Your letter of yesterday gave me the first information that Monsieur de Mirabeau had suggested to the honorable the Assembly of the Nation, that I had made an offer to Mr. Necker to obtain from America a quantity of corn or flour, which had been refused.  I know not how Monsieur de Mirabeau has been led into this error.  I never in my life made any proposition to Mr. Necker on the subject:  I never said I had made such a proposition.  Some time last autumn, Mr. Necker did me the honor to desire I would have notified in the United States, that corn and flour would meet with a good sale in France.  I conveyed this notice, in a letter to Mr. Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, as you will see by the extract of my letter published by him in an American gazette, which I have the honor to send you.  I must beg leave to avail myself of your friendship and of your position to have a communication of these facts made to the honorable Assembly of the Nation, of which you are a member, and to repeat to you those sentiments of respect and attachment, with which I have the honor to be, my dear Sir, your most obedient and most

humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXII.—­TO MR. NECKER, July 8, 1789

TO MR. NECKER.

Paris, July 8, 1789

Sir,

I have the honor to enclose you a copy of my letter to Monsieur de la Fayette.  When I called on him yesterday, he had already spoken to Monsieur de Mirabeau, who acknowledged he had been in an error in what he had advanced in the Assembly of the Nation, as to the proposition supposed to have been made by me to your Excellency, and undertook to declare his error, when the subject should be resumed by the Assembly, to whom my letter to the Marquis de la Fayette will be also read.

I have thought it a duty, Sir, thus to correct, in the first moment, an error, by which your name had been compromitted by an unfounded use of mine, and shall be happy in every occasion of proving to you those sentiments of profound respect and attachment, with which I have the honor to be, your Excellency’s most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXIII.—­TO THE COUNT DE MONTMORIN, July 8, 1789

TO THE COUNT DE MONTMORIN.

Paris, July 8, 1789.

Sir,

My hotel having been lately robbed for the third time, I take the liberty of uniting my wish with that of the inhabitants of this quarter, that it might coincide with the arrangements of police, to extend to us the protection of a guard.  While the Douane remained here, no accident of that kind happened, but since their removal, other houses in the neighborhood have been robbed as well as mine.  Perhaps it may lessen the difficulties of this request, that the house occupied by the people of the Douane, will lodge abundantly a corps de garde.  On the one side of that house is Chaillot, on the other the Roule, on the third the Champs Elysees, where accidents are said to happen very frequently, all of which are very distant from any corps de garde.