apologize for your letters of
introduction to Americans coming here. It is so far from needing apology
on your part, that it calls for thanks on mine. I endeavor to show
civilities to all the Americans who come here, and who will give me
opportunities of doing it: and it is a matter of comfort to know, from
a good quarter, what they are, and how far I may go in my attentions to
them.

Can you send me Woodmason's bills for the two copying presses, for the
Marquis de la Fayette and the Marquis de Chastellux? The latter makes
one article in a considerable account, of old standing, and which I
cannot present for want of this article. I do not know whether it is
to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new
constitution. I beg leave, through you, to place them where due. It will
yet be three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There
are very good articles in it; and very bad. I do not know which
preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in
the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against
a chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been
disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of
Polish Kings, should have for ever excluded the idea of one continuable
for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying.
The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat, and
model into every form, lies about our being in anarchy, that the world
has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them,
the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more
wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy
exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of
Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so
honorably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were founded in
ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid, we should ever be twenty years
without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well
informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to
the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under
such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the
public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven
years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a
century and a half for each State. What country before