Autograph letter signed : London, to [Sir James Pulteney], 1793 Nov. 8.

Concerning opinions expressed by Pulteney in earlier letters; saying he will not respond until he has consulted with the King's Ministers "after having duly weighed the Contents. My letters to which you refer were certainly not meant to create any disagreeable Sensation in the Breast of His royal Highness, nor upon an attentive perusal of them do I find a Syllable in any of them that ought to have raised such a Sensation. I am sure His Royal Highness is too just and too candid to expect that where I continue in His Majestys Service, I shall either act or write otherwise than as I think my Duty to the King and my Country requires. I must likewise think you had not read my Dispatches with due attention before you wrote the observations contained in your Private Letter otherwise I can only express my Surprise at the tendency of some of those observations. Happy am I, however, to reflect at this moment, that Neuport and Ostend are not in the hands of the Enemy. If they had fallen in to their hands, depend upon it, you have not sufficiently Weighed the feelings of this Country, if you [illegible] care that any other Successes would have counterbalanced the impressions that such an Event would have created...Suffice it to say for the present that sending Sir Charles Grey with the force destined for another important Service, and thereby endangering that Service is the most compleat Proof I can give you of what His Majestys Ministers feel on the alarm created that these Ports were in imminent Danger of being captured."