te payment to France; but advantage may be gained by judiciously
timing the payment. The French colonies will doubtless claim, in their
new constitution, a right to receive the necessaries of life from
whomever will deliver them cheapest; to wit, grain, flour, live stock,
salted fish, and other salted provisions. It would be well that you
should confer with their deputies, guardedly, and urge them to this
demand, if they need urging. The justice of the National Assembly will
probably dispose them to grant it, and the clamors of the Bordeaux
merchants may be silenced by the clamors and arms of the colonies.
It may cooperate with the influence of the colonies, if favorable
dispositions towards us can be excited in the moment of discussing this
point. It will therefore be left to you to say, when the payment shall
be made, in confidence that you will so time it as to forward this great
object: and when you make this payment, you may increase its effect, by
adding assurances to the minister, that measures have been taken which
will enable us to pay up, within a very short time, all arrears of
principal and interest now due; and further, that Congress has fully
authorized our government to go on and pay even the balance not yet due,
which we mean to do, if that money can be borrowed on reasonable
terms; and that favorable arrangements of commerce between us and their
colonies, might dispose us to effect that payment with less regard to
terms. You will, of course, find excuses for not paying the money which
is ready and put under your orders, till you see that the moment has
arrived when the emotions it may excite, may give a desisive cast to the
demands of the colonies.

The newspapers, as usual, will accompany the present.

I have the honor to be, with great esteem and attachment, Dear Sir, your
most obedient and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XLIII.--TO M. LA FOREST, August 30, 1790

TO M. LA FOREST, _Consul of France_,

New York, August 30, 1790.

Sir,

I asked the favor of the Secretary of the Treasury to consider the
fourth article of the consular convention, and to let me know whether he
should conclude that Consuls not exercising commerce, were exempt from
paying duties on things imported for their own use. I furnished him no
explanation whatever, of what had passed on the subject at the time of
forming the convention, because I thought it should be decided on the
words of the conventio