Plus valet una dies, quæ libera ducitur, acta,
Quam mali sub domini sæcula mille jugo.
There has been struck at Leuwarde in Friesland, to perpetuate the same event, and all that was resolved in their Provincial Diets of February and April last, a medal representing a Frieslander stretching out his right hand to an American, in token of fraternity, and rejecting with his left the advances made to him by an Englishman. We are invited to dinner on Sunday by the French Ambassador, who augurs better than we do of Grenville's mission. God grant that he may be right.
I have the honor to be, &c.
DUMAS.
TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.
The Hague, August 16th, 1782.
Sir,
At length the treaty of commerce has passed, and was approved day before yesterday in the States of Holland; and the States-General proposed immediately a conference with Mr Adams, to put a final hand to it.
August 19th. The States of Holland separated on the 17th, after having resolved and decreed instructions for the Plenipotentiaries, which the Republic sends to treat with Mr Fitzherbert, in conjunction with France and her allies. They talk, among other things, of acting in all respects in a communicative manner, and in concert with the Ministers of the King of France, and the other belligerent powers, in the preparatory and preliminary negotiations, which they may begin with the Ambassador of Great Britain, to do nothing without them, and to be assured above all of the sincere and unequivocal intentions of the British king, to leave for the future the Republic in the full enjoyment of the rights of neutrality, established in the Russian declaration of the 28th of February, 1780.
I have the honor to be, &c.