moral duties the same case is presented so often that the Chancellor can seize certain leading features which submit it to a general description and show that it is a proper object for the application of some moral rule-here is a new class of cases formed and brought within the regular relief of the court of Chancery, which thus continues the administration of justice progressive almost in equal pace with the progress of commerce and refinement of morality. One practice only is wanting to render this court completely valuable. That is that when a class of cases has been formed & has been the subject of so many decisions in the Court of Chancery as to have been seen there under all circumstances, & in all its combinations and the rules for its decision are modified accordingly & thoroughly digested, the legislature should reduce these rules to a text and transplant them into the department of the common law, which is competent then to the application of them, and is a safer depository for the general administration of justice. This would be to make the Chancery a nursery only for the forming new plants for the Department of the common law. Much of the business of Chancery is now actually in a state of perfect preparation for removal into the common law.

It has often been predicted in England that the Chancery would swallow up the common law, during many centuries however, that these two courts have gone on together, the jurisdiction of the common law has not been narrowed in a single article: on the contrary it has been enlarged from time to time by

VOL. IV.-8

act of the legislature; but jealousy uncorrected by reason or experience, sees certainty where ever there is a possibility and sensible men still think that the danger from this court overweighs its utility.

Even some of the states in our Union have chosen to do without this court; and it has been proposed to others to follow their example in this case. One of two consequences must follow. Either, I—the cases now remediable in Chancery must be left without remedy, in which event the clamorers for justice which originally begat this court, would produce it's re-institution; or 2-the courts of common law must be permitted to perform the discretionary functions of the Chancery. This will be either by adopting at once all the rules of the Chancery, with the consent of the legislature, or if that is withheld, these courts will be led, by the desire of doing justice, to extend the text of the law according to it's equity as was done in England before the Chancery took a regular form. This will be worse than running on Scylla to avoid Charybdis, for at present nine tenths of our legal contestations are perfectly remedied by the common law, & can be carried before that judicature only. This proportion then of our rights is placed on sure ground. Relieve the judges from the rigour of text law, and permit them, with prætorian discretion, to wander into its equity, & the whole legal system becomes incertain. This has been it's fate in every country where the fixed, & the discretionary law have been committed into the same hands.

It is probable that the singular certainty, with

which justice has been administered in England, has been the consequence of their distribution into two distinct departments. Unhappily for that country, however, a very unexpected revolution is working in their laws of late years. La Mansfield, a man of the clearest head & most seducing eloquence coming from a country where the powers of the common law & chancery are united in the same court, has been able since his admission to the bench of judges in England, to persuade the courts of common law to revise the practice of construing their text equitably. The object of former judges has been to render the law more & more certain. That of this personage to render it more incertain under pretence of rendering it more reasonable. No period of the English law of what ever length it be taken, can be produced wherein so many of it's settled rules have been reversed as during the time of this judge. His decisions will be precious in those states where no chancery is established, but his accession to the bench should form the epoch, after which all recurrence to English decisions should be proscribed in those states which have separated the two courts. His plan of rendering the chancery useless by administering justice in the same way in the courts of common law has been admirably seconded by the celebrated D: Blackstone, a judge in the same. department, who has endeavored seriously to prove that the jurisdiction of the Chancery is a chaos, irreducible to system, insusceptible of fixed rules, & } incapable of definition or explanation. Were this true,

it would be a monster whose existence should not be suffered one moment in a free country wherein every power is dangerous which is not bound up by general rules.

Before I end up my letter I will further observe, to guard still more effectually against the dangers apprehended from a court of Chancery, the legisla ture of Virginia have very wisely introduced into it the trial by jury for all matters of fact.

I have thus gone over, with much rapidity the subject of your inquiries, yet I fear I have been more lengthy than you wished. You can, however, extract such of these details as will fulfill your object, neglect ing those which go beyond it. I shall close therefore with assurances of the sincere esteem with which am Dear Sir, Your friend & servant.

CONFERENCE WITH THE COUNT DE VERGENNES ON THE

SUBJECT OF THE COMMERCE OF THE UNITED

STATES WITH FRANCE.1

1785.

The next levee day at Versailles, I meant to bring again under the view of the Count de Vergennes, the whole subject of our commerce with France; but the number of audiences of ambassadors and other ministers, which take place, of course, before mine, and which seldom, indeed, leave me an opportunity of audience at all, prevented me that day. I was only able to ask the Count de Vergennes, as a particular favor, that he would permit me to wait on him some day that week. He did so, and I went to Versailles the Friday following (the 9th of December). M. de Reyneval was with the Count. Our conversation began with the usual topic; that the trade of the United States had not yet learned the way to France, but continued to centre in England, though no longer obliged by law to go there. I observed, that the real cause of this, was to be found in the difference of the commercial arrangements in the two countries; that merchants would not, and could not trade but where there was to be

In a letter to John Jay, dated Paris, January 2, 1786, Jefferson wrote: "SIR,-Several conferences and letters having passed between the Count de Vergennes and myself, on the subject of the commerce of this country with the United States, I think them sufficiently interesting to be communicated to Congress. They are stated in the form of a report, and are herein enclosed. The length of this despatch, perhaps, needs apology. Yet I have not been able to abridge it, without omitting circumstances which I thought Congress would rather choose to know. Some of the objects of these conferences present but small hopes for the present, but they seem to admit a possibility of success at some future moment.

See also post, letter to Jay, of May 23, 1786.