Before these startling changes were fully understood by either party, the Fifth Congress came to its end, on the 4th March, 1799, and Mr. Gallatin at once set out for Fayette to rejoin his wife and struggle with the financial difficulties that now perplexed his mind. After long hesitation, he had taken on the part of his firm a contract for supplying arms to the State of Pennsylvania. Like most of his financial undertakings, this became a source of loss rather than of profit, and it was probably fortunate that his acceptance of the Treasury Department in 1801 obliged him to dissolve his partnership and wind up its affairs. GALLATIN TO HIS WIFE. PHILADELPHIA, 7th December, 1798. ... Once more I am fixed at Marache's, and write you from the fire-corner in my old front room. I wrote you a few lines from Lancaster, which I hope you have received. I could not make my letter any longer, and it was with difficulty I could even write at all. I arrived there after dark, mistook the tavern I intended to have lodged at, and took my lodgings at an old German Tory who happened to know me. He was a little tipsy, followed me to my room where I was writing, in order to have some political conversation with me, and was, at the time whilst I was writing my letter to you, reading me a lecture to prove to me that the Hessian fly was improperly so called, that Porcupine had proven it to be of French extraction, and that it was a just cause of war against that nation. Saturday night I lodged comfortably at Downingstown, where many kind inquiries were made about you. The weather changed during the night, and Sunday we had almost all day a cold, chilling rain. William Findley joined me in the morning at Downing's, and we made shift to go that evening as far as Buck. Monday was a fine day, and at nine o'clock I was at breakfast in Marache's parlor with Mr. Langdon, who arrived a few minutes after me. Havens joined us the same day, as did Elmendorf the following and Nicholas yesterday. Dr. Jones is not yet in town.... The account of my business in Europe is as followeth: 1st. They have sold my grandfather's estate and paid all his debts, which (on account of losses of rents, &c.) amounted to about 200 dollars more than what they sold the estate for. The price it sold for is less than one-half of what it was worth before the French revolution. But my orders were positive to sell and to pay all the debts, although they amounted to more than the proceeds of the estate, in order to do full honor to the memory of my parents. Thus their inheritance has cost me 200 dollars, instead of leaving me 6000 as they expected, but I could not have reconciled it to my feelings that any individual had lost a single half-penny either by me or by them. 2d. My annuities in France, amounting to about 3000 livres a year (555 dollars), have in four years produced 369 livres cash (not quite 80 dollars), and the principal,