on of 1796. The
debate will probably have good effects, in several ways, on the public
mind, but the advocates for the reformation expect to lose the question.
They find themselves deceived in the expectation entertained in the
beginning of the session, that they had a majority. They now think the
majority is on the other side by two or three, and there are moreover
two or three of them absent. Blount's affair is to come on next. In the
mean time, the Senate have before them a bill for regulating proceedings
in impeachment. This will be made the occasion of offering a clause for
the introduction of juries into these trials. (Compare the paragraph
in the constitution which says, that all crimes, except in cases of
impeachment, shall be by jury, with the eighth amendment, which says,
that in all criminal prosecutions, the trial shall be by jury.) There is
no expectation of carrying this; because the division in the Senate is
of two to one, but it will draw forth the principles of the parties, and
concur in accumulating proofs on which side all the sound principles are
to be found.

Very acrimonious altercations are going on between the Spanish Minister
and the executive, and at the Natchez something worse than mere
altercation. If hostilities have not begun there, it has not been
for want of endeavors to bring them on, by our agents. Marshall,
of Kentucky, this day proposed in Senate some amendments to the
constitution. They were barely read just as we were adjourning, and not
a word of explanation given. As far as I caught them in my ear,
they went only to modifications of the elections of President and
Vice-President, by authorizing voters to add the office for which they
name each, and giving to the Senate the decision of a disputed election
of President, and to the Representatives that of Vice-President. But
I am apprehensive I caught the thing imperfectly, and probably
incorrectly. Perhaps this occasion may be taken of proposing again the
Virginia amendments, as also to condemn elections by the legislatures,
themselves to transfer the power of trying impeachments from the Senate
to some better constituted court, &c. &c.

Good tobacco here is thirteen dollars, flour eight dollars and fifty
cents, wheat one dollar and fifty cents, but dull, because only the
millers buy. The river, however, is nearly open, and the merchants will
now come to market and give a spur to the price. But the competition
will not be what it h