I remember having written to you, while Congress sat at Annapolis, on the water communication between ours and the western country, and to have mentioned, particularly, the information I had received of the plain face of the country between the sources of Big-beaver and Cayohoga, which made me hope that a canal, of no great expense, might unite the navigation of Lake Erie and the Ohio.  You must since have had occasion of getting better information on this subject, and if you have, you would oblige me by a communication of it.  I consider this canal, if practicable, as a very important work.

I remain in hopes of great and good effects from the decision of the Assembly over which you are presiding.  To make our States one as to all foreign concerns, preserve them several as to all merely domestic, to give to the federal head some peaceable mode of enforcing its just authority, to organize that head into legislative, executive, and judiciary departments, are great desiderata in our federal constitution.  Yet with all its defects, and with all those of our particular governments, the inconveniences resulting from them are so light, in comparison with those existing in every other government on earth, that our citizens may certainly be considered as in the happiest political situation which exists.

The Assemblee des Notables has been productive of much good in this country.  The reformation of some of the most oppressive laws has taken place, and is taking place.  The allotment of the State into subordinate governments, the administration of which is committed to persons chosen by the people, will work in time a very beneficial change in their constitution.  The expense of the trappings of monarchy, too, is lightening.  Many of the useless officers, high and low, of the King, Queen, and Princes, are struck off.  Notwithstanding all this, the discovery of the abominable abuses of public money by the late Comptroller General, some new expenses of the court, not of a piece with the projects of reformation, and the imposition of new taxes, have, in the course of a few weeks, raised a spirit of discontent in this nation, so great and so general, as to threaten serious consequences.  The parliaments in general, and particularly that of Paris, put themselves at the head of this effervescence, and direct its object to the calling the States General, who have not been assembled since 1614.  The object is to fix a constitution, and to limit expenses.  The King has been obliged to hold a bed of justice, to enforce the registering the new taxes:  the parliament, on their side, propose to issue a prohibition against their execution.  Very possibly this may bring on their exile.  The mild and patriotic character of the new ministry is the principal dependence against this extremity.

The turn which the affairs of Europe will take, is not yet decided.