The Minister Plenipotentiary of France, undersigned, does not doubt that the committee, charged on the part of Congress to persuade the undersigned to keep the rate of exchange at nine hundred per cent, in order to stop the farther depreciation which circumstances threatened, has reported the answer which the said Minister gave on this subject; but as the undersigned is still ignorant of the manner in which Congress has received this answer, he is the more desirous of being informed of it, as he must give an account to his Court of the success of the course which he has adopted, and as the agent of the royal navy has, till this time, confined himself to the rule proposed on the part of Congress, without any return to the interests of his Majesty.
GERARD.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
Translation.
Philadelphia, March 16th, 1779.
Sir,
The Minister Plenipotentiary of France, being about to send M. de Maulcon to New York to effect the exchange of the French prisoners, who are detained there, takes the liberty to request the Congress of the United States of America to have the goodness to allow them the same facilities as heretofore, by charging their Commissioners to receive them on their landing at Elizabethtown and New London, and from thence as far as Philadelphia or Boston, and to give them, at the expense of his Most Christian Majesty, the same treatment which American prisoners receive.
GERARD.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.
Translation.