When I received Mr Alexander's letter, there was no cartel or other vessel at L'Orient, that I could trust with a charge of so delicate a nature as your plate, and I had great reason to expect I should return to France within six months after I embarked for America; but circumstances in America prevented my returning to Europe during the war, though I had constant expectation of it. The long delay that has happened to the restoration of your plate has given me much concern, and I now feel a proportionate pleasure in fulfilling what was my first intention. My motive for landing at your estate in Scotland was to take you as an hostage for the lives and liberty of a number of the citizens of America, who had been taken in war on the ocean, and committed to British prisons, under an act of parliament, as traitors, pirates, and felons. You observed to Mr Alexander, that my idea was a mistaken one, because you were not (as I had supposed) in favour with the British ministry, who knew that you favoured the cause of liberty." On that account I am glad that you were absent from your estate when I landed there, as I bore

no personal enmity, but the contrary, towards you. I afterwards had the happiness to redeem my fellow-citizens from Britain, by means far more glorious than through the medium of any single hostage,

"As I have endeavoured to serve the cause of liberty, through every stage of the American revolution, and sacrificed to it my private ease, a part of my fortune, and some of my blood, I could have no selfish motive in permitting my people to demand and carry off your plate. My sole inducement was to turn their attention and stop their rage from breaking out, and retaliating on your house and effects the too wanton burnings and desolation that had been committed against their relations and fellow-citizens in America by the British; of which, I assure you, you would have felt the severe consequences had I not fallen on an expedient to prevent it, and hurried my people away before they had time for farther reflection. As you were so obliging as to say to Mr Alexander, that my people behaved with great decency at your house,' I ask the favour of

6

you to announce that circumstance to the public.

“I am, my Lord, wishing you always perfect

freedom and happiness," &c. &c.

"PAUL JONES."

from

The answer that Jones received next year the Earl was some indemnification for his trouble

and anxiety :

“SIR,

London, 4th August, 1785.

"I received the letter you wrote me at the time you sent off my plate, in order for restoring it. Had I known where to direct a letter to you at the time it arrived in Scotland, I would have then wrote to you; but not knowing it, nor finding that any of my acquaintance at Edinburgh knew it, I was obliged to delay writing till I came here, when, by means of a gentleman connected with America, I was told Mr Le Grand was your banker at Paris, and would take proper care of a letter for you; therefore I enclose this to him.

"Notwithstanding all the precautions you took for the easy and uninterrupted conveyance of the plate, yet it met with considerable delays, first at Calais, next at Dover, then at London. How

VOL. I.

E

ever, it at last arrived at Dumfries, and, I dare say, quite safe, though as yet I have not seen it, being then at Edinburgh. I intended to have put an article in the newspapers about your having returned it; but before I was informed of its being arrived, some of your friends, I suppose, had put it in the Dumfries newspaper, whence it was immediately copied into the Edinburgh papers, and thence into the London ones.

"Since that time I have mentioned it to many people of fashion; and on all occasions, Sir, both now and formerly, I have done you the justice to tell, that you made an offer of returning the plate very soon after your return to Brest, and although you yourself were not at my house, but remained at the shore with your boat, that yet you had your officers and men in such extraordinary good discipline, that you having given them the strictest orders to behave well, to do no injury of any kind, to make no search, but only to bring off what plate was given them; that in reality they did exactly as ordered, and that not one man offered to stir from his post, on the outside of the house, nor entered the doors, nor said

an uncivil word; that the two officers stood not a quarter of an hour in the parlour and butler's pantry while the butler got the plate together; behaved politely, and asked for nothing but the plate, and instantly marched their men off in regular order; and that both officers and men behaved in all respects so well, that it would have done credit to the best-disciplined troops whatever. Some of the English newspapers at that time having put in confused accounts of your expedition to Whitehaven and Scotland, I ordered a proper one of what happened in Scotland to be put in the London newspapers, by a gentleman who was then at my house, by which the good conduct and civil behaviour of your officers and men were done justice to, and attributed to your orders, and the good discipline you maintained over your people.

"I am, Sir, your most humble servant,

"SELKIRK."

The plate was returned exactly as it had been taken away; even the tea leaves, it is said, remained in the tea-pot.