Voltaire encourages the recipient to read a letter from Turgot, Contrôleur général des Finances to Louis XVI concerning the 30,000 pounds that had been set as the price for the Pays de Gex’s future immunity from taxation. Voltaire notes that Turgot’s letter shows he fought bitterly for this figure to be reduced and expresses his annoyance that the recipient did not keep him informed of their own negotiations over this price, negotiations Voltaire felt had jeopardised his own attempts to reduce the sum. He then turns to salt, a commodity that had been proposed as an alternative to taxation, stating that this idea had never come to fruition.

Voltaire writes that he places in the recipient’s hands a small act of atonement for the breaches he has caused and that he made a great deal larger before the end of the year. He adds that it is no easy thing to build a city when one loses thirty thousand francs on the ship Carnatic, and speculates that the recipient lost something there too. He ends by saying that he is far more grieved to have lost Monsieur Turgot.