d, promised me to
have it published in the Leyden gazette. It will do us great honor. I
wish it may be as much approved by our Assembly, as by the wisest part
of Europe. I have heard, with great pleasure, that our Assembly have
come to the resolution, of giving the regulation of their commerce to
the federal head. I will venture to assert, that there is not one of its
opposers, who, placed on this ground, would not see the wisdom of this
measure. The politics of Europe render it indispensably necessary, that,
with respect to every thing external, we be one nation only, firmly
hooped together. Interior government is what each State should keep to
itself. If it were seen in Europe, that all our States could be brought
to concur in what the Virginia Assembly has done, it would produce a
total revolution in their opinion of us, and respect for us. And it
should ever be held in mind, that insult and war are the consequences
of a want of respectability in the national character. As long as the
States exercise, separately, those acts of power which respect foreign
nations, so long will there continue to be irregularities committed
by some one or other of them, which will constantly keep us on an ill
footing with foreign nations.

I thank you for your information as to my Notes. The copies I have
remaining shall be sent over, to be given to some of my friends and to
select subjects in the College. I have been unfortunate here with this
trifle. I gave out a few copies only, and to confidential persons,
writing in every copy a restraint against its publication. Among others,
I gave a copy to a Mr. Williams: he died. I immediately took every
precaution I could to recover this copy. But, by some means or other, a
bookseller had got hold of it. He employed a hireling translator, and is
about publishing it in the most injurious form possible. I am now at
a loss what to do as to England. Every thing, good or bad, is thought
worth publishing there; and I apprehend a translation back from the
French, and a publication there. I rather believe it will be most
eligible to let the original come out in that country: but am not yet
decided.

I have purchased little for you in the book way since I sent the
catalogue of my former purchases. I wish, first, to have your answer to
that, and your information, what parts of these purchases went out of
your plan. You can easily say, Buy more of this kind, less of that, &c.
My wish is to conform mys