I send Mr Franklin such resolutions as refer to general objects, which may be of use to you in conducting your negotiations, presuming that he will communicate freely with you. There will be no necessity while you are together of multiplying them with respect to our affairs here; they have undergone no change. The number of resolutions passed by Congress and the different States, (copies of which have been transmitted to our Ministers) serve to show the fixed and unalterable determination of the rulers and the people on this side of the water, to adhere inviolably to their engagements. This will, I hope, open the eyes of the British, and show them the vanity of expecting to dissolve a confederacy, which is founded in mutual interest and honor.
With respect to intelligence, we have little of importance. The army is gone into winter quarters. The fleet, under the command of the Marquis de Vaudreuil, still remains at Boston. Fourteen sail of the line and eight frigates left New York the 26th ultimo. We have yet no account of the evacuation of Charleston, though we have long expected it. I cannot turn my eyes to that quarter, without offering you my sincerest condolence on the untimely death of the gallant Colonel Laurens. It is not easy for those who knew his value to offer consolation. When time shall have turned the keen edge of your afflictions, you may find some mitigation of it in the cause and manner of his death, in the services he has rendered his country, and in the honor which he reflects on all who were connected with him.
I am, Sir, with respect and esteem, &c.
TO LORD CORNWALLIS.
Paris, December 9th, 1782.
My Lord,
Often, since the 31st of May last, your Lordship must have charged me with want of decency and good manners, for a seeming delinquency to an address of that date, which your Lordship intended to honor me with. The bare apprehension has added to my unhappiness, notwithstanding my feelings of assurance that your Lordship will acquit me upon the instant of being informed, that only a few minutes have passed since Mr Oswald called upon me with the letter, and an apology for having mislaid and detained it so long.
Believe me, my Lord, though I was at a distance from Passy, I was not unmindful of accomplishing your Lordship’s release from parole, in exchange for my discharge. My feelings on that occasion were always alive. I was never satisfied with my own enlargement, till I had written pressingly to Doctor Franklin, and had finally delivered my opinion upon an appeal from the Doctor, intimating that he would do “what I should think best.” Without a moment’s hesitation, I signified my ideas, both of the expediency and necessity of satisfying the well grounded expectations of the British Ministry. Your Lordship will find that the release followed, or that it was the consequence of previous applications on my part, and of Mr Oswald’s assurance that an exchange was expected, that he himself had treated with me while I was a prisoner in the Tower of London for that purpose, by desire of the Administration, a fact, to which many others might be added, confronting an assertion respecting this affair, in a late letter from the British Commissioners at New York to General Washington. The assertion in that letter did great violence to candor, but as I am sure your Lordship could not possibly have been privy to the ground of that transaction, I forbear to enlarge upon the subject. Nor do I mean to touch the veracity of the Commissioners, who no doubt wrote as they had been instructed. Even the instruction, I charitably hope, was rather the effect of inadvertency than of premeditated detour.