RETIREMENT
/ DESIRE FOR
I leave to others the sublime delights of
riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep and a warmer
berth below it, encircled with the society of my neighbors, friends,
and fellow laborers of the earth, rather than with spies and
sycophants. Still, I shall value highly the share I may have had in
the late vote, as a measure of the share I hold in the esteem of my
fellow citizens. In this point of view, a few votes less are but
little sensible, while a few more would have been in their effect
very sensible and oppressive to me. I have no ambition to govern
men. It is a painful and thankless office. |
John
Adams
28 Dec 1796 |
RETIREMENT
/ DESIRE FOR
You have seen my name lately tacked to so much
of eulogy and of abuse, that I dare say you hardly thought it meant
your old acquaintance of '76. In truth, I did not know myself under
the pens either of my friends or foes. It is unfortunate for our
peace, that unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not
the power to heal. These are hard wages for the services of all the
active and healthy years of one's life. I had retired after five and
twenty years of constant occupation in public affairs, and total
abandonment of my own. I retired much poorer than when I entered the
public service, and desired nothing but rest and oblivion. My name,
however, was again brought forward, without concert or expectation
on my part; (on my salvation I declare it). I do not as yet know the
result, as a matter of fact; for in my retired canton we have
nothing later from Philadelphia than of the second week of this
month. Yet I have never one moment doubted the result. I knew it was
impossible Mr. Adams should lose a vote north of the Delaware, and
that the free and moral agency of the South would furnish him an
abundant supplement. On principles of public respect I should not
have refused; but I protest before my God, that I shall, from the
bottom of my heart, rejoice at escaping. I know well that no man
will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him
into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any
other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of
torment and hatred. I shall highly value, indeed, the share which I
may have had in the late vote, as an evidence of the share I hold in
the esteem of my countrymen. But in this point of view, a few votes
more or less will be little sensible, and in every other, the minor
will be preferred by me to the major vote. I have no ambition to
govern men; no passion which would lead me to delight to ride in a
storm. Flumina amo, sylvasque, inglorius. My attachment to
my home has enabled me to make the calculation with rigor, perhaps
with partiality, to the issue which keeps me there. The newspapers
will permit me to plant my corn, peas, etc., in hills or drills as I
please (and my oranges, by-the-bye, when you send them), while our
eastern friend will be struggling with the storm which is gathering
over us; perhaps be shipwrecked in it. This is certainly not a
moment to covet the helm. |
Edward
Rutledge
27 Dec 1796 |
RETIREMENT
/ DESIRE FOR
It seems, from what we hear of the votes at the
election, that you may see me in Philadelphia about the beginning of
March, exactly in that character which, if I were to reappear at
Philadelphia, I would prefer to all others; for I change the
sentiment of Clorinda to "L'Alte temo, l'humile non sdegno."
I have no inclination to govern men. I should have no views of my
own in doing it; and as to those of the governed, I had rather that
their disappointment (which must always happen) should be pointed to
any other cause, real or supposed, than to myself. I value the late
vote highly; but it is only as the index of the place I hold in the
esteem of my fellow-citizens. In this point of view, the difference
between sixty-eight and seventy-one votes is little sensible, and
still less that between the real vote, which was sixty-nine and
seventy; because one real elector in Pennsylvania was excluded from
voting by the miscarriage of the votes, and one who was not an
elector was admitted to vote. My farm, my family, my books and my
building, give me much more pleasure than any public office would,
and, especially, one which would keep me constantly from them. I had
hoped, when you were here, to have finished the walls of my house in
the autumn, and to have covered it early in winter. But we did not
finish them at all. I have to resume the work, therefore, in the
spring, and to take off the roof of the old part during the summer,
to cover the whole. This will render it necessary for me to make a
very short stay in Philadelphia, should the late vote have given me
any public duty there. My visit there will be merely out of respect
to the public, and to the new President. |
Mr.
Volney
8 Jan 1797 |
RETIREMENT
/ FROM PRESIDENCY
It has been a source of great pain to me, to
have met with so many among our opponents, who had not the
liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition;
who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his
political opinions. I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man
whose political principles have any decided character, and who has
energy enough to give them effect, must always expect to encounter
political hostility from those of adverse principles. But I came to
the government under circumstances calculated to generate peculiar
acrimony. …I became of course the butt of everything which
reason, ridicule, malice and falsehood could supply. They have
concentrated all their hatred on me, till they have really persuaded
themselves, that I am the sole source of all their imaginary evils.
