ed the government of New Jersey. See a paragraph in Martin's
Baltimore paper of February the 10th, signed, 'a looker on,' staling an
intimacy of views between Harper and Burr.

February the 14th. General Armstrong tells me, that Gouverneur Morris,
in conversation with him to-day on the scene which is passing, expressed
himself thus. 'How comes it,' says he, 'that Burr, who is four hundred
miles off (at Albany), has agents here at work with great activity,
while Mr. Jefferson, who is on the spot, does nothing?' This explains
the ambiguous conduct of himself and his nephew, Lewis Morris, and that
they were holding themselves free for a price; i.e. some office, either
to the uncle or nephew.

February the 16th. See in the Wilmington Mirror of February the 14th,
Mr. Bayard's elaborate argument to prove that the common law, as
modified by the laws of the respective States at the epoch of the
ratification of the constitution, attached to the courts of the United
States.

June the 23rd, 1801. Andrew Ellicot tells me, that in a conversation
last summer with Major William Jackson of Philadelphia, on the subject
of our intercourse with Spain, Jackson said we had managed our affairs
badly; that he himself was the author of the papers against the Spanish
minister signed Americanus; that his object was irritation; that he was
anxious, if it could have been brought, about, to have plunged us into a
war with Spain, that the people might have been occupied with that, and
not with the conduct of the administration, and other things they had no
business to meddle with.

December the 13th, 1803. The Reverend Mr. Coffin of New England, who
is now here soliciting donations for a college in Greene county, in
Tennessee, tells me that when he first determined to engage in this
enterprise, he wrote a paper recommendatory of the enterprise, which
he meant to get signed by clergymen, and a similar one for persons in
a civil character, at the head of which he wished Mr. Adams to put his
name, he being then President, and the application going only for his
name, and not for a donation. Mr. Adams, after reading the paper and
considering, said, 'he saw no possibility of continuing the union of
the States; that their dissolution must necessarily take place; that he
therefore saw no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote
a literary institution in the south; that it was in fact giving strength
to those who were to be their e