TO REV. ELIPHALET NOTT, D. D.

ALBANY, September 17, 1841.

MY DEAR SIR: It seems, from my old tutor's letter, that I have again fallen under discipline. It is fortunate for me that he has not now the power he had of old. If he had, I should most surely be "suspended" instead of M'Leod, unless you were, as before, the appellate tribunal. If you were, I trust I might hope for executive clemency similar to that which saved me from expulsion from the barren sand-hills that have since been converted into fertility and embellished under your care, at Schenectady.

I thank you for vindicating me so well and justly. I have often had occasion to mark how much more justly men reason in books than in action. Dr. Wayland's book on "Human Responsibility" is an invaluable and in the main a most true book. I think he would be unwilling to say in his next edition that it was my business to usurp judicial power and acquit without trial a party accused of crime, because even the British government might launch her thunders against this nation if I refused to do so. It will, however, be sufficient to remove the doctor's apprehensions, to say that his information is altogether incorrect. "The borderers are" not "determined, right or wrong, to hang M'Leod."

"The governor is not with them" or with anybody else that has such designs, but, as the world will know in the sequel, is as careful of the personal security of Alexander M'Leod as the honor and dignity of the state of New York requires its executive authority to be. And instead of political capital being sought by me, all the thousand idle rumors that alarm our old friend are the consequence of busy men in both countries who are trying to make capital by showing how they can prevent a war which there is no real ground to fear.

Always, my dear sir, your obedient servant and docile pupil.

TO HON. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

ALBANY, September 25, 1841.

MR DEAR SIR: I thank you very sincerely for your kind remembrance, manifested by sending me a copy of your remarks on the M'Leod resolution. If I can not subscribe to all your positions, I can acknowledge that I am gratified with the spirit which pervades the speech. You are entitled to the thanks of the country for inculcating the importance of deliberation and patriotism in acting upon the delicate questions which have occurred in our foreign relations. I am especially grateful to you for reading some of our orators a lesson upon the flippancy with which they magnify New York as the empire state. Such expressions are in bad taste, and tend to excite jealousies affecting the just influence of the state.

With renewed assurances of very high respect, I am your obedient servant.

TO HON. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

ALBANY, November 6, 1841.

MY DEAR SIR: I share with a thousand others a deep regret on account of your inability to accept the invitation of our Young Men's Association. But I am not surprised. I can not, indeed, conceive how you are able ever to turn aside from sterner duties to literary pursuits.

The mails have borne to you the news of a disastrous overthrow of the whig party in this state. I confess my fears that the evil is epidemic, and that even Massachusetts may exhibit a similar result next week. There will be much speculation, and as usual

very little wisdom in it, concerning the causes of this popular change. History is not very accurate in her judgments upon "causas rerum," but cotemporaneous commentary is never just. I should refer the causes to the constitution of parties and of men. The country was alarmed and suffering. It called upon us for relief and repose. The call has been answered, the relief given, the repose is enjoyed. Nevertheless, there is no cause of despondency. The country demands the existence of parties, and these parties must alternate in the public councils. If I were to choose again with which I would connect myself, I should say that party invoked when danger and suffering came, rather than that which holds fast on power until a despairing people casts it off.

I can not omit an acknowledgment of your wisdom and sagacity in your conclusions in your specch as to what would be the consequences of a war upon the conviction and execution of Alexander M'Leod. But, my dear sir, there is a part of the history of that affair unwritten, and that part would show that while there was an entire certainty that M'Leod would not be convicted, and an equal certainty that there would be no war unless he was executed, yet there was an absence of all prudence and caution in the eagerness of the federal government to procure his release by direct interference with the proceedings of the courts of this state, and in an extraordinary and unusual manner; and all this after assurances in which the government might have confided, that, in any and every emergency, the state of New York might be relied upon to act with justice, magnanimity, and high regard to the national honor and harmony.

I am, my dear sir, very much gratified by the kind consideration you express concerning my public actions in the difficult place assigned me. If I were to define the ruling motive of my political conduct in and out of place, it would be that of solicitude to avoid doing or saying, under the pressure of the time, anything which in all time to come would require vindication. Such, you will permit me to say, has always appeared to me to be the moral of your distinguished life. It will be an enduring consolation to know that I have in any degree secured the respect and confidence of one whose fame seems to me the most enviable achievement of the age in which I live. I early determined not to be a candidate for a third election to my present place. Such

a course was necessary to vindicate myself from jealousies that hindered my usefulness. A common misfortune will now lend a healing influence. As for the future, I await its developments without concern, conscious that if my services are needed, they will be demanded-and if not needed, that it would be neither patriotic nor conducive to my own happiness to be in public life. Excuse the egotism into which words of kindness from one so much revered have betrayed me, and believe me your obedient

servant.

MISCELLANEOUS.

HOLLAND LAND COMPANY.

TO THE CITIZENS OF CHAUTAUQUE COUNTY:

AUBURN, October 15, 1838.

MISREPRESENTATION of facts and injurious influences, which concern only the political principles and conduct of candidates for popular suffrage, may generally be left to the correction of the press. But misrepresentations and inferences which tend to affect the social or business relations existing between them and their fellow-citizens, may sometimes demand personal notice.

During the last two months many statements have been published calculated to excite apprehensions among you concerning your business relations with the Chautauque land-office.

It is not my intention to question the justice or magnanimity of this mode of attack, or to inquire why those who have been so suddenly overcome by solicitude on behalf of "the hardy and honest settlers of the west" have been so long, as it would now seem, criminally indifferent to your welfare; or whether their kind concern for you will continue after the election which now approaches shall have passed.

Knowing from your intelligence and past liberality that your confidence was not to be easily shaken, I have waited before making this expose, until those engaged in these efforts should have submitted to the public all the accusations they might deem it to their advantage to allege against me. And although to many of you these accusations will now come for the first time, I shall not hesitate to submit them in all their enormity, and in the language in which they have been promulgated.