transfer money from hence to Richmond. Government bills on their custom house at Bermuda can from time to time be had. I think it will be best for mr. Barnes always to keep them bespoke, and to remit in that way your instalments as fast as they are either due or within the discountable period. The Ist is due the middle of March, & so from 2. months to 2. months in 5. equal instalments. I am looking out to see whether such a difference of price here may be had as will warrant our bringing our tobo from N York here, rather than take 8. D. there. We have been very unfortunate in this whole business. First in our own miscalculation of the effect of the nonintercourse law; & when we had corrected our opinions, that our instructions were from good, but mistaken views, not executed. My constant love to my dear Martha, kisses to her young ones, and affectionate esteem to yourself.

TO JAMES MONROE.

J. MSS. PHILADA. Feb. 6. 1800.

Nobody here has received mr. Madison's report as

it passed the house. The members of the different states are waiting to receive & forward a single copy to their states to be reprinted there. This would require half a dozen copies But if you will send me one, we can have it reprinted here & sent out. Pray do it by the first post. If it was not printed there as amended in a separate pamphlet then send me those sheets of the journal in which it is contained. I expect Dupont the father at Philada every hour. Adieu affectionately.

J. MSS.

TO SAMUEL ADAMS. PHILADELPHIA, February 26, [1800.] DEAR SIR, Mr. Erving delivered me your favor of Jany. 31, and I thank you for making me acquainted with him. You will always do me a favor in giving me an opportunity of knowing gentlemen as estimable in their principles & talents as I find mr. Erving to be. I have not yet seen mr. Winthrop. A letter from you, my respectable friend, after three & twenty years of separation, has give me a pleasure I cannot express. It recalls to my mind the anxious days we then passed in struggling for the cause of mankind. Your principles have been tested in the crucible of time, & have come out pure. You have proved that it was monarchy, & not merely British monarchy, you opposed. A government by representatives, elected by the people at short periods, was our object; and our maxim at that day was, 'where annual election ends, tyranny begins;' nor have our departures from it been sanctioned by the happiness of their effects. A debt of an hundred millions growing by usurious interest, and an artificial paper phalanx overruling the agricultural mass of our country, with other &c. &c. &c., have a portentous aspect. I fear our friends on the other side of the water, laboring in the same cause, have yet a great deal of crime & misery to wade through. My confidence has been placed in the head, not in the heart of Buonaparte. I hoped he would calculate truly the difference between the fame of a Washington & a Cromwell. Whatever his views may be, he has at

least transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm. Some will use this as a lesson against the practicability of republican government. I read it as a lesson against the danger of standing armies. Adieu, my ever respected & venerable friend. May that kind & overruling providence which has so long spared you to our wishes, still foster your remaining years with whatever may make them comfortable to yourself & soothing to your friends. Accept the cordial salutations of your affectionate friend.

TO GEORGE WYTHE.

J. MSS.

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 28. 1800.

MY DEAR SIR,—I know how precious your time is & how exclusively you devote it to the duties of your office. Yet I venture to ask a few hours or minutes of it on motives of public service, as well as private friendship. I will explain the occasion of the application. You recollect enough of the old Congress to remember that their mode of managing the business of the House was not only unparliamentary, but that the forms were so awkward & inconvenient that it was impossible sometimes to get at the true sense of the majority. The House of Repr. of the U. S. are now pretty much in the same situation. In the Senate it is in our power to get into a better way. Our ground is this. The Senate have established a few rules for their government, & have subjected the decisions on these & on all other points of order with

out debate, & without appeal, to the judgment of their President. He, for his own use, as well as theirs must prefer recurring to some system of rules, ready formed, & there can be no question that the Parliamentary rules are the best known to us for managing the debates, & obtaining the sense of a deliberative body. I have therefore made them my rule of decision, rejecting those of the old Congress altogether; & it gives entire satisfaction to the Senate; in so much that we shall not only have a good system there, but probably, by the example of it's effects, produce a conformity in the other branch. But in the course of this business I find perplexities, having for twenty years been out of deliberative bodies & become rusty as to many points of proceeding. And so little has the Parliamentary branch of the law been attended to, that I not only find no person here, but not even a book to aid me. I had, at an early period of life, read a good deal on the subject, & commonplaced what I read. This commonplace has been my pillow, but there are many questions of practice on which that is silent. Some of them are so minute indeed & belong so much to every day's practice that they have never been thought worthy of being written down. Yet from desuetude they have slipped my memory. You will see by the inclosed paper what they are. I know with what pain you write. Therefore I have left a margin in which you can write a simple negative or affirmative opposite every position, or perhaps with as little trouble correct the text by striking out or interlining. This is what I have earnestly to solicit

:

from you & I would not have given you the trouble if I had had any other resource. But you are in fact the only spark of parliamentary science now remaining to us. I am the more anxious, because I have been forming a manual of Parliamentary law, which I mean to deposit with the Senate as the standard by which I judge & am willing to be judged. Though I should be opposed to it's being printed, yet it may be done perhaps without my consent; & in that case I should be sorry indeed should it go out with errors that a Tyro should not have committed. And yet it is precisely those to which I am most exposed. I am less afraid as to important matters, because for them I have printed authorities. But it is those small matters of daily practice, which 20. years ago were familiar to me, but have in that time escaped my memory. I hope under these circumstances you will pardon the trouble I propose to you in the inclosed paper. I am not pressed in time, so that your leisure will be sufficient for me. Accept the salutations of grateful & sincere friendship & attachment & many prayers for your health & happiness from Dear Sir yours affectionately.1

1 In pursuance of this subject Jefferson wrote Wythe :

PHILADELPHIA, Apr. 7. 1800.

I received in due time your favor of Feb. 22. & shall with pleasure assist mr. Marshall in the negotiation with mr. Lowndes, whenever desired either by Mr. Marshall or our executive.

I wrote you a troublesome letter sometime ago, & now propose some additimenta to it. It is with vast reluctance I do it, & would not do it, if books could furnish the information I want. But there are minutiæ of practice, which are hardly to be met with in the books, & therefore can only be learned from practical men ; & you know how destitute we are of such in Parliamentary reading at present. That science is so lost, & yet so important, that I am