ARTHUR LEE.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
Philadelphia, October 7th, 1780.
I must trouble your Excellency to inform Congress of my arrival in this city; and that I shall obey their commands, in giving them information in my power relative to the conduct of their private affairs.
Your Excellency will permit me to deposit with you the picture of the King of France, set with diamonds, which the Minister of that monarch presented to me, as a mark of his Majesty’s esteem, upon my taking leave of the Court of Versailles. But as it was in consequence of my having been a Commissioner of Congress at that Court, I do not think it becomes me to retain this present, without the express approbation of Congress.
It is with infinite pain, that I feel myself obliged to mention to Congress, that the manner of my dismission from the service of the United States implies a censure upon my conduct abroad, and is injurious to my character. I have already laid before Congress the fullest evidence of the untruth and malice of the insinuations made against me. And as they all appear at length abandoned by those who made them, and the single assertion maintained of my having been disesteemed at the French Court, I desire to lay before Congress a copy of a letter from Count de Vergennes in direct contradiction to that assertion; with two letters from my colleague, Mr John Adams, as testimonials of my conduct, to which he was witness.[51]
Should any doubt remain in Congress, that the insinuations made against me were groundless and malicious, and that I have discharged the public trust reposed in me with zeal and fidelity, I must beg of their justice to give me a full hearing at their bar, upon the whole of the proceedings, that concern my public conduct.
I have the honor to be, &c.