I wrote you on the 23d. and yesterday I received yours of the 17th. which was the more welcome as it acknoleged mine of the 9th. about the safety of which I was anxious. I now risk some other papers, the sequel of those conveyed in that. The result I know not. We are sending a courier to Madrid to make a last effort for the preservation of honorable peace. The affairs of France are recovering their solidity: and from the steadiness of the people on the defection of so popular and capital a commander as Dumourier, we have a proof that nothing can shake their republicanism. Hunger is to be excepted; but the silence of the late papers on that head and the near approach of harvest makes us hope they will weather that rock. I do not find that there has been serious insurrection but in Brittany, and there, the noblesse having been as numerous as the people, and indeed being almost the people, the counterrevolutionary spirit has been known always to have existed since the night in which titles were suppressed. The English are trying to stop the torrent of bankruptcies by an emission of 5. millions of Exchequer bills, to be loaned on the pawn-broking plan: consequently much inferior to the assignats of France. But that paper will sink to an immediate level with their other public paper, and consequently can only complete the ruin of those who take it from government at par, and on a pledge of pins, buckles &c. of double value, which will not sell so as to pay storage in a country where there is no specie, and now we may say no paper of confidence. Every letter which comes expresses a firm belief that the whole paper system will now vanish into that nothing on which it is bottomed. For even the public faith is nothing, as the mass of paper bottomed on it is known to be beyond it’s possible redemption. I hope this will be a wholsome lesson to our future legislature. The war between France and England has brought forward the Republicans and Monocrats in every state so openly, that their relative numbers are perfectly visible. It appears that the latter are as nothing. H. is endeavoring to engage a house in town for the next year. He is in the country for the summer.

As I must ere long put my general plan of farming into the hands of my Elkton manager, I have lately endeavored to establish a proper succession of crops for a farm of red highland of about 500. acres of open land fit for culture. In all successions of crops, the feilds must be supposed equal, each feild to go through the same succession, and each year’s crop be the same. On these data, the laws of combination pronounce that the number of feilds and number of years constituting a compleat rotation, must be always equal. If you cultivate three equal feilds only, your rotation will be of 3. years, 5. feilds, 5 years &c. I propose 8. feilds of 60. acres each, and of course an 8. years rotation, in the following succession. 1st. year, wheat and fall fallow. 2d. peas with Indn. corn thinly planted. 3d. wheat and fall fallow. 4th. potatoes with Indn. corn thinly planted. 5th. rye or barley1 and fall fallow. 6th. 7th. and 8th. red clover. The following diagram will shew the system better; the initials of every article only being written in each square or feild, to wit

Also 2.3	eighths of your farm are	cleansing		every year
3.	eighths	fallowing
3.	eighths	resting
8.

Bye articles as follow.

Oats and flax, a few acres only wanting. To be with the new sown clover.

Hemp, turneps, pumpkins, in the new clearings.

Artichokes in a perpetual feild.

Orchard grass in the hill sides too steep for the plough. Qu?

Lucerne, St. foin, cotton, in appropriate feilds.

Buckwheat to be ploughed into the washed lands.

When a 9th. feild shall be added by new clearings, add it to the rotation as a feild at absolute rest or spring fallowed.4

So of a 10th. &c.5

As you are now immersed in farming and among farming people, pray consider this plan for me, well, and give me your observations fully and freely as soon as you can. I mean to ask the same from the President, and also from my son in law. Cattle to be raised in proportion to the provision made for them, also what number of labourers and horses will be necessary? Errors are so much more easy to avoid than to correct afterwards, that I am anxious to be well advised before I begin. Adieu, Yours affectionately.