It was due also to this business venture that Marshall was at last persuaded to break through his rule of declining office and to accept appointment in 1797, together with Pinckney and Gerry, on the famous "X.Y.Z." mission to France. From this single year's employment he obtained nearly $20,000, which, says his biographer, "over and above his expenses," was "three times his annual earnings at the bar"; and the money came just in the nick of time to save the Fairfax investment, for Morris was now bankrupt and in jail. But not less important as a result of his services was the enhanced reputation which Marshall's correspondence with Talleyrand brought him. His return to Philadelphia was a popular triumph, and even Jefferson, temporarily discomfited by the "X.Y.Z." disclosures, found it discreet to go through the form of paying him court--whereby hangs a tale. Jefferson called at Marshall's tavern. Marshall was out. Jefferson thereupon left a card deploring how "unlucky" he had been. Commenting years afterwards upon the occurrence, Marshall remarked that this was one time at least when Jefferson came near telling the truth. Through the warm insistence of Washington, Marshall was finally persuaded in the spring of 1799 to stand as Federalist candidate for Congress in the Richmond district. The expression of his views at this time is significant. A correspondent of an Alexandria newspaper signing himself "Freeholder" put to him a number of questions intended to call forth Marshall's opinions on the issues of the day. In answering a query as to whether he favored an alliance with Great Britain, the candidate declared that the whole of his "politics respecting foreign nations" was "reducible to this single position.... Commercial intercourse with all, but political ties with none." But a more pressing issue on which the public wished information was that furnished by the Alien and Sedition laws, which Marshall had originally criticized on grounds both of expediency and of constitutionality. Now, however, he defended these measures on constitutional grounds, taking the latitudinarian position that "powers necessary for the attainment of all objects which are general in their nature, which interest all America ... would be naturally vested in the Government of the whole," but he declared himself strongly opposed to their renewal. At the same time he denounced the Virginia Resolutions as calculated "to sap the foundations of our Union."