January the 12th.  General Samuel Smith says that Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry, wrote a joint letter from Trenton to the President, then at Braintree, dissuading him from the mission to France.  Stoddard refused to join it.  Stoddard says the instructions are such, that if the Directory have any disposition to reconciliation, a treaty will be made.  He observed to him also, that Ellsworth looks beyond this mission to the Presidential chair.  That with this view, he will endeavor to make a treaty, and a good one.  That Davie has the same vanity and views.  All this communicated by Stoddard to S. Smith.

January the 13th.  Baer and Harrison G. Otis told J. Nicholas, that in the caucus mentioned ante 10th, there wanted but five votes to produce a declaration of war.  Baer was against it.

January the 19th.  W. C. Nicholas tells me, that in a conversation with Dexter three or four days ago, he asked Dexter whether it would not be practicable for the States to agree on some uniform mode of choosing electors of President.  Dexter said, ’I suppose you would prefer an election by districts.’  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas, ’I think it would be best; but would nevertheless agree to any other consistent with the constitution.’  Dexter said he did not know what might be the opinion of his State, but his own was, that no mode of election would answer any good purpose; that he should prefer one for life.  ‘On that reasoning,’ said Nicholas, ‘you should prefer an hereditary one.’  ‘No,’ he said, ’we are not ripe for that yet.  I suppose,’ added he, ’this doctrine is not very popular with you.’  ‘No,’ said Nicholas, ’it would effectually damn any man in my State.’  ‘So it would in mine,’ said Dexter; ’but I am under no inducement to belie my sentiment; I have nothing to ask from any body; I had rather be at home than here, therefore I speak my sentiments freely.’  Mr. Nicholas, a little before or after this, made the same proposition of a uniform election to Rossr who replied that he saw no good in any kind of election.  ‘Perhaps,’ said he, ’the present one may last a while.’  On the whole, Mr. Nicholas thinks he perceives, in that party, a willingness and a wish to let every thing go from bad to worse, to amend nothing, in hopes it may bring on confusion, and open a door to the kind of government they wish.  In a conversation with Gunn, who goes with them, but thinks in some degree with us, Gunn told him that the very game which the minority of Pennsylvania is now playing with McKean (see substitute of minority in lower House, and address of Senate in upper), was meditated by the same party in the federal government, in case of the election of a republican President; and that the eastern States would in that case throw things into confusion, and break the Union.  That they have in a great degree got rid of their paper, so as no longer to be creditors, and the moment they cease to enjoy the plunder of the immense appropriations now exclusively theirs, they would aim at some other order of things.