best data possessed, of the quantities of flour, corn, and rice, which, in addition to your internal supplies, may be necessary for the consumption, in any given time, of those parts of your State which habitually depend on importation for these articles. I ask this the more freely, because I presume you must have had such an estimate formed for the government, of your discretion in issuing the preceding certificates, and because it may be so necessary for our future government. I salute you with assurance of great respect and esteem. TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR CLAIBORNE. WASHINGTON, July 17, 1808. SIR,--After writing my letter of the 9th, I received one from Mr. Pitot in the name of the New Orleans Canal Company, which ought to have come with the printed report, stating more fully their views, and more explicitly the way in which we can aid them. They ask specifically that we should lend them $50,000, or take the remaining fourth of their shares now on hand. This last measure is too much out of our policy of not embarking the public in enterprises better managed by individuals, and which might occupy as much of our time as those political duties for which the public functionaries are particularly instituted. Some money could be lent them, but only on an assurance that it would be employed so as to secure the public objects. The first interests of the company will be to bring a practicable navigation from the Lake Pontchartrain through the Bayou St. Jean and Canal de Carondelet to the city, because that entitles them to a toll on the profitable part of the enterprise. But this would answer no object of the government unless it was carried through to the Mississippi, so that our armed vessels drawing five feet water might pass through. Instead therefore of the ground I suggested in my last letter, I would propose to lend them a sum of money on the condition of their applying it entirely to that part of the canal which, beginning at the Mississippi, goes round the city to a junction with the canal of Carondelet; and we may moreover at our own expense erect the locks. The Secretary at War not being here, I cannot propose these or any other terms precisely, but you may more openly than I proposed in my last letter, give these as the general shape of the aid which we contemplate, collect the ideas of individual members, and communicate them to me, so that when I shall have an opportunity of consulting the Secretary at War we may put our proposition in the form most acceptable to them. On this subject I shall wish to hear from you soon.