MY DEAR FRIEND,--I found on my arrival here a letter from Geneva, dated the last spring, which announced to me the death of my grandfather, which has happened more than one year ago, and which was followed a short time after by that of my aunt,--his only daughter. My grandmother, worn out by age and disorders, had, happily perhaps for herself, fell in a state of insensibility bordering upon childhood, which rendered those losses less painful to her and my presence altogether useless to her, as she would not be able to derive much comfort from it and had preserved but very faint ideas of me. Yet it may perhaps be necessary that in order finally to settle my business I should go over there, but I have resolved not to go the ensuing summer, so that I will have time to speak to you more largely on the subject. My grandfather has left but a small landed estate, much encumbered with debts. That and the settlement of what may be my share of the West India inheritance of my Amsterdam relation would be the reasons that might oblige me to go; the pleasure to see once more my respectable mother would perhaps be sufficient to induce me to take that trip, was it not that I think she would grieve more at seeing me setting off again for this country than she possibly can now at my absence.... [Sidenote: 1793.] We have not yet done any business here; we are generally blamed, by even our friends, for the violence of our resolutions at Pittsburg, and they have undoubtedly tended to render the excise law more popular than it was before. It is not perhaps a bad sign on the whole in a free country that the laws should be so much respected as to render even the appearance of an illegal opposition to a bad law obnoxious to the people at large, although I am still fully convinced that there was nothing illegal in our measures, and that the whole that can be said of them is that they were violent and impolitic. Two bills have been found in the federal court against Alexander Beer and ---- Carr, of the town of Washington, as connected with the riot there. I believe them to be innocent, and I think the precedent a very dangerous one to drag people at such a distance in order to be tried on governmental prosecutions. I wish, therefore, they may keep out of the way and not be found when the marshal will go to serve the writ; but, at all events, I hope the people will not suffer themselves to be so far governed by their passions as to offer any insult to the officer, as nothing could be more hurtful to our cause, and indeed to the cause of liberty in general. It must also be remembered that he is a man who did not accept the office with a view of hurting our western country, but that mere accident obliges him to go there in the discharge of the duties of his office.... GALLATIN TO THOMAS CLARE. PHILADELPHIA, March 9, 1793.