portion of power, secured by formal compact with the
nation, rather than, grasping at more, hazard all upon uncertainty, and
risk meeting the fate of their predecessor, or a renewal of their own
exile. We are just informed, too, of an example which merits, if true,
their most profound contemplation. The gazettes say, that Ferdinand of
Spain is dethroned, and his father re-established on the basis of their
new constitution. This order of magistrates must, therefore, see, that
although the attempts at reformation have not succeeded in their whole
length, and some secession from the ultimate point has taken place, yet
that men have by no means fallen back to their former passiveness; but
on the contrary, that a sense of their rights, and a restlessness to
obtain them, remain deeply impressed on every mind, and, if not quieted
by reasonable relaxations of power, will break out like a volcano on
the first occasion, and overwhelm every thing again in its way. I always
thought the present King an honest and moderate man: and having
no issue, he is under a motive the less for yielding to personal
considerations. I cannot, therefore, but hope, that the patriots in and
out of your legislature, acting in phalanx, but temperately and wisely,
pressing unremittingly the principles omitted in the late capitulation
of the King, and watching the occasions which the course of events will
create, may get those principles engrafted into it, and sanctioned by
the solemnity of a national act.

With us the affairs of war have taken the more favorable turn which
was to be expected. Our thirty years of peace had taken off, or
superannuated, all our revolutionary officers of experience and grade;
and our first draught in the lottery of untried characters had been
most unfortunate. The delivery of the fort and army of Detroit, by the
traitor Hull; the disgrace at Queenstown, under Van Rensellaer; the
massacre at Frenchtown, under Winchester; and surrender of Boerstler
in an open field to one third of his own numbers, were the inauspicious
beginnings of the first year of our warfare. The second witnessed but
the single miscarriage occasioned by the disagreement of Wilkinson and
Hampton, mentioned in my letter to you of November the 30th, 1813; while
it gave us the capture of York by Dearborn and Pike; the capture of Fort
George by Dearborn also; the capture of Proctor's army on the Thames by
Harrison, Shelby, and Johnson; and that of the whole Brit