November 17th. I had the pleasure to receive this morning, on behalf of the Ambassador, absent at Amsterdam, the news of the re-admission of M. Van Berckel, First Pensionary of Amsterdam, to the Assembly of their Noble and Grand Mightinesses, where he will re-appear on the 20th, radiant as the sun, disjectis nubibus.
There has arrived a circular letter from Friesland, to take away from the Prince the direction of affairs. I shall have it, and will add it to the gazettes.
November 18th. On my return, Friday evening, I found, Sir, your favors of the 5th and 12th of September, to which I can only answer succinctly, that the present may not be delayed.
I have thought a long time how much it might be advantageous both for Congress and for me, as you observe, Sir, if I could enter into a minute and frequent detail of all that passes here within the sphere of my action. But let Congress remember at last that qui vult finem, vult media, being both essential and subsidiary. I labor all day. Often I have scarcely time left to note briefly for myself what is done or said. I am alone. It is necessary to copy the same despatches four times, if one would hope for their arrival. I could have many things to say on all this. But to what good, if Congress does not say it also? I have not put my light under a bushel. I have made it shine constantly before both worlds, for the service of the United States, since they have called me here.
If the truths I transmit come more slowly than the falsehoods of the enemy, which they may serve to contradict, it is because they may forge stories as they please, but not the truth which arrives when it can, and which besides, cannot always be hazarded prematurely, still less be foretold, especially when the enemy might profit by it.
As to peace, we know not here what has been done about it at Paris. My opinion is, that two or three more campaigns will be infinitely more salutary to the American Confederation than a patched-up peace, which shall leave the enemy possessor of Canada, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; whence he would not cease nor be slow to vex you by all manner of means, perhaps to divide you, which will be worse.
But let us wait what Parliament says at the end of this month. Then we may be able to say of the Congress of Peace, what the poet Rousseau, in his Ode to Fortune, said of a hero becoming man again;
Le masque tombe, George reste,
Et le Romain s'évanouit.
And so much the better, I think, for America and for this Republic. I am, with very great respect, Sir,
DUMAS.