Dexter maintained that the common law, as to crimes, is in force in the United States.

Chipman says, that the principles of common right are common law.

March the 11th.  Conversing with Mrs. Adams on the subject of the writers in the newspapers, I took occasion to mention that I never in my life had, directly or indirectly, written one sentence for a newspaper; which is an absolute truth.  She said that Mr. Adams, she believed, had pretty well ceased to meddle in the newspapers, since he closed the pieces on Davila.  This is the first direct avowal of that work to be his, though long and universally understood to be so.

March the 14th.  Freneau, in Charleston, had the printing of the laws in his paper.  He printed a pamphlet of Pinckney’s letters on Robbins’s case.  Pickering has given the printing of the laws to the tory paper of that place, though not of half the circulation.  The printing amounted to about one hundred dollars a year.

March the 24th.  Mr. Perez Morton of Massachusetts tells me that Thatcher, on his return from the war Congress, declared to him he had been for a declaration of war against France, and many others also; but that on counting noses they found they could not carry it, and therefore did not attempt it.

March the 27th.  Judge Breckenridge gives me the following information.  He and Mr. Ross were originally very intimate; indeed, he says, he found him keeping a little Latin school, and advised and aided him in the study of the law, and brought him forward.  After Ross became a Senator, and particularly at the time of the western insurrection, they still were in concert.  After the British treaty, Ross, on his return, informed him there was a party in the United States who wanted to overturn the government, who were in league with France; that France, by a secret article of treaty with Spain, was to have Louisiana; and that Great Britain was likely to be our best friend and dependence.

On this information, he, Breckenridge, was induced to become an advocate for the British treaty.  During this intimacy with Ross, he says, that General Collot, in his journey to the western country, called on him, and he frequently led Breckenridge into conversations on their grievances under the government, and particularly the western expedition; that he spoke to him of the advantages that country would have in joining France when she should hold Louisiana; showed him a map he had drawn of that part of the country; pointed out the passes in the mountain, and the facility with which they might hold them against the United States, and with which France could support them from New Orleans.  He says, that in these conversations, Collot let himself out without common prudence.  He says, Michaux (to whom I, at the request of Genet, had given a letter of introduction to the Governor of Kentucky as a botanist, which was his real profession,) called on him; that Michaux had a commissary’s