whether some person could not take my office per interim, till he should make an appointment; as Mr. Randolph, for instance.  ‘Yes,’ says he; ’but there you would raise the expectation of keeping it, and I do not know that he is fit for it, nor what is thought of Mr. Randolph.’  I avoided noticing the last observation, and he put the question to me directly.  I then told him, I went into society so little as to be unable to answer it.  I knew that the embarrassments in his private affairs had obliged him to use expedients, which had injured him with the merchants and shop-keepers, and affected his character of independence; that these embarrassments were serious, and not likely to cease soon.  He said, if I would only stay in till the end of another quarter (the last of December), it would get us through the difficulties of this year, and he was satisfied that the affairs of Europe would be settled with this campaign:  for that either France would be overwhelmed by it, or the confederacy would give up the contest.  By that time, too, Congress will have manifested its character and views.  I told him that I had set my private affairs in motion in a line which had powerfully called for my presence the last spring, and that they had suffered immensely from my not going home; that I had now calculated them to my return in the fall, and to fail in going then, would be the loss of another year, and prejudicial beyond measure.  I asked him whether he could not name Governor Johnson to my office, under an express arrangement that at the close of the session he should take that of the Treasury.  He said that men never chose to descend; that being once in a higher department, he would not like to go into a lower one.  He asked me whether I could not arrange my affairs by going home.  I told him I did not think the public business would admit of it; that there never was a day now, in which the absence of the Secretary of State would not be inconvenient to the public.  And he concluded by desiring that I would take two or three days to consider whether I could not stay in till the end of another quarter, for that, like a man going, to the gallows, he was willing to put it off as long as he could; but if I persisted, he must then look about him and make up his mind to do the best he could:  and so he took leave.

November the 5th, 1793.  E. Randolph tells me, that Hamilton, in conversation with him yesterday, said, ’Sir, if all the people in America were now assembled, and to call on me to say whether I am a friend to the French revolution, I would declare that I have it in abhorrence?’

November the 8th, 1793.  At a conference at the President’s, where I read several letters of Mr. Genet; on finishing one of them, I asked what should be the answer.  The President thereupon took occasion to observe, that Mr. Genet’s conduct continued to be of so extraordinary a nature, that he meant to propose to our serious consideration, whether he should not have his functions discontinued, and