I have at length succeeded in collecting together your letters to Genl Washington and some copies of his to you, which it affords me great pleasure to have accomplished & still greater to forward them to you. I shall apply to the Secretary of State to afford them a Conveyance to you by the first vessel which shall be charged with dispatches from our Government to France.

I am closely engaged in preparing my corrections of the life, and have no doubt they will be in perfect readiness by the winter, should any printer be disposed to engage in the publication. This however is a business which we can not press. My present employment has brought to my recollection a letter which I think ought to be suppressed but which I forgot to mention to you in Washington.

I had the pleasure of receiving your letter written immediately after your return from Philadelphia and am much obliged by your kind enquiries for “The Calm Observer.” I now believe that those papers were never in the pamp[h]let form, or if ever so published, are no longer to be found. I will thank you, if General Washington ever took & preserved that precious deposit of democratic patriotism.

Your letter of the 21st has just reached me. I am astonished at the failure of my letter in answer to that which contained the proposition of Mr Sparks. I answered the day of its reception and expressed unequivocally my opinion that his offer should be accepted. In addition to the obvious reasons for accepting it stated by yourself I suggested others of a nature somewhat delicate which I would not willingly submit to any eye but yours.

I received on my return from North Carolina your favor inclosing a check on the bank of Virga for $500 being my share of the third instalment from Mr Wayne.

Sometime time ago you published a letter from Gen. Washington to a friend of his, written during the Indian War. you introduced the letter by observing that it was copied from the “original” & that if the compiler¹ of the Hist. desired would be furnished with it on application. I sent the printed letter to Judge Washington & he has this day wrote to me as follows, viz

Extract

["]Mount Vernon Nov. 24, 1803

On receiving your letter I made the necessary inquiries respecting the lands for which taxes have not been paid. The money can no longer be received in the auditors office but must be paid in the county to the sheriff. If not paid before August they will then be sold. The sooner payment is made the better as the arrears accumulate very fast they carry an interest of ten percent & I am not sure that it is not compounded.

I had the pleasure of receiving on my return from the upper country your letter dated in August. I had not seen Brown¹ & had formed an opinion of the civil admiralty jurisdiction from the character of a case of piracy not from precedent A pirate being an enemy of the human race & at war with the civilized world I had considered a libel for the condemnation of his vessel as partaking rather of the character of a prize cause than of one belonging to the civil admiralty side of the court. But I bow to precedent.

I have received the box of letters by the steam boat.

Soon after receiving the box containing the correspondence copied at this place I commenced a careful reperusal of it & have just finished that part which concerns the old war of 1754. I find that the last letter is dated the 25th of July 1758 & consequently breaks off in the midst of the interesting transactions which preceded the capture of fort Du Quêsne. Before I made this discovery I had packed up all the books & sent them to you so that it is not in my power to supply this chasm. The last letter is to Colo.