the important circumstances for insertion in the
Chronicle in order to set the minds of the candid part of the public to
rights? Mr. Madison has had a slight bilious attack. I am advising
him to get off by the middle of this month. We who have stronger
constitutions shall stay to the end of it. But during August and
September, we also must take refuge in climates rendered safer by our
habits and confidence. The post will be so arranged as that letters will
go hence to Monticello, and the answer return here in a week. I hope I
shall continue to hear from you there.

Accept assurances of my affectionate esteem and high respect.

Th: Jefferson.

P. S. The French convention was laid before the Senate December the
16th. I think the Berceau arrived afterwards. If so, she was dismantled
when it was known she was to be restored. When did she arrive? By whose
orders was she dismantled? T.J.

LETTER CCLXXXVII.--TO GOVERNOR MONROE, July 11, 1801

TO GOVERNOR MONROE.

Washington, July 11, 1801.

Dear Sir,

As to the mode of correspondence between the general and particular
executives, I do not think myself a good judge. Not because my position
gives me any prejudice on the occasion; for if it be possible to
be certainly conscious of any thing, I am conscious of feeling no
difference between writing to the highest and lowest being on earth; but
because I have ever thought that forms should yield to whatever should
facilitate business. Comparing the two governments together, it is
observable that in all those cases where the independent or reserved
rights of the States are in question, the two executives, if they are
to act together, must be exactly co-ordinate; they are, in these cases,
each the supreme head of an independent government. In other cases, to
wit, those transferred by the constitution to the General Government,
the general executive is certainly pre-ordinate; e.g. in a question
respecting the militia, and others easily to be recollected. Were there,
therefore, to be a stiff adherence to etiquette, I should say that in
the former cases the correspondence should be between the two heads, and
that in the latter, the Governor must be subject to receive orders from
the war department as any other subordinate officer would. And were it
observed that either party set up unjustifiable pretensions, perhaps
the other might be right in opposing them by a tenaciousness of his
own rigorous rights. But I think the