The
revisal of the Congressional intelligence contained in your letters,
makes me regret the loss of it on your departure. I feel, too, the
want of a person there to whose discretion I can trust confidential
communications, and on whose friendship I can rely against the unjust
designs of malevolence. I have no reason to suppose I have enemies in
Congress; yet it is too possible, to be without that fear. Some
symptoms make me suspect, that my proceedings to redress the abusive
administration of tobacco by the Farmers General have indisposed towards
me a powerful person in Philadelphia, who was profiting from that abuse.
An expression in the enclosed letter of M. de Calonne, would seem to
imply, that I had asked the abolition of Mr. Morris's contract. I never
did. On the contrary, I always observed to them, that it would be unjust
to annul that contract. I was led to this, by principles both of justice
and interest. Of interest, because that contract would keep up the price
of tobacco here to thirty-four, thirty-six, and thirty-eight livres,
from which it will fall when it shall no longer have that support.
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