Last evening I received the inclosed letter1 for you from Mr. King. With His dispatches by the Wm. Penn2 I received a copy of the treaty of commerce & navigation between G. Britain & Russia, concluded the 21st of February last.3 There is no provision, that free ships shall make free goods. The articles of contraband are confined to those immediately relating to war, and do not comprehend naval stores & ship timber. But my principal inducement to mention this treaty is, to inform you of a subsequent declaration on the 11th of May, to explain a passage in the 9th article, which says “the subjects of the High Contracting Parties shall not pay higher duties upon the importation & exportation of their merchandize, than are paid by the subjects of other nations:” The declaration is, “that by the words other nations, European nations alone are to be understood.”— This exception must doubtless have been made to enable G. Britain to favour the trade of the United States.

Since Talleyrand has been appointed Minister for foreign affairs, a Major Mountflorence4, Chancellor to our Consul General Skipwith5 (but a very different man from his principal) waited upon him. Talleyrand received him very cordially, enquired politely after General Pinckney, and added, “he hoped soon to have the pleasure of seeing him in Paris.”— Talleyrand has dismissed all the officers in his department, except Mr. Giraudet6 the secretary general, who treated Genl. Pinckney with so much politeness, before he was ordered to leave Paris. Mr. Otto7 & Mr. La Forest8 are both at present employed in that department. Both these persons have been in America, & I presume you will know their characters; tho’ I do not, but from transient information.

Some of our Jacobin papers asserted that Mr. Thos. B. Adams, the President’s son, who in the current year made an excursion from the Hague to Paris, was ordered to leave France. This is not only utterly false, but he was on the contrary treated with distinguished respect. The day before he ^was^ returning, he rec’d a polite invitation to dine with Carnot (the Director) was civilly treated, & urged to endeavour to reconoile the two countries. He was also admitted, & had a seat assigned him, at the ceremony of drawing the lot for the new director. I am very respectfully Sir your obt. servant