infer, if any counsel from the country has lately been given to Spain, it has been rather of a cooling than of an inflammatory character. I ought to mention, that some intimation has been conveyed to me of new orders having been recently issued to the British naval officers at Newfoundland and on the North American coast, of special vigilance in the prevention of contraband, which has probably relation to the fisheries. I am, etc. TO JOHN ADAMS EALING, 6 May, 1816. DEAR SIR: I keep a constant search on foot for the books which in any of your letters you have expressed the desire of procuring, but the excessive prices at which all books are held deter me sometimes from taking those that I find, and I am not always successful in finding those for which I am on the lookout. The translation of the New Testament by Beausobre and L'Enfant is in two quarto volumes, and there is an additional volume of commentary. They ask for the whole 22 guineas, which I have not paid, having the expectation of meeting with another copy upon better terms. have not yet discovered Balthasar Bekker's Monde Enchanté. But I have met with one odd volume of an English translation of it under the title of the World bewitched. If the work had been complete, I would have taken it and sent it to you; though on the blank leaf of the volume that I met with there was a manuscript anonymous caution. against the impieties contained in it, with the remark that they had been often refuted. Bekker was a clergyman, and I was not perhaps aware that in writing down the devil he was laboring to demolish his own employment. It is impossible to find any separate first volumes of the Defence of the American Constitutions; but complete sets of the work are to be had of many of the booksellers-little if anything under the original cost of the second edition. Stockdale has been some time dead.1 His widow still keeps a shop, but his establishment opposite Burlington House is broken up. I have found two copies of my Silesian Letters, one of which I shall send you, and keep the other as a curiosity for my children. Copies of it are easily to be had, but at a price beyond what I am willing to pay for them. To collect an hundred of them would cost as much as to print a new edition at Boston or Philadelphia. I have no letter from you later than of 7 February, and no accounts of my dear mother's health later than of the 19th of the same month. We are all well and anxiously waiting to hear again from Boston and Quincy. Ever affectionately. TO GEORGE AND JAMES ABEL GENTLEMEN: 13 Craven Street, 14 May, 1816. Immediately after receiving your favors of the 20th ultimo with its enclosures, I addressed a note upon the subject of it to Lord Castlereagh, and I have the satisfaction. of stating to you by information from His Lordship, that a bill has been submitted to Parliament, to allow vessels of the United States to clear out from any port of this king 1 John Stockdale died June 21, 1814. He had issued two editions of the Defence in 1794, with different titles. dom for any of the principal settlements of the British dominions in the East Indies: viz., Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and the Prince of Wales's Island, with any articles which may legally be exported from the United Kingdom to the said settlements. I am, etc.1 Private. TO THOMAS ASPINWALL LONDON, 14 May, 1816. The enclosed letters are returned according to your desire. I think it would be expedient to publish that from Mr. Shaler and that from Commodore Shaw, with the exception of the last two lines. A reason for omitting them is, that the present state of affairs being a suspension of hostilities, it is not necessary to give the public any conjectural anticipation of a declaration of war by the Dey, or of its consequences. If, as you suppose, the effect of the publication would be to raise the price of insurance, that may be a farther motive for making it. The letters are written to you for the express purpose of giving public notice of the actual state of things to all persons interested in our trade in the Mediterranean. The underwriters are as much interested, and have as much right to the information as those who have insurance to be made. What the effect may be upon either of those parties of the facts is their concern and not ours. As public officers our province is to give them all alike the information affecting their interests in our possession. An extract also of Mr. McCall's 2 letter, which I have marked between crotchets with a pencil, 1 See Adams, Memoirs, April 29, 1816. * Richard McCall, United States Consul at Barcelona. or a paragraph to the same purport, may be published with the other two letters. In giving the information to the public there is no possible event which can hereafter attach blame to you for it. But if the truce should be broken by the Dey, and misfortune should happen to any of our countrymen trading or navigating in the Mediterranean, we should regret that we had not given them all information which we possessed and which might have guarded them against it. I am, etc. TO LORD CASTLEREAGH The undersigned Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America has had the honor of receiving Lord Castlereagh's note of the 27th ultimo, together with the enclosed copies of the act of Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade, and of the Order of Council of 16 March, 1808, consequent upon it. All which he will take the earliest opportunity of communicating to the government of the United States. Unwilling to protract any discussion upon this subject beyond the bounds of absolute necessity, the undersigned will not anticipate the reflections which the perusal of those documents may suggest to the American government. He will confine himself to those observations, which he feels. it to be his duty to make in reply, to the remarks of his Lordship upon the testimony which the undersigned had the honor of transmitting to him with this last note upon this subject. In the pursuit of this inquiry it is very material constantly to bear in mind its real nature and origin. The American plenipotentiaries appointed to negotiate the treaty of peace were instructed to endeavor to obtain the restoration of the slaves taken from citizens of the United States by British officers during the war, or payment of their value to their owners. As a proper consideration in support of this claim to indemnify, it was alleged in a dispatch from the American Secretary of State to be known that a traffic had been carried on in the West Indies of slaves taken from the United States by those who professed to be their deliverers. Although no indemnity was obtained for the sufferers by the treaty of peace, the American government has been repeatedly and urgently called upon for evidence that the existence of this traffic was known. And what evidence could be more conclusive than the avowal of the practice to various persons made by several individuals whose names are given, and belong to the very class of persons to whom it had been imputed? Under this view of the question the undersigned has the honor of requesting that Lord Castlereagh would take the trouble of a further perusal of the depositions of John Hamilton Browne, of Freeman Tyler, and of Michael Taney, copies of which the undersigned has transmitted to his Lordship. He takes the liberty of making the reference, because his Lordship will find that in those depositions the names of persons stated to have made the declarations to the purpose are given, and that they are not mere expressions of opinion, but unequivocal avowals of the traffic. In the deposition of Browne it is stated that Captains Nourse, Armistead, Wainwright and Ramsey, and Colonel Browne, an aid of General Ross, told the deponent that negroes and tobacco were considered as the private emolument of the officers; that likely negroes were worth from 900 |