[[pg 87] [Docket: [undecipherable] / Jany. 21. 1791 / wth Bill concerning / [undecipherable] at [undecipherable]]] [V. (6.] D'r Sir/ I send you the draft of a Bill for regulating the [underline: Medical Establishment] (I avoid purposely the term [underline: department] which I would reserve for the great branches of Administrations) — You will see that nothing but an organisation with a general outline of duty is provided for. Detail of regulations will properly come from the President and the Departments, and the less these are legislated upon in such cases, the better — when fixed by law, they cannot be varied as experience advises. — This particular establishment, is one to the right [undecipherable: probable reading "partitioning"] of which I feel myself more than ordinarily incompetent. You mention in one of your letters that by the law of the 16^th of July the appropriation for the augmented army expires at the end of the present session. This is one construction of that law. A different might perhaps be maintained. But be this as it may, you will find by a subsequent act of the same date intitled "An Act making certain appropriations" &c that 900,000 Dollars are there appropriated for the same object without any qualifications — and I take it for granted that whatever money should have been issued from the Treasury for the use of the War Department previous to the end of the session upon the foot of those acts might be expended afterwards by this establishment department without any question about its regularity — Yrs truly A Hamilton James Mc Henry Esq New York Jan'y 21. 1791