I believe it is now certain that the commissioners on the British debts can proceed together no longer.  I am told that our two have prepared a long report, which will perhaps be made public.  The result will be, that we must recur again to negotiation, to settle the principles of the British claims.  You know that Congress rises on the 3rd of March, and that if you have acceded to my prayers, I should hear from you at least a week before our rising.  Accept my affectionate salutations, and assurances of the sincere esteem with which I am, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXLIX.—­TO JAMES MADISON, February 19, 1799

TO JAMES MADISON.

Philadelphia, February 19, 1799.

Dear Sir,

I wrote you last on the 11th; yesterday the bill for the eventual army of thirty regiments (thirty thousand) and seventy-five thousand volunteers, passed the Senate.  By an amendment, the President was authorized to use the volunteers for every purpose for which he can use militia, so that the militia are rendered completely useless.  The friends of the bill acknowledge that the volunteers are a militia, and agreed that they might properly be called the ‘Presidential militia.’  They are not to go out of their State without their own consent.  Consequently, all service out of the State is thrown on the constitutional militia, the Presidential militia being exempted from doing duty with them.  Leblane, an agent from Desfourneaux, of Guadaloupe, came in the Retaliation.  You will see in the papers Desfourneaux’s letter to the President, which will correct some immaterial circumstances of the statement in my last.  You will see the truth of the main fact, that the vessel and crew were liberated without condition.  Notwithstanding this, they have obliged Leblane to receive the French prisoners, and to admit, in the papers, the terms, ’in exchange for prisoners taken from us,’ he denying at the same time that they consider them as prisoners, or had any idea of exchange.  The object of his mission was not at all relative to that; but they choose to keep up the idea of a cartel, to prevent the transaction from being used as evidence of the sincerity of the French government towards a reconciliation.  He came to assure us of a discontinuance of all irregularities in French privateers from Guadaloupe.  He has been received very cavalierly.  In the mean time, a Consul General is named to St. Domingo:  who may be considered as our Minister to Toussaint.

But the event of events was announced to the Senate yesterday.  It is this:  it seems that soon after Gerry’s departure, overtures must have been made by Pichon, French Charge d’Affaires at the Hague, to Murray.  They were so soon matured, that on the 28th of September, 1798, Talleyrand writes to Pichon, approving what had been done, and particularly of his having assured Murray that whatever Plenipotentiary