I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same motives of money:  nor were those of France.  Some of them are Outs, and wish to be Ins; some the mere dupes of the agitators, or of their own party passions; while the Maratists alone are in the real secret:  but they have very different materials to work on.  The yeomanry of the United States are not the canaille of Paris.  We might safely give them leave to go through the United States recruiting their ranks, and I am satisfied they could not raise one single regiment (gambling merchants and silk-stocking clerks excepted), who would support them in any effort to separate from the Union.  The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every American.  I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis.  Let them, in any State, even in Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation, and its citizens will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own incendiaries.  If they could have induced the government to some effort of suppression, or even to enter into discussion with them, it would have given them some importance, have brought them into some notice.  But they have not been able to make themselves even a subject of conversation, either of public or private societies.  A silent contempt has been the sole notice they could excite; consoled, indeed, some of them, by the palpable favors of Philip.  Have then no fears for us, my friend.  The grounds of these exist only in English newspapers, endited or endowed by the Castlereaghs or the Cannings, or some other such models of pure and uncorrupted virtue.  Their military heroes, by land and sea, may sink our oyster-boats, rob our hen-roosts, burn our negro-huts, and run off.  But a campaign or two more will relieve them from further trouble or expense in defending their American possessions.

You once gave me a copy of the journal of your campaign in Virginia, in 1781, which I must have lent to some one of the undertakers to write the history of the revolutionary war, and forgot to reclaim.  I conclude this, because it is no longer among my papers, which I have very diligently searched for it, but in vain.  An author of real ability is now writing that part of the history of Virginia.  He does it in my neighborhood, and I lay open to him all my papers.  But I possess none, nor has he any, which can enable him to do justice to your faithful and able services in that campaign.  If you could be so good as to send me another copy, by the very first vessel bound to any port of the United States, it might be here in time; for although he expects to begin to print within a month or two, yet you know the delays of these undertakings.  At any rate, it might be got in as a supplement.  The old Count Rochambeau gave me also his memoire of the operations at York, which is gone the same way, and I have no means of applying to his family for it.  Perhaps you could render them as well as us, the service of procuring another copy.