I have the Honour of yours of the 25th. and am in equal pain with you for Charlestown, especially Since the Arrival of A Vessell at Nantes from Baltimore, which brings a certain Account of Clintons Arrival the latter End of February, at the southward, with forty five Ships, escaped from the Wreck of the Tempest. There is no certain Account of his Landing nor of the precise Place where he intended to land. G. Gates was appointed to command in the southern department, and was gone thither, but am not certain that he was arrived. Gates is a Master of his Profession, and possesses the Confidence and Affection of the American soldier and Citizen, So that, if Clinton should get in Possession of Charlestown, it will be but the Tryumph of a day, serve to give the Ministry a momentary Ecclat, and damp 253the Ardour of Committees Associations for a few days: but it will serve the Cause of Patriotism in the End, by exhausting the ministerial forces in that Part, by leaving more scope for the Armaments from Brest and Cadiz, wherever they are destined.

Nil admirari,1 is my Maxim in Politicks. I am not surprised at the Proclamation, annulling all Treaties with the Dutch. This ministry leave themselves no other Resource but such desperate measures. They pledge themselves, ignorantly and blindly, in such a manner, that when Events turn up, ever so much against their Plan, they are bound in honour to go on. They cannot retract nor receed. And So sure, as they now exist they will go on, untill Force and Arms, obstruct them at home.

I wish with you, that Mr. L. was in Holland, but I fear he is not coming. I see by an American Paper that in Jany. I think he was reelected into Congress, which looks As if, he was not only there, but did not intend to come. The Dutch may expect what they please, but they will expect to all Eternity, if they expect, one Iota of an exclusive Priviledge in American trade. I wonder in Gods name what obligation We are under to the dutch? Nor can I conceive what Pretensions they can have to the Fishery, on the Banks of Newfoundland.

I dont remember to have heard particularly, of your answer being read in Congress. I heard your Brothers was, from Several Quarters, and I doubt not yours was.2 I know nothing of that Gentlemans being in Congress, there was a paragraph inserted in a Fish Kill Newspaper, that the following are the Delegates for Connecticut, and then mentioned that Gentlemans name and Eleven others. But it appeared to me a manifest fiction. I am myself persuaded, he is not, and will not soon be. I wish I knew the name of that Gentlemans Agent and Correspondent in Holland.

Adieu

Paris, 29 April 1780. RC (PCC, No. 84, II, f. 3–5). LbC in John Thaxter's hand (Adams Papers); marked: “55.” printed: Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev. , 3:640–642.

In this letter, received by Congress on 19 Feb. 1781, 254John Adams provided information that had appeared in London newspapers between 11 and 18 April. He included the names of the newly appointed commander and principal officers of the channel fleet and summarized reports from Portsmouth regarding mutinies by the crews of the Invincible and Resolution over pay. Both vessels were part of the Rear Adm. Thomas Graves' fleet that was intended to intercept the French fleet under Ternay (see Thomas Digges' letter of 14 April, and note 5, above). Adams quoted from resolutions opposing the war in America adopted on 14 April by a meeting of “the freeholders of the county of Surry” (see Edmund Jenings' letter of 24 April, and note 3, above). In a postscript, not printed by Wharton, Adams quoted from resolutions adopted by the County of Hertford on 17 April to the effect that the war in America, “by obliging Us to carry all our Forces to that Quarter puts us out of a Condition to resist with Vigour, As We might otherwise do, the united Efforts of France and Spain while the Said War produces no other Effect upon the Americans than to add to the Enmity, which has but too long subsisted between Us: an Enmity, of which We have felt, the fatal Effects, and which by putting an obstacle to our Union, threatens England, with a Ruin as compleat as it is inevitable.”