I was favored with your letters of the 20th of December; that of the 17th, which you mention to have written to the late Committee of Foreign Affairs, never came to hand. If you have received my former letter, you will find your question relative to the continuance of your correspondence already answered. But lest you should not, let me repeat it, by assuring you that it will always give me very great pleasure to hear from you. The channels of communication with this office are much too few to induce me to shut up one by which we receive the most frequent and important intelligence. I shall endeavor to send you a cypher by this, or the next safe opportunity, and shall alter that look for a strict compliance with your promise. I make no remark on the political parts of your letters, both because I have no cypher yet settled with you, and because I shall always write fully on these subjects to Mr Jay. It gives me pleasure to see the train you are establishing to procure intelligence, and to cultivate the esteem of persons who may be of use to us. This has been, and is still too much neglected, but that neglect makes your address and attention the more important. The season of the year, and the inactivity of the British, deprive me of the means of making a full return for the intelligence you communicate. Our attention is at present turned to an object, which, though apparently small, promises to have consequences of some moment. You will find in the papers enclosed, an account of the execution of a militia officer, Capt. Huddy, by a band of tories, on some false pretences. The General has demanded the perpetrators of this crime, or threatened to retaliate upon some British officer of equal rank. As his letter does him honor, I enclose a copy, which you will be pleased to show to Mr Jay. Clinton is reduced to great straits; he has already been the means of one officer's dying on a gibbet. He would be execrated by the army should he occasion the ignominious death of another. On the other hand, he is already very unpopular with the tories. Should he give up those of the refugee corps, who are concerned in this business, which has probably been done by the direction, or at least the connivance of their board of directors, he will be embroiled with them. They form a kind of _imperium in imperio_. The directors, being in a great measure independent of the commander-in-chief, have the custody of their own prisoners, regulate their own exchanges, divide the plunder they make according to their own rules; and correspond regularly with the Ministry, which circumstance alone is sufficient to excite a kind of rivalry between them, and the commander-in-chief.