let him take a copy of it, and that it only contained an extension to American prizes, of the regulations before ordained for Dutch and French ones. As to the prize at Bilboa, a particular order was issued in that case for selling the ship and cargo, on the captors giving security to produce, within a year, an exemplification of a sentence of an American Court of Admiralty to justify it. On the 5th of November, M. Gardoqui communicated to me certain letters and papers from which it appeared, that the Cicero, Captain Hill, had been stopped at Bilboa, by an order of the Minister, on a charge of improper conduct towards one of the King's cutters. Upon this subject I wrote the following letter to the Count de Florida Blanca, viz. "Madrid, November 6th, 1781. "Sir, "It gives me much concern to be informed, that the conduct of Captain Hill, of the Cicero, an American private ship of war, towards one of his Catholic Majesty's cutters, has been so represented to your Excellency, as to have given occasion to an order for detaining him at Bilboa. "This unfortunate affair is represented to me as follows.