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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO THE SPANISH COMMISSIONERS (JOSEPH JAUDENES AND JOSEPH VIAR) - Thomas Jefferson, The Works, vol. 6 (Correspondence 1789-1792) [1905]

Edition used:

The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 6.

Part of: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO THE SPANISH COMMISSIONERS

(JOSEPH JAUDENES AND JOSEPH VIAR)

j. mss.

Philadelphia Jan 26, 1792.

Gentlemen,

—By your letter of yesterday evening in answer to mine of the morning, I perceive that Don Joseph Jaudenes’s communication verbally had not been understood in the same way by him & myself. How this has happened I cannot conceive. Monsr. de Jaudenes will do me the justice to recollect that when he had made the verbal communication to me I asked his permission to commit it to writing. I did so, read it to him, corrected a phrase or two at his desire to render it exact to his expression, read it to him again, & he approved it. I inclose you a verbal copy of it, being the one dated Dec. 6. This I laid before the President, & it was the basis of our subsequent proceedings. On the 27th of Dec. Don Joseph de Jaudenes, at the city tavern, spoke to me again on the same subject. When I came home in the evening I committed to writing the substance of what he had said, as far as my memory enabled me.

I send you a copy under the date of Dec. 27. but for the exactness of this I cannot undertake with as much certainty as the first. Accordingly you will find my letter of yesterday morning strictly conformable to the note of the first communication. Thus much has been said for my own justification. It remains now that the error be corrected, and that I may set out again on sure ground, I must ask the favor of you to give me in writing the communication intended to be made. Whatever it be, you may be assured that our dispositions to preserve friendship & perfect understanding with his Catholic majesty, as well as to render the exercise of your functions here as pleasing to yourselves as possible, will induce us to receive with great partiality the intimations of your court, and to proceed on them accordingly. I shall suspend doing any thing more on this subject till you favor me with your answer.1

[1 ]See ante, pp. 342, 356.