aw, or the Nation
must have lost its Commerce; and the consequence to America would have
been, that such a Law would, in a great measure if not entirely, have
released her from the injuries of Jay's Treaty.

Of all these matters I informed Mr. Jefferson. This was before he was
President, and the Letter he wrote me after he was President was in
answer to those I had written to him and the manuscript Copy of the plan
I had sent here. Here follows the Letter:

Washington, March 18, 1801. Dear Sir:

Your letters of Oct. 1st, 4th, 6th, 16th, came duly to hand, and the
papers which they covered were, according to your permission, published
in the Newspapers, and in a Pamphlet, and under your own name. These
papers contain precisely our principles, and I hope they will be
generally recognized here. _Determined as we are to avoid, if possible,
wasting the energies of our People in war and destruction, we shall
avoid implicating ourselves with the Powers of Europe, even in support
of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other Interests
different from ours that we must avoid being entangled in them. We
believe we can enforce those principles as to ourselves by Peaceable
means, now that we are likely to have our Public Councils detached from
foreign views. The return of our citizens from the phrenzy into which
they had been wrought, partly by ill conduct in France, partly by
artifices practiced upon them, is almost extinct, and will, I believe,
become quite so_, But these details, too minute and long for a Letter,
will be better developed by Mr. Dawson, the Bearer of this, a Member of
the late Congress, to whom I refer you for them. He goes in the Maryland
Sloop of War, which will wait a few days at Havre to receive his Letters
to be written on his arrival at Paris. You expressed a wish to get a
passage to this Country in a Public Vessel. Mr. Dawson is charged with
orders to the Captain of the Maryland to receive and accommodate you
back if you can be ready to depart at such a short warning. Rob't R.
Livingston is appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republic of
France, but will not leave this, till we receive the ratification of
the Convention by Mr. Dawson. I am in hopes you will find us returned
generally to sentiments worthy of former times. In these it will be
your glory to have steadily laboured and with as much effect as any man
living. That you may long live to continue your useful Labours and to