“Your letter of the 28th of April caused me much happiness, my dear Hamilton. You speak to me with a touching friendship of the warm reception which awaits me in America, but you cannot, you say, press me to hasten my departure under actual circumstances. Truly, my dear friend, it is much against my desires that I have been forced to defer it for so long a time. Immediately upon my deliverance I had wished to embark; but it was impossible for my wife, in the state of her health, to set sail, and I could not resolve to leave her. I have been waiting until the moment when she could undertake a journey to France, necessary to our affairs. I wait news from her. Would that I also might receive that which shall give me the hope of a reconciliation between the United States and the French government. [Illustration: A Hamilton] “You know that if my attachment to my native country has not been altered, the measures of her governors are repugnant in general to my sentiments; and in spite of the obligations which I am under to some of them for my deliverance, I cannot be considered as their personal friend. You know, also, that the independence, the dignity, the prosperity of the United States are more dear to me than to any one; my opinion ought, then, to have some weight with you. For I believe, be assured, as far as I can judge, at this distance where I am, in the best intentions which the Directory have in this respect. “Under this supposition, my dear friend, at a moment when no one power of continental Europe can resist the French Republic, I believe it conformable to honor and to the interests of the United States to come half way toward a reconciliation. Never, and much less since your declarations, would I be so unjust towards any one of my best friends as to suppose that the spirit of party prejudices, or private grievances, could, under such grave circumstances, influence their conduct. Let America, so far as she has been wronged, maintain her dignity and her rights; but if an ancient alliance, which no one could pretend to regret or improve, can bring itself to her remembrance, I have confidence that the two parties which divide the countries will re-unite to effect a reconciliation. “Since you have spoken to me of the difference of our opinions upon the European revolution, I would return to the time when, following that which I have often predicted, I found myself engaged in the struggle; up to August, then, in spite of the offers of a powerful faction, I believed it to be my duty to resist or to die in remaining always faithful to my constitutional oath.