In thanking Your Excellency for the letter with which you have honored me,2 I should have to reproach myself for not paying my respects to you hitherto, if the novel and busy scene in which I have been engaged did not plead my excuse, and if I were not persuaded that Your Excellencys letters from America, which I committed on my arrival to the care of Doctor Franklin, will have given you every information relative to our affairs—3

I entreat you Sir to accept my most grateful acknowlegements for Your Excellencys friendly offers to me, and the interest which you are so good as to take in my fathers release— I have avoided as yet solliciting a matter in which tho it be of a public nature I have such a near and personal concern—when my principal business is terminated I shall use my efforts to procure at least my fathers enlargement on parole, with liberty to return to America

(Doctor Franklin has communicated to me the subject of Your Excellencys letter to him,—4 the urgent demands which we are making at this court; their reiterated complaints of the enormous expences of the war—and the inadequacy of our pecuniary resources here, to objects of the first and most indispensable necessity and to which they are already appropriated—render it in every point of view essential to the general interest that the means of paying the bills in question should be negotiated in Spain if possible—and that relief should be drawn from hence only in the last extremity—)

I am exceedingly sorry that I have not been able to prepare a set of Cyphers as your Excellency desired—but my short stay in this Stay in France renders it very improbable that an opportunity would present for using them— I feel infinite regret at being deprived by circumstances of the immediate opportunity of cultivating an acquaintance with a Gentleman whose eminent talents and Services have rendered him illustrious at home and abroad—and for whose character I have always had a particular veneration—it will be some consolation to me if Your Excellency will command my services, and make me in any way useful to you in America— I shall take care to give Your Excellency timely notice of the precise moment of my departure I take the liberty altho I have not the honor to be known to Mrs Jay, to entreat you to present her my respects—and to accept the assurances of esteem and regard with which I have the honor to be Your Excellencys most obedt Servt.