elieve he would be a good minister for England, with
respect to a better agreement with France.'

(Same letter continued) 'April 10. The acts for regulating the trade
with America are to be continued as last year. A paper from the Privy
Council respecting the American fly is before parliament. I had some
conversation with Sir Joseph Banks upon this subject, as he was the
person whom the Privy Council referred to. I told him that the Hessian
fly attacked only the green plant, and did not exist in the dry grain.
He said, that with respect to the Hessian fly they had no apprehension,
but it was the weevil they alluded to. I told him the weevil had always,
more or less, been in the wheat countries of America, and that if the
prohibition was on that account, it was as necessary fifty or sixty
years ago as now; that I believed it was only a political manoeuvre of
the ministry to please the landed interest, as a balance for prohibiting
the exportation of wool, to please the manufacturing interest. He did
not reply, and as we are on very sociable terms, I went farther, by
saying, the English ought not to complain of the non-payment of debts
from America, while they prohibit the means of payment. I suggest to you
a thought on this subject.

The debts due before the war ought to be distinguished from the debts
contracted since, and all and every mode of payment and remittance under
which they might have been discharged at the time they were contracted,
ought to accompany those debts so long as any of them shall continue
unpaid, because the circumstances of payment became united with the
debt, and cannot be separated by subsequent acts of one side only. If
this was taken up in America, and insisted on as a right coeval
with, and inseparable from those debts, it would force some of the
restrictions here to give way. While writing this, I am informed that
the minister has had a conference with some of the American creditors,
and proposed to them to assume the debts, and give them ten shillings
in the pound. The conjecture is, that he means, when the new Congress
is established, to demand the payment. If you are writing to General
Washington, it may not be amiss to mention this, and if I hear further
on this matter, I will inform you. But as, being a money matter, it
cannot come forward but through parliament; there will be notice given
of the business. This would be a proper time to show that the British
acts since the peace milita