iculous to add, that it was my own. I think a modern in
an antique dress as just an object of ridicule as a Hercules or Marius
with a periwig and a chapeau bras.

I remember having written to you, while Congress sat at Annapolis, on
the water communication between ours and the western country, and to
have mentioned particularly the information I had received of the plain
face of the country between the sources of Big Beaver and Cayohoga,
which made me hope that a canal of no great expense might unite the
navigation of Lake Erie and the Ohio. You must since have had occasion
of getting better information on this subject, and if you have, you
would oblige me by a communication of it. I consider this canal, if
practicable, as a very important work.

I remain in hopes of great and good effects from the decision of the
Assembly over which you are presiding. To make our States one as to all
foreign concerns, preserve them several as to all merely domestic, to
give to the federal head some peaceable mode of enforcing its just
authority, to organize that head into legislative, executive, and
judiciary apartments, are great desiderata in our federal constitution.
Yet with all its defects, and with all those of our particular
governments, the inconveniences resulting from them, are so light in
comparison with those existing in every other government on earth, that
our citizens may certainly be considered as in the happiest political
situation which exists.

The Assemblee des Notables has been productive of much good in this
country. The reformation of some of the most oppressive laws has taken
place, and is taking place. The allotment of the State into subordinate
governments, the administration of which is committed to persons chosen
by the people, will work in time a very beneficial change in their
constitution. The expense of the trappings of monarchy, too, is
lightening. Many of the useless officers, high and low, of the King,
Queen, and Princes, are struck off. Notwithstanding all this, the
discovery of the abominable abuses of public money by the late
Comptroller General, some new expenses of the court, not of a piece
with the projects of reformation, and the imposition of new taxes,
have, in the course of a few weeks, raised a spirit of discontent in
this nation, so great and so general, as to threaten serious
consequences. The parliaments in general, and particularly that of
Paris, put themselves at the head of this ef