TO THE COMMISSIONERS OF SPAIN. J. MSS. PHILADELPHIA July 9. 1792. GENTLEMEN,-Information has been received that the Government of West Florida has established an Agent within the territory of the United States belonging to the Creek Indians, and it is even pretended that that Agent has excited those Indians to oppose the marking a boundary between their district and that of the Citizens of the United States. The latter is so inconsistent with the dispositions to friendship and good neighborhood which Spain has always expressed towards us, with that concert of interest which would be so advantageous to the two nations and which we are disposed sincerely to promote, that we find no difficulty in supposing it erroneous. The sending an Agent within our limits we presume has been done without the authority or knowledge of your government. It has certainly been the usage, where one nation has wished to employ agents of any kind within the limits of another, to obtain the permission of that other, and even to regulate by convention and on principles of reciprocity, the functions to be exercised by such Agents. It is not to a nation whose dominions are circumstanced as those of Spain in our neighborhood that we need develop the inconveniences of permitting reciprocally the unlicensed mission of Agents into the territories of each other. I am persuaded nothing more is necessary than to bring the fact under the notice of your government in order to it's being rectified, which is the object of my addressing you on this occasion; with every assurance that you will make the proper communications on the subject to your court. TO THE GOVERNOR OF VERMONT. J. MSS. PHILADELPHIA, July 12th, 1792. SIR,-I had the honor of inclosing to you on the 9th instant copies of some papers I had received from the British minister here, and I have now that of forwarding some received from him this day. I must renew my entreaties to your Excellency that no innovation in the state of things may be attempted for the present. It is but lately that an opportunity has been afforded of pressing on the court of Gt. Britain our rights on the question of the posts, and it would be truly unfortunate if any premature measures on the part of your state should furnish a pretext for suspending the negotiations on this subject. I rely therefore that you will see the interest even of your own state in leaving to the general government the measures for recovering it's rights, and the rather as the events to which they might lead are interesting every state in the highest degree. TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. D. S. MSS. MONTICELLO July 30. 1792. DEAR SIR,-I received yesterday the letter you did me the honor to write on the 23d inst. covering one from the Governor of Vermont. As the question which party has a right to complain depends on the fact which party has hitherto exercised jurisdiction in the place where the seizure was made, and the Governor's letter does not ascertain that fact, I think it will be better to wait his answer to my two former letters in which he cannot fail to speak to that point. I inclose a letter just received from Colo. Humphreys; as also one for the Commissioners of the federal territory from myself, covering one from Mr. Blodgett.-The inhabitants of Culpepper are intent on opening a short and good road to the new city. They have had a survey of experiment made along the road I have so much enquired after, by State run church, Champs' race paths & Sangster's tavern to George town, and they have reason to believe they may make it shorter by 20. miles and better than any of the present roads. This once done, the counties from Culpepper Southwardly will take it up probably, and extend it successively towards Carolina. TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. J. MSS. MONTICELLO Sep 9, 1792. DEAR SIR,-I received on the 2d inst the letter of Aug 23, which you did me the honor to write me; but the immediate return of our post, contrary to his custom, prevented my answer by that occasion. The proceedings of Spain mentioned in your letter are really of a complexion to excite uneasiness, & a suspicion that their friendly overtures about the Missisipi have been merely to lull us while they should be strengthening their holds on that river. Mr. Carmichael's silence has been long my astonishment and however it might have justified something very different from a new appointment, yet the public interest certainly called for his junction with Mr. Short as it is impossible but that his knolege of the ground of negotiation of persons & characters, must be useful & even necessary to the success of the mission. That Spain & Gr Britain may understand one another on our frontiers is very possible; for however opposite their interests or disposition may be in the affairs of Europe, yet while these do not call them into opposite action, they may concur as against us. I consider their keeping an agent in the Indian country as a circumstance which requires serious interference on our part; and I submit to your decision whether it does not furnish a proper occasion to us to send an additional instruction to Messrs. Carmichael & Short to insist on a mutual & formal stipulation to forbear employing agents or pensioning any persons within each other's limits and if this be refused, to propose the contrary stipulation, to wit, that each party may freely keep agents within the Indian territories of the other, in which case we might soon sicken them of the license. I now take the liberty of proceeding to that part of your letter wherein you notice the internal dissentions which have taken place within our government, & their disagreeable effect on it's movements. That such dissentions have taken place is certain, & even among those who are nearest to you in the administration. To no one have they given deeper concern than myself; to no one equal mortification at being myself a part of them. Tho' I take to myself no more than my share of the general ob + servations of your letter, yet I am so desirous ever that you should know the whole truth, & believe no more than the truth, that I am glad to seize every occasion of developing to you whatever I do or think relative to the government; & shall therefore ask permission to be more lengthy now than the occasion particularly calls for, or could otherwise perhaps justify. When I embarked in the government, it was with a determination to intermeddle not at all with the legislature, & as little as possible with my co-departments. The first and only instance of variance from the former part of my resolution, I was duped into by the Secretary of the Treasury and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret. It has ever been my purpose to explain this to you, when, from being actors on the scene, we shall have become uninterested spectators only. The second part of my resolution has been religiously observed with the war department; & as to that of the Treasury, has never been farther swerved from than by the mere enunciation of my sentiments in conversation, and chiefly among those who, expressing the same sentiments, drew mine from me. If it has been supposed that I have ever intrigued among the members of the legislatures to defeat the plans of the Secretary of the Treasury, it is contrary to all truth. As I never had the desire to influence the members, so neither had I any other means than my friendships, which I valued too highly to risk by usurpations on their freedom of judgment, & the conscientious pursuit of their own sense of duty. That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the system of the Secretary of the treasury, I ackolege & avow: and this was not merely a speculative difference. His system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, & was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic, by creating an influence of his department over the members of the legislature. I saw this influence actually produced, & it's first fruits to be the establishment of the great outlines of his project by the votes of the very persons who, having swallowed his bait were laying themselves out to profit by his plans: & that had these persons withdrawn, as those interested in a question ever should, the vote of the dis interested majority was clearly the reverse of what they made it. These were no longer the votes then of the representatives of the people, but of deserters from the rights & interests of the people : & it was impossible to consider their decisions, which had nothing in view but to enrich themselves, as the measures of the fair majority, which ought always to be respected.-If what was actually doing begat uneasiness in those who wished for virtuous government, what was further proposed was not less threatening to the friends of the Constitution. For, in a Report on the subject of manufactures (still to be acted on) it was expressly assumed that the general government has a right to exercise all powers which may be for the general welfare, that is to say, all the legitimate powers of government: since no government has a legitimate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed. There was indeed a sham-limitation of the universality of this power to cases where money is to be employed. But about what is it that money cannot be employed? Thus the object of these plans taken together is to draw all the powers of government into the hands of the general legislature, to establish means for corrupting a sufficient corps in that legislature to divide the honest votes & preponderate, by their own, the scale which suited, & to have that corps under the command of the Secretary of the Treasury for the purpose of subverting step by step the principles of the constitution, which he has so often declared to be a thing of nothing which must be changed. Such views might have justified something more than mere expressions of dissent, beyond which, nevertheless, I never went.-Has abstinence from the department committed to me been equally observed by him? To say nothing of other interferences equally known, in the case of the two nations with which we have the most intimate connections, France & England, my system was to give some satisfactory distinctions to the former, of little cost to us, in return for the solid advantages yielded us by them; & to have met the English with some restrictions which might induce them to abate their severities against our commerce. I have always supposed this coincided with your sentiments. Yet the Secretary of the treasury, by his cabals with members of the legislature, & by hightoned declamation on other occasions, has forced down his own |