JOHN ADAMS.
TO THE COUNT DE VERGENNES.
Paris, May 19th, 1780.
Sir,
I have the honor to enclose a few newspapers, received by the last post from Boston, by the way of Bilboa. There is very little news. I have letters as late as the 27th of March.
The most remarkable thing in the Pennsylvania Gazette is, that the great seal of the Province of Pennsylvania was brought into the House of the Assembly of that State, and by order of the House defaced and cut to pieces, which, to be sure, is no proof of a desire to go back to their old government. I do not see how they could have expressed a stronger contempt of it.
In the Independent Chronicle of the 9th of March is a list of prizes, made by the privateers of the middle district of the Massachusetts Bay, only since the last session of the Court of Admiralty. They amount to nineteen vessels; which shows that privateering flourishes in those seas, and also shows what havoc may, and probably will be made among the English transports, provision vessels, and merchant-men, when the superiority of the French and Spanish fleets comes to be as clear, as it soon will be; perhaps, as it is now, and has been, since the arrival of M. de Guichen.
In a private letter of the 27th of March I am told, that two prizes had just then arrived, one with four hundred hogsheads of rum, and another with four thousand barrels of flour, pork, and beef, articles much wanted by the enemy, and not at all amiss in Boston.