FOOTNOTE:
[5] The particulars of the ratification will be seen in M. Dumas's Correspondence.
TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.
Paris, June 9th, 1783.
Sir,
The enclosed, No. 121 of the Politique Hollandais having translated a few sentences of mine, and the author intending to insert more, as he has already inserted a good deal of the same correspondence, I think it proper to transmit you a short relation of it.
In 1780, at Paris, a number of pamphlets of Mr Galloway's were sent me from England. I wrote to a friend an answer to them. He sent it to London to be published. But whether the printers were afraid, or from what other motive, I know not. I heard nothing of them until the spring and summer of 1782, when some of them appeared in print, in Parker's General Advertiser, under the title of "Letters from a distinguished American," &c. but with false dates.
There are in those letters so many of the characteristic features of the Provisional Treaty, of the 30th of November, 1782, that the publication of them in England, at the time when they appeared, may be supposed to have contributed, more or less, to propagate such sentiments as the more private circulation of them before had suggested to a few. And as they were written by one of your Ministers at the conferences for peace, who repeated and extended the same arguments to the British Ministers in the course of the negotiation, it is proper that you should be informed of them. Whether I have in any former letter mentioned this subject, or not, I do not recollect. If I have, I pray you to excuse the repetition.
I have the honor to be, &c.
JOHN ADAMS.