Written March the 12th.

Eodem die.  Ten o’clock, A. M. The preceding was about nine o’clock.  The President now sends Lear to me, to ask what answer he shall give to the committee, and particularly, whether he shall add to it, that, ’in making the communication, it was not his expectation that the House should give any answer.’  I told Mr. Lear, that I thought the House had a right, independently of legislation, to express sentiments on other subjects.  That when these subjects did not belong to any other branch particularly, they would publish them by their own authority; that in the present case, which respected a foreign nation, the President being the organ of our nation with other nations, the House would satisfy their duty, if, instead of a direct communication, they should pass their sentiments through the President:  that if expressing a sentiment were really an invasion of the executive power, it was so faint a one, that it would be difficult to demonstrate it to the public, and to a public partial to the French revolution, and not disposed to considered the approbation of it from any quarter is improper.  That the Senate, indeed, had given many indications of their wish to invade the executive power:  the Representatives had done it in one case, which was indeed mischievous and alarming; that of giving orders to the Heads of the executive departments, without consulting the President; but that the late vote for directing the Secretary of the Treasury to report ways and means, though carried, was carried by so small a majority, and with the aid of members so notoriously under local influence on that question, as to give a hope that the practice would be arrested, and the constitutional course be taken up, of asking the President to have information laid before them.  But that in the present instance, it was so far from being clearly an invasion of the executive, and would be so little approved by the general voice, that I could not advise the President to express any dissatisfaction at the vote of the House; and I gave Lear, in writing, what I thought should be his answers.  See it.

March the 31st.  A meeting at the President’s; present, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph.  The subject was the resolution of the House of Representatives, of March the 27th, to appoint a committee to inquire into the causes of the failure of the late expedition under Major General St. Clair, with the power to call for such persons, papers, and records, as may be necessary to assist their inquiries.  The committee had written to Knox for the original letters, instructions, &tc.  The President had called us to consult, merely because it was the first example, and he wished that so far as it should become a precedent, it should be rightly conducted.  He neither acknowledged nor denied, nor even doubted the propriety of what the House were doing, for he had not thought upon it, nor was acquainted with subjects of this kind:  he could readily conceive there might be papers of so secret a nature, as that they ought not to be given up.  We were not prepared, and wished time to think and inquire.