me that the two latter will probably prefer their present offices, and the two former divide each other's interest so that neither may be chosen. Remarkable deaths are Colonel Bannister of Virginia, and John Penn of North Carolina. General Washington writes me word that the great rains had prevented the continuance of their labors on the Potomac, so that they should not be able to bring the navigation this winter to the great falls as he had hoped. It will want little of it, and no doubt remains of their completing the whole. That of James River has some time since been so far completed as to let vessels pass down to Richmond. The crop of wheat in America the last year has been a fine one both for quantity and quality. This country is likely to want. They have offered a premium of forty sous the quintal on flour of the United States, and thirty sous on their wheat imported here. They have also opened their islands for our supplies. Much will come here. Views which bid defiance to my calculations had induced this court in an Arret of September 28th, to comprehend us with the English, in the exclusion of whale oil from their ports, in flat contradiction to their Arret of December last. This you know would be a sentence of banishment to the inhabitants of Nantucket, and there is no doubt they would have removed to Nova Scotia or England, in preference to any other part of the world. A temporary order, however, is now given for our admittance, and a more prominent one under preparation. The internal affairs of this country will, I hope, go on well. Neither the time, place, nor form of the States General are yet announced. But they will certainly meet in March or April. The clergy and nobility, as clergy and nobility eternally will, are opposed to the giving to the Tiers Etat so effectual a representation as may dismount them from their backs. The court wishes to give to the unprivileged order an equal number of votes with the privileged, and that they should sit in one house, but the court is timid. Some are of opinion that a majority of the nobles are also on the side of the people. I doubt it when so great a proportion of the Notables, indeed almost an unanimity, were against them, and five princes of the blood out of seven. If no

schism prevents the proceedings of the States General, I suppose they will obtain in their first session, 1. The periodical convocation of the States. 2. Their participation in the legislature; and 3. Their exclusive right to levy and appropriate money; and that at some future day, not very far distant, they will obtain a habeas corpus law and free press. They have great need of external peace to let them go on quietly with these internal improvements. This seems to be secured to them by the insanity of the King of England. Regents are generally peaceable, and I think this country will not let itself be diverted from its object by any other power. There are symptoms which render it suspicious that the two empires may make their peace with the Turks. It seems more eligible to Russia to do this by ceding the Crimea to them, that she may turn to the other side and save Poland, which the King of Prussia is endeavoring to wrest from her. Probably the loss of his principal ally will induce him to adopt a language and a conduct less Thrasonic. The death of the King of Spain contributes to throw into uncertainty the future face and fate of Europe. The English count on his successor. We have not yet received from London the decision on the question of regency. It is believed the Prince of Wales will be sole regent, and that there will be a total change in the ministry. In this case, probably 1405. 452. will be 846. 1453. 915. he will have found that the old proverb is not always true, "that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." There is something 816. 1209. 1225. 319. 8. 1548. 173. 1140. 457. 980. 913. 537. 814. 478. 887. 1363. 12. 1271. 1266. 904. 1266. 1017. 1548. 1128. 1581. 1438. 254.

The necessity of carrying back my family to America, and of carrying my affairs, which I left under expectation of returning to them very soon, have induced me to ask of Congress a leave of five or six months' absence during the next year. I hope to obtain it in time to sail soon after the vernal equinox, and shall return immediately after the autumnal. I shall be happy while there if I can render you any service, and shall hope to receive your commands before my departure, and in the meantime a continuance of your interesting communications, now become much

more so, till we see which way the new administration of your residence will turn itself. I have the honor to be, with great and sincere esteem, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble

servant.

TO DR. PRICE.

PARIS, January 8, 1789.

