Page images
PDF
EPUB

too I am pleased with Montmorin. His honesty proceeds from the heart as well as the head, and therefore may be more surely counted on. The King loves business, economy, order, & justice, and wishes sincerely the good of his people; but he is irascible, rude, very limited in his understanding, and religious, bordering only on bigotry. He has no mistress, loves his queen, and is too much governed by her. She is capricious like her brother, and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues. Unhappily the King shews a propensity for the pleasures of the table, that for drink has increased lately, or at least it is become more known. For European news in general, I will refer you to my letter to Mr. Jay. Is it not possible that the occurrences in Holland may excite a desire in many of fleeing that country & transferring their effects out of it may make an opening for shifting into their hands the debts due to this country, to its officers and Farmers? It would be surely eligible. I believe Dumas, if put on the watch, might alone suffice; but surely, if Mr. Adams should go when the moment offers. Dumas has been in the habit of sending his letters open to me, to be forwarded to Mr. Jay. During my absence they passed through Mr. Short's hands who made extracts from them by which I see he has been recommending himself and me for the money negotiations in Holland. It might be thought perhaps that I have encouraged him in this. Be assured my dear Sir, that no such idea ever entered my head. On the contrary it is a

business which would be the most disagreeable to me of all others, & for which I am the most unfit person living. I do not understand bargaining, nor possess the dexterity requisite to them. On the other hand Mr. Adams, whom I expressly and sincerely recommend, stands already on ground for that business, which I could not gain in years. Pray set me to rights in the minds of those who may have supposed me privy to this proposition. En passant, I will observe with respect to Mr. Dumas, that the death of the Count de Vergennes places Congress more at their ease, how to dispose of him. Our credit has been ill treated here in public debate, and our debt deemed apocryphal. We should try to transfer this debt elsewhere, & leave nothing capable of exciting ill thoughts between us. I shall mention in my letter to Mr. Jay a disagreeable affair in which Mr. Barclay has been thrown into, at Bordeaux. An honester man cannot be found, nor a slower, nor more indecisive one. His affairs, too, are so embarrassed and desperate, that the public reputation is every moment in danger of being compromitted with him. He is perfectly amiable & honest, with all his embarrass

ments.

By the next packet I shall be able to send you some books as also your watch & pedometer. The two last are not yet done. To search for books and forward them to Havre will require more time than I had between my return & the departure of this packet. You did perfectly right as to the paiment by the Mr. Fitzhughs. Having been a witness here

tofore to the divisions in Congress on the subject of their foreign ministers, it would be a weakness in me to suppose none with respect to myself, or to count with any confidence on the renewal of my commission, which expires on the 10th day of March next: and the more so as, instead of requiring the disapprobation of 7. states as formerly, that of one suffices for a recall when Congress consists of only 7. states, 2. when of 8. &c which I suppose to be habitually their numbers at present. Whenever I leave this place, it will be necessary to begin my arrangements 6. months before my departure; and these, once fairly begun and under way, and my mind set homewards, a change of purpose could hardly take place. If it should be the desire of Congress that I should continue still longer, I could wish to know it at farthest by the packet which will sail from New York in September. Because were I to put off longer the quitting my house, selling my furniture &c. I should not have time left to wind up my affairs; and having once quitted, and sold off my furniture, I could not think of establishing myself here again. I take the liberty of mentioning this matter to you not with a desire to change the purpose of Congress, but to know it in time. I have never fixed in my own mind the epoch of my return so far as shall depend on myself, but I never supposed it very distant. Probably I shall not risk a second vote on this subject. Such trifling things may draw on one the displeasure of one or two states & thus submit me to the disgrace of a recall.

I thank you for the Paccan nuts which accompanied your letter of March. Could you procure me a copy of the bill for proportioning crimes & punishments in the form in which it was ultimately rejected by the house of delegates? Young Mr. Bannister desired me to send him regularly the Mercure de France. I will ask leave to do this thro' you, & that you will adopt such method of forwarding them to him as will save him from being submitted to postage which they would not be worth. As a compensation for your trouble you will be free to keep them till you shall have read them.

[blocks in formation]

DEAR SIR-I returned about three weeks ago from a very useless voyage, useless, I mean, as to the object which first suggested it, that of trying the effect of the mineral waters of Aix en Provence on my hand. I tried these because recommended among six or eight others as equally beneficial, & because they would place me at the beginning of a tour to the seaports of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes & L'Orient which I had long meditated, in hopes that a knolege of the places & persons concerned in our commerce & the information to be got from them might enable me sometimes to be useful. I had expected to satisfy myself at Marseilles of the causes of the difference of quality between the rice of Carolina & that of Piedmont which is brought in quantities to

Marseilles. Not being able to do it I made an excursion of three weeks into the rice country beyond the Alps, going through it from Vercelli to Pavia, about 60 miles. I found the difference to be not in the management as had been supposed both here & in Carolina, but in the species of rice, & I hope to enable them in Carolina to begin the cultivation of the Piedmont rice & carry it on hand in hand with their own that they may supply both qualities, which is absolutely necessary at this market. I had before endeavored to lead the depôt of rice from Cowes to Honfleur, and hope to get it received there on such terms as may draw that branch of commerce from England to this country. It is an object of 250.000 guineas a year. While passing thro' the towns of Turin, Milan & Genoa, I satisfied myself of the practicability of introducing our whale oil for their consumption & I suppose it would be equally so in the other great cities of that country. I was sorry that I was not authorized to set the matter on foot. The merchants with whom I chose to ask conferences, met me freely, and communicated fully, knowing I was in a public character. I could however only prepare a disposition to meet our oil merchants. On the article of tobacco I was more in possession of my ground, and put matters into a train for inducing their government to draw their tobaccos directly from the U. S. & not as heretofore from Gr. B. I am now occupied with the new ministry here to put the concluding hand to the new regulations for our commerce with this country, announced in the letter of M. de Ca

« PreviousContinue »