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LETTERS AND PAPERS

ILLUSTRATING THE FORMATION OF THE FEDERAL

CONSTITUTION.

VOL. II.

24

APPENDIX.

Temple to Lord Carmarthen, New York, 7 July, 1786. Ex. It is with pleasure that I can inform your lordship what silver and gold is to be had in this country goes in his Majesty's packet boats to England. The last packet, the Tankerville, carried upward of three hundred thousand Spanish milled dollars, and the Carteret packet, to sail to-morrów, will, I believe, carry home near as much more. The French packets carry none.

Monroe to Jefferson, New York, 16 July, 1786.

DEAR SIR: I have not heard from you for several months past, the last being dated some time previous to your removal to London. Not knowing you would have stayed so long, I have wrote you by every packet to France. We have now present twelve states, and hope this will be the case for some time. Soon after my arrival here in the winter I suggested to you my apprehensions that the condition of the act of cession from Virginia, which respected the extent of the states to be erected over the ceded territory, was an unpolitic one, and that it might be proper to recommend it to the state to alter it. A proposition to this effect was submitted to congress, which ultimately passed, advising that it be vested in congress to divide the said territory into not less than three nor more than five states; but the investigation of the subject has opened the eyes of a part of the union, so as to enable them to view the subject in a different light from what they have heretofore done. They have, therefore, manifested a desire

to rescind everything they have heretofore done in it, particularly to increase the number of inhabitants which should entitle such states to admission into the confederacy, and to make it depend on their having one thirteenth part of the free inhabitants of the United States.

This, with some other restrictions they wish to impose on them, evinces plainly the policy of these men to be to keep them out of the confederacy altogether.

I considered this as a dangerous and very mischievous kind of policy, and calculated to throw them into the waters of Britain. I know not with certainty whether they will be able to carry this point, but if it is pressed, and a probability of being carried, we shall object to the power of the United States to determine the numbers without the consent of the state; it having been left open in the act does by no means put it in the power of the United States to make such restrictions on this head as to defeat the condition altogether. If they do not, therefore, agree with the delegation to have it upon the ground of 23 April, 1784, we shall propose a subsequent convention between the parties as to that point, and deny the right of the United States to act otherwise in it.

In my last I advised you of an intrigue on foot under the management of Jay to occlude the Mississippi, supported by the delegation of Massachusetts. Since my last no further measures have been openly taken in the business, yet it is not relinquished. As yet there hath not been a fair trial of the sense of congress on the subject. I have a conviction in my own mind that Jay has managed this negotiation dishonestly; on the other hand, I am persuaded that the minister here has no power on the subject, yet I am firmly persuaded that he has conducted himself in such a manner in this business as to give him and his court hopes which neither the sense of congress nor his instructions authorize.

Having been on all the foreign committees latterly, indeed since you left us, I have had an opportunity of knowing him well, and this communication is founded in circumstances this opportunity hath given me. The Massachusetts delegates, except the president, whose talents and merits have been greatly overrated (though preferable greatly in the latter instance to his brethren), are without exception the most illiberal I have ever seen from that state. Two of these men, whose names are Dana and King, are elected for the next year, which is my motive for making known to you this circumstance. It may possibly

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