eculiar
situation, that I find myself blamed and censured by many in Congress
as well as out, for not having performed an impossibility, and am
represented as a defaulter, and as having misapplied or embezzled the
public monies, at once to prevent my future usefulness to my country,
and to the ruin of my private fortune and character. Thus situated, I
can but appeal once more to the justice of Congress, and remind them
that I brought with me and delivered them, it is now more than seven
months since, an account from under the banker's hands, of all the
monies received and paid out by him, and to whom paid; that in my
letter of the 12th of October, I explained to Congress for what
purposes those payments were made, and in my answers to Mr Lee's
objections to these contracts, that I proved him to have been
acquainted with them, and that he signed himself the orders for the
money, for the greater part of them. I am informed, by several
honorable gentlemen in Congress, that many of the members, from their
absence at the time, or from their taking their seats since the
delivering in of that account and my letter of the 12th of October,
are to this moment uninformed of either. This obliges me to refer to
them at this time, and though I have not the vouchers to support
every article, yet I will cheerfully put my reputation as a merchant,
as an honest man, and as a frugal servant of the public, on the
examination of those accounts, the circumstances under which they were
taken, at the same time to be considered.

That account commences in February, 1777, and ends the 27th day of
March, 1778, three days before my leaving Paris. It will show, that
the whole amount of the monies received by the commissioners, was
3,753,250 livres, and their expenditures 4,046,988 livres, 7 sols, and
by the general state of the account delivered the 12th of October, it
appears for what those expenditures were made. After deducting the
sums paid, for large contracts for supplies, &c. which are
particularised, there will be left 219,250 livres, 1 sol, 11 deniers,
equal to L9644. 8. 7-1/2 sterling, for the commissioners' expenses,
for almost fifteen months, and for small purchases, and for a variety
of services not possible to be particularised, without the accounts at
large. I might with safety rest this whole sum on the score of the
commissioners' expenses for this space of time, and support it on Mr
Lee's letter to Congress, in which he says, that