ich have been conspicuously displayed in the
most trying times, and on the most critical occasions: it is, therefore,
with the sincerest regrets that we now receive an official notification
of your intentions to retire from the public employments of your
country.

"When we review the various scenes of your public life, so long and so
successfully devoted to the most arduous services, civil and military,
as well during the struggles of the American Revolution as the
convulsive periods of a recent date, we can not look forward to your
retirement without our warmest affections and most anxious regards
accompanying you; and without mingling, with our fellow-citizens at
large, in the sincerest wishes for your personal happiness that
sensibility and attachment can express. The most effectual consolation
that can offer for the loss we are about to sustain, arises from the
animating reflection that the influence of your example will extend to
your successors, and the United States will thus continue to enjoy an
able, upright, and energetic administration."

The reply of the house was equally warm in personal compliments. "We
have ever concurred with you," they said, "in the most sincere and
uniform disposition to preserve our neutral relations inviolate, and it
is, of course, with anxiety and deep regret we hear that any
interruption of our harmony with the French republic has occurred; for
we feel, with you and with our constituents, the cordial and unabated
wish to maintain a perfect friendly understanding with that nation. Your
endeavors to fulfil that wish, and by all honorable means to preserve
peace, and to restore that harmony and affection which have heretofore
so happily subsisted between the French republic and the United States,
can not fail, therefore, to interest our attention. And while we
participate in the full reliance you have expressed in the patriotism,
self-respect, and fortitude of our countrymen, we cherish the pleasing
hope that a mutual spirit of justice and moderation will insure the
success of your perseverance.

"When we advert to the internal situation of the United States," they
continued, "we deem it equally natural and becoming to compare the
present period with that immediately antecedent to the operation of the
government, and to contrast it with the calamities in which the state of
war still involves several of the European nations, as the reflections
deduced from both tend to justify as we