TO COLONEL GOUVION.

Paris, August 15,1789.

Sir,

I have the pleasure to inform you, that money is now deposited in the hands of Messrs. Grand and company, for paying the arrears of interest due to the foreign officers who served in the American army.  I will beg the favor of you to notify thereof as many of them as you find convenient; and if you can furnish the addresses of any others to Messrs. Grand and company, they will undertake to give notice to them.  The delays which have attended the completion of this object, have been greater than I expected.  This has not proceeded from any inattention of Congress or any of their servants to the justice due to those officers.  This has been sufficiently felt.  But it was not till the present moment, that their efforts to furnish such a sum of money have been successful.  The whole amount of arrears to the beginning of the present year, is about ten thousand louis d’ors.

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

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER IX.—­TO JOHN JAY, August 27, 1789

TO JOHN JAY.

Paris, August 27, 1789.

Sir,

I am honored with your favor of June the 19th, informing me that permission is given me to make a short visit to my native country, for which indulgence I beg leave to return my thanks to the President, and to yourself, Sir, for the expedition with which you were so good as to forward it, after it was obtained.  Being advised that October is the best month of the autumn for a passage to America, I shall wish to sail about the first of that month and as I have a family with me, and their baggage is considerable I must endeavor to find a vessel bound directly for Virginia if possible.

My last letters to you have been of the 5th and 12th instant.  Since these, I received information from our bankers in Holland, that they had money in hand sufficient to answer the demands for the foreign officers, and for the captives; and that, moreover, the residue of the bonds of the last loan were engaged.  I hereupon wrote to Mr. Grand for an exact estimate of the sum necessary for the officers.  He had stated it to me as being forty-five thousand six hundred and fifty-two livres eleven sous six deniers a year, when I was going to Holland to propose the loan to Mr. Adams, and at that sum, you will see it was stated in the estimate we sent you from Amsterdam.  He now informed me it was sixty thousand three hundred and ninety-three livres seventeen sous ten deniers a year.  I called on him for an explanation.  He showed me that his first information agreed with the only list of the officers and sums then in his possession, and his last with a new list lately sent from the treasury board, in which other officers were set down, who had been omitted in the first.