I received from you last Summer, and which indeed I ought to have acknowledged sooner, a most acceptable Present, of your excellent Work, for which please to receive my hearty Thanks, as well as for the honourable Mention you have been so good as to make of me in it. The favourable Light in which you have so kindly plac’d our Country, will I am persuaded have the good Effect of inducing more worthy European Characters to remove and settle among us, the Acquisition of whom will be greatly advantageous to us. I thank you also for your Care of the Bundle sent me by Mr. Short.

Inclos’d is a Letter for our excellent and most amiable Friend Madame de Houdetot. I wrote to her the beginning of last Year, and believing you then in France, I sent it under a Cover directed to you. Your Arrival here soon after the Vessel sail’d, makes me fear that Letter may have been long delay’d if not lost. With great and sincere Esteem, I am, Sir, Your most obedient humble Servant

p.s. Feb.17.

Since writing the within I have received your Favour of the 30th January respecting Mr. Fitch’s Steam Boat, and asking my Opinion of it. Not being able to go much abroad, I have never seen it; and tho’ I never doubted that the Force of Steam properly apply’d might be sufficient to move a Boat against the Current in most Rivers; yet when I consider’d the first Cost of such a Machine as the Fire Engine, the Necessity of its being accompany’d constantly by a skilful Engineer who would expect good Wages, to work it, and repair it on occasion, and the the [sic] room it would take (?) up in the Boat, I confess I have fear’d that the Advantage would not be such as to bring the Invention into Use. But the Opinion you have sent me of Mr. Rittenhouse, who is an excellent Judge, gives me more favourable sentiments of it.