P. S. The original of the report on the inauguration of the bust of the Marquis de La Fayette accompanies this. TO WILLIAM HAY. PARIS, August 4, 1787. SIR,--I am now to acknowledge the receipt of your two favors of April 26, and May 3. I have forwarded, by a vessel lately sailed from Havre to New York, a box marked W. H., containing the livraisons of the Encyclopedie subsequent to those Dr. Currie has delivered you, to the 22d inclusive. They are sent to the care of Mr. Madison at Congress, who will forward the box to you. There is in it, also, the same livraisons to Colonel Monroe. I will continue to forward them once or twice a year, as they come out. I have stated in a letter to Dr. Currie the cost and expenses of the first twenty-two livraisons, to enable yourself and himself to settle. The future shall be charged to you or him, as your agreement shall be. It is really a most valuable work, and almost supplies the place of a library. I receive from too many quarters the account of the distresses of my countrymen to doubt their truth--distresses brought on themselves by a feebleness of mind which calculates very illy its own happiness. It is a miserable arithmetic which makes any single privation whatever so painful as a total privation of everything which must necessarily follow the living so far beyond our income. What is to extricate us I know not, whether law, or loss of credit. If the sources of the former are corrupted, so as to prevent justice, the latter must supply its place, leave us possessed of our infamous gains, but prevent all future ones of the same character.