12, 1807

TO GEORGE HAY.

Washington, June 12, 1807.

Dear Sir,

Your letter of the 9th is this moment received. Reserving the necessary
right of the President of the United States to decide, independently of
all other authority, what papers, coming to him as President, the public
interests permit to be communicated, and to whom, I assure you of
my readiness, under that restriction, voluntarily to furnish, on all
occasions, whatever the purposes of justice may require. But the letter
of General Wilkinson, of October the 21st, requested for the defence
of Colonel Burr, with every other paper relating to the charges against
him, which were in my possession when the Attorney General went on to
Richmond in March, I then delivered to him; and I have always taken for
granted he left the whole with you. If he did, and the bundle retains
the order in which I had arranged it, you will readily find the letter
desired, under the date of its receipt, which was November the 25th: but
lest the Attorney General should not have left those papers with you,
I this day write to him to forward this one by post. An uncertainty
whether he is at Philadelphia, Wilmington, or New Castle, may produce
delay in his receiving my letter, of which it is proper you should be
apprized. But, as I do not recollect the whole contents of that letter,
I must beg leave to devolve on you the exercise of that discretion
which it would be my right and duty to exercise, by withholding the
communication of any parts of the letter, which are not directly
material for the purposes of justice.

With this application, which is specific, a prompt compliance is
practicable. But when the request goes to 'copies of the orders issued
in relation to Colonel Burr, to the officers at Orleans, Natchez, &c.
by the Secretaries of the War and Navy departments,' it seems to cover
a correspondence of many months, with such a variety of officers, civil
and military, all over the United States, as would amount to the laying
open the whole executive books. I have desired the Secretary of War to
examine his official communications; and on a view of these, we may be
able to judge what can and ought to be done towards a compliance with
the request. If the defendant alleges that there was any particular
order, which, as a cause, produced any particular act on his part, then
he must know what this order was, can specify it, and a prompt answer
can be given. If the object had been