of a commission is immaterial.  As it may be sent by letter to any one, so it may be delivered by hand to him any where.  The place of signature by the Sovereign is the material thing.  Were that to be done in any other jurisdiction than his own, it might draw the validity of the act into question.  I mention these things, because I think it would be proper, that after considering them and such other circumstances as appear in the papers, or may occur to yourself, you should make it the subject of a conversation with the Minister.  Perhaps it may give you an opportunity of touching on another subject.  Whenever Mr. Hammond applies to our government on any matter whatever, be it ever so new or difficult, if he does not receive his answer in two or three days or a week, we are goaded with new letters on the subject.  Sometimes it is the sailing of the packet, which is made the pretext for forcing us into premature and undigested determinations.  You know best how far your applications meet such early attentions, and whether you may with propriety claim a return of them:  you can best judge too of the expediency of an intimation, that where despatch is not reciprocal, it may be expedient and justifiable that delay should be so.

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

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLVII.—­TO MR. GENET, June 17, X

TO MR. GENET.

Philadelphia, June 17, 1793.

Sir,

I shall now have the honor of answering your letter of the 1st instant, and so much of that of the 14th (both of which have been laid before the President) as relates to a vessel armed in the port of New York and about to depart from thence, but stopped by order of the government.  And here I beg leave to premise, that the case supposed in your letter, of a vessel arming for her own defence, and to repel unjust aggressions, is not that in question, nor that on which I mean to answer, because not having yet happened, as far as is known to the government, I have no instructions on the subject.  The case in question is that of a vessel armed, equipped, and manned in a port of the United States, for the purpose of committing hostilities on nations at peace with the United States.

As soon as it was perceived that such enterprises would be attempted, orders to prevent them were despatched to all the States and ports of the Union.  In consequence of these, the Governor of New York, receiving information that a sloop heretofore called the Polly, now the Republican, was fitting out, arming, and manning in the port of New York, for the express and sole purpose of cruising against certain nations with whom we are at peace, that she had taken her guns and ammunition aboard and was on the point of departure, seized the vessel.  That the Governor was not mistaken in the previous indications of her object, appears by