Princeton, Ocr. 16th. 1783.
Dear Sir,
I receivd your favor of the 1st by last post. No day is fixd for entering upon the business of Consuls, & it seems the opinion of some that no Minister above them shoud be continued in Europe unless for very extraordinary. We tried upon another occasion to obtain a resolution that none but Citizens shoud be eligible to the Office of Consul, which woud have excluded a great number of Candidates. But we lost the question.
1
The attempts to get us into Philadelphia, tho strenuous, have been hitherto resisted, & I hope will continue to be so, or I am satisfyd we shoud have the most ample reason to rue it.
I enclose you a continuation of some strictures on the Philadelphia Address, which I observe were printed in one of your Papers. They are necesary & compleat the proof of the impudence of the Addressers. I shall be obligd to you [to] send these to the same Printer that he may insert them also.
2
Please to make my respects to Mrs. Warren, & remember me to your Son.
Farewell.
A.L.
ENCLOSURE
Continuation of the Strictures on a late Address to Congress from some of the Citizens of Philadelphia &c.
Gentlemen, I had the honor of shewing you, in my former Address that what some of your Citizens had the confidence to assert in their Address to Congress, namely - that you had in an essential manner distinguish'd yourselves by every exertion which principle coud inspire or fortitude support - was not quite consonant to truth. That measuring your exertions with your means they appeard the most feeble in the union.
That tho' essentially distinguishd from the other States in the Union by the vast profits, emoluments and advantages arising from the residence of Congress - their treasury - Officers - & the foreign Ministers among you; by freedom from an Enemy or Impress among you for several years; prospering in agriculture, trade, & commerce - you had been almost as deficient in the whole of your contributions as those States which were essentially distinguishd from you - by the devastation of their fields - the destruction of their Capitols - the interruption of their trade, & commerce - & by all the calamities, which internal war can bring upon a distressd People.
The object of this Address will be, to prove to you, that if you have been justly chargeable with defective exertions in furnishing your quota to the field, & to the continental treasury, your alertness in taking money out of the same tresaury for state purposes, has distinguishd you far beyond any State in the Union. This fact will appear most clearly from the following view drawn from the journals of Congress.
| By | In the year 1775 | 1776 | 1778 | 1779 | 1780 | Total |
| N. Hampshire | 40,000 | 177,500 | 202,500 | 27,000 | 78,000 | 525,000 |
| Massachusetts | 443,333 | 312,200 | 813,000 | 73,600 | 1,642,133 | |
| Rhode Island | 120,000 | 550,000 | 316,000 | 38,000 | 1,024,000 | |
| Connecticut | 12,500 | 257,266 | 174,000 | 58,000 | 501,766 | |
| New-York | 50,000 | 166,200 | 101,000 | 34,300 | 111,000 | 462,500 |
| New Jersey | 5,000 | 100,000 | 297,500 | 7,500 | 2,000 | 402,000 |
| Pensylvania | 14,000 | 1,035,000 | 473,600 | 2,009,200 | 2,500 | 3,556,800 |
| Delaware | 3,100 | 4,000 | 7,100 | |||
| Maryland | 98,738 | 261,470 | 816,000 | 114,000 | 1,290,208 | |
| Virginia | 95,333 | 75,021 | 323,000 | 153,000 | 646,354 | |
| N. Carolina | 12,400 | 623,278 | 159,808 | 169,000 | 954,746 | |
| S. Carolina | 570,276 | 2,500 | 181,000 | 754,746 | ||
| Georgia | 5,100 | 72,000 | 113,839 | 6,000 | 449,289 | 666,128 |
From this it is plain, that for five years of the war, you were not very free of your fortunes, but exceedingly liberal of your drafts on the Continental Treasury, so that you receivd twice as much as Massachusetts & six times as much as Virginia. Yet these States are to redeem a fi[f]th more than you. If we take the middle of each year for reducing the Sums taken in them respectively, we shall find the whole to amount to - 1,152,848 hard dollars, which you have taken out of the United Treasury; and you boast of having put into it 100,000.
The error then of the Addressers seems to be this - that they have claimd a general pre-eminence of merit, during the whole war, from having contributed a little more money than most of the States in the Union, during the last year of the war. But surely you will allow it to be just, that when such comparisons are drawn, they shoud flow from a view of the sum total of the Contributions of each State in - Men, Money, & Specifics, during the whole war, deducting the monies they drew from the common fund.
When you are forming this estimate, I hope you will not forget, what I know from having servd in that campaign, that at the close of the year 1776, when the Enemy threatnd immediately your State and your City, the State of Virginia alone furnishd two thirds of the Troops, which enabled our illustrious General, to execute an enterprize against the Enemy's posts in the Jerseys, repelld the danger from you at that time & gave an ascendency to our military reputation which it never lost. Had we then depended on the boasted exertions of a City, containing forty thousand Inhabitants, free of their fortunes & their lives, as the Address says, the fact shews that - in the most pressing danger to themselves & to the Union, they woud hardly have furnishd Regulars enough to have attackd a Picket of the Enemy. Yet we see, that in the same year your State drew from the public treasury - 1,035,000 dlls - when paper-money was little if at all depritiated. I shall not repeat the reasons that were then given, for your not making more adequate exertions. The[y] did no honor to your patriotism. It was a misfortune that revolution principles prevaild so little among you. But surely you shoud have had more modesty, remembering those circumstances, than to have boasted, that you were distinguishd for doing, what you were in fact distinguishd for not doing. I perceive that you will attempt to draw some source of defence, from the payments you have made since the close of the year 1782, which I am informd exceed those of any other State. But let it be rememberd, that the preeminence which the residence of Congress gave you in the eyes of Europe, drew almost the whole of the foreign trade to your City on the cessation of hostilities; insomuch that it is matter of common notoriety that in a few months, the duty of 2 per Ct on Imports, brot into your treasury fifty thousand pounds. So that the whole of your contribution very little exceeds the produce of a single tax.
The same cause drew to you many rich Emigrants, who have deposited large sums of specie in that Bank, which the public money raisd in your City for your sole emolument. The States ought to order an enquiry by what authority so partial a use was made of the public money, while several of them were laid waste by the Enemy for want of Arms, & Ammunition to repel them - while the troops to the southward were destitute of Cloathing - & recruiting their lines, was for that reason renderd impracticable.
Having now fulfilld the purpose with which I addressd you, Gentlemen, I shall take my leave with recommending to you that modesty without which even merit loses its lustre & its beauty.
Receiver's copy, Warren-Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. In the hand of Arthur Lee.
1 See JCC, 25:620, 637. For Warren's interest in this question because his son Winslow was seeking an appointment as consul in Portugal, see Samuel Holten to Winslow Warren, July 15, note; and Lee to James Warren, August 13, 1783, note 1.
2 Lee's "strictures on the Philadelphia Address" had appeared in John Carter's Providence Gazette on September 6, for which see Lee to the Public, July ? 1783. Lee apparently intended that Warren send to Carter the enclosed "continuation," but for whatever reason Warren retained Lee's copy among his papers and the essay never appeared in the Gazette. Perhaps by the time he received it Warren felt that continued baiting of Pennsylvania in the eastern press was unwise.