been
mere affectation, and that he was like other men, when once in office
he could not quit it. He was sensible, too, of a decay of his hearing,
perhaps his other faculties might fall off and he not be sensible of it.
That with respect to the existing causes of uneasiness, he thought there
we're suspicions against a particular party, which had been carried a
great deal too far: there might be desires, but he did not believe there
were designs to change the form of government into a monarchy: that
there might be a few who wished it in the higher walks of life,
particularly in the great cities; but that the main body of the people
in the eastern States were as steadily for republicanism as in the
southern. That the pieces lately published, and particularly in
Freneau's paper, seemed to have in view the exciting opposition to
the government. That this had taken place in Pennsylvania as to the
excise-law, according to information he had received from General Hand.
That they tended to produce a separation of the Union, the most dreadful
of all calamities, and that whatever tended to produce anarchy, tended,
of course, to produce a resort to monarchical government. He considered
those papers as attacking him directly, for he must be a fool indeed to
swallow the little sugar-plumbs here and there thrown out to him. That
in condemning the administration of the government, they condemned
him, for if they thought there were measures pursued contrary to his
sentiments, they must conceive him too careless to attend to them, or
too stupid to understand them. That though, indeed, he had signed many
acts which he did not approve in all their parts, yet he had never put
his name to one which he did not think, on the whole, was eligible. That
as to the bank, which had been an act of so much complaint, until there
was some infallible criterion of reason, a difference of opinion must be
tolerated. He did not believe the discontents extended far from the seat
of government. He had seen and spoken with many people in Maryland and
Virginia in his late journey. He found the people contented and
happy. He wished, however, to be better informed on this head. If the
discontents were more extensive than he supposed, it might be, that the
desire that he should remain in the government was not general.

My observations to him tended principally to enforce the topics of my
letter. I will not, therefore, repeat them, except where they produced
obser