Your favour of the 8th instt conveys very pleasing information, and I feel obliged by the communication.

Although you did not give your letter the stamp of privacy, I did not think myself at liberty to mention the purport of it to some good Federal characters who were dining with me at the time I received it, and who would have thought it the best Desert I could have offered.1

Hence forward, I will consider your letters to me, in three distinct points of view; and I mention it now, that I may commit no error hereafter.

First, such communications as you may conceive proper to make to me, alone, and mark confidential, shall go no farther; those marked private, I may, occasionally, impart their contents to well disposed characters; and those without either, will leave me unrestrained.2 With very great esteem & regard—I am always—Yr Affecte