Continual ill health for 18. months past has nearly ended the business of letter-writing with me. I cannot however but make an effort to thank you for your vindiciae Americanæ against Gr. Britain. the malevolence and impertinence of her critics & writers really called for the rod, and I rejoiced when I heard it was in hands so able to wield it with strength and correctness. your work will furnish the 1st volume of every future American history; the Ante-revolutionary part especially. the latter part will silence the libellists of the day, who finding refutation impossible, and that men in glass houses should not provoke a war of stones, will be glad of a truce, to hush and be done with it. I wish that, being placed on the vantage ground by these able researches and expositions of facts, our own citizens and their antagonists would now bury the hatchet and join in a mutual amnesty. no two nations on earth can be so helpful to each other as friends, nor so hurtful as enemies: and, in spite of their insolence I have ever wished for an honorable and cordial amity with them as a nation. I think the looking glass you have held up to them will now so compleatly humble their pride as to dispose them also to wish and court it.