c service, but
the year closed and Mr. Gallatin had not made up his mind. In the
situation of France, which he considered "would under her present
dynasty be for some years a vassal of her great rival," he did not
consider the mission important, and his private fortune was limited to a
narrow competence. "I do not wish," he wrote to Monroe, "to accumulate
any property. I will not do my family the injury of impairing the little
I have. My health is frail; they may soon lose me, and I will not leave
them dependent on the bounty of others." But being again earnestly
pressed, he on January 2, 1816, accepted the appointment. To Jefferson
he wrote that he would not conceal 'that he did not feel yet old enough
nor had philosophy enough to go into retirement and abstract himself
wholly from public affairs.'

In April, Madison notified Mr. Gallatin of Dallas's probable retirement
from the Treasury, and offered him the post if he cared to return to it.
He was perfectly aware of his supreme fitness for the direction of the
Treasury, and he declined with reluctance, because he was disturbed by
the suspension of specie payments. Remembering Madison's weakness in
1812 on the subject of the renewal of the bank charter, which Gallatin
considered necessary in the situation of the finances, he could hardly
have felt a desire to return to the cabinet in that or indeed in any
other capacity. He was perfectly conscious that as leader of the House
of Representatives, as secretary of the treasury, and as negotiator of
the Ghent treaty, he had brought into the triumvirate all its practical
statesmanship. His short career abroad had opened to him a new source of
intellectual pleasure. He had earned a right to some hours of ease.
Diplomacy at that period, when communication was uncertain and
difficult, was perforce less restricted than in these latter days, when
ambassadors are little more than foreign clerks of the State Department
without even the freedom of a chief of bureau. Gallatin felt entirely at
home, and was happy in this peculiar sphere. There was no time in his
life when he would not have gladly surrendered all political power for
the enjoyment of intellectual ease, the pursuit of science, and the
atmosphere of society of the higher order of culture in whatever field.
And Paris was then, as it is still, the centre of intellectual and
social civilization.

Jefferson rejoiced in Gallatin's appointment to France, and rightly
judged th