220 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



No. 129. 1783, March 12: Extract from Letter, Mr. Madison to Mr. 



Edmund Randolph. 



PHILADELPHIA, March 1%, 1783. 



DEAR SIR: Captain Barney, commanding the American packet- 

 boat, which has been long expected, with official intelligence from our 

 ministers in Europe, arrived here this morning. He brings a supply 

 of money, the sum of which I can not as yet specify, and comes under 

 a passport from the King of Great Britain. The despatches from 

 our ministers are dated the fifth, fourteenth, and twenty-fourth of 

 December. Those of the fourteenth enclose a copy of the preliminary 

 articles, provisionally signed between the American and British pleni- 

 potentiaries. The tenor of them is that the United States shall be 

 acknowledged and treated with as free, sovereign, and independent; 

 that our boundaries shall begin at the mouth of the St. Croix, run 

 thence to the ridge dividing the waters of the Atlantic from those of 

 the St. Lawrence; thence to the head of Connecticut River; thence 

 down to forty -five degrees north latitude; thence to Cadaraqui; thence 

 through the middle of Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Superior to 

 Long Lake, to Lake of the Woods ; and thence due west to the Missis- 

 sippi; thence down the middle of the river to latitude thirty-one; 

 thence to Apalachicola, to Flint River, to St. Mary's, and down the 

 same to the Atlantic; that the fisheries shall be exercised as 

 formerly; .... 



No. 130. 1783, March 25: Extract from Letter, Mr. Livingston to 

 the Peace Commissioners. 



PHILADELPHIA, March 25, 1783. 



GENTLEMEN: I am now to acknowledge the favor of your joint 

 letter by the Washington, together with a copy of the preliminary 

 articles; both were laid before Congress. The articles have met 

 with their warmest approbation, and have been generally seen by 

 the people in the most favourable point of view. 



The steadiness manifested in not treating without an express 

 acknowledgment of your independence previous to a treaty is ap- 

 proved, and it is not doubted but it accelerated that declaration. 

 The boundaries are as extensive as we have a right to expect, and we 

 have nothing to complain of with respect to the fisheries. 



No. 131. 1783, April 11: Extract from letter, Mr. Thomas Jefferson 



to Mr. Jay. 



.-v>--.-. . I cannot, however, take my departure without paying to 

 yourself and your worthy colleagues my homage for the good work 

 you have completed for us, and congratulating you on the singular 

 happiness of having borne so distinguished a part both in the earliest 

 and latest transactions of this revolution. The terms obtained for 

 us are indeed great, and are so deemed by your countrymen, a few 

 ill-designing debtors excepted. . . . 



