are expressly directed to be incurred.  By an ancient rule of Congress, your salary will commence from the day you receive this letter, if you be then at Paris, or from the day you set out for Paris from any other place at which it may find you:  it ceases on receiving notice or permission to return, after which the additional quarter’s allowance takes place.  You are free to name your own private secretary, who will receive, from the public a salary of thirteen hundred and fifty dollars a year, without allowance for any extras.  I have thought it best to state these things to you minutely, that you may be relieved from all doubt as to the matter of your accounts.  I will beg leave to add a most earnest request, that on the 1st day of July next, and on the same day annually afterwards, you make out your account to that day, and send it by the first vessel, and by duplicates.  In this I must be very urgent and particular, because at the meeting of the ensuing Congress always, it is expected that I prepare for them a statement of the disbursements from this fund, from July to June inclusive.  I shall give orders by the first opportunity to our bankers in Amsterdam, to answer your drafts for the allowances herein before mentioned, recruiting them at the same time by an adequate remitment, as I expect that by the time you receive this, they will not have remaining on hand of this fund more than seven or eight thousand dollars.

You shall receive from me, from time to time, the laws and journals of Congress, gazettes, and other interesting papers:  for whatever information is in possession of the public, I shall leave you generally to the gazettes, and only undertake to communicate by letter, such, relative to the business of your mission, as the gazettes cannot give.

From you I shall ask, once or twice a month regularly, a communication of interesting occurrences in France, of the general affairs of Europe, and transmission of the Leyden gazette, the Journal Logographe, and the best paper of Paris for their colonial affairs, with such other publications as may be important enough to be read by one who can spare little time to read any thing, or which may contain matter proper to be turned to on interesting subjects and occasions.  The English packet is the most certain channel for such epistolary communications as are not very secret, and by those packets I would wish always to receive a letter from you by way of corrective to the farrago of news they generally bring.  Intermediate letters, secret communications, gazettes, and other printed papers, had better come through the channel of Monsieur de la Motte at Havre, to whom I shall also generally address my letters to you, and always the gazettes and other printed papers.

Mr. Short will receive by the same conveyance, his appointment as Minister Resident at the Hague.

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