United
States, who were heard, in all companies. It corrected the idea that we
were unwilling to pay our debts. I fear that our present failure towards
them will give new birth to new imputations, and a relapse of credit.
Under this fear I have written to Mr. Adams, to know whether he can have
this money supplied from the funds in Holland; though I have little hope
from that quarter, because he had before informed me, that those funds
would be exhausted by the spring of the present year, and I doubt, too,
whether he would venture to order these payments, without authority from
you. I have thought it my duty to state these matters to you.

I have had the honor of enclosing to Mr. Jay, Commodore Jones's receipts
for one hundred and eighty-one thousand and thirty-nine livres, one sol
and ten deniers, prize-money, which (after deducting his own proportion)
he is to remit to you, for the officers and soldiers who were under his
command. I take the liberty of suggesting, whether the expense and risk
of double remittances might not be saved, by ordering it into the hands
of Mr. Grand immediately, for the purposes of the treasury in Europe,
while you could make provision at home for the officers and soldiers,
whose demands will come in so slowly, as to leave you the use of a great
proportion of this money for a considerable time, and some of it for
ever. We could then, immediately, quiet the French officers.

I have the honor to be, with the most perfect respect and esteem,
Gentlemen,

your most obedient

and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLV.--TO MESSRS. BUCHANAN AND HAY, January 26, 1786

TO MESSRS. BUCHANAN AND HAY.

Paris, January 26, 1786.

Gentlemen,

I had the honor of writing to you on the receipt of your orders to
procure draughts for the public buildings, and again on the 13th of
August. In the execution of these orders, two methods of proceeding
presented themselves to my mind. The one was, to leave to some architect
to draw an external according to his fancy, in which way, experience
shows, that about once in a thousand times a pleasing form is hit upon;
the other was, to take some model already devised, and approved by the
general suffrage of the world. I had no hesitation in deciding that the
latter was best, nor after the decision, was there any doubt what model
to take, There is at Nismes, in the south of France, a building, called
the _Maison Quarree_, erected in the time of