WILLIAM CARMICHAEL.
ARTHUR LEE TO C. W. F. DUMAS.
Paris, January 26th, 1777.
Dear Sir,
My having quitted London some time since to join my colleagues here, is the reason you did not hear from me, as you complain in your last letter to Mr Deane. As I am soon to leave this place for one very remote,[26] I am afraid this will be the last letter I shall have the honor of writing to you.
There are so many and more immediate calls for the attention of the Congress, that we are not surprised at not receiving any intelligence from them. We learn too, from Havre, that despatches for us have been intercepted at sea, so that we remain totally uninformed by authority relative to the state of things in America. We hope the best, and if the powers of Europe are not so totally blind to their own interest as to refuse maintaining that freedom and enjoyment of our commerce, which our declaration of Independence offers them, their support will save us much distress and blood. The liberties, however, and redemption which we work out through labor and endurance will be more precious.
By accounts from London, the press for seamen produces little, though their merchant ships are stopped in their ports, and insurance from Jamaica, with convoy, is risen to twentyfive per cent. During the last war it never amounted to more than seven.
Our cruisers, therefore, appear to do their duty. Had we anything of a fleet to assist them, England would soon repent of a war, they have so unjustly engaged in, and from which they have not wisdom to retreat.
No nation seems more interested in opening our commerce, by abolishing the British monopoly, than the Dutch. The carrying trade by which they flourish must be greatly increased by the change. It would also very infallibly reduce that natural power and superiority at sea, which the English exercise with so much insolence, and the sinews of which are derived from America by their usurpation and tyranny; and yet, such is the pusillanimity of the times, the States are crouching to the English, and in effect aiding them in confirming that tyranny and those advantages. It is astonishing, that the smallest power in Europe should fear Great Britain, at a time when she is set at defiance by America alone, yet in its infancy, and laboring under so many disadvantages.
I wish you every happiness, &c.