n
a subject which I find he has but slightly mentioned to you. I shall
therefore now do it. When I returned from France, after an absence of
six or seven years, I was astonished at the change which I found had
taken place in the United States in that time. No more like the same
people; their notions, their habits and manners, the course of their
commerce, so totally changed, that I, who stood in those of 1784, found
myself not at all qualified to speak their sentiments, or forward their
views in 1790. Very soon, therefore, after entering on the office of
Secretary of State, I recommended to General Washington to establish
as a rule of practice, that no person should be continued on foreign
mission beyond an absence of six, seven, or eight years. He approved it.
On the only subsequent Missions which took place in my time, the persons
appointed were notified that they could not be continued beyond that
period. All returned within it except Humphreys. His term was not
quite out when General Washington went out of office. The succeeding
administration had no rule for any thing: so he continued. Immediately
on my coming to the administration, I wrote to him myself, reminded him
of the rule I had communicated to him on his departure; that he had then
been absent about eleven years, and consequently must return. On
this ground solely he was superseded. Under these circumstances, your
appointment was impossible after an absence of seventeen years. Under
any others, I should never fail to give to yourself and the world proofs
of my friendship for you, and of my confidence in you. Whenever you
shall return, you will be sensible in a greater, of what I was in a
smaller degree, of the change in this nation from what it was when we
both left it in 1784. We return like foreigners, and, like them, require
a considerable residence here to become Americanized.

The state of political opinion continues to return steadily towards
republicanism. To judge from the opposition papers, a stranger would
suppose that a considerable check to it had been produced by certain
removals of public officers. But this is not the case. All offices
were in the hands of the federalists. The injustice of having totally
excluded republicans was acknowledged by every man. To have removed one
half, and to have placed republicans in their stead, would have been
rigorously just, when it was known that these composed a very great
majority of the nation. Yet such w