| Description | ("No. 3." Docketed 25 Feb. in error, and therefore numbered after No. 2 below.)
Paris, 21st February 1791.
Dear Sir!
Having been detained at Calais for two days, I intended to have writen sooner but arrived only here on Friday ; however, I am happy to say, all in good time. There is no rioting; rather can I observe much misery in this town. The playhouses are as full as ever and the streets swarm as usual with carriages. Many excellent and salutary decrees have passed these few days past: one abolishing all corporations throughout the kingdom, the other on Saturday morning allowing the free entry and abolishing all imports and duties throughout all the towns in the interior parts of the whole kingdom; you may easily imagine what an encouragement this will give to the activity of the internal commerce.
Perrier, I was informed yesterday, has just now established a canon-foundry here, where small field-pieces are cast and bored for the use of the different battallions of the National Guard. The National Assembly have decreed to prepare two vessels for a voyage round the world and to endeavour at the same time to obtain some account of Mr. Peyrouse, who is supposed to be lost, or cast on one or other of the islands in the Southern Ocean. I have not yet been able to inform myself about your maps, whether I can get them compleated or not, but will do it by the first opportunity. Being pressed by the post, I have only time to add that I am always, with esteem, your most obedient servant,
F. Swediaur
PS. Your parcel for Messrs. Becomois has been forwarded from Paris to Nantes the 17th January, and must have been delivered there safely the 28th of the same month. I have just time to mention, that I received this moment your letter of the 14th February, and the other from Prescot.
[The following passage was written with sympathetic ink.]
My whole future correspondence will be with this solution of cobalt, and it will be best to use the same for our future correspondence; especially please to use a fine pen.
Mirabeau is the soul of Comittee appointed for the coinage; the Bishop is a weak and only a secondary man. Without Mirabeau nothing can be done; it is looky that he is the most capable and enlightened man of the assembly to understand and enter into a plan. I wrote him a letter on Saturday, but he was out of town and only expected to return last night, if so, I shall have an answer and an appointment from him to-morrow; the result of which you shall receive by the post of Thursday next. But M. is poor and I therefore think it necessary that we should make a genteel offer if we succeed; mention to what length I may go, without delay. I have not delivered your letter to van der Linder, because, 1st, I think it best to do myself what I can, at least to try, than to put myself under any other man's obligation, for a thing which I may perhaps, at least to a certain point, affectuate myself. Secondly, because I did not chuse to strike out the line in your letter to him where you ask and offer him to take a share in the undertaking, without previous consent. This, however, is the more necessary, because there is no hurry to make this offer, and it is more easy to make such offers than to retract them, which we might perhaps be obliged to do if Mirabeau or any other person of credit and influence were to propose us some other person. Perhaps it will also be more prudent to engage with a Frenchman than with a foreigner. I have for the same reason avoided to see Pradeaux; as to the Monnerons, I think it equally prudent not to speak as yet. The following is the account I obtained from a friend whom I can trust, and who is a member of the National Assembly: There are three brothers; none of them is either merchant or banker; all three have been in the East Indies and have made their fortune there by employing the East India Company's or the Government's money in speculations . . . own interest; these speculations have turned out looky for them and each of them has made a fortune, especially Louis, who was agent of the Company at the Cape of Good Hope, and on hs return married a very rich woman at l'Orient . He is member of the National Assembly for P. . . and is known for his activity and abilities, is rekoned to be worth about a million of livres. The two other brothers are likewise men of activity, one of them known under the name of Monneron d'. . . in Vivarais; he is also a member of the National Assemby for Vivarais, and his brother Pierre is his suppleant. Louis and Pierre are generally here, but the other is mostly in Vivarois. They are now thought to be of a caracter good enough. I shall see what Mirabeau thinks of them after I have had a conversation with him; I shall wait on the Bishop.
Do not be afraid, I shall not compromise myself concerning Droz, but I am sorry to see you as if bewitched by this scoundrel; let him go whenever he pleases, but give him not a single farthing more, except he fulfills what he . . . to do; every body will think you guilty-that is to say, every body who will hear that you gave him money [will] think that he communicated some important secrets in the art of coining for which you did not . . . him payment, and if your affair should ever come before a court of law you will be much blamed for having done so. I am of Mr. Loggins' opinion that [the] safest way to set a rascal at defiance is to let him go where he pleases but give him no money, except perhaps 20 or 25 guineas, which he may . . . for his passage, but you should not know . . . much about to know what he intends to do with this money. Believe me, I am not in the least afraid of . . . here and find easily . . . concerning him . . .
There has been a good number of papers published on coinage. Mirabeau's is by far the first; shall I send it you, together with van der Linder's description of the coining mill in the Mint here, by the post or by the diligence? Shall I strike out the line in your letter to van der Linder? then I think it less exceptionable to deliver it to him. I expect your answer by the return of the post. |