I hope, therefore, that my retirement will abate some of their
disaffection to the government of their country. |
Richard
M. Johnson
10 Mar 1808 |
RETIREMENT
/ FROM PRESIDENCY
Within a few days I retire to my family, my
books and farms; and having gained the harbor myself, I shall look
on my friends still buffeting the storm with anxiety indeed, but not
with envy. Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such
relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power. Nature
intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them
my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have
lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to
commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. I thank
God for the opportunity of retiring from them without censure, and
carrying with me the most consoling proofs of public approbation. I
leave everything in the hands of men so able to take care of them,
that if we are destined to meet misfortunes, it will be because no
human wisdom could avert them. |
Pierre
Samuel Dupont de Nemours
2 Mar 1809 |
RETIREMENT
/ FROM PRESIDENCY
I have rarely written to you; never but by safe
conveyances; and avoiding everything political, lest coming from one
in the station I then held, it might be imputed injuriously to our
country, or perhaps even excite jealousy of you. Hence my letters
were necessarily dry. Retired now from public concerns, totally
unconnected with them, and avoiding all curiosity about what is done
or intended, what I say is from myself only, the workings of my own
mind, imputable to nobody else.
Now a word as to myself. I am retired to Monticello, where, in the
bosom of my family, and surrounded by my books, I enjoy a repose to
which I have been long a stranger. My mornings are devoted to
correspondence. From breakfast to dinner, I am in my shops, my
garden, or on horseback among my farms; from dinner to dark, I give
to society and recreation with my neighbors and friends; and from
candle light to early bed-time, I read. My health is perfect; and my
strength considerably reinforced by the activity of the course I
pursue; perhaps it is as great as usually falls to the lot of near
sixty-seven years of age. I talk of ploughs and harrows, of seeding
and harvesting, with my neighbors, and of politics too, if they
choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens,
and feel, at length, the blessings of being free to say and do what
I please, without being responsible for it to any mortal. A part of
my occupation, and by no means the least pleasing, is the direction
of the studies of such young men as ask it. They place themselves in
the neighboring village, and have the use of my library and counsel,
and make a part of my society. In advising the course of their
reading, I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main
objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. So that
coming to bear a share in the councils and government of their
country, they will keep ever in view the sole objects of all
legitimate government. |
Thaddeus
Kosciusko
26 Feb 1810 |
RETIREMENT
/ SECRETARY OF STATE
Having had the honor of communicating to you in
my letter of the last of July, my purpose of returning from the
office of Secretary of State, at the end of the month of September,
you were pleased, for particular reasons, to wish its postponement
to the close of the year. That term being now arrived, and my
propensities to retirement becoming daily more and more
irresistible, I now take the liberty of resigning the office into
your hands. Be pleased to accept with it my sincere thanks for all
the indulgences which you have been so good as to exercise towards
me in the discharge of its duties. Conscious that my need of them
has been great, I have still ever found them greater, without any
other claim on my part, than a firm pursuit of what has appeared to
me to be right, and a thorough disdain of all means which were not
as open and honorable, as their object was pure. I carry into my
retirement a lively sense of your goodness, and shall continue
gratefully to remember it. With very sincere prayers for your life,
health and tranquillity, I pray you to accept the homage of the
great and constant respect and attachment with which I have the
honor to be, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant.
|
George
Washington
31 Dec 1793 |
RETIREMENT
/ SECRETARY OF STATE
I am to thank you for the book you were so good
as to transmit me, as well as the letter covering it, and your
felicitations On my present quiet. The difference of my present and
past situation is such as to leave me nothing to regret, but that my
retirement has been postponed four years too long. The principles on
which I calculated the value of life, are entirely in favor of my
present course. I return to farming with an ardor which I scarcely
knew in my youth, and which has got the better entirely of my love
of study. Instead of writing ten or twelve letters a day, which I
have been in the habit of doing as a thing of course, I put off
answering my letters now, farmer-like, till a rainy day, and then
find them sometimes postponed by other necessary occupations.
|
George
Washington
25 Apr 1794 |
REVOLUTIONS
Your letter of August the 15th was received in
due time, and with the welcome of everything which comes from you.
