of adhering to their colonial system, of the wisdom of which he spoke as being in his own mind not unquestionable, but from which it was not thought expedient now to depart. He renewed at the same time the assurance of the pacific and friendly dispositions of this government.

Since the commencement of this month the government advertised for transports to carry five thousand two hundred tons of ordnance stores to Canada. This advertisement, appearing immediately after the publication in the newspapers of Governor Cass's letter to the commander of the Tecumseh, produced an alarm among the commercial people in the city of London which it might perhaps have been intended to produce in another quarter. But it occasioned a depression of the funds which was probably neither intended nor expected. A part of these stores lately sailed, together with officers to command some of their vessels on the lakes. At the beginning of the summer they had stripped a number of their merchant vessels at Quebec of their crews, to the heavy damage of their owners and the ruin of some of the voyages, for the purpose of manning their armed vessels on the lakes, and now they send out ordnance and officers at a season of perilous navigation, and too late for service if they arrive. Far from being alarmed at these measures, I rather infer from the ostentatious publicity given to them some alarm on their part. They are the precipitances of imaginations haunted with terrors of a sudden invasion of Canada from the United States. I believe there is no intention here of an immediate war with America, but there may be a policy of exciting frequently a public expectation of it. I spoke to Lord Castlereagh of the improper conduct of the officer from the Tecumseh, and told him I should send him a note concerning it and copies of the affidavits. He said he wished me to express

in the note the conviction that this government would take the promptest measures to repress any misconduct of that nature, and to mark their disapprobation of it. His Lordship also communicated to me the instructions to Lord Exmouth on his present expedition to Algiers. They are dated the 18th of July, and they direct Lord Exmouth to offer peace to the Dey upon three conditions: I. That the Dey shall sign a declaration similar to that lately obtained from Tunis and Tripoli never more to reduce Christian prisoners to slavery. 2. That he shall immediately liberate, and in the first instance deliver up to Lord Exmouth, all the Christian slaves of whatever nation now in his possession. 3. That he shall repay all the money paid for the Sardinian and Neapolitan slaves under the treaties of 3 April last. No modification of either of these three conditions is to be accepted. He is to prescribe a reasonable time within which the Dey's answer is to be given, and in case of refusal of either of the conditions he is to commence hostilities against the Algerine fleet. In concluding the peace he is to admit no stipulation for any consular present in future. These instructions are founded upon the formal undertaking of Great Britain to break up the whole system of Barbary piracy, an enterprise worthy of her power and among the noblest purposes to which it could be applied. Nothing is left but for the execution to correspond with the design.

I am, etc.

TO ABIGAIL ADAMS.

EALING, 30 August, 1816.

George says that his writing master has forbidden him to write letters for the present, because it will retard the improvement of his handwriting. I do not understand this theory, and suspect it will not meet the approbation of George's correspondents at home. The consequence of it is, that I am called to write the weekly letter that is to go with the newspaper almost every week myself.

The present Lord Mayor of London, Matthew Wood by name, and a fishmonger by profession, that is a member of the fishmongers' company, has taken the fancy to show extraordinary civility to the American Minister, and has manifested it from the time of his election. You remember perhaps that the annual day of the Lord Mayor's induction to office is the 9th of November. That is always a day of ceremony, and there is a great entertainment at Guildhall to which all the foreign ministers are invited. I received accordingly an invitation to it from Mr. Wood, then Lord Mayor-elect; but I was then confined to my chamber with the inflammation in my eyes, and was obliged to send an excuse. In February he gave a splendid dinner and ball to the Austrian Archdukes, John and Louis, the two youngest brothers of the Emperor of Austria, who were then in England upon a visit. To this all the foreign ministers were likewise invited, and many of them attended. I went a total stranger to the Lord Mayor and to all the company, excepting the Archdukes, to whom I had been presented the day before, and the foreign ministers whom I had met at the Regent's levee and occasionally elsewhere. It was at this dinner that I was suddenly and most unexpectedly

called to answer a complimentary speech with which the Duke of Kent, who sat next to the Lord Mayor, introduced the toast of the President of the United States. I answered of course in a very few words, concluding with that toast which was published in the newspapers, then copied into some of those in America, and which is mentioned in one of your letters. He invited me within ten days afterwards to another great entertainment which he gave to the wardens and officers of his fishmongers' company. I was the only foreigner invited to that party, and there I met the Duke of Kent again, and the Duke of Sussex, whom I had formerly known at Berlin. Not long afterwards these royal brothers were made members of the fishmongers' company, upon which occasion the company itself gave a dinner to which I was invited. Then there was the Easter Monday dinner and ball. Then a dinner given by the Lord Mayor to the Duke of Wellington, and lastly a water party upon the Thames last week-a voyage from Westminster Bridge to Richmond, and a dinner there on board a new city barge. Will you not be ashamed for me, when I tell you that the first return I have made to the Lord Mayor for all these more than polite hospitalities, has been by having him to dine with us this day in company with the Duke of Sussex, Lord Erskine, Sir Robert Wilson (who has just returned from his honorable imprisonment in France), your and my father's old friend, the Chevalier de Freire, and two or three other friends. But if my returns have not been as

5

1 Adams, Memoirs, February 19, 1816.

2 Ib., February 27, 1816.

3 Ib., May 23, 1816.

Ib., April 15, 1816.

Ib., August 8, 1816. Ib., August 22, 1816. 7 Ib., August 30, 1816.

prompt, and frequent, and sumptuous, as his kindness to me, you know the reason why. I have not refused his invitations, because I thought a sulky reserve in return for frank and open civility would be worse than no return at all. The Lord Mayor of London who, as you know, never serves in that office but one year, receives from the city twelve thousand pounds sterling for discharging the duties of it. They usually exceed this sum by an expenditure of six or eight thousand pounds, and the present Lord Mayor, who has a large fortune of his own, and has been magnificent in his entertainments beyond example, will not get through his year at less than double his salary. His year is now drawing to a close, and he is to be succeeded by a person who has no partialities for anything American. We shall not be much embarrassed by his civilities.

The weather still continues cold and damp, though having for the last ten days had an occasional sight of the sun, and the temperature of the air only cool, it passes for fine weather, and has revived the hopes of an abundant harvest, which I think will be disappointed. Accustomed as I have been all my life to observe the workings of party spirit, I have been surprised to find that from the beginning of this month, it has been here a great party question whether the harvest of this present year would be good or bad. Cobbett, who is the literary representative of the reformers, very early in the month announced that it would be scanty. Mr. Hunt 1 another ardent reformer, at the city meeting last week, pledged his honor that it would be bad. But all the newspapers, ministerial and oppositionist, Whig and Tory, have opened in full cry against these predictions, and foretold a plentiful or at least an average harvest. The Morning Chronicle, which seldom ventures to encounter Cobbett,

1 Henry Hunt (1773-1835).