passed on the subject of our commerce, which are interesting.  The merchants here, say, that the effect of the countervailing tonnage on American vessels, will throw them completely out of employ as soon as there is peace.  The eastern members say nothing but among themselves.  But it is said that it is working like grave in their stomachs.  Our only comfort is, that they have brought it on themselves.  My respectful salutations to Mrs. Madison; and to yourself, friendship and adieu.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXXIII.—­TO GENERAL GATES, February 21, 1798

TO GENERAL GATES.

Philadelphia, February 21, 1798.

Dear General,

I received duly your welcome favor of the 15th, and had an opportunity of immediately delivering the one it enclosed to General Kosciusko.  I see him often, and with great pleasure mixed with commiseration.  He is as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known, and of that liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone.  We are here under great anxiety to hear from our Envoys.

*****

I agree with you that some of our merchants have been milking the cow:  yet the great mass of them have become deranged, they are daily falling down by bankruptcies, and on the whole, the condition of our commerce far less firm and really prosperous, than it would have been by the regular operations and steady advances which a state of peace would have occasioned.  Were a war to take place, and throw our agriculture into equal convulsions with our commerce, our business would be done at both ends.  But this I hope will not be.  The good news from the Natchez has cut off the fear of a breach in that quarter, where a crisis was brought on which has astonished every one.  How this mighty duel is to end between Great Britain and France, is a momentous question.  The sea which divides them makes it a game of chance; but it is narrow, and all the chances are not on one side.  Should they make peace, still our fate is problematical.

The countervailing acts of Great Britain, now laid before Congress, threaten, in the opinion of merchants, the entire loss of our navigation to England.  It makes a difference, from the present state of things, of five hundred guineas on a vessel of three hundred and fifty tons.  If, as the newspapers have told us, France has renewed her Arret of 1789, laying a duty of seven livres a hundred on all tobacco brought in foreign bottoms (even our own), and should extend it to rice and other commodities, we are done, as navigators, to that country also.  In fact, I apprehend that those two great nations will think it their interest not to permit us to be navigators.  France had thought otherwise, and had shown an equal desire to encourage our navigation as her own, while she hoped its weight would at least not be thrown into the scale of her enemies.  She sees now that that