With respect to the distressed American who needs one hundred and forty livres to enable him to return to America, I have no authority to apply any public monies to that purpose, and the calls of that nature are so numerous, that I am obliged to refuse myself to them in my private capacity.  As to Captain Newell’s case, you are sensible, that being in the channel of the laws of the land, to ask a special order from government, would expose us, in reciprocity to like demands from them in America, to which our laws would never permit us to accede.  Speaking conscientiously, we must say it is wrong in any government to interrupt the regular course of justice.  A minister has no right to intermeddle in a private suit, but when the laws of the country have been palpably perverted to the prejudice of his countryman.

When you shall be so kind as to recommend to me a correspondent in your port during your absence, I will ask the favor of you also to give me some idea of the time you expect to return.

I have the honor, after wishing you pleasant and prosperous voyages, to assure you of the esteem and attachment, with which I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXVI.—­TO DR. BANCROFT, March 2, 1789

TO DR. BANCROFT.

Paris, March 2, 1789

Dear Sir,

I have just received a letter of January the 31st from Admiral Paul Jones, at Petersburg, which charging me with the execution of some commissions, and these requiring money, he tells me you will answer my drafts, to the amount of four or five thousand livres, on his account.  Be so good as to inform me whether you will pay such drafts.

A Monsieur Foulloy, who has been connected with Deane, lately offered me for sale two volumes of Deane’s letter books and account books, that he had taken instead of money, which Deane owed him.  I have purchased them on public account.  He tells me Deane has still six or eight volumes more, and being to return soon to London, he will try to get them also, in order to make us pay high for them.  You are sensible of the impropriety of letting such books get into hands which might make an unfriendly use of them.  You are sensible of the immorality of an ex-minister’s selling his secrets for money and, consequently, that there can be no immorality in tempting him with money to part with them; so that they may be restored to that government to whom they properly belong.  Your former acquaintance with Deane may, perhaps, put it in your power to render our country the service of recovering those books.  It would not do to propose it to him as for Congress.  What other way would best bring it about, you know best.  I suppose his distresses and his crapulous habits will not render him difficult on this head.  On the supposition that there are six or eight volumes, I think you might venture as far as fifty guineas,