These papers contain precisely our principles, and I hope they will be
generally recognised here. Determined as we are to avoid, if possible,
wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction, we shall
avoid implicating ourselves with the powers of Europe, even in support
of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other interests
different from ours, that we must avoid being entangled in them. We
believe we can enforce those principles, as to ourselves, by peaceable
means, now that we are likely to have our public councils detached from
foreign views. The return, of our citizens from the phrenzy into which
they had been wrought, partly by ill conduct in France, partly by
artifices practised on them, is almost entire, and will, I believe,
become quite so. But these details, too minute and long for a letter,
will be better developed by Mr. Dawson, the bearer of this, a member
of the late Congress, to whom I refer you for them. He goes in the
Maryland, a sloop of war, which will wait a few days at Havre to receive
his letters, to be written on his arrival at Paris. You expressed a
wish to get a passage to this country in a public vessel. Mr. Dawson
is charged with orders to the captain of the Maryland to receive and
accommodate you with a passage back, if you can be ready to depart
at such short warning.
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