[To Mrs. John Adams.]
Your letter, Madam, of the 18th of August, has been some days received, but a press of
business has prevented the acknowledgment of it; perhaps, indeed, I may have already trespassed
too far on your attention. With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned
to be perfectly indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only truth
to set it to rights, I cannot be as passive. The act of personal unkindness alluded to in your
former letter, is said in your last to have been the removal of your eldest son from some office
to which the judges had appointed him. I conclude, then, he must have been a commissioner
of bankruptcy. But I declare to you, on my honor, that this is the first knowledge
I have ever had that he was so. It may be thought, perhaps, that I ought to have enquired
who were such, before I appointed others. But it is to be observed, that the former law
permitted the judges to name commissioners occasionally only, for every case as it arose,
and not to make them permanent officers. Nobody, therefore, being in office, there could
be no removal. The judges, you well know, have been considered as highly federal; and
it was noted that they confined their nominations exclusively to federalists. The Legislature,
dissatisfied with this, transferred the nomination to the President, and made the
offices permanent. The very object in passing the law was, that he should correct, not
confirm, what was deemed the partiality of the judges. I thought it, therefore, proper to
inquire, not whom they had employed, but whom I ought to appoint to fulfil the intentions
of the law. In making these appointments, I put in a proportion of federalists, equal, I
believe, to the proportion they bear in numbers through the Union generally. Had I known
that your son had acted, it would have been a real pleasure to me to have preferred him
to some who were named in Boston, in what was deemed the same line of politics. To this
I should have been led by my knowledge of his integrity, as well as my sincere dispositions
towards yourself and Mr. Adams [531]
. * * * The candor manifested in your letter,
and which I ever believed you to possess, has alone inspired the desire of calling your
attention, once more, to those circumstances of fact and motive by which I claim to be
judged. I hope you will see these intrusions on your time to be, what they really are, proofs
of my great respect for you. I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ
from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality. I know too well the weakness
and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different results. Both of our political
parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in the same object—the public
good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good.
One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers; the other, by a
different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other, the selfishness of rulers
independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove. We think that one
side of this experiment has been long enough tried, and proved not to promote the good of
the many; and that the other has not been fairly and sufficiently tried. Our opponents
think the reverse. With whichever opinion the body of the nation concurs, that must
prevail. My anxieties on this subject will never carry me beyond the use of fair and honorable
means, of truth and reason; nor have they ever lessened my esteem for moral worth,
nor alienated my affections from a single friend, who did not first withdraw himself. Whenever
this has happened, I confess I have not been insensible to it; yet have ever kept myself
open to a return of their justice. I conclude with sincere prayers for your health and
happiness, that yourself and Mr. Adams may long enjoy the tranquillity you desire and merit,
and see in the prosperity of your family what is the consummation of the last and warmest
of human wishes.—
To Mrs. John Adams.iv, 560.
Ford ed., viii, 310. (M., Sep. 11, 1804.)
