n to the opinion that I might be more serviceable here than
in France, and with a firm resolution in my mind, to indulge my constant
wish for retirement at no very distant day; that when, therefore, I had
received his letter, written from Mount Vernon, on his way to Carolina
and Georgia (April the 1st, 1791), and discovered, from an expression
in that, that he meant to retire from the government ere long, and as to
the precise epoch there could be no doubt, my mind was immediately made
up, to make that the epoch of my own retirement from those labors of
which I was heartily tired. That, however, I did not believe there was
any idea in either of my brethren in the administration of retiring;
that on the contrary, I had perceived at a late meeting of the trustees
of the sinking fund, that the Secretary of the Treasury had developed
the plan he intended to pursue, and that it embraced years in its view.

He said, that he considered the Treasury department as a much more
limited one, going only to the single object of revenue, while that
of the Secretary of State, embracing nearly all the objects of
administration, was much more important, and the retirement of the
officer therefore, would be more noticed: that though the government had
set out with a pretty general good will of the public, yet that symptoms
of dissatisfaction had lately shown themselves far beyond what he could
have expected, and to what height these might arise, in case of too
great a change in the administration, could not be foreseen.

I told him that in my opinion, there was only a single source of these
discontents. Though they had indeed appeared to spread themselves over
the War department also, yet I considered that as an overflowing only
from their real channel, which would never have taken place, if they
had not first been generated in another department, to wit, that of
the Treasury. That a system had there been contrived, for deluging the
States with paper-money instead of gold and silver, for withdrawing our
citizens from the pursuits of commerce, manufactures, buildings, and
other branches of useful industry, to occupy themselves and their
capitals in a species of gambling, destructive of morality, and which
had introduced its poison into the government itself. That it was a
fact, as certainly known as that he and I were then conversing, that
particular members of the legislature, while those laws were on the
carpet, had feathered their nests