TO M. DE LA FAYETTE.

PHILADELPHIA, June 16, 1792.

Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel through which it may pour its favors. While you are estimating the monster Aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, Monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new Constitution not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords, and commons, come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our Legislature, or rather too many of our Legislature have become stock-jobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election. The machinations of our old enemies are such as to keep us still at bay with our Indian neighbors. What are you doing for your colonies? They will be lost, if not more effectually succored. Indeed, no future efforts you can make will ever be able to reduce the blacks. All that can be done, in my opinion, will be to compound with them, as has been done formerly in Jamaica. We have been less zealous in aiding them, lest your government should feel any jealousy on our account. But, in truth, we as sincerely wish their restoration and their connection with you, as you do yourselves. We are satisfied that neither your justice nor their distresses will ever again permit their being forced to

seek at dear and distant markets those first necessaries of life which they may have at cheaper markets, placed by nature at their door, and formed by her for their support. What is become of Madame de Tessy and Madame de Tott? I have not heard of them since they went to Switzerland. I think they would have done better to have come and reposed under the poplars of Virginia. Pour into their bosoms the warmest effusions of my friendship, and tell them they will be warm and constant unto death. Accept of them also for Madame de La Fayette, and your dear children; but I am forgetting that you are in the field of war, and they I hope in those of peace. Adieu, my dear friend. God bless you all. Yours affectionately.

TO MR. BARLOW.

PHILADELPHIA, June 20, 1792.

DEAR SIR,-Though I am in hopes you are now on the ocean home-bound, yet I cannot omit the chance of my thanks reaching you, for your "Conspiracy of Kings" and advice to the privileged orders, the second part of which I am in hopes is out by this time. Be assured that your endeavors to bring the transAtlantic world into the road of reason, are not without their effect here. Some here are disposed to move retrograde, and to take their stand in the rear of Europe, now advancing to the high ground of natural right; but of all this your friend Mr. Baldwin gives you information, and doubtless paints to you the indignation with which the heresies of some people here fill us.

This will be conveyed by Mr. Pinckney, an honest, sensible man, and good republican. He goes our Minister Plenipotentiary to London. He will arrive at an interesting moment in Europe. God send that all the nations who join in attacking the liberties of France may end in the attainment of their own. I still hope this will not find you in Europe, and therefore add nothing more than assurances of affectionate esteem from, dear Sir, your sincere friend and servant.

TO PETER CARR.

PHILADELPHIA, June 22, 1792. DEAR SIR,-I received in due time your favor of May 28, with the notes it contained on the subject of Waste. Your view of the subject, as far as it goes, is perfectly proper. Perhaps, on such a question in this country, where the husbandry is so different, it might be necessary to go further, and inquire whether any difference of this kind should produce a difference in the law. The main objects of the law of waste in England are, 1st, to prevent any disguise of the lands which might lessen the revisioner's evidence of title, such as the change of pasture into arable; 2d, to prevent any deterioration of it, as the cutting down forest, which in England is an injury. So careful is the law there against permitting a deterioration of the land, that though it will permit such improvements in the same line, as manuring arable lands, leading water into pasture lands, &c., yet it will not permit improvements in a different line, such as erecting buildings, converting pasture into arable, &c., lest this should lead to a deterioration. Hence we might argue in Virginia, that though the cutting down of forest in Virginia is, in our husbandry, rather an improvement generally, yet it is not so always, and therefore it is safer never to admit it. Consequently, there is no reason for adopting different rules of waste here from those established in England.

Your objection to Lord Kaims, that he is too metaphysical, is just, and it is the chief objection to which his writings are liable. It is to be observed also, that though he has given us what should be the system of equity, yet it is not the one actually established, at least not in all its parts. The English Chancellors have gone on from one thing to another without any comprehensive or systematic view of the whole field of equity, and therefore they have sometimes run into inconsistencies and contradictions.

Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment in it. The foundation you will have laid in legal reading, will enable you

to take a higher ground than most of your competitors, and even ignorant men can see who it is that is not one of themselves. Go on then with courage, and you will be sure of success; for which be assured no one wishes more ardenily, nor has more sincere sentiments of friendship towards you, than, dear Sir, your affectionate friend.

TO MR. VAN BERCKEL.

PHILADELPHIA, July 2, 1792.

SIR, It was with extreme concern that I learned from your letter of June the 25th, that a violation of the protection due to you as the representative of your nation had been committed, by an officer of this State entering your house and serving therein a process on one of your servants. There could be no question but that this was a breach of privilege; the only one was, how it was to be punished. To ascertain this, I referred your letter to the Attorney General, whose answer I have the honor to enclose you. By this you will perceive, that from the circumstance of your servant's not being registered in the Secretary of State's office, we cannot avail ourselves of the more certain and effectual proceeding which had been provided by an act of Congress for punishing infractions of the law of nations, that act having thought proper to confine the benefit of its provisions to such domestics only, as should have been registered. We are to proceed, therefore, as if that act had never been made, and the Attorney General's letter indicates two modes of proceeding. 1. By a warrant before a single magistrate, to recover the money paid by the servant under a process declared void by law. Herein the servant must be the actor, and the government not intermeddle at all. The smallness of the sum to be re-demanded will place this cause in the class of those in which no appeal to the higher tribunal is permitted, even in the case of manifest error, so that if the magistrate should err, the government has no means of correcting the error. 2. The second mode of proceeding would

be, to indict the officer in the Supreme Court of the United States; with whom it would rest to punish him at their discretion, in proportion to the injury done and the malice from which it proceeded; and it would end in punishment alone, and not in a restitution of the money. In this mode of proceeding, the government of the United States is actor, taking the management of the cause into its own hands, and giving you no other trouble than that of bearing witness to such material facts as may not be otherwise supported. You will be so good as to decide in which of these two ways you would choose the proceeding should be; if the latter, I will immediately take measures for having the offender prosecuted according to law.

I have the honor to be, with sentiments of respect, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA.

PHILADELPHIA, July 3, 1792.

SIR,—I have the honor to enclose to your Excellency, the copy of a letter I have received from his Catholic Majesty's representatives here, in consequence of a complaint from the Governor of Florida, that three inhabitants of the State of Georgia, to wit, Thomas Harrison, David Rees, and William Ewin, had entered the Spanish territory and brought from thence five negro slaves, the property of John Blackwood, a Spanish subject, without his consent, in violation of the rights of that State and the peace of the two countries. I had formerly had the honor of sending you a copy of the convention entered into between the said Governor and Mr. Leagrove, on the part of the United States for the mutual restitution of fugitive slaves. I now take the liberty of requesting your Excellency to inform me what is done, or likely to be done with you for the satisfaction of the Spanish government in this instance. Nobody knows better than your Excellency the importance of restraining individuals from committing the peace and honor of the two nations, and I am