y necessary. They are
disarming executive patronage and preponderance, by putting down one
half the offices of the United States, which are no longer necessary.
These economies have enabled them to suppress all the internal taxes,
and still to make such provision for the payment of their public debt
as to discharge that in eighteen years. They have lopped off a parasite
limb, planted by their predecessors on their judiciary body for party
purposes; they are opening the doors of hospitality to the fugitives
from the oppressions of other countries; and we have suppressed all
those public forms and ceremonies which tended to familiarize the public
eye to the harbingers of another form of government. The people are
nearly all united; their quondam leaders, infuriated with the sense
of their impotence, will soon be seen or heard only in the newspapers,
which serve as chimneys to carry off noxious vapors and smoke, and all
is now tranquil, firm, and well, as it should be. I add no signature
because unnecessary for you. God bless you, and preserve you still for a
season of usefulness to your country.

LETTER CCXCVI.--TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON, April 18, 1802

TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.

Washington, April 18, 1802.

Dear Sir,

A favorable and confidential opportunity offering by M. Dupont de
Nemours, who is re-visiting his native country, gives me an opportunity
of sending you a cipher to be used between us, which will give you some
trouble to understand, but once understood, is the easiest to use, the
most indecipherable, and varied by a new key with the greatest facility,
of any I have ever known. I am in hopes the explanation enclosed will be
sufficient.

*****

But writing by Mr. Dupont, I need use no cipher. I require from him to
put this into your own and no other hand, let the delay occasioned by
that be what it will.

The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France, works most
sorely on the United States. On this subject the Secretary of State has
written to you fully, yet I cannot forbear recurring to it personally,
so deep is the impression it makes on my mind. It completely reverses
all the political relations of the United States, and will form a new
epoch in our political course. Of all nations of any consideration,
France is the one, which, hitherto, has offered the fewest points on
which we could have any conflict of right, and the most points of a
communion of interests. From these ca