M. Grand delivered to us on your behalf, our dear and esteemed friend, three bars of vegetal soap. We are very grateful for your thoughts and your gift. It would please us to do something you would like; you know that our friendship is at your orders and your service; the more you ask of us, the happier we will be.

At last you are back in the bosom of your country and your family, you are free and happy, may you rejoice in long years of happiness. Your freedom tickles our imagination pleasantly, but our hearts are far from hoping to rejoice in that precious gift of nature that we have lost amidst our irons, as Jean Jacques [Rousseau] says, to the point where we only feel the pleasures of our vices; our only consolation is knowing that there exists in your world a country where man is assured of rejoicing in all his rights under the protection of the laws he created himself. When the weight of our evils will give birth to the desire for liberty, we will cross the seas to place ourselves under its banner; you will welcome the miserable ones who will cease being miserable when they get to share your fate.

The sorrows caused by your departure remain, your friends, and you know their number is not small, wish they had you here still, philosophers, literary men, artists, peaceable bourgeois, all want you; if you cannot satisfy their wishes thaey hope at least that you will never forget the feelings that you inspired in them and that they will keep all their life.

You know from the newspapers all that is happening in Holland, matters seem to have degenerated today into a war of words; such a weapon is not as strong as a sword, a citizen has already lost half his liberty when he prefers the pen to the sword. The Stathouder is just the first subject of the Republic, since his creation, he has not stopped extending his prerogatives, this usurpation has prompted protests, God grant that they not be rendered useless by intrigue and cabals. A hereditary leader in a republic is and cannot be anything but an enemy of Liberty; your wise constitutions shelter you from this danger, but you still must guard your rights always, if you fall asleep, the vices you have put in chains will wake up and put you in the chains they broke will you slept.

Excuse our temerity if we dare to give advice to wisdom, you know better than we how much Freedom is worth, you who spilled your blood to get it, you will know how to preserve it and make it everlasting.

We know from M. Jefferson and M. Grand that you are well, we ask everyone who arrives from the United States about you; do not forget that you have promised to send us your friends who are coming to France; we have not yet seen anyone you sent, do not hesitate to recommend them, your recommendation will always be a sure guarantee of the warm welcome we will give them out of our friendship for you.

You have undoubtedly mislaid the little note that we had the honor to give you before you left for America. M. Humbert Gerbier, a friend of ours and the doctor of Monsieur, the King’s brother, asked in that note to be made a member of the Philadelphia Philosophical Society, you had the goodness to promise your help in obtaining it, and we gave you on his behalf two small publications that were on the subject, allow us to prevail on your friendship to obtain what M. Humbert Gerbier wants and to ask you to expedite his association with your philosophical society; his talents, his knowledge and his virtues make him worthy of this honor.

We have given to M. Jefferson the portrait of the late M. l’abbé de Mably, our friend and yours, he has promised to get it to you; we thought you would be pleased to have the portrait of a great writer you liked and whose works you admired.

We have the honor to be, with feelings of esteem, friendship and respect, our dear friend, your very humble and very obedient servants.