to take away all temptations to our coöperation in the emancipation of their colonies; and I know no means of doing this but the making it our interest that they should continue dependant, nor any other way of making this our interest but by allowing us a commerce with them. However, this is a mode of reasoning which their Ministry, probably, could not bear to listen to.

I send herewith the gazettes of France and Leyden, and have the honor to be, &c.,

TH: JEFFERSON.

THOMAS JEFFERSON TO MESSRS. WILLINKS AND VAN STAPHORSTS.

Gentlemen,

Paris, February 22, 1789.

I have just received your joint letter of the 16th instant to me, and have perused that of the same date to the board of Treasury, which you were so kind as to enclose for my perusal. I shall immediately forward it to them. You therein state the balance in your hands to be 123,674 florins, to which will be added the nett produce of one hundred and three bonds engaged, though not yet delivered, and you say there will then be a deficiency of about 100,000 florins for the June interest. From this an implication arises, that you consider this balance as a deposit for the June interest, and propose again to postpone the article of 60,000 florins, appropriated in the estimate we left you, to a particular purpose as of the last year. But I must observe to you that this article is of a nature not to admit such postponement. The situations it is intended to relieve are too cruel to be suffered. That estimate was under the eyes of Congress when they approved the loan which was to fulfil its views. The order of appropriation is as much established by their will as the sums appropriated; and priority in order gives priority of right. Though that article stands among those which should have been furnished in 1788, I said nothing when I found you were postponing it to the interest of February, 1789, but I did not expect it would be again proposed to postpone it to that of June; and were I to be silent now, it might afterwards be postponed to that of February, and so on, without end. Besides my instructions from Congress, which do not leave me at liberty to permit this object to lose its turn,

besides the pressing cries of humanity, which urge its right, another reason is superadded. I have asked and hope to receive leave to go to America in the ensuing spring, and shall not return till the fall. Were I to leave Europe without setting this business into motion, it would be suspended till my return, which no consideration will permit. As I expect, then, to sail about the middle of April, I must draw on you in the course of the month of March for these 60,000 florins, and I hope the same motives will urge you to honor the draft which will oblige me to make it. Besides this, the article of the medal stands before that of either the February or June interest; and as my departure would render it necessary that these also should be finished, and their execution requires time, I have been obliged to enter into contracts with the several workmen, who are already well advanced in their work, and will finish it by the middle of April. They will soon become entitled to partial payments, so that I must immediately begin these drafts on you, and make the whole of them between this and the middle of April. With respect to the appropriation for the foreign officers, I have no orders; I presume they will be sent to you. Should your two houses concur in sentiment on the subject of this letter, I shall hope to receive your joint answer, as usual. Should they differ in opinion, I must ask your answers separately.

I have the honor to be, &c.,

TH: JEFFERSON.

MEMORIAL.

M. Lestevenon de Berkenrode (the Dutch Ambassador at the Court of Versailles) delivered, some time ago, a memorial to the Court of France, for the purpose of reminding the King of the four and a half millions which the Court, under the administration of the Count de Vergennes, engaged to pay in virtue of the treaty of peace, signed at Fontainebleau, between the Court of Vienna and the Plenipotentiary and the States General, in consideration of the sum of eight millions of German florins, valued at ten millions of Dutch florins, five and a half of which at the charge of the States General, and four and a half France undertook to furnish to procure peace for the Republic.

He was answered by the Count de Montmorin, that this memorial would be laid before the King. The Council having considered it,

sent a note thereon to the States General by M. Caillard, Chargé d'Affaires from the Court at the Hague, wherein they ascend as far as the last war between France and England, which gave cause to the alliance between His Majesty and the Republic. They mention therein the two ships of the line, that was offered to the King, and also the war between his Majesty the Emperor, and the Republic, France, by its good offices at the Court of Vienna, stifled in its birth, by consolidating a peace between the two States. It is said therein that it is true that the King took upon himself the payment of the four and a half millions of florins in order to procure it, but that T. H. M., not having given the two sail of the line, which they offered, and not having regarded the demand of the King's Ambassador, in June last, to stipulate at the end of the treaty of alliance subsisting with France, a clause to counterbalance the advantages granted to England in the new alliance with the Republic in contravention to that with France; that T. H. M., in their political changes having proscribed such members of the States, as had not contributed to form this alliance, and having by this means shaken themselves the basis of this pecuniary convention, it appeared to the King that he was disengaged from complying with it, and that he submitted this consideration to the T. H. M's. wisdom and justice.

