July, 1797.  Murray is rewarded for his services by an appointment to Amsterdam; W. Smith of Charleston, to Lisbon.

August the 24th.  About the time of the British treaty, Hamilton and Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, dined together, and Hamilton drank freely.  Conversing on the treaty, Talleyrand says, ’Mais vraiment, Monsieur Hamilton, ce n’est pas Men honnete, after making the Senate ratify the treaty, to advise the President to reject it.’  ‘The treaty,’ says Hamilton, ’is an execrable one, and Jay was an old woman for making it; but the whole credit of saving us from it must be given to the President.’  After circumstances had led to a conclusion that the President also must ratify it, he said to the same Talleyrand, ’Though the treaty is a most execrable one, yet when once we have come to a determination on it, we must carry it through thick and thin, right or wrong.’  Talleyrand told this to Volney, who told it to me.

There is a letter now appearing in the papers, from Pickering to Monroe, dated July the 24th, 1797, which I am satisfied is written by Hamilton.  He was in Philadelphia at that date.

December the 26th, 1797.  Langdon tells me, that at the second election of President and Vice-President of the United States, when there was a considerable vote given to Clinton in opposition to Mr. Adams, he took occasion to remark it in conversation in the Senate chamber with Mr. Adams, who gritting his teeth, said, ’Damn ’em, damn ’em, damn ’em, you see that an elective government will not do.’  He also tells me that Mr. Adams, in a late conversation,said,’ Republicanism must be disgraced, ‘Sir.’  The Chevalier Yrujo called on him at Braintree, and conversing on French affairs, and Yrujo expressing his belief of their stability, in opposition to Mr. Adamses, the latter lifting up and shaking his finger at him, said, ’I’ll tell you what, the French republic will not last three months.’  This I had from Yrujo.

Harper, lately in a large company, was saying that the best thing the friends of the French could do, was to pray for the restoration of their monarch.  ‘Then,’ says a by-stander, ’the best thing we could do, I suppose, would be to pray for the establishment of a monarch in the United States.’  ‘Qur people,’ says Harper, ’are not yet ripe for it, but it is the best thing we can come to, and we shall come to it.’  Something like this was said in presence of Findlay.  He now denies it in the public papers, though it can be proved by several members.

December the 27th.  Tench Coxe tells me, that a little before Hamilton went out of office, or just as he was going out, taking with him his last conversation, and among other things, on the subject of their differences, ‘For my part,’ says he, ’I avow myself a monarchist; I have no objection to a trial being made of this thing of a republic, but,’ &c.