RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “His Excellency / The Vice Pr[. . .] / of the / Un[. . . .].” Some loss of text due to a torn manuscript.

Previously, U.S. consuls were nominated from the ranks of popular merchants, who saw foreign postings as lucrative business ventures to offset the heavy losses of the Anglo-American trade. But the existing practice grew problematic as government support grew for a paid, professional, and well-trained cadre of consuls. Even as members considered a bill to create that institution, they heard a petition from Philippe André Joseph de Létombe, the French consul at Boston, who had tangled with Massachusetts authorities and waged a war in the press that drew in JA’s friend James Lovell.

Meanwhile, public attitudes toward French consuls soured as Americans questioned the need for salaries in light of their access to private profit and sought a clearer definition of consular powers. As it stood, the Constitution awarded the U.S. Supreme Court original jurisdiction in cases involving consuls. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson became a loud critic of the consular service, claiming that it had sprung from “times of barbarism and might well have ended with them.” Such popular censure, along with Létombe’s public scuffle with authorities in Boston, ignited a Senate debate on 24 March that stretched into the fall, for which see Jefferson’s 26 Nov. letter, and note 1, below. The debate prompted Otis to send this rare request to JA, whose potential revisions have not been found (vol. 20:191, 406; Jefferson, Papers , 19:303–304, 306–309).