Your letter of Novr. 17. having been directed to Petersburg which is very distant from me, was not recd. till yesterday.

I am sorry that I cannot give to it the answer that would be most agreeable. Unwilling as I am to obtrude my private affairs on others, the occasion requires me to say that for a number of years past the drafts of various denominations on my resources, have so far exceeded them, that I have been obliged to part with more than half my productive property; or that I am still subject to paramount demands & under positive engagements, which forbid me to extend the latter. I might add that the University near me, with which I have been closely connected, & in the success of which I feel a strong interest, is labouring under the same wants with those of the Institution at Princeton, and with prospects of aid not less precarious: nor would it be a misapplied reflection that An Institution within the State is more likely to be the resort of those with whom I ought most to sympathise than a distant Institution in another state.

I enclose a note of $20. due on my subscription; which would have been more punctually forwarded had I not hoped for a conveyance other than the Mail. Be so good as to say by a line that it has been received. With respectful Salutations.