believed the next Congress would
attempt nothing material, but to render their own body independent; that
that party were firm in their dispositions to support the government;
that the manoeuvres of Mr. Genet might produce some little
embarrassment, but that he would be abandoned by the republicans the
moment they knew the nature of his conduct; and on the whole, no crisis
existed which threatened any thing.

He said, he believed the views of the republican party were perfectly
pure, but when men put a machine into motion, it is impossible for them
to stop it exactly where they would choose, or to say where it will
stop. That the constitution we have is an excellent one, if we can keep
it where it is; that it was, indeed, supposed there was a party disposed
to change it into a monarchical form, but that he could conscientiously
declare there was not a man in the United States who would set his
face more decidedly against it than himself. Here I interrupted him by
saying, 'No rational man in the United States suspects you of any other
disposition; but there does not pass a week, in which we cannot prove
declarations dropping from the monarchical party, that our government is
good for nothing, is a milk-and-water thing which cannot support itself,
we must knock it down, and set up something of more energy. He said, if
that was the case, he thought it a proof of their insanity, for that the
republican spirit of the Union was so manifest and so solid, that it was
astonishing how any one could expect to move it.

He returned to the difficulty of naming my successor; he said Mr.
Madison would be his first choice, but that he had always expressed to
him such a decision against public office, that he could not expect he
would undertake it. Mr. Jay would prefer his present office. He said
that Mr. Jay had a great opinion of the talents of Mr. King; that there
was also Mr. Smith of South Carolina, and E. Rutledge: but he observed,
that, name whom he would, some objections would be made, some would be
called speculators, some one thing, some another; and he asked me to
mention any characters occurring to me. I asked him if Governor Johnson
of Maryland had occurred to him. He said he had; that he was a man
of great good sense, an honest man, and, he believed, clear of
speculations: but this, says he, is an instance of what I was observing;
with all these qualifications, Governor Johnson, from a want of
familiarity with foreign af