Allow me to salute your excellency on the felicitous outcome of our glorious cause. Our enemies are defeated and America's honor is restored forever. Your excellency must know better than anyone what a large part I take in everything that concerns the interests of the United States of America.1 As proof of my attachment, I have unhesitatingly put my entire fortune at risk. Accordingly, you may well imagine how delighted I am to see us reach, in so short a time, a goal that the Dutch only attained after seventy years.2 I rejoice, and indeed never doubted it.

The court here has finally reached the point of wanting to do something to recall those it so unthinkingly and imprudently banished. The Portuguese seem to have renounced their former arrogance, founded on England's former might. They persisted in this trait for a long time and only began to fear the consequences quite recently. In the enclosed decree, they henceforth revoke in a few lines all previous decrees that proved so 280offensive to us.3 At present I am trying to bring to fruition my commission to develop Portuguese relations with America as much as I can, without compromising the United States in any way, convinced as I am that this is in the best interests of Portugal. I think they were courting us, since we can buy and sell everywhere with less bother and expense. If through some extraordinary effort (to which they seem little inclined) the Portuguese were not urging us to grant them our friendship on the same footing as we grant it to every other nation, I confess this edict might seem dictated more by a desire to avoid adding to the mass of insults, with consequences they fear, than by a real desire to please us or to give us satisfaction. They saw only the allure of their own interests, which caused them to suffer during the war for having been too obliging toward England, and they wanted to retrieve their losses.

My own interest lies with the United States, and if I cannot manage to establish a reciprocally advantageous exchange between these countries, then I would sooner leave for America than give my hand to it.

I would be extremely delighted to receive news from your excellency and please be persuaded that I am, with great esteem, your excellency's very humble and very obedient servant