I shall be happy to receive your corrections of these ideas as I have found in the course of our joint services that I think right when I think with you.
I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens & not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, & that Missionaries of that description from hence would avail...
Hamilton is ill of the fever as is said. he had two physicians out at his house the night before last. his family think him in danger, & he puts himself so by his excessive alarm. he had been miserable several days before from a firm persuasion he should catch it. a man as timid as he is on...
I have the same good opinion of mr Adams which I ever had. I know him to be an honest man, an able one with his pen, and he was a powerful advocate on the floor of Congress. he has been alienated from me by belief in the wretched forgeries lying suggestions, contrived for electioneering purposes,...
mr Henry’s ravenous avarice, the only passion paramount to his love of popularity. the facts I have heard on that subject are not within my own knolege, & ought not to be hazarded but on better testimony than I possess.
you probably do not know mr Madison personally, or at least intimately as I do. I have known him from 1779. when he first came into the public councils; and from three & thirty years trial, I can say conscientiously that...
Genl Washington did not harbour one principle of federalism. he was neither an Angloman, a monarchist nor a Separatist. he sincerely wished the people to have as much self-government as they were competent to exercise themselves. the only point in which he and I ever differed in opinion was that...
Another of our friends of 76. is gone, my dear Sir, another of the Co-signers of the independance of our country. and a better man, than Rush, could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest. we too must go; and that ere long.
I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character it should be in terms like these. His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, tho’ not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon or Locke;...
nobody who knows the President can doubt but that he has honestly done every thing he could to the best of his judgment. and there is no sounder judgment than his. I cannot account for what has happened but by...
I do not entertain your apprehensions for the happiness of our brother Madison in a state of retirement. such a mind as his, fraught with information, and with matter for reflection, can never know ennui. besides, there will always be work enough cut out for him to continue his active usefulness...
“I have made it a rule, said he, whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. when I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice Hatter ... was about to open shop...
When Dr Franklin went to France, on his revolutionary mission, his eminence as a philosopher, his venerable appearance, and the cause on which he was sent, rendered him extremely popular. for all ranks and conditions of men there, entered warmly into the American interest. he was therefore...
I am happy to hear of his good health. I think he will outlive us all, I mean the Declaration-men, altho’ our senior since the death of Colo Floyd. it is a race in which I have no ambition to win. man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness. like that too, if he continues longer...
My father was riding one evening with Mr Jefferson and had been commenting upon the character of George Washington in a tone which elicited the following from Mr Jefferson who stopping his horse and pointing to the heavens exclaimd “Yes Sir, when names now great are gone & forgotten, His ...