1. Jefferson’s letter to William Short, 31 Aug. 1790, is in Boyd, Jefferson Papers, description begins Julian P. Boyd et al., eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. 41 vols. to date. Princeton, N.J., 1950–. description ends 17:477–78.

2. Hamilton’s instructions to Short, 1 Sept. 1790, enclosed copies of the acts of 4 and 12 Aug. 1790 concerning the retirement of the United States foreign and domestic debts and the floating of new loans abroad. Hamilton ordered Short to proceed from Paris to Amsterdam for a period of at least three months to investigate the market for United States loans in Holland and to make a judgment of the qualifications and resources of Willink, Van Staphorst & Hubbard, the current United States bankers in Amsterdam. “You are accordingly to borrow on the best terms which shall be found practicable within the limitations prescribed by Law, such sum or sums as shall be sufficient to discharge as well all installments or parts of the principal of the foreign debt, which now are due or shall become payable to the end of the year One thousand seven hundred and ninety one, as all interest and arrears of interest which now are or shall become due in respect to the said debt to the same end of the year One thousand seven hundred and ninety one. But you shall not extend the amount of the loans which you shall make or cause to be made beyond the sum which shall be requisite for that purpose unless it can be done upon terms more advantageous to the United States than those upon which the residue of the said debt shall stand or be.” Short was further instructed not to allow the bankers to accept “unusual or extraordinary premiums, to obtain loans upon a nominal interest of five per Cent as well because it is a pernicious mode of borrowing, as because it would be an evasion of the law, is inadmissible.” Hamilton wrote that Short should “not pass unnoticed the circumstance, that the laws contain actual appropriations of very adequate funds for the payment of interest upon the sums you shall borrow. The first Act, indeed, after reserving six hundred thousand Dollars for the support of Government, gives a priority in payment to the for⟨eign⟩ debt out of revenues which are calculated upon the estimate of a much larger product. You may confidently assert, that the duties hitherto have produced at the rate of One Million eight hundred thousand Dollars; which alone would leave twelve hundred thousand Dollars, as the fund out of which the interest on your loan would be payable. But the augmentations which have been made in the rates are computed to be capable of affording an addition of Eight hundred thousand Dollars; and I believe the computation to be well founded” (DLC: William Short Papers; see also Syrett, Hamilton Papers, description begins Harold C. Syrett et al., eds. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. 27 vols. New York, 1961–87. description ends 7:6–14).

3. GW replied to Hamilton from Mount Vernon on 18 Sept. 1790: “Your letter dated the 3d inst. enclosing a copy of the instructions you have forwarded to Mr Short, came to my hands by the mail of Wednesday.

“The appointment of that gentleman to negotiate the Loans in Holland, and the Instructions you have given for his government, meet my approbation—The first as no inconvenience it is conceived will result from his absence from Paris, is a measure of œconomy; the latter, are full and cautionary; and under his Agency will, it is to be hoped, be satisfactorily executed” (LB, DLC:GW).