more decisively declared.  I wish you were here at present, to take your choice of the two governments of Orleans and Louisiana, in either of which I could now place you; and I verily believe it would be to your advantage to be just that much withdrawn from the focus of the ensuing contest, until its event should be known.  The one has a salary of five thousand dollars, the other of two thousand dollars; both with excellent hotels for the Governor.  The latter at St. Louis, where there is good society, both French and American, a healthy climate, and the finest field in the United States for acquiring property.  The former not unhealthy, if you begin a residence there in the month of November.  The Mrs. Trists and their connections are established there.  As I think you can within four months inform me what you say to this, I will keep things in their present state till the last day of August, for your answer.

The late change in the ministry I consider as insuring us a just settlement of our differences, and we ask no more.  In Mr. Fox, personally, I have more confidence than in any man in England, and it is founded in what, through unquestionable channels, I have had opportunities of knowing of his honesty and his good sense.  While he shall be in the administration, my reliance on that government will be solid.  We had committed ourselves in a line of proceedings adapted to meet Mr. Pitt’s policy and hostility, before we heard of his death, which self-respect did not permit us to abandon afterwards; and the late unparalleled outrage on us at New York excited such sentiments in the public at large, as did not permit us to do less than has been done.  It ought not to be viewed by the ministry as looking towards them at all, but merely as the consequences of the measures of their predecessors, which their nation has called on them to correct.  I hope, therefore, they will come to just arrangements.  No two countries upon earth have so many points of common interest and friendship; and their rulers must be great bunglers indeed, if, with such dispositions, they break them asunder.  The only rivalry that can arise, is on the ocean.  England may by petty larceny thwartings check us on that element a little, but nothing she can do will retard us there one year’s growth.  We shall be supported there by other nations, and thrown into their scale to make a part of the great counterpoise to her navy.  If, on the other hand, she is just to us, conciliatory, and encourages the sentiment of family feelings and conduct, it cannot fail to befriend the security of both.  We have the seamen and materials for fifty ships of the line, and half that number of frigates, and were France to give us the money, and England the dispositions to equip them, they would give to England serious proofs of the stock from which they are sprung, and the school in which they have been taught, and added to the efforts of the immensity of sea-coast lately united under one