With its opinions on the difficulties of revolutions from despotism
to freedom, I very much concur. The generation which commences a
revolution rarely completes it. Habituated from their infancy to
passive submission of body and mind to their kings and priests, they
are not qualified when called on to think and provide for
themselves; and their inexperience, their ignorance and bigotry make
them instruments often, in the hands of the Bonapartes and
Iturbides, to defeat their own rights and purposes. This is the
present situation of Europe and Spanish America. But it is not
desperate. The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of
printing, has eminently changed the condition of the world. As yet,
that light has dawned on the middling classes only of the men in
Europe. The kings and the rabble, of equal ignorance, have not yet
received its rays; but it continues to spread, and while printing is
preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his course.
A first attempt to recover the right of self-government may fail, so
may a second, a third, etc. But as a younger and more instructed
race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a
fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent one of the ever renewed attempts
will ultimately succeed. |
John
Adams
4 Sep 1823 |
ROBESPIERRE
Robespierre met the fate, and his memory the
execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and
perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys the
poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the syncophants even of
science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will
be consigned; and the day will come when a just posterity will give
to their hero the only preeminence he has earned, that of having
been the greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of
his military life has not consigned a million of human beings to
death, to poverty and wretchedness! What field in Europe may not
raise a monument of the murders, the burnings, the desolations, the
famines and miseries it has witnessed from him! And all this to
acquire a reputation which Cartouche attained with less injury to
mankind, of being fearless of God or man. |
Madame
La Baronne De Stael-Holstein
24 May 1813 |
ROMAN
EMPIRE / CICERO'S WRITING
I have been amusing myself latterly with
reading the voluminous letters of Cicero. They certainly breathe the
purest effusions of an exalted patriot, while the parricide Caesar
is lost in odious contrast. When the enthusiasm, however, kindled by
Cicero's pen and principles, subsides into cool reflection, I ask
myself, what was that government which the virtues of Cicero were so
zealous to restore, and the ambition of Caesar to subvert? And if
Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what
could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power, have done to
lead his fellow citizens into good government? I do not say to restore
it, because they never had it, from the rape of the Sabines to the
ravages of the Caesars. If their people indeed had been, like
ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would
be obvious. "Restore independence to all your foreign
conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome,
consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will."
But steeped in corruption, vice and venality, as the whole nation
was (and nobody had done more than Caesar to corrupt it), what could
even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done, had it been referred to them to
establish a good government for their country? They had no ideas of
government themselves, but of their degenerate Senate, nor the
people of liberty, but of the factious opposition of their tribunes.
They had afterwards their Tituses, their Trajans and Antoninuses,
who had the will to make them happy, and the power to mold their
government into a good and permanent form. But it would seem as if
they could not see their way clearly to do it. No government can
continue good, but under the control of the people; and their people
were so demoralized and depraved, as to be incapable of exercising a
wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken up ab
incunabulis. Their minds were to be informed by education what
is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue, and
deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments,
proportioned indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth
as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in
one false consequence after another, in endless succession. These
are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for
the structure of order and good government. But this would have been
an operation of a generation or two, at least, within which period
would have succeeded many Neros and Commoduses, who would have
quashed the whole process. I confess then, I can neither see what
Cicero, Cato, and Brutus, united and uncontrolled, could have
devised to lead their people into good government, nor how this
enigma can be solved, nor how further shown why it has been the fate
of that delightful country never to have known, to this day, and
through a course of five and twenty hundred years, the history of
which we possess, one single day of free and rational government.
Your intimacy with their history, ancient, middle and modern, your
familiarity with the improvements in the science of government at
this time, will enable you, if anybody, to go back with our
principles and opinions to the times of Cicero, Cato, and Brutus,
and tell us by what process these great and virtuous men could have
led so unenlightened and vitiated a people into freedom and good
government, et eris mihi magnus Apollo. Cura ut valeas, et tibi
persuadeas carissimum te mihi esse. |
John
Adams
10 Dec 1819 |
RUSH,
BENJAMIN / MEMORIAL
Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone,
my dear Sir, another of the co-signers of the Independence 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 believe we are under half a dozen at
present; I mean the signers of the Declaration. Yourself, Gerry,
Carroll, and myself, are all I know to be living. I am the only one
south of the Potomac. Is Robert Treat Payne, or Floyd living? It is
long since I heard of them, and yet I do not recollect to have heard
of their deaths. |
John
Adams
27 May 1813 |
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