As to the delay proposed in your letter, it was to be expected:  indeed a winter passage from Charleston to this place, or across the Atlantic, is so disagreeable, that if either that circumstance or the arrangement of your affairs should render it in the smallest degree eligible to you to remain at home till the temperate season comes on, stay till after the vernal equinox; there will be no inconvenience to the public attending it.  On the contrary, as we are just opening certain negotiations with the British minister here, which have not yet assumed any determinate complexion, a delay till that time will enable us to form some judgment of the issue they may take, and to know exactly in what way your co-operation at the place of your destination may aid us.  On this and other accounts it will be highly useful that you take this place in your way, where, or at New York, you will always be sure of finding a convenient, passage to England.

I have the honor to be, with the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XCII.—­TO WILLINKS, VAN STAPHORSTS, AND HUBARD, Jan. 23,1792

TO MESSRS.  WILLINKS, VAN STAPHORSTS, AND HUBARD.

Philadelphia, January 23,1792.

Gentlemen,

On the 19th of March last, I had the honor to enclose you a bill for ninety-nine thousand florins, drawn on yourselves by the Treasurer of the United States, in favor of the Secretary of State, and I desired you to raise an account with the Secretary of State, and pass that bill to his credit in the account.  In my letter of May the 14th, I enclosed you a duplicate of the same bill, and informed you that this money was destined to pay the salaries and contingent expenses of our ministers and agents of every description, from July the 1st, 1790, and nothing else; and I added these words; ’I must beg the favor of you, also, to make up your account to the close of the last day of June this present year, into which no expenses are to enter which preceded, the 1st day of July, 1790, these being the dates of the appropriation of the law.’  And lastly, in my letter of August the 5th, I enclosed a triplicate of the same bill, and added, ’In the mean time, I hope that your account of this fund, from July the 1st, 1790, to June the 30th, 1791, inclusive, is on its way to me, that I may receive it in time to lay before Congress at their meeting:’  but in fact, I have neither received the account so much desired, nor even an acknowledgment of the receipt of any of the said letters or bills; and though Congress have been now sitting upwards of three months, I have it not in my power to lay before them a statement of the administration of this fund.  When you consider the delicate situation of those entrusted with the disposal of public monies, and the express injunction under which I am laid by my office to submit this account to a proper and timely examination, I leave you to conceive what my sensations must be under the disability to do it, which the want of your account alone has brought,on me; and I hope I shall soon be relieved by the receipt of it.