JOHN JAY."

To this letter I never received any answer whatever. After waiting six
or eight days I asked M. Gardoqui, who almost daily applied to me on
the subject, what could be the reason of so much delay in a case,
that admitted of so little doubt. He said he could only account for it
by supposing, that the Minister had sent for the original order to
prevent mistakes. I asked whether these royal orders were not
regularly recorded at the time they were issued. He told me they were
not.

For my own part I rather suspect that this order treated us as an
independent nation, and that the Minister found it difficult to
establish any general regulations respecting our prizes or commerce,
without meeting with that obstacle. M. Gardoqui informed me, that one
of the Judges permitted him to read it, but would not let him take a
copy of it, and that it only contained an extension to American
prizes, of the regulations before ordained for Dutch and French ones.

As to the prize at Bilboa, a particular order was issued in that case
for selling the ship and cargo, on the captors giving security to
produce, within a year, an exemplification of a sentence of an
American Court of Admiralty to justify it.

On the 5th of November, M. Gardoqui communicated to me certain letters
and papers from which it appeared, that the Cicero, Captain Hill, had
been stopped at Bilboa, by an order of the Minister, on a charge of
improper conduct towards one of the King's cutters. Upon this subject
I wrote the following letter to the Count de Florida Blanca, viz.

"Madrid, November 6th, 1781.

"Sir,

"It gives me much concern to be informed, that the conduct of Captain
Hill, of the Cicero, an American private ship of war, towards one of
his Catholic Majesty's cutters, has been so represented to your
Excellency, as to have given occasion to an order for detaining him at
Bilboa.

"This unfortunate affair is represented to me as follows.

"That Captain Hill, with a prize he had taken, was going from Corunna
to Bilboa. That in the night of the 26th of October last, he
discovered an armed vessel approaching the prize. Captain Hill
suspecting it to be a Jersey privateer, hailed her, and ordered her to
send her boat on board. They answered in English, that their boat was
out of repair. This circumstance increased his suspicions that she was
an enemy, and induced him to insist on their sending a boa