Indeed I am to blame. I should have written to you two days earlier, and it is no sufficient justification that I have been interrupted every moment I had set aside to converse with you. My mind has, it is true, been uncommonly taken up and agitated by the question now before Congress. The ground is so extensive, the views and principles of the two parties so fully displayed in the debate, so much yet remains to be said and ideas upon that subject crowd so much upon my mind, that I think it important to speak again, and feel afraid that it will not be in my power to do justice to my own feelings and to the cause in which we are engaged. The subject has the same effect upon many others; it keeps Nicholas and Dr. Jones almost in a fever, and it has actually made Brent very sick. It is not that we expect at present to carry the question; it stands so much on party grounds that we cannot expect at once to break upon their well-organized phalanx; but we must lay the foundation in the minds of the disinterested and moderate part of their own side of the House of a change as to the general policy of our affairs. We must show to the President and his counsellors that we understand fully their principles, and we must publish and expose to the people of America the true grounds upon which both parties act in and out of Congress.... 3d February, 1798. ... Although I had intended not to write till to-morrow, when I will have time to converse more amply with you, yet having a few minutes to spare this morning I thought you would be glad to hear something of myself and of our Congressional dispute which has interrupted our debates on the foreign ministers. As to myself, I am very well and feel in pretty good spirits. I have been so long used to personal abuse from party that I hardly knew I had lately received any till your letter informed me that you had felt on the occasion; but, upon the whole, that circumstance cannot make me unhappy. We have a new acquisition in our family, Mr. and Mrs. Law (she was, you know, Miss Custis), both very agreeable, and I feel quite rejoiced that there should be some female in our circle in order to soften our manners; indeed, the dispute between Griswold and Lyon shows you what asperity has taken place between members of Congress. The facts you now know from the accounts in the papers, the report of the committee, and Lyon's defence in this morning's Aurora. I must only add that there is but little delicacy in the usual conversation of most Connecticut gentlemen; that they have contracted a habit of saying very hard things, and that considering Lyon as a low-life fellow they were under no restraint in regard to him. No man can blame Lyon for having resented the insult. All must agree in reprobating the mode he selected to show his resentment, and the place where the act was committed. As two-thirds are necessary to expel, he will not, I believe, be expelled, but probably be reprimanded at the bar by the Speaker....