Gentlemen Agreeably to [strikethrough: your] my engagement, upon my arrival in [undecipherable: porto], I waited on the Gentlemen that compose the Treasury Board and conversed with them on the subject of the balance due you in trust for the late Colonel Flowers — The difficulty you have long experienced Nor — (the accounts of Jones,) was again urged as a reason why the Certificate for the balance due should not issue I endeavoured to shew the Board that the account of Jones you had rendered was all that Flowers was in equity bound to answer for, they being all that he ever had immediately under his charge — This brought on a conversation on the subject, which ended by the Boards giving their opinion that he was in addition to that account only answerable for the stores received and delivered at his Own Office under the direction of M. Pearson from the Eleventh of August Seventeen hundred and ninety eight to the commencement of the account rendered and that such account being made out and rendered would induce the Board to issue the Certificate requested — It was in vain that I attempted to prove that Pearson was accountable for the moneys [since] which they had mentioned [strikethrough: in common with other deputies] [and that] urged his being called in to render account — nothing short of the account it seemed, and that from your finding that to be the case, would be accepted, I then proposed their allowing the expense of Clerkship to while making out the account, this did not seem to meet their ideas, I then suggested the last [undecipherable: method?] I could devise which was to [forward] the documents, [in ward to them] and let them take their own measures [strikethrough: with the] to produce a satisfactory account, this they took under consideration, but I never heard no more from them on the subject, only that the Board would address you on the subject — This [strikethrough: confirmation] intelligence I have thought proper to communicate, that you may with information proceed in obtaining the Certificate when you have so often requested, and which when last in [York] I was empowered to receive — I shall probably go again to [York] in about a Month at which time if I can be of further use to you in the business you may without apology command my best services for I know the claim to be just and I will do all in my power to bring it to a happy complexion With sentiments of respect & esteem I am Gentlemen your Most Obedient Servant Samuel Hodgdon [Mess^rs] John Wilcox & [undecipherable] Clarkson [undecipherable] Executors of the late Colonel Flowers We the Subscribers being called on by Samuel Hodgdon Esq^r Commissary of Military Stores to examine a quantity of Steel this day received of the Executors of the late Thomas Potts on account of the United States — have attended that service, and after repeated trials find, that by reason of a faulty conversion, arising from a partial immersion in the furnace, or duration there — the greater part can only be considered as Bar Iron, and that, injured by the attempt made to convert it; a very small part, perhaps not more than One eighth part of what we examined, can be used for any purposes that requires good blistered Steel — Philadelphia 15^th May 1800