maybe you can find this reference in print:
from Rossiter’s “Seedtime of the Republic; pg 343 “The Sources of American Political Theory”
“Although many references in colonial literature to European authors were window-dressing of the most obvious sort, at least four Continental philosophers were studied with care and quoteds with confidence: Emmerich de Vattel, a name to be flung as confidently as that of Locke or Suidney...”
Virginia Gazette June 7, 1776