ity we had not money to
buy on public account. He said, yes, and that it was the more provoking,
as two millions had been borrowed for that purpose, and drawn over here,
and yet were not here. That he had no doubt those would take notice of
the circumstance whose duty it was to do so. I suppose he must mean the
President.

May the 23rd. I had sent to the President, yesterday, draughts of a
letter from him to the Provisory Executive Council of France, and of one
from myself to Mr. Ternant, both on the occasion of his recall. I called
on him to-day. He said there was an expression in one of them, which he
had never before seen in any of our public communications, to wit, 'our
republic' The letter prepared for him to the Council, began thus: 'The
Citizen Ternant has delivered to me the letter wherein you inform me,
that yielding &c. you had determined to recall him from his mission, as
your Minister Plenipotentiary to our republic.' He had underscored
the words our republic. He said that certainly ours was a republican
government, but yet we had not used that style in this way; that if any
body wanted to change its form into a monarchy, he was sure it was only
a few individuals, and that no man in the United States would set his
face against it more than himself: but that this was not what he was
afraid of; his fears were from another quarter; that there was more
danger of anarchy being introduced. He adverted to a piece in Freneau's
paper of yesterday; he said he despised all their attacks on him
personally, but that there never had been an act of the government, not
meaning in the executive line only, but in any line, which that paper
had not abused. He had also marked the word republic thus X, where it
was applied to the French republic. (See the original paper.) He was
evidently sore and warm, and I took his intention to be, that I should
interpose in some way with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment
of translating clerk to my office. But I will not do it. His paper has
saved our constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has
been checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well
and universally known, that it has been that paper which has checked the
career of the monocrats; and the President, not sensible of the designs
of the party, has not, with his usual good sense and _sang froid_,
looked on the efforts and effects of this free press, and seen that,
though some bad things h