To John Adams from Thomas Jefferson, 23 February 1787
From Thomas Jefferson
Paris Feb. 23. 1787.
Dear Sir
The Notables met yesterday. the king opened the assembly with a short speech, wherein he expressed his inclination to consult with them on the affairs of his kingdom, to receive their opinions on the plans he had digested, and to endeavor to imitate the head of his family Henry IV. whose name is so dear to the nation.1 the speech was affectionate. the Guarde des sceaux2 spoke about 20 minutes, complimented the Clergy, the Noblesse, the Magistrates & tiers etats. the Comptroller general3 spoke about an hour. he enumerated the expences necessary to arrange his department when he came to it, he sd̃ his returns had been minutely laid before the king, he took a review of the preceding administrations, & more particularly of mr̃ Neckar’s, he detailed the improvements which had been made, he portrayed the present state of the finances, & sketched the several schemes proposed for their improvement; he spoke on a change in the form of the taxes, the removal of the interior custom houses to the frontiers, provincial administrations & some other objects. the assembly was then divided into Committees. to-day there was to be another grand assembly, the plans more fully explained & referred to the discussion of the Committees. the grand assembly will meet once a week & vote individually.
the propriety of my attending the first audience day of Count Montmorin,4 which will not be till the 27th. retards my departure till then.
I have read your book with infinite satisfaction & improvement. it will do great good in America. it’s learning & it’s good sense will I hope make it an institute for our politicians, old as well as young. there is one opinion in it however, which I will ask you to reconsider, because it appears to me not entirely accurate, & not likely to do good. pa. 362. “Congress is not a legislative, but a diplomatic assembly.”5 separating into parts the whole sovereignty of our states, some of these parts are yeilded to Congress. upon these I should think them both legislative & executive: & that they would have been judiciary also, had not the Confederation required them for certain purposes to appoint a judiciary. it has accordingly been the decision of our courts that the Confederation is a part of the law of the land, & superior in authority to the ordinary laws, because it cannot be altered by the legislature of any one state. I doubt whether they are at all a diplomatic assembly.
on the first news of this work, there were proposals to translate it. fearing it might be murdered in that operation, I endeavored to secure a good translator.6 this is done, & I lend him my copy to translate from. it will be immediately announced to prevent others attempting it.
I am with sincere esteem & respect Dear Sir / your most obedt. / & most humble servt
Th: Jefferson7
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “H. E. / Mr. Adams.”; endorsed: “Mr Jefferson Feb. 23. / ansd. March 1. 1787”; notation by CFA: “not published.” CFA presumably meant that the letter was not published in .
1. In his brief speech welcoming the notables, Louis XVI stated that the assembly’s goal was to effect a series of projects intended for the public good, namely, “To ameliorate the revenues of the State on the one hand, and ensure their perfect liberation by a more equal repartition of imposts on the other; to free commerce from the various shackles which circumscribe its circulation, and to alleviate … the most indigent part of my subjects” (Speech of the French King, to the Assembly of Notables, Held at Versailles the 22d of February, 1787, London, 1787).
Louis XVI hoped to emulate his predecessor Henry IV, who convened the Assembly of Notables at Rouen in 1596 to resolve France’s fiscal woes. Although the assembly accused Henry of royal extravagance and of maintaining a ministerial system that was rife with corruption, it accepted a new tax on goods sold in major French towns (Vincent J. Pitts, Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age, Baltimore, 2009, p. 199, 246).
2. The new keeper of the seals of France was former botanist Chrétien François de Lamoignon (1735–1789), a cousin of the influential jurist Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes. After the assembly, Lamoignon channeled his efforts toward fiscal and judicial reform, dismissing the proposed stamp tax and territorial subvention in favor of a sweeping five-year plan. Working closely with royal advisor Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne (1727–1794), Lamoignon suggested a provocative compromise that prolonged the old tax system, readmitted local parlements to power, and elevated provincial courts to the level of grands balliages in order to expedite the settlement of criminal and civil cases. The apparent victim of a hunting accident, Lamoignon was found shot dead on his country estate in spring 1789 (, p. 256, 263–264, 266–267, 269, 286–287; ).
3. This was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who used the assembly’s sessions to continue his denunciations of predecessor Jacques Necker’s fiscal policies (vol. 18:530–531).
4. Jefferson returned from his 27 Feb. 1787 audience with Armand Marc, Comte de Montmorin de Saint Herem, impressed by the new French foreign minister’s “modesty, the simplicity of his manners, and his dispositions towards us. I promise myself a great deal of satisfaction in doing business with him” (, 11:186).
5. The entire passage, which appears on p. 362–363 of the first volume of JA’s , reads: “The people of America, and their delegates in congress, were of opinion, that a single assembly was every way adequate to the management of all their fœderal concerns; and with very good reason, because congress is not a legislative assembly, nor a representative assembly, but only a diplomatic assembly.” Here, JA referred to the issue of state sovereignty, a question resolved by the later adoption of the U.S. Constitution. See also JA’s reply of 1 March, below.
6. Jefferson proposed a French edition of JA’s Defence to the bookseller Jacques François Froullé, but it was not printed in Paris until 1792 by Jacques Vincent Delacroix, as Défense des constitutions américaines (vol. 18:550).
7. In his next letter to JA, of 28 Feb. 1787, Jefferson enclosed Thomas Barclay’s 10 Feb. letter to the commissioners, above, and requested that JA send a copy to John Jay. Jefferson reported that with the assembly “held to secrecy … little transpires” (, 11:184).