The Duc de Lauzun will confer with you on these points on his return from the eastward, and I beg you, Sir, to consider with him how to make the legion early useful; it may be very usefully employed in the service above mentioned, and the Duke will be happy to act in any manner your Excellency may wish. In all cases, it cannot but be of service to hold ourselves in a hostile position. If the negotiations produce the happy effects we wish, I will lose no time in informing you, and knowing your humane disposition, I think I never shall announce to you a more agreeable event than a general peace, honorable and safe to the allies. You are convinced how sincerely the King wishes it, and the sacrifices he has made to obtain it will prove this. If the treaty has been communicated to you, Sir, you will have seen that the King of England has reserved to himself the liberty to conclude, or not to conclude, the treaty of peace with America, so that the act signed the 30th of November by the respective Commissioners, is merely conditional and eventual. I have the honor to be, &c. LUZERNE. * * * * * TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON. Translation. Philadelphia, March 18th, 1783. Sir, I have the honor of sending you a copy of a letter, which I have written to Mr Robert Morris. I shall soon have the honor of communicating to you some news, which I have just received from France by the packet boat Washington. I have the honor to be, &c. LUZERNE. * * * * * GEORGE WASHINGTON TO M. DE LA LUZERNE. Head Quarters, March 19th, 1783. Sir, I am exceedingly obliged to your Excellency for your communication of the 15th. The Articles of the treaty between America and Great Britain, as they stand in connexion with a general pacification, are so very inconclusive, that I am fully in sentiment with your Excellency, that we should hold ourselves in a hostile position, prepared for either alternative, peace or war. I shall confer with the Duc de la Lauzun on the objects you are pleased to mention; and as I have ever viewed the practice of the States in supplying the enemy in New York with the means of subsistence, as a very pernicious one in its tendency, both to ourselves and to our allies, you may depend upon me to exert every measure in my power to prevent it. I am at all times happy in receiving any intelligence from your Excellency, and should it be in your power to announce a general peace, you cannot make a more pleasing communication to me.