ing who they were from. I now forward them to you, as I do this to my friend Jacob Van Staphorst, at Paris. Our alien bill struggles hard for a passage. It has been considerably mollified. It is not yet through the Senate. We are proceeding further and further in war measures. I consider that event as almost inevitable. I am extremely anxious to hear from you, to know what sort of a passage you had, how you find yourself, and the state and prospect of things in Europe. I hope I shall not be long without hearing from you. The first dividend which will be drawn for you and remitted, will be in January, and as the winter passages are dangerous, it will not be forwarded till April; after that, regularly, from six months to six months. This will be done by Mr. Barnes. I shall leave this place in three weeks. The times do not permit an indulgence in political disquisitions. But they forbid not the effusion of friendship, and not my warmest toward you, which no time will alter. Your principles and dispositions were made to be honored, revered and loved.

True to a single object, the freedom and happiness of man, they have not veered about with the changelings and apostates of our acquaintance. May health and happiness ever attend you. Accept sincere assurances of my affectionate esteem and respect. Adieu.

TO JAMES MADISON.

Philadelphia, June 21, 1798.

DEAR SIR, Yours of the 10th instant is received. I expected mine of the 14th would have been my last from hence, as I had proposed to set out on the 20th; but on the morning of the 19th, we heard of the arrival of Marshall at New York, and I concluded to stay and see whether that circumstance would produce any new projects. No doubt he there received more than hints from Hamilton as to the tone required to be assumed. Yet I apprehend he is not hot enough for his friends. Livingston came with him from New York. Marshall told him they had no idea

in France of a war with us. That Talleyrand sent passports to him and Pinckney, but none to Gerry. Upon this, Gerry staid, without explaining to them the reason. He wrote, however, to the President by Marshall, who knew nothing of the contents of the letter. So that there must have been a previous understanding between Talleyrand and Gerry. Marshall was received here with the utmost eclat. The Secretary of State and many carriages, with all the city cavalry, went to Frankfort to meet him, and on his arrival here in the evening, the bells rung till late in the night, and immense crowds were collected to see and make part of the show, which was circuitously paraded through the streets before he was set down at the City tavern. All this was to secure him to their views, that he might say nothing which would oppose the game they have been playing. Since his arrival I can hear of nothing directly from him, while they are disseminating through the town things, as from him, diametrically opposite to what he said to Livingston. Doctor Logan, about a fortnight ago, sailed for Hamburg. Though for a twelvemonth past he had been intending to go to Europe as soon as he could get money enough to carry him there, yet when he had accomplished this, and fixed a time for going, he very unwisely made a mystery of it: so that his disappearance without notice excited conversation. This was seized by the war hawks, and given out as a secret mission from the Jacobins here to solicit an army from France, instruct them as to their landing, &c. This extravagance produced a real panic among the citizens; and happening just when Bache published Talleyrand's letter, Harper, on the 18th, gravely announced to the House of Representatives, that there existed a traitorous correspondence between the Jacobins here and the French Directory; that he had got hold of some threads and clues of it, and would soon be able to develop the whole. This increased the alarm; their libelists immediately set to work, directly and indirectly to implicate whom they pleased. Porcupine gave me a principal share in it, as I am told, for I never read his papers. This state of things added to my reasons for not departing at the time I intended. These follies seem to have

died away in some degree already. Perhaps I may renew my purpose by the 25th. Their system is, professedly, to keep up an alarm. Tracy, at the meeting of the joint committee for adjournment, declared it necessary for Congress to stay together to keep up the inflammation of the public mind; and Otis has expressed a similar sentiment since. However, they will adjourn. The opposers of an adjournment in Senate, yesterday agreed to adjourn on the 10th of July. But I think the 1st of July will be carried. That is one of the objects which detain myself, as well as one or two more of the Senate, who had got leave of absence. I imagine it will be decided to-morrow or next day. To separate Congress now, will be withdrawing the fire from under a boiling pot.

