Adieu. If I should go to heaven before you-I shall remember you. I must go to bed.

Yours affectionately,

JAMES MCHENRY.

CARROLL TO HAMILTON.

ANNAPOLIS, 22d October, 1792.

DEAR SIR:

I received on the 7th instant, your favor of the 23d past. I have delayed thus long answering it with a hope that I might discover whether the anti-federal party in the State had in view the person referred to in your letter. I suspect a communication of sentiments is maintained by the leaders of this party throughout the United States; however, I have not heard his name even whispered. His character I could not well see through during the time we were together. I noticed a disposition to perplex and puzzle, which left an unfavorable impression on my mind. He appeared to me not to want talents, but judgment and steadiness; and I suspect he possesses of ambition a quantum sufficit for any man.

I hope the friends of stability, in other words, the real friends of liberty and their country, will unite to counteract the schemes of men, who have uniformly manifested a hostile temper to the present government; the adoption of which has rescued these States from that debility and confusion and those horrors which unhappy France has experienced of late, and may still labor under. I beg my respects to Mrs. Hamilton, and remain with sentiments of respect and regard,

Dear Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,

CHARLES CARROLL, of Carrollton.

MORRIS TO HAMILTON.

PARIS, October 24th, 1792.

MY DEAR SIR:

I have received yours of the twenty-second of June, and am in the hourly hope to hear farther from you. I need not tell you that it will give me pleasure. Inclosed you will find the copy of a letter, which I wrote to Mr. Jefferson on the 7th of November, 1791. This, with some other communications of the same epoch, he never acknowledged. I know not why, but I think the paper inclosed in that letter will be agreeable to you, though not very amusing.

It would seem that your friend Scipio is not much attached to Paulus, at least if I may judge from some things which I see. However, there is a great chasm in my newspapers, which breaks the thread of my conjectures, as well as of my information; for I have little, I might almost say, none of the latter but from the gazettes; of course I know what passes about two months after every body else. Tell me, I pray you, how Scoevola stands affected between the parties just named. I think he never had a very high opinion of the first mentioned, but he was attached to Tarquin immeasurably, and that, with some local circumstances, may have formed a stronger chain than I should otherwise suppose.

You will have seen that the late Constitution of this country has overset; a natural accident to a thing, which was all sail and no ballast. I desire much, very much, to know the state of opinions with you on that subject. Some gentlemen who consi dered it as the acme of human wisdom, must, I suppose, find out causes which persons on the spot never dreamt of. But in seeking or inventing these causes, what will be their opinion of present powers; what the conduct they wish to pursue? These are to me important questions. Brutus will doubtless triumph, but I wish to feel the pulse of opinion with you, or rather to know beforehand how it is like to beat. There are pros and cons whose action I cannot estimate. The flight of Monsieur de

Lafayette, the murder of the Duke de la Rochefoucault and others, with many similar circumstances, have, I know, affected the ideas of some. But what will be the republican sense as to the new republic? Will it be taken for granted that Louis the Sixteenth was guilty of all possible crimes, and particularly of the enormous one of not suffering his throat to be cut, which was certainly a nefarious plot against the people, and a manifest violation of the bill of rights? Paulus, who is no enemy to kings, will not believe that they are all tigers; but I am not certain that, if he were here, he would not consider them as monkeys.

However, we are done with them in France, at least for the present. There are two parties here. The one consists of about half a dozen, and the other of fifteen or twenty, who are at daggers' drawing. Each claims the merit of having made the young republic. My public letters and the gazettes will bring you acquainted with things here, as fully as I can in any way communicate them. It is not worth while to detail the characters of those now on the stage, because they must soon give place to others. Adieu.

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.

MORRIS TO HAMILTON.

PARIS, December 24th, 1792.

MY DEAR SIR:

I wrote to you on the twenty-fourth of October, and have not since received any of your letters. In that I acknowledged yours of the 22d of June. You will have seen from the public prints the wonderful success of the French arms, arising from the following causes,-1. That the enemy, deceived by the emigrants, counted too lightly on the opposition he was to meet with. 2. That from like misinformation, instead of attacking on the northern frontier, backed by the resources of Flanders, and those which the ocean would supply, they came across the Ardennes, to that part of Champaigne nicknamed the lousy, from

its barrenness and misery. 3. That in this expedition, where the difficulty of the roads, transportation and communication was the greatest they expected, it so happened that the season, usually dry and fair (when those bad roads are at the best), was one continued rain for two months, so that at length they were nearly stuck fast, and had as much as they could do to drag back their cannon, &c., through the mud. Lastly. That France brought into the field, and has kept up until very lately, the immense number of six hundred thousand troops. This has been done at an average expense of about five millions sterling per month beyond their resources, and yet they have ordered a like army for the next campaign, and talk boldly of meeting Great Britain also upon her element. What say you to that, Monsieur le Financier? But I will tell you in your ear, that in spite of that blustering, they will do much to avoid a war with Great Britain, if the people will let them; but the truth is, that the populace of Paris influence in a great degree the public councils. I think they will have quite as many men as they can maintain; but what that may amount to is hard to determine.

The ministers here are most extraordinary people. They make nothing of difficulties, as you shall judge by a single trait of M. Pache, the Minister at War. He had sent Bournonville to occupy the Moselle river down to Coblentz, taking Trèves and other places in his way. Now this way lies through a very difficult mountainous country, in which the snow is very deep, therefore Bournonville, having got a little neck of land between the Saave and the Moselle, puts his troops into winter quarters, pleading their nakedness as an excuse. The minister has sent him a brace of commissioners, who have power to impress in the neighborhood whatever may be needful for the troops, and then (their wants supplied) summon him to obey his orders. I have given to Mr. Jefferson a pretty full account of the state of things, so that if you see that account, which I take it is of course, you may measure by the standard now given you all other affairs.

If I may venture to judge from appearances, there is now in the wind a storm not unlike that of the second of September. Whether it will burst or blow over, it is impossible to determine.

It has occurred to me, that I never yet assigned a reason why the completion of payment of six million livres, which, at Mr. Short's request, I had stipulated for with the government lately abolished, appeared to me desirable. In effect I left this, as I do many other things, to the sense of the gentle reader; but as readers are sometimes ungentle, it is not amiss to communicate that reason to a friend. I saw that the new government would be hungry, and would urge us for money in the double view of obtaining an acknowledgment of them, as well as of supplying their wants. It was, therefore, I thought, right to take a position where we might say, there is nothing due. This would leave open a question, which it would be very delicate to answer either way, as things appeared then, and as they are now that appearances have changed. You will have seen the manoeuvres to force me in that intrenchment; but at last, like your friend General Lee, I was quite at the worst for a retrograde manœuvre.

But I concluded that supplies of money to support the colony of St. Domingo would, in all events, have been considered as a good and effectual payment on our part, and had my offer of recommending such supplies been accepted, I would on that ground have proposed the measure, which, anticipating the next instalments, would have still kept open the main point as long as you should think proper. And thus my apparent retreat was in effect a mode of more permanent defence, and this is more, I believe, than poor Lee could say for himself.

I am truly yours, &c.,

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.

JAY TO HAMILTON,

NEW-YORK, December 29th, 1792.

DEAR SIR:

On my return this evening from Rye, I found your letter of

the 18th inst. at my house.