His time was employed in action chiefly,
reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history. His
correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing
his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within
doors. On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing
bad, in few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did
nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to
place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited
from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny
and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an
arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting
its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and
principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train;
and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career,
civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other
example. How, then, can it be perilous for you to take such a man on
your shoulders? I am satisfied the great body of republicans think of
him as I do. We were, indeed, dissatisfied with him on his ratification
of the British treaty. But this was short-lived. We knew his honesty,
the wiles with which he was encompassed, and that age had already begun
to relax the firmness of his purposes; and I am convinced he is more
deeply seated in the love and gratitude of the republicans, than in the
Pharisaical homage of the federal monarchists.
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