Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CLXXXV.—TO MR. CARNES, February 15,1789
TO MR. CARNES.
Paris, February 15,1789.
Sir,
I am now to acknowledge the receipt of your favors of January the 23rd, and February the 9th and 10th. Your departure for America so soon, puzzles me as to the finishing the affair of Schweighaeuser and Dobree, in which I could have reposed myself on you. It remains, that I ask you to recommend some person who may be perfectly relied on, in that business. In fact, it is probably the only one I shall have occasion to trouble them with before my own departure for America, which I expect to take place in May; and I fix my return to Paris, in December. While I ask your recommendation of a person to finish Dobree’s business with fidelity, I must ask your secrecy on the subject of that very business, so as not to name it at all, even to the person you shall recommend.
With respect to the distressed American who needs one hundred and forty livres to enable him to return to America, I have no authority to apply any public monies to that purpose, and the calls of that nature are so numerous, that I am obliged to refuse myself to them in my private capacity. As to Captain Newell’s case, you are sensible, that being in the channel of the laws of the land, to ask a special order from government, would expose us, in reciprocity to like demands from them in America, to which our laws would never permit us to accede. Speaking conscientiously, we must say it is wrong in any government to interrupt the regular course of justice. A minister has no right to intermeddle in a private suit, but when the laws of the country have been palpably perverted to the prejudice of his countryman.
When you shall be so kind as to recommend to me a correspondent in your port during your absence, I will ask the favor of you also to give me some idea of the time you expect to return.
I have the honor, after wishing you pleasant and prosperous voyages, to assure you of the esteem and attachment, with which I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant,