of determination; e. g. 1, 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' 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 nearly the whole remaining mass. They now find themselves with us, and separated from their quondam leaders. If we can but avoid shocking their feelings by unnecessary acts of severity against their late friends, they will in a little time cement and form one mass with us, and by these means harmony and union be restored to our country, which would be the greatest good we

could effect. It was a conviction that these people did not differ from us in principle, which induced me to define the principles which I deemed orthodox, and to urge a reunion on those principles; and I am induced to hope it has conciliated many. I do not speak of the desperadoes of the quondam faction in and out of Congress. These I consider as incurables, on whom all attentions would be lost, and therefore will not be wasted. my wish is, to keep their flock from returning to them.

But

On the subject of the marshal of Virginia, I refer you confidentially to Major Egglestone for information. I leave this about this day se'nnight, to make some arrangements at home preparatory to my final removal to this place, from which I shall be absent about three weeks.

Accept assurances of my constant esteem and high consideration and respect.

TO DOCTOR RUSH.

WASHINGTON, March 24, 1801

DEAR SIR, I have to acknowledge the receipt of your friendly favor of the 12th, and the pleasing sensations produced in my mind by its affectionate contents. I am made very happy by learning that the sentiments expressed in my inaugural address gave general satisfaction, and holds out a ground on which our fellow citizens can once more unite. I am the more pleased, because these sentiments have been long and radically mine, and therefore will be pursued honestly and conscientiously. I know there is an obstacle which very possibly may check the confidence which would otherwise have been more generally reposed in my observance of these principles. This obstacle does not arise from the measures to be pursued, as to which I am in no fear of giving satisfaction, but from appointments and disappointments as to office. With regard to appointments, I have so much confidence in the justice and good sense of the federalists, that I have no doubt they will concur in the fairness of the posi

tion, that after they have been in the exclusive possession of all offices from the very first origin of party among us, to the 3d of March, at 9 o'clock in the night, no republican ever admitted, and this doctrine newly avowed, it is now perfectly just that the republicans should come in for the vacancies which may fall in, until something like an equilibrium in office be restored. But the great stumbling block will be removals, which though made on those just principles only on which my predecessor ought to have removed the same persons, will nevertheless be ascribed to removal on party principles. 1st. I will expunge the effects of Mr. A.'s indecent conduct, in crowding nominations after he knew they were not for himself, till 9 o'clock of the night, at 12 o'clock of which he was to go out of office. So far as they are during pleasure, I shall not consider the persons named, even as candidates for the office, nor pay the respect of notifying them that I consider what was done as a nullity. 2d. Some removals must be made for misconduct. One of these is of the marshal in your city, who being an officer of justice, intrusted with the function of choosing impartial judges for the trial of his fellow citizens, placed at the awful tribunal of God and their country, selected judges who either avowed, or were known to him to be predetermined to condemn; and if the lives of the unfortunate persons were not cut short by the sword of the law, it was not for want of his good-will. In another State I have to perform the same act of justice on the dearest connection of my dearest friend, for similar conduct, in a case not capital. The same practice of packing juries, and prosecuting their fellow citizens with the bitterness of party hatred, will probably involve several other marshals and attornies. Out of this line I see but very few instances where past misconduct has been in a degree to call for notice. Of the thousands of officers therefore, in the United States, a very few individuals only, probably not twenty, will be removed; and these only for doing what they ought not to have done. Two or three instances indeed where Mr. A. removed men because they would not sign addresses, &c., to him, will be rectified-the persons restored. The whole world will

say this is just. I know that in stopping thus short in the career of removal, I shall give great offence to many of my friends. That torrent has been pressing me heavily, and will require all my force to bear up against; but my maxim is "fiat justitia, ruat cælum." After the first unfavorable impressions of doing too much in the opinion of some, and too little in that of others, shall be got over, I should hope a steady line of conciliation very practicable, and that without yielding a single republican principle. A certainty that these principles prevailed in the breasts of the main body of federalists, was my motive for stating them as the ground of reunion. I have said thus much for your private satisfaction, to be used even in private conversation, as the presumptive principles on which we shall act, but not as proceeding from myself declaredly. Information lately received from France gives a high idea of the progress of science there; it seems to keep pace with their *. I have* just received from the A. P. Society, two volumes of Comparative Anatomy, by Cuvier, probably the greatest work in that line that has ever appeared. His comparisons embrace every organ of the animal carcass; and from man to the Accept assurances of my sincere friendship, and high consideration and respect.

*

TO DON JOSEPH YZNARDI.

WASHINGTON, March 26, 1801.

DEAR SIR, The Secretary of State is proceeding in the consideration of the several matters which have been proposed to us by you, and will prepare answers to them, and particularly as to our vessels taken by French cruisers, and carried into the ports of Spain, contrary, as we suppose, to the tenor of the convention with France. Though ordinary business will be regularly transacted with you by the Secretary of State, yet considering what you mentioned as to our minister at Madrid to have been private and confidential, I take it out of the official course, and observe *The manuscript here is illegible.

to you myself that under an intimate conviction of long standing in my mind, of the importance of an honest friendship with Spain, and one which shall identify her American interests with our own, I see in a strong point of view the necessity that the organ of communication which we establish near the King should possess the favor and confidence of that government. I have therefore destined for that mission a person whose accommodating and reasonable conduct, which will be still more fortified by instructions, will render him agrecable there, and an useful channel of communication between us. I have no doubt the new appointment by that government to this, in the room of the Chevalier d'Yrujo, has been made under the influence of the same motives; but still, the Chevalier d'Yrujo being intimately known to us, the integrity, sincerity, and reasonableness of his conduct having established in us a perfect confidence, in nowise diminished by the bickerings which took place between him and a former Secretary of State, whose irritable temper drew on more than one affair of the same kind, it will be a subject of regret if we lose him. However, if the interests of Spain require that his services should be employed elsewhere, it is the duty of a friend to acquiesce; and we shall certainly receive any successor the King may choose to send, with every possible degree of favor and friendship. Our administration will not be collected till the end of the ensuing month; and consequently, till then, no other of the mutual interests of the two nations will be under our views, except those general assurances of friendship which I have before given you verbally, and now repeat. Accept, I pray you. assurances of my high consideration and respect.

TO GENERAL KNOX,

WASHINGTON, March 27, 1801.

DEAR SIR,-I received with great pleasure your favor of the 16th, and it is with the greatest satisfaction I learn from all quarters that my inaugural address is considered as holding out