New York 16h. Feby. [1786]
My dear sir
By way of introduction of a correspondence, with a character I love & respect so sincerely, I enclose a report passed yesterday by Congress, the only material business done lately & which proves the dreadful situation of our fœderal government.1 The report speaks so fully on the subject that I withhold remarks which might [my?] solicitude for the public gives birth to.
We have received some advices from our agent in Madeira which afford some ground to hope success will attend our negotiations with the Barbary powers tho when you consider the enmity which certainly prevails in the British cabinet towards us, their influence with those pirates and our scanty purse, I profess my fears preponderate.2 Indian affairs do not wear a promising countenance - an additional evil to our many evils, if the spring should open with a war with the savages.
Only eight states are represented. Grayson joined us two days ago, & Monroe becomes Benedict this evening.3 My best wishes attend you, farewel my friend.
Yours truely,
H. Lee Junr
Receiver's copy, Madison Papers, Library of Congress.
1 See the preceding entry, note 1.
2 Letters of December 5 and 12 from John M. Pintard, the U.S. commercial agent in Madeira, were submitted to Congress on February 15 by the secretary for foreign affairs, who was ordered to report. See JCC, 30:76n, 293n. Pintard's letters are not in PCC, but for John Jay's May 19 report, see PCC, item 81, 2:115 - 18.
3 A reference to Monroe's impending marriage to Elizabeth Kortright, for whom see Monroe to Madison, February 11, note 2. The allusion to Benedict is to the character of that name, a confirmed bachelor who married, in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing.