Circular New York Jany 21st. 1785
Sir
I have the honor to enclose to your Excellency some late communications from the Ministers plenipotentiary of these United States at Paris, together with an Act of Congress on that subject.1 Much inconvenience to the American Ministers abroad, being apprehended from improper publications of their letters, hath induced Congress to desire that these informations may be kept from the public eye. The precarious state of our public credit abroad is so powerfully expressed in these letters, as to render a comment unnecessary. They prove incontestably, the necessity of immediate, vigorous measures for supplying the Treasury of the United States, that justice may be punctually done to those excellent friends who assisted us in the day of our distress. Your enlightned Legislature Sir will see the close connection that subsists between National safety and National faith - that the loss of the latter will ever have the most malignant effects upon the former.
The Congress request that your Excellency will lay these communications before the General Assembly of your State, with the Act of Congress respecting them.
I have the honor to be with sentiments of the truest esteem & regard, Sir your Excellencies most obedient and very humble servant
R. H. Lee, P.
File copy, Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union. In the hand of Richard Henry Lee. Endorsed: "Copy of circular Letter, New York Jany 21st 1785. recorded."
1 The enclosed January 20 "Act" directed the distribution to the states of two recently received foreign dispatches concerning the payment of interest on the foreign debt of the United States. These "late communications" consisted of a November 3 letter from John Adams summarizing the United States' interest obligations and the precariousness of the nation's public credit in Europe, and a November 11 letter from Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson reporting the "uneasiness" of the French court at the prospect of a default of interest payments on Dutch loans to the United States originally guaranteed by France. See JCC, 28:11n, 12; PCC, item 84, 5:351 - 54, item 86, fols. 49 - 57; and Diplomatic Correspondence, 1783 - 89, 1:467 - 68, 537 - 38.