If until now I have not taken the liberty to thank your excellency for the grace that you showed me last year in giving me letters of 335 recommendation, it is because I feared bothering you and distracting you from important business. But I have felt no less all that I owe to your kindness, and I presume to take the liberty here to bear witness to all my gratitude. Mr. Mifflin overwhelmed me with his politeness and took a warm interest in us.1

Mr. Gevaerts of Dordrecht wrote to me that he had had the honor of seeing you several times last winter.2 He may have told you that I had reason to hope for some success. Since then, our affairs have not been going so well, and that is not surprising given the extreme scarcity of money. But we must hope that everything will get better and that the future will repay us for the trials and the sacrifices that we must endure. I hope that your excellency will do justice to the sentiments that we are expressing in our gazette and that you will be willing to believe that we are motivated only by the purest patriotism. You will have seen that Mr. Hopkinson did not judge it appropriate to respond to what we put forward against him in Claypoole’s gazette and tacitly acknowledged the falsity of his assertions. He does not cease to create problems for us, however, and we have for some time experienced much discouragement. But as we have nothing for which to reproach ourselves, we will continue on the same footing as long as we can.3

Pardon, sir, my importunity. I wanted to seize the chance in sending our gazette4 to you to thank you and to recommend myself anew to the invaluable protection of your excellency, for whom I have the most profound respect and for whom I have the honor to be, sir, your very humble and very obedient servant