public details.  I enclose with the present, some extracts of a letter from Mr. Paine, which he desired me to communicate:  your knowledge of the writer will justify my giving you the trouble of these communications, which their interesting nature and his respectability will jointly recommend to notice.  I am in great pain for the Marquis de la Fayette.  His principles, you know, are clearly with the people; but having been elected for the Noblesse of Auvergne, they have laid him under express instructions to vote for the decision by orders and not persons.  This would ruin him with the Tiers-Etat, and it is not possible he could continue long to give satisfaction to the Noblesse.  I have not hesitated to press on him to burn his instructions, and follow his conscience as the only sure clue, which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies.  If he cannot effect a conciliatory plan, he will surely take his stand manfully at once with the Tiers-Etat.  He will in that case be what he pleases with them, and I am in hopes that base is now too solid to render it dangerous to be mounted on it.  In hopes of being able, in the course of the summer, to pay my respects to you personally in New York, I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect respect and attachment, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

     [Extract of the letter from Thomas Paine, referred to in the
     preceding, to General Washington.]

’London, March the 12th, 1789.  I do not think it is worth while for Congress to appoint any minister at this court.  The greater distance Congress observes on this point, the better.  It will be all money thrown away to go to any expense about it, at least during the present reign.  I know the nation well, and the line of acquaintance I am in enables me to judge better on this matter than any other American can judge, especially at a distance.  I believe I am not so much in the good graces of the Marquis of Lansdowne as I used to be.  I do not answer his purpose.  He was always talking of a sort of re-connection of England and America, and my coldness and reserve on this subject checked communication.  I believe he would be a good minister for England, with respect to a better agreement with France.’

(Same letter continued) ’April 10.  The acts for regulating the trade with America are to be continued as last year.  A paper from the Privy Council respecting the American fly is before parliament.  I had some conversation with Sir Joseph Banks upon this subject, as he was the person whom the Privy Council referred to.  I told him that the Hessian fly attacked only the green plant, and did not exist in the dry grain.  He said, that with respect to the Hessian fly they had no apprehension, but it was the weevil they alluded to.  I told him the weevil had always, more or less, been in the wheat countries of America, and that if the prohibition