ensuing spring. So that it will be yet a twelvemonth before we shall be able to judge of the efficacy of our land office to sink our national debt. It is made a fundamental that the proceeds shall be solely & sacredly applied as a sinking fund to discharge the capital only of the debt. It is true that the tobaccos of Virginia go almost entirely to England. The reason is that they owe a great debt there which they are paying as fast as they can.-I think I have now answered your several queries, & shall be happy to receive your reflections on the same subjects, & at all times to hear of your welfare & to give you assurances of the esteem with which I have the honor to be Dear Sir your most obedient & most humble

servant.

TO N. AND J. VAN STAPHORST.

PARIS, Oct. 25. 1785.

GENTLEMEN,-I received yesterday your favor of the 20th inst. In order to give you the information you desire on the subject of the Liquidated debts of the United States, & the comparative footing on which they stand, I must observe to you that the first & great division of our federal debt is into 1. Foreign and 2. Domestic. The Foreign debt comprehends 1. the loan from the government of Spain. 2. the loans from the government of France & from the Farmers general. 3. the loans negotiated in Holland by order of Congress. This branch of our debt stands absolutely singular: no man in the United States having ever supposed that Congress or their

legislatures can in any wise modify or alter it. They justly view the United States as the one party & the lenders as the other & that the consent of both would be requisite were any modification to be proposed. But with respect to the Domestic debt, they consider Congress as representing both the borrowers & lenders, and that the modifications which have taken place in this, have been necessary to do justice between the two parties, & that they flowed properly from Congress as their mutual umpire. The Domestic debt comprehends 1. the army debt; 2. the Loan office debt. 3. the liquidated debt. & 4. the unliquidated debt. The 1st term includes debts to the officers & souldiers for pay, bounty & subsistence. The 2 term means moneis put into the loan-office of the United States. The 3 comprehends all debts contracted by quartermasters, commissaries, & others duly authorized to procure supplies for the army, and which have been liquidated (that is, settled) by commissioners appointed under the resolution of Congress of June 12. 1780. or by the officer who made the contract. The 4th comprehends the whole mass of debts described in the preceding article which have not yet been liquidated. These are in a course of liquidation, and are passing over daily into the 3d class. The debts of this 3a class, that is the liquidated debt is the object of your inquiry. No time is fixed for the payment of it, no fund is yet determined, nor any firm provision for the interest in the meantime. The consequence is that the certificates of these debts sell greatly below par.

When I left

America they could be bought for from 2/6 to 15/ in the pound: this difference proceeding from the circumstance of some states having provided for paying the interest on those due in their own state, which others had not. Hence, an opinion had arisen with some, & propositions had even been made in the legislatures for paying off the principal of these debts with what they had cost the holder & interest on that. This opinion is far from being general, & I think will not prevail. But it is among possible events. I have been thus particular that you might be able to judge not only in the present case, but also in others, should any attempts be made to speculate in your city on these papers. It is a business in which foreigners will be in great danger of being duped. It is a science which bids defiance to the powers of reason. To understand it, a man must not only be on the spot, and be perfectly possessed of all the circumstances relative to every species of these papers, but he must have that dexterity which the habit of buying & selling them alone gives. The brokers of these certificates are few in number, and any other person venturing to deal with them engages in a very unequal contest.

TO PHILLIP MAZZEI.

J. MSS.

PARIS, Nov. ? 1785.

DEAR SIR,-You desire me to give you an idea of the Origin and Object of our Court of Chancery, the Limits of it's jurisdiction, and it's Tendency to render

property & liberty more or less secure in a country where that security is infinitely valued. The purpose for which you require this obliges me to be concise, as indeed does my situation here, where, as you know, I am without books which might enable me to enter into details, I shall confine myself therefore to general description only. The terms of this, if presented to professors of the law, would furnish matter for abundant exceptions. But these should be suppressed by the reflection that we mean only to sketch for foreigners a general idea of this Court.

The system of law in most of the United States, in imitation of that of England is divided into two departments, the Common law & the Chancery.

The Common law is a written law the text of which is preserved from the beginning of the 13th century downwards, but what has preceded that is lost, it's substance, however, has been retained in the memory of the people & committed to writing from time to time in the decisions of the judges and treatises of the jurists, insomuch that it is still considered as a lex scripta, the letter of which is sufficiently known to guide the decisions of the courts. In this department the courts restrain themselves to the letter of the law. Antiently indeed before the improvement or perhaps the existence of the court of Chancery, they allowed themselves greater latitude, extending the provisions of every law not only to the cases within it's letter but to those also which came within the spirit and reason of it. This was called the equity of the law but it is now very long since certainty in the law has

become so highly valued by the nation that the judges have ceased to extend the operation of laws beyond those cases which are clearly within the intention of the legislators. This intention is to be collected principally from the words of the law: only where these are ambiguous they are permitted to gather further evidence from the history of the times when the law was made & the circumstances which produced it. In antient times, when contracts and transfers of property were more rare, and their objects more simple, the imperfections of this administration of justice according to the letter of the law were less felt. But when commerce began to make progress, when the transfer of property came into daily use, when the modifications of these transfers were infinitely diversified, when with the improvement of other faculties that of the moral sense became also improved, and learnt to respect justice in a variety of cases which it had not formerly discriminated, the instances of injustice left without remedy by courts adhering to the letter of the law, would be so numerous as to produce a general desire that a power should be found somewhere which would redress them. History renders it probable that appeals were made to the king himself in these cases, and that he exercised this power sometimes in person, but more generally by his Chancellor to whom he referred the case. This was most commonly an Ecclesiastic, learning being rare in any other class at that time. Roman learning, and a prejudice in favour of Roman institutions are known to have been a leading feature