We understand that on the 22d January, T. H. M. answered this note by a long memorial, of which the following is the substance:

They therein express their acknowledgments for the signal services which the Court of France has rendered them during the war between the Republic and Great Britain, (in which the State was involved by causes which the King cannot be ignorant of,) T. H. M. are penetrated with the generous manner in which the King has restored the reconquered possessions belonging to the Republic, in the two Indies, that they wish for nothing more than to contribute, if the case happens, all in their power towards the prosperity of the French arms, by virtue of the alliance subsisting between the two States.

That the King completed his kindness by preventing, through his powerful mediations, a war with which the Emperor menaced the Republic, and by procuring a peace by sacrificing four and a half millions, the four first instalments of which the King has already paid.

That T. H. M., full of confidence in the words of the King, had expected the same payment of the other periods with the like promptitude, and that they had attributed the delay of the payment of the two last periods only to the circumstances of the Finances, without renouncing them.

That it is true that one province of the Union made the proposition to the States General of offering to the King two ships of the line, but that the resolution was not taken.

That as to the alliances which T. H. M. have contracted, they conceive that an independent State is at liberty to form such political alliances as the safety of the country requires, without being obliged to be answerable to any one whatever for its motives.

That T. H. M. have remarked with as much pain as surprise, that the King's Minister has made use of the expression, “that T. H. M. 'had themselves shaken the basis of the convention, and that they had 'proscribed from the Government the persons who had chiefly 'contributed to form the alliance with France."

That T. H. M. disavow this imputation, which can only be the work of such as envy the prosperity and happiness of the Republic, and have endeavored to abuse the King in every thing that relates to the affairs of the Republic.

That T. H. M. flatter themselves that the King, being better informed of the state of things, will render justice to the uprightness of T. H. M.'s intentions, which they will not cease to convince his Majesty of.

The remainder of the memorial respects the troubles that have so cruelly harassed the Republic; troubles that, like an epidemical disorder, have overrun all Europe.

T. H. M. say that a cabal, accustomed to bend every thing to their yoke, tyrannized over a part of the nation, which had since so clearly expressed its sentiments, that it had carried its audacity so far as to insult and offer violence to the Princess of Orange, whose virtues are admired by Europe, and who ought to be an object of veneration to all who profess principles of honor and justice.

That his Majesty the King of Prussia, enraged at the insult offered his blood, in the person of his august sister, had demanded exemplary satisfaction, which had been refused him by the cabal, notwithstanding the representations of his Majesty; that the King of Prussia having armed his troops, entered in a very few days into the heart of

Holland, without availing himself of his advantages, and effected a revolution that will form an epoch in the annals of history; a revolution the more marvellous, as in reëstablishing the lawful Constitution, it tended to aggrandize no one person in the Republic.

There T. H. M. conclude with painting the cabal in the blackest colors. They charge it with having dared to employ the King's military officers in their culpable designs, (as T. H. M. have shewn,) as if the King had intended to have overturned the laws of the Republic.

T. H. M. repeat with pleasure the King's reiterated assurances that he would not intermeddle in an armed manner in the affairs of the Republic.

In the last place, T. H. M. declare that they cannot relinquish the King's sacred word for the payment, which constitutes the principal object of the memorial, and which, if present circumstances prevent the discharge, T. H. M. expect that a more favorable change will admit of it.

FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON TO JOHN JAY.

Paris, March 15, 1789

Sir,

Since closing my letters which accompany this, I have received an answer from London on the subject of the other volumes of Deane's letters and accounts suggested to be still in his possession. This information renders it certain that none such are in his possession, and probably that no others exist but the two which I have purchased. I am in hopes, therefore, we may conclude that the recovery of these two volumes finishes that business.

Mr. Nesbit having concluded to stay yet a while longer, my present despatches will go to London by a private conveyance which occurs to-morrow morning, from which place Mr. Trumbull will, as usual, find a safe occasion of forwarding them.

I have the honor to be, &c.,

TH: JEFFERSON.

P. S. March 18th.-Before the departure of my letters, the incident became known which has taken place in Sweden, and is minutely detailed in the gazette of Leyden of the 13th instant. It