n that I learned from your letter of June
the 25th, that a violation of the protection, due to you as the
representative of your nation had been committed, by an officer of this
State entering your house and serving therein a process on one of your
servants. There could be no question but that this was a breach of
privilege; the only one was, how it was to be punished. To ascertain
this, I referred your letter to the Attorney General, whose answer I
have the honor to enclose you. By this you will perceive, that from the
circumstance of your servant's not being registered in the Secretary
of State's office, we cannot avail ourselves of the more certain and
effectual proceeding which had been provided by an act of Congress for
punishing infractions of the law of nations, that act having thought
proper to confine the benefit of its provisions to such domestics only,
as should have been registered; We are to proceed, therefore, as if that
act had never been made, and the Attorney General's letter indicates
two modes of proceeding. 1. By a warrant before a single magistrate, to
recover the money paid by the servant under a process declared void
by law. Herein the servant must be the actor, and the government not
intermeddle at all. The smallness of the sum to be redemanded will
place this cause in the class of those in which no appeal to the higher
tribunal is permitted, even in the case of manifest error, so that if
the magistrate should err, the government has no means of correcting the
error. 2. The second mode of proceeding would be, to indict the officer
in the Supreme Court of the United States; with whom it would rest to
punish him at their discretion, in proportion to the injury done and the
malice from which it proceeded; and it would end in punishment alone,
and not in a restitution of the money. In this mode of proceeding, the
government of the United States is actor, taking the management of the
cause into its own hands, and giving you no other trouble than that
of bearing witness to such material facts as may not be otherwise
supported. You will be so good as to decide in which of these two
ways you would choose the proceeding should be; if the latter, I will
immediately take measures for having the offender prosecuted according
to law.

I have the honor to be, with sentiments of respect, Sir, your most
obedient and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXVI.--TO MR. PALESKE, August 19,1792