My hope is that this obstacle to the delights of retirement
will wear away with the oblivion which follows that, and that I may at
length be indulged in those studious pursuits, from which nothing but
revolutionary duties would ever have called me.
I shall receive your proposed publication, and read it with the pleasure
which every thing gives me from your pen. Although much of a sceptic in
the practice of medicine, I read with pleasure its ingenious theories.
I receive with sensibility your observations on the discontinuance of
friendly correspondence between Mr. Adams and myself, and the concern
you take in its restoration. This discontinuance has not proceeded from
me, nor from the want of sincere desire, and of effort on my part, to
renew our intercourse. You know the perfect coincidence of principle and
of action, in the early part of the Revolution, which produced a high
degree of mutual respect and esteem between Mr. Adams and myself.
Certainly no man was ever truer than he was, in that day, to those
principles of rational republicanism, which, after the necessity of
throwing off our monarchy, dictated all our efforts in the establishment
of a new government. And although he swerved, afterwards, towards the
principles of the English constitution, our friendship did not abate on
that account. While he was Vice-President, and I Secretary of State,
I received a letter from President Washington, then at Mount Vernon,
desiring me to call together the Heads of departments, and to invite Mr.
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