measures to insure these by the time they are wanted, and your management of this kind of business, formerly, is known to have been so advantageous, that we should certainly wish to avail ourselves of your services, if they can be obtained conformably to our joint views. But nothing specific can be said until the denouement of our present situation. No inference can be drawn from Monroe's return, (which I dare say will be by the Revenge,) because his return this autumn had been earnestly solicited by him, and agreed to by us. The classification of our militia will be again proposed, on a better plan, and with more probable success. With respect to General Moreau, no one entertains a more cordial esteem for his character than I do, and although our relations with France have rendered it a duty in me not to seek any public manifestation of it, yet were accident to bring us together, I could not be so much wanting to my own sentiments and those of my constituents individually, as to omit a cordial manifestation of it. * * * * * TO MR. JAMES PEMBERTON. WASHINGTON, November 16, 1807. SIR,--Your favor of October 31st has been duly received, and I thank you for the communication of the report of the Committee of Friends. It gives me great satisfaction to see that we are likely to render our Indian neighbors happier in themselves and well affected to us; that the measures we are pursuing are prescribed equally by our duty to them, and by the good of our own country. It is a proof the more of the indissoluble alliance between our duties and interest, which if ever they appear to lead in opposite directions, we may be assured it is from our own defective views. It is evident that your society has begun at the right end for civilizing these people. Habits of industry, easy subsistence, attachment to property, are necessary to prepare their minds for the first elements of science, and afterwards for moral and religious instruction. To begin with the last has ever ended either in effecting nothing, or ingrafting bigotry on ignorance, and setting them to tomahawking and burning old women and others as witches, of which we have seen a commencement among them. There are two circumstances which have enabled us to advance the southern tribes faster than the northern; 1, they are larger, and the agents and instructors therefore can extend their instruction and influence over a much larger surface; 2, the southern tribes can raise cotton, and immediately enter on the process of spinning and weaving, so as to clothe themselves without resorting to the chase. The northern tribes cannot cultivate cotton, nor can they supply its want by raising sheep, because of the number of wolves. I see not how they are to clothe themselves till they shall have destroyed these animals, which will be a work of time. They should make this one of the principal objects of their hunts.