the English fishing posts in or near
Newfoundland.

We have the honor to be, &c.

B. FRANKLIN,
SILAS DEANE,
ARTHUR LEE.

* * * * *

FROM THE COMMITTEE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO WILLIAM BINGHAM.

York, 2d March, 1778.

Sir,

The Committee of Secret Correspondence, which almost a year ago was
denominated the "Committee for Foreign Affairs," stands indebted to
you for many letters, both of interesting advice and ingenious
speculation. Happening to be the only member of that Committee at this
time present in Yorktown, I now take up my pen, not to form apologies
for their long past silence, so much as to make a beginning of the act
of justice due to you. I really fear that the collected ingenuity of
the members will be put to it to offer, for a main excuse, any thing
better than that they relied upon your getting frequent intelligence
of the state of our affairs from the Commercial Committee. In short,
sir, I am so deeply concerned with the gentlemen in this affair, that
I know what they ought to do; and I am so well acquainted with their
just manner of thinking, that I will venture to confess in their name,
that their past omission of corresponding with you, is, in a
considerable measure, unaccountable. It is certainly better to step
forward towards a man of candor, in the straight line of honest
confession, than in the zigzag track of awkward apology.

Your letters, exclusive of their intrinsic merit, have been more
peculiarly acceptable to Congress, from the circumstance of our having
been deprived of the satisfaction of receiving intelligence from the
hands of our Commissioners in Paris since May of last year. Besides
those of their despatches, which have been lost at sea, we know one
has been examined and culled by some perfidious villain, who
substituted plain sheets of paper for the real letters of our friends.
This was probably done in Europe, before the bearer of it, a Captain
John Folger, embarked with it for America.

Your ideas of the policy of the Court of Versailles appear quite just,
from the corroborating testimony of whatever information we can
collect in any way.

The course of Gazettes, which accompany this, will so well communicate
our ho