te against the payment, by narrowing
the means by which those debts might have been paid when they were
contracted, and which ought to be considered as constituent parts of the
contract.'

LETTER CC.--TO JAMES MADISON, May 11,1789

TO JAMES MADISON.

Paris, May 11,1789.

Dear Sir,

My last to you was of the 15th of March. I am now in hourly expectation
of receiving my leave of absence. The delay of it a little longer will
endanger the throwing my return into the winter, the very idea of which
is horror itself to me. I am in hopes this is the last letter I shall
have the pleasure of writing you before my departure.

The madness of the King of England has gone off, but left him in a state
of imbecility and melancholy. They talk of carrying him to Hanover. If
they do, it will be a proof he does not mend, and that they take that
measure, to authorize them to establish a regency. But if he grows
better, they will perhaps keep him at home, to avoid the question, Who
shall be regent? As that country cannot be relied on in the present
state of its executive, the King of Prussia has become more moderate; he
throws cold water on the fermentation he had excited in Poland. The King
of Sweden will act as nobody, not even himself, can foresee; because he
acts from the caprice of the moment, and because the discontents of
his army and nobles may throw him under internal difficulties, while
struggling with external ones. Denmark will probably only furnish
its stipulated aid to Russia. France is fully occupied with internal
arrangements. So that, on the whole, the prospect of this summer is,
that the war will continue between the powers actually engaged in the
close of the last campaign, and extend to no others; certainly it will
not extend, this year, to the southern States of Europe. The revolution
of France has gone on with the most unexampled success, hitherto. There
have been some mobs, occasioned by the want of bread, in different parts
of the kingdom, in which there may have been some lives lost; perhaps a
dozen or twenty. These had no professed connection, generally, with the
constitutional revolution. A more serious riot happened lately in Paris,
in which about one hundred of the mob were killed. This execution has
been universally approved, as they seemed to have no view but mischief
and plunder. But the meeting of the States General presents serious
difficulties, which it had been hoped the progress of reason w