“ of the just and legal right of the U.S. to the property in contest. I say so with more confidence, because your reasoning upon this subject produced this effect upon my own judgment, which was originally very decided against the claim of the U. S., altho’ I never doubted as to your not being responsible to any Individual for that which you had done.

"I wish that in preparing this work for the press you had given a different arrangement to its parts. The chronological order of events which you have pursued, altho’ generally the best where facts alone are the subjects to be discussed, yet by dividing often times weakens the effect of the general argument. Hence more attentive examination will probably be required to judge correctly of the great merit of this little work, than is perhaps to be expected from the mass of readers. And as “the publick” is the forum to which it is addressed, the character of the mass of readers would probably render a different method more desireable. There is nothing which I would wish retrenched, and but little indeed which I could have desired to be added to your pamphlet; even the arrangement of its contents I would not have alter’d, so far as attentive readers are concerned . . .”

Jefferson answered this on June 19: “ Your favor of May 15. came to hand in due time. on the course of the suit of Livingston, I had thought with you that the question of jurisdiction might have been kept in reserve, as a dernier resort, and had suggested to the gentlemen in Richmond the pleading 1. the general issue, which would have tried the question of the public title, very interesting to the city of New Orleans; 2. Justification, which would have tried that of the responsibility of a chief magistrate; and if these were decided unfavorably, to have arrested judgment for want of jurisdiction. yet when I contemplated the immense labor of taking volumes of evidence in N. Orleans, the scenes which had been exhibited in Richmond in a former case wherein unfriendly passions towards myself made a prosecutor of the criminal, and arraigned the government in his place, the same bias in the judge, & pointed in the same direction, and after all that I might have been dragged to still another tribunal, where all would be to go over again, I say, when I contemplated all this, the torpor of years & desire of tranquility made me shrink from this contest of gladiators, and acquiesce with gratification in the course which had relieved me from it. my appeal became easy & quiet, to men at their firesides, in possession of their reason, uninfected by the contagious passions of a crowd . . . ”

Judge Tyler’s copy was also sent on April 19 and acknowledged on May 17. “I receiv’d the favor of your Pamphlet on the Subject of the Beach of New-Orleans, and read it with great delight, in which you still retain the power of turning whatever you touch to gold--Your Streams are brought from so many fountains--like the great Missisippi so strong and irresistible that Livingston and his bold, but corrupt Enterprize, are swept together into the Gulf without hope of redemption . . .”

Jefferson acknowledged Tyler’s letter on June 17: “ Your acceptable letter of May 17. came to hand ten days after date, and I duly estimate your approbation of my rudiments of the case of the Batture. I observe by the papers that Livingston’s suit against the Marshal for the same trespass, came before the federal court of Orleans, on the 24 ^th. of April, on the plea that he was not a citizen of New York, in which character he had sued that he might have the benefit of the same court which had already decided in his favor. a jury found him to be a citizen of New York. a new trial was asked on the ground that the verdict was contrary to evidence, which was to be discussed on the 2 ^d. of May. but after such a verdict by a jury, which confounds all the states, and removes the barriers between federal & state jurisdiction, we have nothing to expect from a court, already committed for the plaintiff. ‘boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem’ has grown into a maxim with the courts. some copies of my statement would get there about a fortnight or three weeks after that, & perhaps before the argument on the main question. my strictures on their usurpation of Chancery jurisdiction were not calculated to throw the bias of the court on the side of the defendant . . . ”