By
that time, too, Congress will have manifested its character and views. I
told him that I had set my private affairs in motion in a line which
had powerfully called for my presence the last spring, and that they
had suffered immensely from my not going home; that I had now calculated
them to my return in the fall, and to fail in going then, would be
the loss of another year, and prejudicial beyond measure. I asked
him whether he could not name Governor Johnson to my office, under an
express arrangement that at the close of the session he should take that
of the Treasury. He said that men never chose to descend; that being
once in a higher department, he would not like to go into a lower one.
He asked me whether I could not arrange my affairs by going home. I told
him I did not think the public business would admit of it; that there
never was a day now, in which the absence of the Secretary of State
would not be inconvenient to the public. And he concluded by desiring
that I would take two or three days to consider whether I could not stay
in till the end of another quarter, for that, like a man going, to the
gallows, he was willing to put it off as long as he could; but if I
persisted, he must then look about him and make up his mind to do the
best he could: and so he took leave.
November the 5th, 1793. E. Randolph tells me, that Hamilton, in
conversation with him yesterday, said, 'Sir, if all the people in
America were now assembled, and to call on me to say whether I am a
friend to the French revolution, I would declare that I have it in
abhorrence?'
November the 8th, 1793.
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