Yours by your son was a very agreeable letter.1 I recd it last wednesday while at the President’s, where I had the pleasure of viewing your living picture. You have confirmed me in my suspicion, that tho’ there were many pictures abroad there was little likeness. I shall do my best, & it may be well for one who is not a writer of the first talents, nor been employed thirty years in making my collection. I shall pay more attention to resemblance, than the colours & the drapery. I mean not to publish the whole truth of what I know, tho’ nothing but what I know or believe to be true.

I hope to see you in England by this time twelve month; & to be engaged in drawing off from the dreggs an historical spirit, that shall deserve the attention of the public.2 Mr Jay & I have got great & thick since my arrival in the city. Propose returning, the way I came, by water, to Newport so to Providence &c, the beginning of next week; & being accompanied by your son, whom I persuade to go in that way rather than in the land carriages, whose drivers are furious & careless, so as to make it dangerous.3 It is feared, that for want of a sufficient representation, the Congress will not get thro’ their requisitions—which will be bad for our character.

Mr Hancock you will know before this can reach you, is chosen one of our delegates.4 Politicians conjecture, he is laying out for the Presidents chair, that there will be all the apparatus of his coming on, & that if chosen during absence he will answer to appearances; but that if not chosen, illness real or feigned will prevent it.

This will be handed by Dr Rodgers, a young gentleman of fair character & good behaviour, who served in the army in the physical line, & has since been studying in Scotland. He is the son of Dr Rodgers the Presbyterian minister of this city, whom you cannot but know by the hearing of the ear, tho’ you may not by the seeing of the eye.5 Th[o’ the] bearer is not a Bayman, yet as he has ever been a high son of liberty & a thorough American, I am persuaded he will meet with many civilities from you. Pray my best regards to your Lady & daughter, & accept the same yourself, from Your Excellency’s, sincere friend / & very humble servant

I recd. your letter by Monsr: de le Tombe yesterday:1 Every line from your hand gives me pleasure. The Embarassments thrown in the way of our trade will at least have one good effect: they will break a few deceitfull bubbles. They ought to do greater good by curing the People at large of a dangerous distemper brought upon them by the war—the itch of extravagance.— It is melancholy that no invention can be hit upon to guard mankind from the contagion of luxury— Such is the ardent disposition to it that nothing but necessity ever did restrain them. My friends the Dutch have been restrained from only in a degree, and that only by their eternal enemy the Sea, and by the neighborhood of three devouring Monsters France, England & Austria, which threaten alternately to swallow them up— It is a great number of years that I have been fixed in the belief that our Countrymen have in them a more ungovernable passion for Luxury than any People upon earth. The Causes of this would be curious to examine. The fact is indisputable, and you may live to see the day when the ravages of this fury may convince you that you have labored in vain. I am not so sanguine, as my friend Dr: Price, in my expectations of the vast improvement & reformation of Mankind from the American Revolution:2 Yet I hope it will be many years before the progress of Luxury shall have wrought in America so general a destrustion of principle as it has in England—

The measures which all the States must take to counteract the British Policy, by opposing Navigation-Acts to Navigation-Acts, will give a long & severe check to prodigality— In this point of view British jealousy and ill will may befriend us.—

I am, Sir, with great esteem, / Yrs: &c: &c