"I have received the letter you did me the honor to write on the 29th of March last.
"As soon as the examination of your accounts shall be completed, I shall be ready to pay the balance that may be due to you, either here or by bills on Paris.
"I should also be no less ready to subscribe a general approbation of your conduct, if the latter part of it had been equally fair and friendly with the first.
"Although it always affords me pleasure to recollect and acknowledge acts of friendship, yet, Sir, I can consider only one of the five instances you enumerate as entitled to that appellation. I shall review them in their order. You remind me,
"1st. That you risked the making me considerable advances, at a time when I could only give you hopes, and not formal assurances of repayment.
"I acknowledge freely and with gratitude, that (exclusive of the commissions due to you for paying out the various sums I had placed in your hands) you did advance me between twenty and thirty thousand dollars; but as the United States of America were bound to repay it, and I had reason to expect supplies to a far greater amount, I conceived, and the event has shown, that you did not run any great risk, although the uncertainty of the time when these supplies would be afforded, prevented my giving you positive and formal assurances of the time and manner of repayment.
"2dly. That you augmented these advances to quiet the demands of the Marquis d'Yranda.
"Permit me to remind you, that this circumstance might have been more accurately stated. The fact was as follows. I had received about fifty thousand dollars, which, by a prior contract, I had agreed to pay the Marquis on account of a greater sum borrowed from him in paper. The sum in question was in specie. You and others offered to exchange it for paper at the then current difference. The preference was given to you. Under that confidence, and for that express purpose, the specie was sent to your house, and you did exchange it accordingly. With what propriety, Sir, can you consider this transaction in the light of making advances, or lending me money to quiet the Marquis d'Yranda? It is true that by sending the money to your house I put it in your power, by detaining part of it, to repay yourself what you had before advanced. But, Sir, such a proceeding would have been a flagrant breach of trust; and I cannot think any gentleman ought to give himself, or expect to receive, credit for merely forbearing to do a dishonorable action.
"3dly. That you gave me, on my signature, the money for which I applied to you for my personal use, without detaining any part of it on account of the balance then due to you.
"The transaction you allude to was as follows. I had authority to draw from his Excellency, Dr Franklin, on account of my salary. It happened to be convenient to me to draw for a quarter. You agreed to purchase my bill on him, and to pay me in specie at the current exchange. As it was post day, I signed and sent you the bill before I had received the money. These are the facts, and it seems two favors are to be argued from them. First, that you did not scruple my signature, or in other words, that you took my bill. To this I answer, that you had no reason to doubt its being honored. All my former ones had been duly paid. Nor could you or others produce a single instance, in which my signature had not justified the confidence reposed in it. Secondly, that by sending you the bill before you had sent me the money for it, I gave you an opportunity of keeping the money, and giving my public account credit for it, and that in not taking this advantage you did me a favor.