DEAR SIR,-I was favored with your letter of October 26th, and far from finding any of its subjects uninteresting as you apprehend, they were to me, as everything which comes from you, pleasing and instructive. I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. Your opinions and writings will have effect in bringing others to reason on this subject. Our new Constitution, of which you speak also, has succeeded beyond what I apprehended it would have done. I did not at first believe that eleven States out of thirteen would have consented to a plan consolidating them as much into one. A change in their dispositions, which had taken place since I left them, had rendered this consolidation necessary, that is to say, had called for a federal government which could walk upon its own legs, without leaning for support on the State legislatures. A sense of necessity, and a submission to it, is to me a new and consolatory proof that, whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights. You say you are not sufficiently informed about the nature and circumstances of the present struggle here. Having been on the spot from its first origin, and watched its movements as an uninterested spectator, with no other bias than a love of mankind, I will give you my ideas of it. Though celebrated writers of this and other countries had already sketched good principles on the subject of government, yet the American war seems first to have awakened the thinking part of this nation in

general from the sleep of despotism in which they were sunk. The officers too who had been to America, were mostly young men, less shackled by habit and prejudice, and more ready to assent to the dictates of common sense and common right. They came back impressed with these. The press, notwithstanding its shackles, began to disseminate them; conversation, too, assumed new freedom; politics became the theme of all societies, male and female, and a very extensive and zealous party was formed, which may be called the Patriotic party, who, sensible of the abusive government under which they lived, longed for occasions of reforming it. This party comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom, sufficiently at its leisure to think; the men of letters, the easy bourgeois, the young nobility, partly from rereflection, partly from mode; for those sentiments became a matter of mode, and as such united most of the young women to the party. Happily for the nation, it happened that, at the same moment, the dissipations of the court had exhausted the money and credit of the State, and M. de Calonnes found himself obliged to appeal to the nation, and to develop to it the ruin of their finances. He had no idea of supplying the deficit by economies, he saw no means but new taxes. To tempt the nation to consent to these some douceurs were necessary. The Notables were called in 1787. The leading vices of the constitution and administration were ably sketched out, good remedies proposed, and under the splendor of the propositions, a demand for more money was couched. The Notables concurred with the minister in the necessity of reformation, adroitly avoided the demand of money, got him displaced, and one of their leading men placed in his room. The archbishop of Thoulouse, by the aid of the hopes formed of him, was able to borrow some money, and he reformed considerably the expenses of the court. Notwithstanding the prejudices since formed against him, he appeared to me to pursue the reformation of the laws and constitution as steadily as a man could do who had to drag the court after him, and even to conceal from them the consequences of the measures he was leading them into. In his time the criminal laws were

reformed, provincial assemblies and States established in most of the provinces, the States General promised, and a solemn acknowledgment made by the King that he could not impose a new tax without the consent of the nation. It is true he was continually goaded forward by the public clamors, excited by the writings and workings of the Patriots, who were able to keep up the public fermentation at the exact point which borders on resistance, without entering on it. They had taken into their alliance the Parliaments also, who were led, by very singular circumstances, to espouse, for the first time, the rights of the nation. They had from old causes had personal hostility against M. de Calonnes. They refused to register his laws or his taxes, and went so far as to acknowledge they had no power to do it. They persisted in this with his successor, who therefore exiled them. Seeing that the nation did not interest themselves much for their recall, they began to fear that the new judicatures proposed in their place would be established and that their own suppression would be perpetual. In short, they found their own strength insufficient to oppose that of the King. They therefore insisted that the States General should be called. Here they became united with and supported by the Patriots, and their joint influence was sufficient to produce the promise of that assembly. I always suspected that the archbishops had no objections to this force under which they laid him. But the Patriots and Parliament insisted it was their efforts which extorted the promise against his will. The re-establishment of the Parliament was the effect of the same coalition between the Patriots and Parliament; but, once re-established, the latter began to see danger in that very power, the States General, which they had called for in a moment of despair, but which they now foresaw might very possibly abridge their powers. They began to prepare grounds for questioning their legality, as a rod over the head of the States, and as a refuge if they should really extend their reformations to them. Mr. Neckar came in at this period and very dexterously disembarrassed the administration of these disputes by calling the notables to advise the form of calling and constituting the States. The court