I shall do my best in executing the third instruction, respecting our claim upon Denmark. I have written to London to obtain if possible an account of the sums insured upon the ships delivered up, as such an account may be some guide in the valuation of the prizes.
A Captain Williams, formerly in the British service, and employed upon the lakes, has given me a paper containing information of the state of the back country. As those informations may possibly be of some use, I send herewith the paper. Mr Carmichael has sent me the accounts of the money transactions at Madrid. As soon as Mr Jay returns they will be examined.
Be pleased to present my dutiful respects to Congress, and assure them of my most faithful services.
With great esteem and regard I have the honor to be, &c.
The remissness of our people in paying taxes is highly blameable, the unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see in some resolutions of town meetings, a remonstrance against giving Congress a power to take, as they call it, _the people's money_ out of their pockets, though only to pay the interest and principal of debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the point. Money justly due from the people is their creditor's money, and no longer the money of the people, who if they withhold it should be compelled to pay by some law. All property indeed, except the savage's temporary cabin, his bow, his matchuat, and other little acquisitions absolutely necessary for his subsistence, seems to me to be the creature of public convention. Hence the public has the right of regulating descents, and all other conveyances of property, and even of limiting the quantity and uses of it. All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual, and the propagation of the species, is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who by their laws have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it whenever the welfare of the public shall desire such disposition. He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire and live among the savages. He can have no right to the benefits of society, who will not pay his club towards the support of it.