My respectful salutations to Mrs. Madison, and cordial friendship to yourself.

P. M. A message to both Houses this day from the President, with the following communications.

March 23. Pickering's letter to the Envoys, directing them, if they are not actually engaged in negotiation with authorized persons, or if it is not conducted bona fide, and not merely for procrastination, to break up and come home, and at any rate to consent to no loan.

April 3. Talleyrand to Gerry. He supposes the other two gentlemen, perceiving that their known principles are an obstacle to negotiation, will leave there public, and proposes to renew the negotiations with Gerry immediately.

April 4. Gerry to Talleyrand. Disclaims a power to conclude anything separately, can only confer informally and as an unaccredited person or individual, reserving to lay everything before the government of the United States for approbation.

April 14. Gerry to the President. He communicates the preceding, and hopes the President will send other persons instead of his colleagues and himself, if it shall appear that anything can be done.

The President's message says, that as the instructions were not

to consent to any loan, he considers the negotiations as at an end, and that he will never send another minister to France, until he shall be assured that he will be received and treated with the respect due to a great, powerful, free and independent nation.

A bill was brought in the Senate this day, to declare the treaties with France void, prefaced by a list of grievances in the style of a manifesto. It passed to the second reading by fourteen to five.

A bill for punishing forgeries of bank paper, passed to the third reading by fourteen to six. Three of the fourteen (Laurence Bingham and Read) bank directors.

TO MR. NOLAN.

PHILADELPHIA, June 24, 1798.

SIR, It is sometime since I have understood that there are large herds of horses in a wild state, in the country west of the Mississippi, and have been desirous of obtaining details of their history in that State. Mr. Brown, Senator from Kentucky, informs me it would be in your power to give interesting information on this subject, and encourages me to ask it. The circumstances of the old world have, beyond the records of history, been such as admitted not that animal to exist in a state of nature. The condition of America is rapidly advancing to the same. The present then is probably the only moment in the age of the world, and the herds above mentioned the only subjects, of which we can avail ourselves to obtain what has never yet been recorded, and never can be again in all probability. I will add that your information is the sole reliance, as far as I can at present see, for obtaining this desideratum. You will render to natural history a very acceptable service, therefore, if you will enable our Philosophical society to add so interesting a chapter to the history of this animal. I need not specify to you the particular facts asked for; as your knowledge of the animal in his domesticated, as well as his wild state, will naturally have led your attention to those

particulars in the manners, habits, and laws of his existence, which are peculiar to his wild state. I wish you not to be anxious about the form of your information, the exactness of the substance alone is material; and if, after giving in a first letter all the facts you at present possess, you would be so good, on subsequent occasions, as to furnish such others in addition, as you may acquire from time to time, your communications will always be thankfully received, if addressed to me at Monticello; and put into any post office in Kentucky or Tennessee, they will reach me speedily and safely, and will be considered as obligations on, sir, your most obedient, humble servant.

TO SAMUEL SMITH.

MONTICELLO, August 22, 1798. DEAR SIR,-Your favor of August the 4th came to hand by our last post, together with the "extract of a letter from a gentleman of Philadelphia, dated July the 10th," cut from a newspaper stating some facts which respect me. I shall notice these facts. The writer says that "the day after the last despatches were communicated to Congress, Bache, Leib, &c., and a Dr. Reynolds, were closeted with me." If the receipt of visits in my public room, the door continuing free to every one who should call at the same time, may be called closeting, then it is true that I was closeted with every person who visited me; in no other sense is it true as to any person. I sometimes received visits from Mr. Bache and Dr. Leib. I received them always with pleasure, because they are men of abilities, and of principles the most friendy to liberty and our present form of government. Mr. Bache has another claim on my respect, as being the grandson of Dr. Franklin, the greatest man and ornament of the age and country in which he lived. Whether I was visited by Mr. Bache or Dr. Leib the day after the communication referred to, I do not remember. I know that all my motions in Philadelphia, here, and everywhere, are watched and recorded. Some of these spies,