me and on
the most critical occasions. It is therefore with the sincerest regret
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 thus
continue to enjoy an able, upright, and energetic administration.

JOHN ADAMS,

_Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate_.

DECEMBER 10, 1796.

REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT.

GENTLEMEN: It affords me great satisfaction to find in your address a
concurrence in sentiment with me on the various topics which I presented
for your information and deliberation, and that the latter will receive
from you an attention proportioned to their respective importance.

For the notice you take of my public services, civil and military, and
your kind wishes for my personal happiness, I beg you to accept my
cordial thanks. Those services, and greater had I possessed ability to
render them, were due to the unanimous calls of my country, and its
approbation is my abundant reward.

When contemplating the period of my retirement, I saw virtuous and
enlightened men among whom I relied on the discernment and patriotism
of my fellow-citizens to make the proper choice of, a successor--men
who would require no influential example to insure to the United States
"an able, upright, and energetic administration." To such men I shall
cheerfully yield the palm of genius and talents to serve our common
country; but at the same time I hope I may be indulged in expressing the
consoling reflection (which consciousness suggests), and to bear it with
me to my grave, that none can serve it with purer intentions than I have
done or with a more disinterested zeal.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

DECEMBER 12, 1796.

ADDRESS