I received in due time your favor of August 24, the subject of which has since been under the deliberation of both houses. The act, which has been the result of their attention to the petitions of New 153 Port Providence and other towns, will appear to you, probably before this letter.1 Whether it will in all respects be conformable to your wishes, I am not able to say: but it seemed to be the greatest lenght that some of the best informed members, thought it safe to go. We are all very sanguine in our hopes, that you will send us members of both houses, before the 15 of Jany:, indeed on the first monday in December. All unkind questions will then be done away. But if unhappily Rhode Island should not call a convention; or calling one not adopt the constitution, something much more serious than has ever yet been done or talked of, will most probably be undertaken. We have very often been irritated with rumors of correspondences between the Antis in your state and those in Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, N Carolina &. and even with insinuations of intrigues with British emmisaries These are very serious reports. such intercourses are extreamly criminal in the citizens of the Union, and hostile at least in those who are not— If the citizens of Rhode Island place themselves in the light of correspondents with criminal citizens of the Union, or in that of ennemies to the United States, their good sense will suggest to them, that the consequences will be very speedy and very bitter. I rely upon it therefore, that unless your state is devoted and abandoned to the judicial dispensations of heaven, that your people will open their eyes before it is too late. This is the very serious advice of one who has ever been and still is the hearty friend, but who must cease to be so when they become the enemies of the united states. There can be no medium. Enemies they must be, or fellow citizens, and that in a very short time. I am sir & &

I have received the letter you did me the honor to write me on the 15 of May. and take this opportunity to return you my thanks for your polite congratulations. It is now five months within a few days since I entered on the execution of my office: and although I had many apprehensions from the novelty of it, and from my own long habits 154 formed to different scenes of life, in the course of a ten years residence abroad in Paris, London and the Hague; yet I have not found much injury to my health or depresion of spirits. The greatest pleasure I enjoy is in the reflection that I am now employed in doing everything in my power to form a system of policy and Finance that may enable us to pay those debts both at home and abroad which I had so great a hand in contractting. You will always oblige me sir by transmitting me any information concerning the public affairs of France in whose happiness and prosperity I am not a little interested.

In what will be the fermentations in France and the rest of Europe end? Will the spirit and the system of constitutional liberty prevail or will confusion preceed despotism?

If you can send me a cask of claret such as you sent me at the Hotel De Valois, Rue de Richelieu, and another of Vin De Grave to be delivered to me at my house at New York, at your Risque and can contrive to receive your pay at the time and place of delivery, I should be much obliged to you.1

I am sir Yours & &