Your Excellency has been pleased to inform me in Your honored of the 29th: of last month, that You have been pleased to appoint Messrs: Willink & Comp. or any person they Should chuse, to be 166delivered into their hands all Your Effects, remaining under my Care, of this Your order I have immediately acquainted Messrs: Willinks & Com: begging of them to dispatch the business as Soon as they thought proper, that every thing on my part was ready.1

This morning Mr: Dùmas, with his Spouse, another lady, and a Carpenter of her own choice, came all here to the hotel with a Letter from Messrs: Willinks that they have appointed Mr: and Made: Dùmas to execute the bussines for them, I am Satisfied and very willing with their choice of Mr: Dùmas, but I hope and most humbly beg Your Excellency won’t be angry with me for not accepting of Made: Dùmas, Since I have the honor to assure Your Excelce:, and can prove it, by and with the Carpenter’s bill, that She is the worst person fit to be chosen to Such a business of trust and fidelity, Since She is daring enough, to have wrote, and to bring in charge to the States 12 Guilders for which not a Strook of work is done to the hotel.

Hond: Sir, I am persuaded that Your Excely: never had the least mistrust in my Employment, and Service, I have been faithful in every respect, as I can prove it in every instance, and have done everything out of love and Affection to Your Person and Service, and if any person is able to charge me with the least infidelity, I willingly Submit to the rigour of the law, and therefore does it fall hard to my lot, to be Set under the direction of a person, whose character is chargeable of fraud; altho I Know that it is not Your Excels: order, because Messrs: Willinks & Comp: have been charged with Your orders; and not Made: Dùmas.

To be used likewise with brutality, indifference and Scorn, as Made: Dùmas Serv’d me at her entrance of the hotel, before two Strangers, is likewise very far from Your Intentions, to ask in a Scornful tune, who ordered the Court of Arms of America to be brought here, is it your orders, who tolds You that, go quick open the doors and windows, and give me the Key of every thing, ringing the bell and Such like to her far too unbecoming usage, as if I and my wife were her meanest Servants, of which usage I am convinced that Your Excelce: would not allow that the least of Your dependencies Should be Serv’d in Such a manner.

I most humbly beg and intreat Your Excelcy: not to take amiss of my addressing meself farther to Messrs: Willinks to be dispensed of Made: Dùmas, and that they may be pleased to make choice of any other person; as I cannot trust to her of receiving the Effects belonging to Your Excellency.

I flatter meself Your Excle: will find by the reception of Your Effects that every thing has been kept clean, neat, and that not a thread is wanting, having always exerted the greatest Care, and Sometimes anxiety for its preservation, and therefore hope Your Excellency will generously excuse my not obeying the person of Made: Dùmas2

I remain with the greatest respect and Veneration / Your Excellency’s / most devoted and humble Servant

I had the honor on the 2d Instant of receiving your much Esteemed favour of the 11th of March.1 you have I hope, already received an Act of Congress which may serve as an answer to your reasoning on the necessity of our having A minister at the Court of London. before this can reach you, the accounts of a sad agitation in the Commercial Circle of your Country, but more Especially in your native State, will have been handed to you by Some of your Correspondents. The Merchants in Boston in the Last fall sent their orders for Goods upon Credit, according to their usual mode of Trade with the Merchants of London, many of their orders were not executed, and some were by the Merchants of London executed to their own benefit, by sending out the Goods ordered under the direction of their own factors. this threw many Gentlemen into the uneasy bed of disappointment, and Some out of business. our Merchants have applied to Congress for a remedy; and have proposed a general regulation of trade as the only one. When I mention the above, as the Cause of the application to Congress, I do not mean to Suggest that an application is made for a remedy against the evils arising from a want of Credit, for the application States the System of Trade now adopted by the Court of London as the foundation of many growing evils, unless Congress Should pass a navigation Act which may effectually oppose itself to the Acts of Parliment of that Country.

But here arises a question, whether Congress as they are not, ought to be Vested with powers adequate to that important purpose? it is objected that a general Session of power to Regulate trade will carry with it so many incidental powers, and give So much by clear implication, that all the Commercial property of the union, would be under the dominion of one Government consolided of the thirteen States, and that new duties may be raised, and navies, and Armies employed to coerce the People into Obedience to the Ordinanies. in answer to this it has been said, that we Shall never be happy at home, or respectable abroad, untill we are united by a Corporeal relation, and under one System of Government. yet many leading men are very Sanguine for preserving our feoderal relation & for Supporting the Seperate Sovereignty of the States. from this conversation a great Jealosy is Excited, and I beleive that Congress will not receive powers very soon Sufficient for the regulation of Trade—as Congress have located thirteen new States on the Southern and Western frontier.2 the Northern States are affraid that their System of Politicks, Should we ever Consolidate our Governments, will reduce the union to a vile aristocracy, or disunite the feoderated powers. in this veiw of the matter it may be readily foreseen that more depends upon your Negotiation, than upon our union; perhaps a little more Calamity may drive us into the necessity of entertaining more National Ideas.

upon my word Sir, I am every day, more, & more convinced of the difficulty of Governing mankind So as to make them happy. you will have before this arrives the news of Mr Bowdoins being Governor, which is the only novelty that recollect within our State. although a few Scurrilous Scriblers have indulged themselves in our papers, yet we have no considerable parties within the States.

I am Sir with great regard & Sincere / Friendship your Most Hble Servt