arclay, who being fully acquainted with all the
circumstances, will be enabled to give me that information, the want of
which might lead me to do wrong on the one side or the other.
Information of the signature of the treaty with Morocco has been long on
its passage to you. I will beg leave to recur to dates, that you may see
that no part of it has been derived from me. The first notice I had
of it, was in a letter from Mr. Barclay, dated, Daralbeyda, August the
11th. I received this on the 13th of September. No secure conveyance
offered till the 26th of the same month, being thirteen days after
my receipt of it. In my letter of that date, which went by the way of
London, I had the honor to enclose you a copy of Mr. Barclay's letter.
The conveyance of the treaty itself is suffering a delay here at
present, which all my anxiety cannot prevent. Colonel Franks' baggage,
which came by water from Cadiz to Rouen, has been long and hourly
expected. The moment it arrives, he will set out to London, to have
duplicates of the treaty signed by Mr. Adams, and from thence he will
proceed to New York.
The Chevalier del Pinto, who treated with us on behalf of Portugal,
being resident at London, I have presumed that causes of the delay of
that treaty had been made known to Mr. Adams, and by him communicated
to you. I will write to him by Colonel Franks, in order that you may be
answered on that subject.
The publication of the enclosed extract from my letter of May the 27th,
1786, will, I fear, have very mischievous effects. It will tend to
draw on the Count de Vergennes the formidable phalanx of the Farms; to
prevent his committing himself to me in any conversation which he does
not mean for the public papers; to inspire the same diffidence into all
other ministers, with whom I might have to transact business; to defeat
the little hope, if any hope existed, of getting rid of the Farm on the
article of tobacco; and to damp that freedom of, communication which
the resolution of Congress of May the 3rd, 1784, was intended to
re-establish. Observing by the proceedings of Congress, that they are
about to establish a coinage, I think it my duty to inform them, that a
Swiss, of the name of Drost, established here, has invented a method of
striking the two faces and the edge of a coin, at one stroke. By this,
and other simplifications of the process of coinage, he is enabled to
coin from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand pieces a da
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