SIR,--I am now to acknowledge the receipt of the letter you did me the honor to write me on the 21st of January, together with the book on the culture of the olive tree. This is a precious present to me, and I pray you to accept my thanks for it. I am just gratified by letters from South Carolina, which inform me that in consequence of the information I had given them on the subject of the olive tree, and the probability of its succeeding with them, several rich individuals propose to begin its culture there. This will not interfere with the commerce of France, because she imports much more oil than she exports, and because the consumption of oil in the United States at present, is so inconsiderable, that should their demand be totally withdrawn at the European market, and supplied at home, it will produce no sensible effect in Europe. We can never produce that article in very great quantity, because it happens that in our two southernmost States, where only the climate is adapted to the olive, the soil is so generally rich as to be unfit for that tree, and proper for other productions of more immediate profit. I am to thank you, also, for the raisins of Smyrna, without seed, which I received from you through Mr. Grand. * * * * * TO MONSIEUR TROUCHIN. PARIS, February 26, 1788. SIR,--I should with great cheerfulness have done anything I could for the manufacturers of Bourges, had anything been in my power. To this I should have been induced by justice to them, and a desire to serve whomsoever you befriend. This company is part of a great mass of creditors to whom the United States contracted debts during the late war. Those States, like others, are not able to pay immediately all the debts which the war brought on them; but they are proceeding rapidly in that payment, and will, perhaps, get through it more speedily than any nation ever did before.