this.  Every thing I hear from my own country, fills me with despair as to their recovery from their vassalage to Great Britain.  Fashion and folly are plunging them deeper and deeper into distress:  and the legislators of the country becoming debtors also, there seems no hope of applying the only possible remedy, that of an immediate judgment and execution.  We should try, whether the prodigal might not be restrained from taking on credit the gewgaw held out to him in one hand, by seeing the keys of a prison in the other.  Be pleased to present my respects to Mrs. Pleasants, and to be assured of the esteem with which I am,

Dear Sir, your friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XV.—­TO COLONEL MONROE, May 10,1786

TO COLONEL MONROE.

Paris, May 10,1786.

Dear Sir,

My last to you was of January the 27th.  Since that, I have received yours of January the 19th.  Information from other quarters gives me reason to suspect you have in negotiation a very important change in your situation.  You will carry into its execution all my wishes for your happiness.  I hope it will not detach you from a settlement in your own country.  I had even entertained hopes of your settling in my neighborhood:  but these were determined by your desiring a plan of a house for Richmond.  However reluctantly I relinquish this prospect, I shall not the less readily obey your commands, by sending you a plan.  Having been much engaged since my return from England, in answering the letters and despatching other business which had accumulated during my absence, and being still much engaged, perhaps I may not be able to send the plan by this conveyance.  If I do not send it now, I will surely by the next conveyance after this.  Your Encyclopedie, containing eighteen livraisons, went off last night for Havre, from whence it will go in a vessel bound to New York.  It will be under the care of M. la Croix, a passenger, who, if he does not find you in New York, will carry it to Virginia, and send it to Richmond.  Another copy, in a separate box, goes for Currie.  I pay here all charges to New York.  What may occur afterwards, I desire him to ask either of you or Currie, as either will pay for the other; or to draw on me for them.

My letters to Mr. Jay will have informed you of the objects which carried me to England:  and that the principal one, the treaty with Portugal, has been accomplished.  Though we were unable to procure any special advantages in that, yet we thought it of consequence to insure our trade against those particular checks and discouragements, which it has heretofore met with there.  The information as to the Barbary States, which we obtained from Abdrahaman the Tripoline ambassador, was also given to Mr. Jay.  If it be right, and the scale of proportion between those nations, which we had settled, be also right, eight