'
I asked him if Chancellor Livingston had occurred to him. He said yes;
but he was from New York, and to appoint him while Hamilton was in, and
before it should be known he was going out, would excite a newspaper
conflagration, as the ultimate arrangement would not be known. He said
McLurg had occurred to him as a man of first-rate abilities, but it is
said that he is a speculator. He asked me what sort of a man Wolcot was.
I told him I knew nothing of him myself; I had heard him characterized
as a cunning man. I asked him whether some person could not take my
office per interim, till he should make an appointment; as Mr. Randolph,
for instance. 'Yes,' says he; 'but there you would raise the expectation
of keeping it, and I do not know that he is fit for it, nor what is
thought of Mr. Randolph.' I avoided noticing the last observation, and
he put the question to me directly. I then told him, I went into society
so little as to be unable to answer it. I knew that the embarrassments
in his private affairs had obliged him to use expedients, which had
injured him with the merchants and shop-keepers, and affected his
character of independence; that these embarrassments were serious, and
not likely to cease soon. He said, if I would only stay in till the end
of another quarter (the last of December), it would get us through the
difficulties of this year, and he was satisfied that the affairs of
Europe would be settled with this campaign: for that either France would
be overwhelmed by it, or the confederacy would give up the contest.
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