In what passed
through the whole period of these conventions, I have gone on the
information of those who were members of them, being absent myself on my
mission to France.
I returned from that mission in the first year of the new government,
having landed in Virginia in December, 1789, and proceeded to New York
in March, 1790, to enter on the office of Secretary of State.
Here, certainly, I found a state of things which, of all I had ever
contemplated, I the least expected. I had left France in the first
year of her revolution, in the fervor of natural rights, and zeal for
reformation. My conscientious devotion to these rights could not be
heightened, but it had been aroused and excited by daily exercise. The
President received me cordially, and my colleagues and the circle
of principal citizens, apparently with welcome. The courtesies of
dinner-parties given me, as a stranger newly arrived among them, placed
me at once in their familiar society. But I cannot describe the wonder
and mortification with which the table conversations filled me. Politics
were the chief topic, and a preference of kingly over republican
government, was evidently the favorite sentiment. An apostate I could
not be, nor yet a hypocrite; and I found myself, for the most part, the
only advocate on the republican side of the question, unless among
the guests there chanced to be some member of that party from the
legislative Houses.
Pages:
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748