I am, at the request and in behalf of the general assembly, your most obedient, humble servant,

John Collins, Governor.

His Excellency the president of the united states.

United states, February 9, 1790.

Gentlemen of the Senate: 

Among the persons appointed during the last session to offices under the National Government there were some who declined serving.  Their names and offices are specified in the first column of the foregoing list.[2] I supplied these vacancies, agreeably to the Constitution, by temporary appointments, which you will find mentioned in the second column of the list.  These appointments will expire with your present session, and, indeed, ought not to endure longer than until others can be regularly made.  For that purpose I now nominate to you the persons named in the third column of the list as being, in my opinion, qualified to fill the offices opposite to their names in the first.

Go.  Washington.

[Footnote 2:  Omitted.]

United states, December 14, 1790.

Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives: 

Having informed Congress of the expedition which had been directed against certain Indians northwest of the Ohio, I embrace the earliest opportunity of laying before you the official communications which have been received upon that subject.

Go.  Washington.

[The following was transmitted with the message of January 26, 1791 (see Vol.  I, p. 95).]

[From Annals of Congress, Vol.  II, 2116-2118.]

Paris, June 20, 1790.

Mr. PRESIDENT: 

The National Assembly has worn during three days mourning for Benjamin Franklin, your fellow-citizen, your friend, and one of the most useful of your cooperators in the establishment of American liberty.  They charge me to communicate their resolution to the Congress of the United States.  In consequence I have the honor to address to you, Mr. President, the extract from the proceedings of their session of the 11th which contains the deliberations.

The National Assembly have not been stopped in their decree by the consideration that Franklin was a stranger.  Great men are the fathers of universal humanity; their loss ought to be felt as a common misfortune by all the tribes of the great human family; and it belongs without doubt to a nation still affected by all the sentiments which accompany the achievement of their liberty, and which owes its enfranchisement essentially to the progress of the public reason, to be the first to give the example of the filial gratitude of the people toward their true benefactors.  Besides that, these ideas and this example are so proper to disseminate a happy emulation of patriotism, and thus to extend more and more the empire of reason and virtue, which could not fail promptly to determine a body devoted to the most important legislative combinations.  Charged with assuring to the French the rights of men and citizens, it has believed without doubt that fruitful and great truths were likewise numbered among the rights of man.