a minister resident, shall establish his house in the first instant.  If this is to be done out of his salary, he will be a twelvemonth at least without a copper to live on.  It is the universal practice, therefore, of all nations, to allow the outfit as a separate article from the salary.  I have inquired here into the usual amount of it.  I find that, sometimes, the sovereign pays the actual cost.  This is particularly the case of the Sardinian ambassador now coming here, who is to provide a service of plate, and every article of furniture, and other matters of first expense, to be paid for by his court.  In other instances, they give a service of plate, and a fixed sum for all other articles, which fixed sum is in no case lower than a year’s salary.

I desire no service of plate, having no ambition for splendor.  My furniture, carriage, and apparel are all plain, yet they have cost me more than a year’s salary.  I suppose that in every country, and in every condition of life, a year’s expense would be found a moderate measure for the furniture of a man’s house.  It is not more certain to me, that the sun will rise to-morrow, than that our government must allow the outfit, on their future appointment of foreign ministers; and it would be hard on me, so to stand between the discontinuance of a former rule, and institution of a future one, as to have the benefit of neither.  I know, I have so long known the character of our federal head, in its present form, that I have the most unlimited confidence in the justice of its decisions.  I think I am so far known to many of the present Congress, as that I may be cleared of all views of making money out of any public employment, or of desiring any thing beyond actual and decent expenses, proportioned to the station in which they have been pleased to place me, and to the respect they would wish to see attached to it.  It would seem right, that they should decide the claims of those who have acted under their administration, and their pretermission of any article, might amount to a disallowance of it in the opinion of the new government.  It would be painful to me to meet that government with a claim under this kind of cloud, and to pass it in review before their several Houses of legislation, and boards of administration, to whom I shall be unknown; and being for money actually expended, it would be too inconvenient to me to relinquish it in silence.  I anxiously ask it, therefore, to be decided on by Congress before they go out of office, if it be not out of the line of proceeding they may have chalked out for themselves.  If it be against their inclination to determine it, would it be agreeable to them to refer it to the new government, by some resolution, which should show they have not meant to disallow it, by passing it over?  Not knowing the circumstances under which Congress may exist and act at the moment you shall receive this, I am unable to judge what should be done on this subject.