n, which I think
it would be well if the news-writers of Paris would translate and insert
in their papers. The sentiments are too just not to make impression.

Some proceedings of the assembly of St. Domingo have lately taken place,
which it is necessary for me to state to you exactly, that you may be
able to do the same to M. de Montmorin. When the insurrection of their
negroes assumed a very threatening appearance, the Assembly sent a
deputy here to ask assistance of military stores and provisions. He
addressed himself to M. de Ternant, who (the President being then in
Virginia, as I was also) applied to the Secretaries of the Treasury and
War. They furnished one thousand stand of arms, other military stores,
and placed forty thousand dollars in the treasury, subject to the order
of M. de Ternant, to be laid out in provisions, or otherwise, as he
should think best. He sent the arms and other military stores; but
the want of provisions did not seem so instantaneous as to render it
necessary, in his opinion, to send any at that time. Before the vessel
arrived in St. Domingo, the Assembly, further urged by the appearance of
danger, sent two deputies more, with larger demands; viz. eight thousand
fusils and bayonets, two thousand musquetoons, three thousand pistols,
three thousand sabres, twenty-four thousand barrels of flour, four
hundred thousand livres' worth of Indian meal, rice, pease, and hay, and
a large quantity of plank, &c. to repair the buildings destroyed. They
applied to M. de Ternant, and then with his consent to me; he and I
having previously had a conversation on the subject. They proposed to
me, first, that we should supply those wants from the money we owed
France; or secondly, from the bills of exchange which they were
authorized to draw on a particular fund in France; or thirdly, that we
would guaranty their bills, in which case they could dispose of them to
merchants, and buy the necessaries themselves. I convinced them the two
latter alternatives were beyond the powers of the executive, and the
first could only be done with the consent of the minister of France.
In the course of our conversation, I expressed to them our sincere
attachment to France and all its dominions, and most especially to them
who were our neighbors, and whose interests had some common points of
union with ours, in matters of commerce; that we wished, therefore, to
render them every service they needed, but that we could not do i