Responding to the orders which you, jointly with his excellency Mr. Jefferson, bestowed upon me in your letter dated from London on 5 August, we have immediately attended to the errand in question. Mr. Short is busying himself with a report for your excellencies of what has been and remains to be done, to which I am already confident I will have nothing to add other than my recognition of the justifiable gratitude I feel for the trust with which you honor myself, my principles, and my unwavering zeal for the interests of the United States; and of the personal respect with which I am your excellency’s most humble and most obedient servant