Monticello, September 17, 1806.

Dear Sir,

Yours of August the 7th, from Liberty, never got to my hands till the
9th instant. About the same time, I received the Enquirer in which
Decius was so judiciously answered. The writer of that paper observed,
that the matter of Decius consisted, first of facts; secondly, of
inferences from these facts: that he was not well enough informed to
affirm or deny his facts, and he therefore examines his inferences,
and in a very masterly manner shows that even were his facts true, the
reasonable inferences from them are very different from those drawn by
Decius. But his facts are far from truth, and should be corrected. It
happened that Mr. Madison and General Dearborn were here when I received
your letter. I therefore, with them, took up Decius and read him
deliberately; and our memories aided one another in correcting his bold
and unauthorized assertions. I shall note the most material of them in
the order of the paper.

1. It is grossly false that our ministers, as is said in a note,
had proposed to surrender our claims to compensation for Spanish
spoliations, or even for French. Their instructions were to make no
treaty in which Spanish spoliations were not provided for; and although
they were permitted to be silent as to French spoliations carried into
Spanish ports, they were not expressly to abandon even them. 2. It is
not true that our ministers, in agreeing to establish the Colorado as
our western boundary, had been obliged to exceed the authority of their
instructions. Although we considered our title good as far as the
Rio Bravo, yet in proportion to what they could obtain east of the