Very acrimonious altercations are going on between the Spanish Minister
and the executive, and at the Natchez something worse than mere
altercation. If hostilities have not begun there, it has not been
for want of endeavors to bring them on, by our agents. Marshall,
of Kentucky, this day proposed in Senate some amendments to the
constitution. They were barely read just as we were adjourning, and not
a word of explanation given. As far as I caught them in my ear,
they went only to modifications of the elections of President and
Vice-President, by authorizing voters to add the office for which they
name each, and giving to the Senate the decision of a disputed election
of President, and to the Representatives that of Vice-President. But
I am apprehensive I caught the thing imperfectly, and probably
incorrectly. Perhaps this occasion may be taken of proposing again the
Virginia amendments, as also to condemn elections by the legislatures,
themselves to transfer the power of trying impeachments from the Senate
to some better constituted court, &c. &c.
Good tobacco here is thirteen dollars, flour eight dollars and fifty
cents, wheat one dollar and fifty cents, but dull, because only the
millers buy. The river, however, is nearly open, and the merchants will
now come to market and give a spur to the price.
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