| Description | (This is presumably the letter mentioned in MS 3782/12/54.)
This, I hope, will be deliver'd to you by my corresponding clark, Mr. Collins, whose health and other circumstances require him to visit his native city Konigsburgh, and as our trade with Russia, as well as our payments, seem to be much obstructed, I have requested Mr. Collins to take this opportunity of visiting our friends at St. Petersburgh and to consult with them upon the best, and most probable, means of redressing our grievancy and paliating the inconvenience resulting from the late edict and the disadvantageous course of exchange, as well as to form a judgement of a future trade with Russia.
If Mr. Collins should in any case stand in need of your advice or assistance, I request and flatter myself you will favour him with it; and you will thereby very much oblige me, and confirm my opineon of your friendly disposition towards me. I have thought it necessary to furnish Mr. Collins with full power to act for me, but hope he will not in any case have occasion to exert those powers.
I am sensible how disadvantageous it must be to your to make me remittances at the present course of exchange, but as the cause of it arises on your side of the water, and the remedy can only be effected in Russia, it is therefore out of my power, or that of this Goverment, to avert the present calamitous state of trade with Russia; and it would be a great hardship for me to bear the losses arising therefrom, particulary as the Russia merchant as it in his power to sell his goods at such rates as is proportion'd to the exchange between the two countries.
I have a very great number of people employ'd in my Manufacture who must eat or dye, and I am obliged to pay them every week in gold or silver to the amount of between 3 and 4 hundred £ sterling, and therefore you will easily perceive that it would be very inconvenient to me to be kept out of my regular payments for any length of time; and if the loss upon the exchange was to fall upon me it would more than annihilate all my profits.
[Edited transcript.]
(2 pcs.) |