I still hope for the best; but before you mentioned it, I could not help fearing it would serve as a standard to which the disaffected might resort.

It is now evidently the part of all honest men, who are friends to the new constitution, to endeavour to give it a chance to disclose its merits and defects, by carrying it fairly into effect, in the first instance.
"The principal topic of your letter, is to me a point of great delicacy indeed;--insomuch that I can scarcely, without some impropriety, touch upon it.

In the first place, the event to which you allude may never happen, among other reasons, because, if the partiality of my fellow citizens conceive it to be a mean by which the sinews of the new government would be strengthened, it will of consequence be obnoxious to those who are in opposition to it, many of whom, unquestionably, will be placed among the electors.
"This consideration alone would supersede the expediency of announcing any definitive and irrevocable resolution.

You are among the small number of those who know my invincible attachment to domestic life, and that my sincerest wish is to continue in the enjoyment of it solely, until my final hour.

But the world would be neither so well instructed, nor so candidly disposed, as to believe me to be uninfluenced by sinister motives, in case any circumstance should render a deviation from the line of conduct I had prescribed for myself indispensable.