Here, there, and every where else, I am, with great and sincere attachment and respect, your friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXII.—­TO JAMES MADISON, June 1, 1797

TO JAMES MADISON.

Philadelphia, June 1, 1797.

Dear Sir, I wrote you on the 18th of May.  The address of the Senate was soon after that.  The first draught was responsive to the speech, and higher toned.  Mr. Henry arrived the day it was reported; the addressers had not yet their strength around them.  They listened therefore to his objections, recommitted the papers, added him and Tazewell to the committee, and it was reported with considerable alterations; but one great attack was made on it, which was to strike out the clause approving every thing heretofore done by the executive.  This clause was retained by a majority of four.  They received a new accession of members, held a caucus, took up all the points recommended in the speech, except the raising money, agreed the list of every committee, and on Monday passed the resolutions and appointed the committees, by an uniform vote of seventeen to eleven. (Mr. Henry was accidentally absent; Ross not then come.) Yesterday they took up the nomination of John Quincy Adams to Berlin, which had been objected to as extending our diplomatic establishment.  It was approved by eighteen to fourteen. (Mr. Tatnall accidentally absent.) From the proceedings we are able to see, that eighteen on the one side and ten on the other, with two wavering votes, will decide every question.  Schuyler is too ill to come this session, and Gunn has not yet come.  Pinckney (the General), John Marshall, and Dana are nominated Envoys Extraordinary to France.  Charles Lee consulted a member from Virginia, to know whether Marshall would be agreeable.  He named you, as more likely to give satisfaction.  The answer was,’ Nobody of Mr. Madison’s way of thinking will be appointed.’

The representatives have not yet got through their addresses.  An amendment of Mr. Nicholas’s, which you will have seen in the papers, was lost by a division of forty-six to fifty-two.  A clause by Mr. Dayton, expressing a wish that France might be put on an equal footing with other nations, was inserted by fifty-two against forty-seven.  This vote is most worthy of notice, because the moderation and justice of the proposition being unquestionable, it shows that there are forty-seven decided to go to all lengths to

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They have received a new orator from the district of Mr. Ames.  He is the son of the Secretary of the Senate.  They have an accession from South Carolina also, that State being exactly divided.  In the House of Representatives I learned the following facts, which give me real concern.  When the British treaty arrived at Charleston, a meeting, as you know, was called, and a committee of seventeen appointed, of whom General Pinckney was one.  He did not attend.  They waited for him, sent for him:  he treated the mission with great hauteur, and disapproved of their meddling.  In the course of subsequent altercations, he declared that his brother T. Pinckney, approved of every article of the treaty, under the existing circumstances, and since that time the politics of