me his authority to contract for the loan which appeared regular and complete. He is well known in Philadelphia and appears to be an intelligent man.

He says they are good Republicans in Colombia and are much displeased with the royal propensities of San Martin in Peru, and the Imperial dignity of Augustin the 1st in Mexico. He says too they are afraid of Mexico. And that Bolivar himself is thought better of for a general than a Liberator President. I told Mr. Burckle I could only report his wishes to you but asked him to write me from Philadelphia what success he might hope for his loan. He left Bogota late in August, landed yesterday at Baltimore, and came immediately here. He goes tomorrow for Philadelphia. I am, etc.

TO LOUISA CATHERINE ADAMS

MY DEAREST FRIEND:

WASHINGTON, 7 October, 1822.

Your letter and journal to the 3rd have come to hand. If I should give you the reasons why I cannot go and spend a week at Philadelphia, to show my friends there how much I long to be President, you would think them very ridiculous, and me not less so for detailing them. My friends at Philadelphia are not the only ones who send me kind messages to inform me that unless I mend my manners, I shall never be President. Well, and what then? There will be candidates enough for the Presidency without me, and if my delicacy is not suited to the times, there are candidates enough who have no such delicacy. It suits my temper to be thus delicate. Do they call it aristocratic hauteur and learned arrogance? Why, so be it, my worthy friends and

approved good masters. It is not then cringing servility, nor insatiate importunity.

If my friends will neither say nor write to me a single word about the Presidency, from this time forward until the election is over, I believe it would be better for me and perhaps for them. The event will neither depend upon them nor upon me. They and you think I am panting to be President, when I am much more inclined to envy Castlereagh the relief he has found from a situation too much like mine, though I implore the mercy of God that I may be never so deserted of him as to seek relief in the same manner. I have reliance upon God, and therefore while possessed of my reason, I shall never cut the thread of my own life. I have reliance upon my country, and therefore will never flinch from the duties or the dangers of any station to which she will call me. I have reliance upon myself (with God's blessing), and hope I have resources to bear the neglect or the rejection of my services by my country. If I should tell you that I dread infinitely more than I wish to be President, you would not believe me. But suppose it for a moment to be true. How could you advise me to act? Will you say it is very easy? Decline publicly to be a candidate? No. That would be political suicide. It would be to distrust myself and my country. It is my situation that makes me a candidate, and you at least know that my present situation was neither of my own seeking, nor of my choice. Of the public history of Mr. Monroe's administration, all that will be worth telling to posterity hitherto has been transacted through the Department of State. The treaties with Great Britain, with Spain, with France, and with Russia, and the whole course of policy with regard to South America, have been all under the immediate management of that Department. They are all events affecting not only the present

interests, but the future condition of this people. The acquisition of Florida and the extension of the territories of the Union to the Pacific Ocean have been accomplished through that Department, and the formal admission of our right to border upon the South Sea, both by Spain and Great Britain, has been first obtained, I might confidently say by me. That it has been obtained through the Department of State in Mr. Monroe's administration, is beyond the reach of contradiction or of events. As to the Treasury or War Departments, what single incident has occurred in this administration which will tell with credit to future ages? An army reduced to a peace establishment, and a Treasury reduced to loans in profound peace, form hitherto the only history of those two Departments under Mr. Monroe. And now, here at the heart of the Union, are two printing presses groaning under the columns of ribaldry and invective with which the chieftains at the head of those two Departments, through their respective partisans, are pelting each other in their rival race for the Presidency. They are at the same time, here or elsewhere, pelting at me too, merely to keep me out of the course.1 So much for the public history of

1 "A disposition to discuss has always characterized our government; but until recently an appearance of moderation has marked our discussions. Now our disposition to discuss seems to have augmented, and the spirit of conciliation has manifestly been abandoned by our councils. We are determined to say harsher things than are said of us, and to have the last word. Where this temper will lead us cannot be distinctly foreseen. I have labored to restrain this predominant disposition of the government, but have succeeded only partially in softening the asperities which invariably predominate in the official notes of the State Department. If these notes had been permitted to remain as originally drafted, we should, I believe, have before this time been unembarrassed by diplomatic relations with more than one power. The tendency to estrange us from all foreign powers, which the style of the notes of the State Department has uniformly had, has been so often demonstrated, yet so often permitted, that I have almost given up the idea of maintaining friendly relations with those powers." Crawford to Gallatin, May 13, 1822. Adams, Writings of Gallatin, II. 241.

Mr. Monroe's administration. Now for its secret history. This has been one continued series of intrigues, from the Amelia Island expedition, to the senatorial etiquette and the Seminole war debates, down to Jackson's quarrel in Florida, and Jonathan Russell's duplicate, to bar my access to the next Presidency. All the leading members of both houses of Congress, all the editors of accredited printing presses throughout the Union, and all the caucussing managers of the state legislatures, have been engaged, each with his own views, and as retainers to their respective patrons, in crying me down and disgracing me in the estimation of the people. Meanwhile I have not a single active partisan in Congress; not a single printing press in pay or in promise; not one member of any one state legislature disposed to caucus for me, or connected with my interest by any stimulant expectation of his own. Do my friends in Philadelphia suppose me so totally blind to what is passing around me, as not to see what my situation is, or not to foresee what its result must be? Do they suppose that, while I see all the avenues to the temple preoccupied one by one, and a crowd rushing to the gate, already stifling one another, I expect to obtain admission by standing still? Or do they think me besotted enough to believe that I could, if I would, turn the current of public opinion in my favor by a week's visit to Philadelphia? Tell them that I am going by another road and to another temple. That if they must have a President to whom they dare speak, and if they dare not speak to me, they must vote for another man. That I am not bound to be President of the United States, but that I am bound to perform the duties of Secretary of State so long as I hold that office, and that Washington and not Philadelphia is the place where those duties must be performed.

DEAR SIR:

TO GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS

WASHINGTON, 9th October, 1822.

I pray you to accept my thanks for your kind letter of the 4th instant and for its inclosure. A ghost from the grave could scarcely have surprised me more than the reappearance of this departed offering of my prematurity. How it found its way among your respected father's papers I do not absolutely know, but can easily conjecture. Of its transmission to Philadelphia I have a very distinct recollection, and as you have taken the trouble of reading it, will bespeak as much more of your patience as may suffice for telling you how it happened.

Among the auditory who heard it delivered was the late Dr. Belknap, the historian of New Hampshire and author of American Biography. The very feature in its composition which you have noticed now, the earnestness of the plea in behalf of the public faith, attracted his attention then, and a few days after he sent me a letter requesting a copy of it for publication in a monthly miscellany, which was at that time published at Philadelphia, the title of which I have forgotten, but to which he informed me that he was a contributor.

Your memory will certainly remind you sufficiently of the flattering unction which is distilled from the earliest distinctions of boyish days to enable you to conceive that I had not the fortitude to resist this application, the more grateful to me as my oration had received already another, and a very different as well as unusual, distinction - that of a severe

criticism in a public newspaper of the time.

1 Adams' "Oration" at Commencement, 1787. See Memoirs, October 7, 1822.