Talleyrand, which says our Envoys have been heard, that their pretensions are high, that possibly no arrangement may take place, but that there will be no declaration of war by France.  It is said that Bournonville has written that he has hopes of an accommodation (three audiences having then, November, been had), and to be himself a member of a new diplomatic mission to this country.  On the whole, I am entirely suspended as to what is to be expected.  The Representatives have been several days in debate on the bill for foreign intercourse.  A motion has been made to reduce it to what it was before the extension of 1796.  The debate will probably have good effects, in several ways, on the public mind, but the advocates for the reformation expect to lose the question.  They find themselves deceived in the expectation entertained in the beginning of the session, that they had a majority.  They now think the majority is on the other side by two or three, and there are moreover two or three of them absent.  Blount’s affair is to come on next.  In the mean time, the Senate have before them a bill for regulating proceedings in impeachment.  This will be made the occasion of offering a clause for the introduction of juries into these trials. (Compare the paragraph in the constitution which says, that all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury, with the eighth amendment, which says, that in all criminal prosecutions, the trial shall be by jury.) There is no expectation of carrying this; because the division in the Senate is of two to one, but it will draw forth the principles of the parties, and concur in accumulating proofs on which side all the sound principles are to be found.

Very acrimonious altercations are going on between the Spanish Minister and the executive, and at the Natchez something worse than mere altercation.  If hostilities have not begun there, it has not been for want of endeavors to bring them on, by our agents.  Marshall, of Kentucky, this day proposed in Senate some amendments to the constitution.  They were barely read just as we were adjourning, and not a word of explanation given.  As far as I caught them in my ear, they went only to modifications of the elections of President and Vice-President, by authorizing voters to add the office for which they name each, and giving to the Senate the decision of a disputed election of President, and to the Representatives that of Vice-President.  But I am apprehensive I caught the thing imperfectly, and probably incorrectly.  Perhaps this occasion may be taken of proposing again the Virginia amendments, as also to condemn elections by the legislatures, themselves to transfer the power of trying impeachments from the Senate to some better constituted court, &c. &c.

Good tobacco here is thirteen dollars, flour eight dollars and fifty cents, wheat one dollar and fifty cents, but dull, because only the millers buy.  The river, however, is nearly open, and the merchants will now come to market and give a spur to the price.  But the competition will not be what it has been.  Bankruptcies thicken, and the height of them has by no means yet come on.  It is thought this, winter will be very trying.