Thus circumstanced, you will perceive the
entire impossibility of providing for the persons you recommend. I wish
it had been in my power to give you a more favorable answer; but next to
the fulfilling your wishes, the most grateful thing I can do is to give
a faithful answer. The session of the first Congress convened since
republicanism has recovered its ascendency, is now drawing to a close.
They will pretty completely fulfil all the desires of the people. They
have reduced the army and navy to what is barely necessary. They are
disarming executive patronage and preponderance, by putting down one
half the offices of the United States, which are no longer necessary.
These economies have enabled them to suppress all the internal taxes,
and still to make such provision for the payment of their public debt
as to discharge that in eighteen years. They have lopped off a parasite
limb, planted by their predecessors on their judiciary body for party
purposes; they are opening the doors of hospitality to the fugitives
from the oppressions of other countries; and we have suppressed all
those public forms and ceremonies which tended to familiarize the public
eye to the harbingers of another form of government. The people are
nearly all united; their quondam leaders, infuriated with the sense
of their impotence, will soon be seen or heard only in the newspapers,
which serve as chimneys to carry off noxious vapors and smoke, and all
is now tranquil, firm, and well, as it should be.
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