To 935.145. succeeded.  He had established a certain style of living.  The same was expected from 1214. and there were five hundred guineas a year less to do it on.  It has been aimed at, however, as far as was practicable.  This rendered it constantly necessary to step neither to the right nor to the left, to incur any expense which could possibly be avoided, and it called for an almost womanly attention to the details of the household, equally perplexing, disgusting, and inconsistent with business.  You will be sensible, that, in this situation, no savings could be made for reimbursing the half year’s salary, ordered to be advanced under the former commission, and more than as much again, which was unavoidably so applied, without order, for the purchase of the outfit.  The reason of the thing, the usage of all nations, the usage of our own, by paying all expenses of preceding ministers, which gave them the outfit, as far as their circumstances appeared to them to render it necessary, have made me take for granted all along, that it would not be refused to me:  nor should I have mentioned it now, but that the administration is passing into other hands, and more complicated forms.  It would be disagreeable to me to be presented to them, in the first instance, as a suitor.  Men come into business at first with visionary principles.  It is practice alone, which can correct and conform them to the actual current of affairs.  In the mean time, those to whom their errors were first applied, have been their victims.  The government may take up the project of appointing foreign ministers without outfits, and they may ruin two or three individuals, before they find that that article is just as indispensable as the salary.  They must then fall into the current of general usage, which has become general, only because experience has established its necessity.  Upon the whole, be so good as to reflect on it, and to do, not what your friendship to me, but your opinion of what is right, shall dictate.

Accept, in all cases, assurances of the sincere esteem and respect with which I am, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXLI.—­TO PETER CARU, May 23, 1788

TO PETER CARU.

Paris, May 23, 1788.

Dear Peter,

The preceding letter [* For the letter referred to, see ante, LXXIV.] was written at its date, and I supposed you in possession of it, when your letters of December the 10th, 1787, and March the 18th, 1788, told me otherwise.  Still I supposed it on its way to you, when a few days ago, having occasion to look among some papers in the drawer, where my letters are usually put away, till an opportunity of sending them occurs, I found that this letter had slipped among them, so that it had never been forwarded.  I am sorry for it, on account of the remarks relative to the Spanish language only.  Apply to that with all