The President concurred.  The Senate express the motive for this proposition, to be a fear that the Representatives would not keep the secret.  He has no opinion of the secrecy of the Senate.  In this very case, Mr. Izard made the communication to him, sitting next to him at table, on one hand, while a lady (Mrs. McLane) was on his other hand, and the French minister next to her; and as Mr. Izard got on with his communication, his voice kept rising, and his stutter bolting the words out loudly at intervals, so that the minister might hear if he would.  He said he had a great mind at one time to have got up, in order to put a stop to Mr. Izard.

March the 11th, 1792.  Mr. Sterret tells me that sitting round a fire the other day with four or five others, Mr. Smith (of South Carolina) was one.  Somebody mentioned that the murderers of Hogeboom, sheriff of Columbia county, New York, were acquitted.  ‘Ay,’ says Smith, ’this is what comes of your damned trial by jury.’

1791.  Towards the latter end of November, Hamilton had drawn Ternant into a conversation on the subject of the treaty of commerce recommended by the National Assembly of France to be negotiated with us, and, as he had no ready instructions on the subject, he led him into a proposal that Ternant should take the thing up as a volunteer with me, that we should arrange conditions, and let them go for confirmation or refusal.  Hamilton communicated this to the President, who came into it, and proposed it to me.  I disapproved of it, observing, that such a volunteer project would be binding on us, and not them; that it would enable them to find out how far we would go, and avail themselves of it.  However, the President thought it worth trying, and I acquiesced.  I prepared a plan of treaty for exchanging the privileges of native subjects, and fixing all duties for ever as they now stood.  Hamilton did not like this way of fixing the duties, because, he said, many articles here would bear to be raised, and therefore, he would prepare a tariff.  He did so, raising duties for the French, from twenty-five to fifty per cent.  So they were to give us the privileges of native subjects, and we, as a compensation, were to make them pay higher duties.  Hamilton, having made his arrangements with Hammond to pretend that though he had no powers to conclude a treaty of commerce, yet his general commission authorized him to enter into the discussion of one, then proposed to the President at one of our meetings, that the business should be taken up with Hammond in the same informal way.  I now discovered the trap which he had laid, by first getting the President into the step with Ternant.  I opposed the thing warmly.  Hamilton observed, if we did it with Ternant we should also with Hammond.  The President thought this reasonable.  I desired him to recollect, I had been against it with Ternant, and only acquiesced under his opinion.  So the matter went off as to both.  His scheme evidently was, to get us engaged