FROM THE COMMITTEE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO WILLIAM BINGHAM.
York, 2d March, 1778.
Sir,
The Committee of Secret Correspondence, which almost a year ago was denominated the "Committee for Foreign Affairs," stands indebted to you for many letters, both of interesting advice and ingenious speculation. Happening to be the only member of that Committee at this time present in Yorktown, I now take up my pen, not to form apologies for their long past silence, so much as to make a beginning of the act of justice due to you. I really fear that the collected ingenuity of the members will be put to it to offer, for a main excuse, any thing better than that they relied upon your getting frequent intelligence of the state of our affairs from the Commercial Committee. In short, sir, I am so deeply concerned with the gentlemen in this affair, that I know what they ought to do; and I am so well acquainted with their just manner of thinking, that I will venture to confess in their name, that their past omission of corresponding with you, is, in a considerable measure, unaccountable. It is certainly better to step forward towards a man of candor, in the straight line of honest confession, than in the zigzag track of awkward apology.
Your letters, exclusive of their intrinsic merit, have been more peculiarly acceptable to Congress, from the circumstance of our having been deprived of the satisfaction of receiving intelligence from the hands of our Commissioners in Paris since May of last year. Besides those of their despatches, which have been lost at sea, we know one has been examined and culled by some perfidious villain, who substituted plain sheets of paper for the real letters of our friends. This was probably done in Europe, before the bearer of it, a Captain John Folger, embarked with it for America.
Your ideas of the policy of the Court of Versailles appear quite just, from the corroborating testimony of whatever information we can collect in any way.
The course of Gazettes, which accompany this, will so well communicate our home affairs, that I shall not enlarge upon them. I will only say, in brief, that you may rest assured, independence is so absolutely adopted by America, as to leave no hope for Britain that we shall ever relinquish our claim. It must, therefore, be only to delude her own islanders and neighbors, that she pretends to expect the contrary.
In addition to the misfortune which you mention respecting the Lexington, we are told of a greater, and one which will more intimately affect you, respecting the Reprisal, which is said to have foundered on the 1st of October. Your acquaintance with Captain Wickes will lead you to lament greatly the loss of so valuable an officer and so worthy a man. I enclose you a list of your letters as they came to hand, both for your own satisfaction and to command your belief of my regard for you, as a faithful corresponding agent, and of my professions of being, Sir, &c.
JAMES LOVELL,
For the Committee of Foreign Affairs.