I hope that the letters from America, which I forwarded to you some time ago, have safely arrived and that their content was most pleasing to you.

I read in the latest London Chronicle, of 26 April, an article from New York dated 3 March, which begins “that it was the pleasure of the Congress to name Mr. Adams its minister plenipotentiary in London, and Colonel Smith, hitherto aide-de-camp to General Washington, the secretary of this legation.”1

If this news is well-founded, allow me to not be the last to congratulate your excellency.2

We learn with considerable pleasure that we will soon see you here with the Adams ladies. Please accept with them my family’s regards and my own.

Here are two letters, for the Congress and for Mr. Van Berckel, which your son will kindly have the goodness to see to, besides the ones I have already sent him for Mr. Brush and Sir James Jay.

I am, with known respectful attachment, your excellency’s most humble and most obedient servant