Now this is exactly the effect of the late change in the quantity of gold contained in your louis.  Your marc d’argent fin is cut into 53.45 livres (fifty-three livres and nine sous), the marc de l’or fin was cut, heretofore, by law, into 784.6 livres (seven hundred and eighty-four livres and twelve sous); gold was to silver, then, as 14.63 to 1.  And if this was different from the proportion at the markets of Europe, the true value of your livre stood half way between the two standards.  By the ordinance of October the 30th, 1785, the marc of pure gold has been cut into 828.6 livres.  If your standard had been in gold alone, this would have reduced the value of the livre, in the proportion of 828.6 to 784.6.  But as you had a standard of silver as well as gold, the true standard is the medium between the two; consequently, the value of the livre is reduced only one half the difference, that is, as 806.6 to 784.6, which is very nearly three per cent.  Commerce, however, has made a difference of four per cent., the average value of the pound sterling, formerly twenty-four livres, being now twenty-five livres.  Perhaps some other circumstance has occasioned an addition of one per cent, to the change of your standard.

I fear I have tired you by these details.  I did not mean to be so lengthy when I began.  I beg you to consider them as an appeal to your judgment, which I value, and from which I will expect a correction, if they are wrong.

I have the honor to be, with very great esteem and attachment, Dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXCVI.—­TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE, May 6,1789

TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.

Paris, May 6,1789.

My Dear Friend,

As it becomes more and more possible that the Noblesse will go wrong, I become uneasy for you.  Your principles are decidedly with the Tiers-Etat, and your instructions against them.  A complaisance to the latter on some occasions, and an adherence to the former on others, may give an appearance of trimming between the two parties, which may lose you both.  You will, in the end, go over wholly to the Tiers-Etat, because it will be impossible for you to live in a constant sacrifice of your own sentiments to the prejudices of the Noblesse.  But you would be received by the Tiers-Etat, at any future day, coldly, and without confidence.  This appears to me the moment to take at once that honest and manly stand with them, which your own principles dictate.  This will win their hearts for ever, be approved by the world, which marks and honors you as the man of the people, and will be an eternal consolation to yourself.  The Noblesse, and especially the Noblesse of Auvergne, will always prefer men who will do their dirty work for them.  You are not made for that.  They will therefore soon