JOHN JAY.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
St Pierre's, Martinique, December 25th, 1779.
Sir,
I have done, what perhaps I shall be blamed for, but my pride as an American, and my feelings as a man, were not on this occasion to be resisted. The officers of the Confederacy were here without money, or the means of getting any. The idea of our officers being obliged to sneak, as they phrase it, from the company of French officers, for fear of running in debt with them for a bottle of wine, or a bowl of punch, because not able to pay for their share of the reckoning, was too humiliating to be tolerable, and too destructive to that pride and opinion of independent equality, which I wish to see influence all our officers. Besides, some of them wanted necessaries too much to be comfortable, or, in this country, decent. In a word, I have drawn on the fund, pointed out for the payment of part of my salary, for one hundred guineas in their favor, to be divided among them according to their respective ranks. Indeed, it would have given me pleasure to have done something towards covering the nakedness of the crew; but the expense I have been put to by coming here; and the preparations for another voyage, would not admit of it.
I have the honor to be, &c.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
St Pierre's, Martinique, December 26th, 1779.
Sir,