Your Excellency will see the propriety of not suffering copies of this commission to be taken for the press, and of accompanying the communication you may think proper to make of it, with such recommendations to exertion and vigilance, as prudence and the critical state of our affairs may require, since on a review of the conduct of the enemy, it will not appear extravagant to suppose, that this may be another of those artifices so often practised to deceive and put us off our guard. Though we have no official accounts, yet we have every reason to believe, that the treaty of commerce with the United Provinces was signed on the 7th of October.
TO WILLIAM GREENE, GOVERNOR OF RHODE ISLAND.
Agreeably to the order of Congress, I have the honor to lay before your Excellency the enclosed copy of a motion made by Mr Howel, and the resolutions of Congress thereon, together with the state of the applications for foreign loans, and the results thereof.
Without troubling your Excellency with those inconsiderable and secret aids, which we received at the beginning of the controversy, I shall take the applications and the grants, that were made in the year one thousand seven hundred and seventynine, and since. To begin with
The 9th of September, 1779, Congress proposed to obtain a subsidy from Spain during the continuance of the war, which they offered to purchase by a very important cession. Spain having hitherto declined an alliance with the United States, no such subsidiary treaty took place.
In the same month Mr Jay was instructed to borrow five millions of dollars. After long and continued solicitations, he obtained one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and was compelled to protest bills of exchange drawn upon him by Congress, on the presumption, that Spain would certainly enable him to redeem them. This protest, which was made on the 16th of March last, was as follows;
"Mr Jay says, that when he accepted the bills hereunto annexed, he had good reason to expect to be supplied with funds necessary to pay them; that he has been disappointed in the expectation he was encouraged to entertain on this subject, and that his endeavors to obtain money, both here and elsewhere, have been unsuccessful, although the bills which remain to be paid by him, together with his other engagements, do not exceed twentyfive thousand pounds sterling, but these disappointments being unexpected, he cannot for want of time have recourse to Congress, and therefore finds himself reduced to the mortifying necessity of permitting them to be protested." These bills were redeemed after the protest, by money borrowed in France. I have reason to believe, that no money has since been obtained on account of the United States in Spain; so that the application for five millions of dollars has only been answered by the grant of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.