sel run on this way and been trimmed to
it, that to put her on her republican tack will require all the skill,
the firmness, and the zeal of her ablest and best friends. It is a
crisis which calls on them to sacrifice all other objects, and repair
to her aid in this momentous operation. Not only their skill is wanting,
but their names also. It is essential to assemble in the outset
persons to compose our administration, whose talents, integrity, and
revolutionary name and principles may inspire the nation, at once, with
unbounded confidence, and impose an awful silence on all the maligners
of republicanism; as may suppress in embryo the purpose avowed by one
of their most daring and effective chiefs, of beating down the
administration. These names do not abound at this day. So few are they,
that yours, my friend, cannot be spared among them without leaving a
blank which cannot be filled. If I can obtain for the public the aid of
those I have contemplated, I fear nothing. If this cannot be done, then
are we unfortunate indeed! We shall be unable to realize the prospects
which have been held out to the people, and we must fall back into
monarchism, for want of heads, not hands, to help us out of it. This is
a common cause, my dear Sir, common to all republicans. Though I have
been too honorably placed in front of those who are to enter the breach
so happily made, yet the energies of every individual are necessary, and
in the very place where his energies can most serve the enterprise. I
can assure you that your colleagues will be most acceptable to you;
one of them, whom you cannot mistake, peculiarly so. The part which
circumstances constrain us to propose to you, is the secretaryship
of the navy. These circumstances cannot be explained by letter.
Republicanism is so rare in those parts which possess nautical skill,
that I cannot find it allied there to the other qualifications.
Though you are not nautical by profession, yet your residence and your
mechanical science qualify you as well as a gentleman can possibly
be, and sufficiently to enable you to choose under-agents perfectly
qualified, and to superintend their conduct. Come forward then, my
dear Sir, and give us the aid of your talents and the weight of your
character towards the new establishment of republicanism; I say, for its
new establishment; for hitherto, we have seen only its _travestie_. I
have urged thus far, on the belief that your present office would not