"Article XIII. In the meantime, his Majesty requires your Excellency to give also the necessary orders to the tribunals and counsellors of the Marine, that they may expedite, with the utmost diligence, the processes begun relative to stopped vessels conformably to the spirit of this royal declaration, which as to the essentials agrees with the precedent ones successively published."
Thus I have gone through these lengthy state papers, but am under fearful apprehensions that Congress will find the translation imperfect in some parts, for I have not time to revise it. I may take this opportunity to observe, that I have sent many state papers to Congress, which were originally in English, but which I have first found in the foreign gazettes and translated from them; which will account to Congress for the difference, which they will see between some papers I have sent and the originals.
I have the honor to be, &c.
JOHN ADAMS.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
Paris, May 8th, 1780.
Sir,
There is an article of news from the Hague of the 3d of May, that they write from Dort, that the recruits of Anspach and of Hanover, in the pay of England, are embarked there and sailed from that city the day before yesterday, in order to go to their destination.
There is news also from Stockholm of the 18th of April, that the ordinance, which the College of the Admiralty has expedited to all the agents and consuls, who reside in foreign countries, relating to the convoys necessary to the protection of the commerce of the subjects of this kingdom, is as follows, dated Stockholm, April 1st.