public employment, or of desiring any thing beyond actual and decent
expenses, proportioned to the station in which they have been pleased to
place me, and to the respect they would wish to see attached to it. It
would seem right, that they should decide the claims of those who
have acted under their administration, and their pretermission of any
article, might amount to a disallowance of it in the opinion of the new
government. It would be painful to me to meet that government with a
claim under this kind of cloud, and to pass it in review before their
several Houses of legislation, and boards of administration, to whom I
shall be unknown; and being for money actually expended, it would be
too inconvenient to me to relinquish it in silence. I anxiously ask it,
therefore, to be decided on by Congress before they go out of office,
if it be not out of the line of proceeding they may have chalked out for
themselves. If it be against their inclination to determine it, would
it be agreeable to them to refer it to the new government, by some
resolution, which should show they have not meant to disallow it, by
passing it over? Not knowing the circumstances under which Congress may
exist and act at the moment you shall receive this, I am unable to judge
what should be done on this subject. It is therefore that I ask the aid
of your friendship and that of Mr. Madison, that you will do for me
in this regard, what you think it is right should be done, and what it
would be right for me to do, were I on the spot, or were I apprized of
all existing circumstances. Indeed, were you two to think my claim
an improper one, I would wish it to be suppressed, as I have so much
confidence in your judgment, that I should suspect my own in any case
where it varied from yours, and more especially, in one where it
is liable to be warped by feeling. Give me leave, then, to ask your
consultation with Mr. Madison on this subject; and to assure you that
whatever you are so good as to do herein, will be perfectly approved,
and considered as a great obligation conferred on him, who has the honor
to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and attachment, Dear
Sir, your friend and servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXL.*--TO JAMES MADISON, May 28, 1788

TO JAMES MADISON.

Paris, May 28, 1788.

Dear Sir,

The enclosed letter for Mr. Jay, being of a private nature. I have
thought it better to put it under your cover, lest it might be op