moment to renew those conferences.  I may safely, however, assure your Excellency, that the same friendly dispositions still continue, and the same desire of facilitating and encouraging a commerce between the two nations, which produced the former appointment.  But our nation is, at this time, proposing a change in the organization of its government.  For this change to be agreed to by all the members of the Union, the new administration chosen and brought into activity, their domestic matters arranged, which will require their first attention, their foreign system afterwards decided on and carried into full execution, will require very considerable length of time.  To place under the same delay the private claims which I have the honor to present to your Excellency, would be hard on the persons interested:  because these claims have no connection with the system of commercial connection, which may be established between the two nations, nor with the particular form of our administration.  The justice due to them is complete, and the present administration as competent to final settlement as any future one will be, should a future change take place.  These individuals have already lingered nine years in expectation of their hard and perilous earnings.  Time lessens their numbers continually, disperses their representatives, weakens the evidence of their right, and renders more and more impracticable his Majesty’s dispositions to repair the private injury, to which public circumstances constrained him.  These considerations, the just and honorable intentions of your Excellency, and the assurances you give us in your letter, that no delay is wished on your part, give me strong hopes that we may speedily obtain that final arrangement, which express instructions render it my duty to urge.  I have the honor, therefore, of agreeing with your Excellency, that the settlement of this matter, formerly begun at Paris, shall be continued there; and to ask that you will be pleased to give powers and instructions for this purpose to such persons as you shall think proper, and in such full form as may prevent those delays, to which the distance between Copenhagen and Paris might otherwise expose us.

I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most profound respect, your Excellency’s most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXLIII.—­TO THE COUNT DE MONTMORIN, June 20, 1788

TO THE COUNT DE MONTMORIN.

Paris, June 20, 1788.

Sir,

Having had the honor of mentioning to your Excellency the wish of Congress, that certain changes should be made in the articles for a consular convention, which had been sent to them, I have now that, conformably to the desire you expressed, of giving a general idea of the alterations to be proposed.

The fourth article gives to the consuls the immunities of the law of nations.  It has been understood, however, that the laws of France do not admit of this; and that it might be desirable to expunge this article.  In this we are ready to concur, as in every other case, where an article might call for changes in the established laws, either inconvenient or disagreeable.