ens
dawning on us, will be equal to these objects.

But there is another branch of duty which I must meet with courage
too, though I cannot without pain; that is, the appointments and
disappointments as to offices. Madison and Gallatin being still absent,
we have not yet decided on our rules of conduct as to these. That some
ought to be removed from office, and that all ought not, all mankind
will agree. But where to draw the line, perhaps no two will agree.
Consequently, nothing like a general approbation on this subject can be
looked for. Some principles have been the subject of conversation, but
not of determination; e.g. all appointments to civil offices during
pleasure, made after the event of the election was certainly known
to Mr. Adams, are considered as nullities. I do not view the persons
appointed as even candidates for the office, but make others without
noticing or notifying them. Mr. Adams's best friends have agreed this
is right. 2. Officers who have been guilty of official mal-conduct are
proper subjects of removal. 3. Good men, to whom there is no objection
but a difference of political principle, practised on only as far as
the right of a private citizen will justify, are not proper subjects of
removal, except in the case of attorneys and marshals. The courts being
so decidedly federal and irremovable, it is believed that republican
attorneys and marshals, being the doors of entrance into the courts,
are indispensably necessary as a shield to the republican part of our
fellow-citizens, which, I believe, is the main body of the people.

These principles are yet to be considered of, and I sketch them to
you in confidence. Not that there is objection to your mooting them as
subjects of conversation, and as proceeding from yourself, but not as
matters of executive determination. Nay, farther, I will thank you for
your own sentiments and those of others on them. If received before the
20th of April, they will be in time for our deliberation on the subject.
You know that it was in the year X. Y. Z. that so great a transition
from us to the other side took place, and with as real republicans as we
were ourselves; that these, after getting over that delusion, have been
returning to us, and that it is to that return we owe a triumph in 1800,
which in 1799 would have been the other way. The week's suspension
of the election before Congress, seems almost to have completed that
business, and to have brought over