University of Virginia Library

TO J. Q. ADAMS.

Dear Sir I have received your several favors
of Feby 8, Ap[40] 19, June 3,1 and Aug. 17, all of them
in triplicates or duplicates.

I need not say how agreeable it would have been
to me, and I am persuaded satisfactory to the public,
if your inclination & circumstances had favored the
new allotment of your services. Being ignorant of
the obstacle arising from the particular state of your
family, and inferring from considerations known to
you, that such an exchange might not be unwelcome,
I had proceeded so far in anticipating a decision
different from that which took place in your mind,
as to hold out the station at St Petersburg to another.
It has happened that no disappointment of any sort
ensued to your contemplated successor. But I
ought not to omit, that I did not so far lose sight of
the possibility that you might be induced to decline
the new appointment, as not to have meditated a
provision for that event which wd. have probably deprived

it of its embarrassments. In the present state
of things, I have only to wish that your diplomatic
situation may continue to be less incommodious than
it was at first found; and that opportunities of rendering
it useful to your Country may equal her confidence
in the fidelity and ability which you will apply
to them.

Count Pahlen has just delivered his letter of leave,
in pursuance of the order of the Emperor which
translates him to Rio Janeiro. His excellent dispositions,
and amicable deportment, have justly rendered
him so highly & universally agreeable here,
that we take for granted that no doubt on that point
can have been among the reasons of his sovereign
for this change of his destination.

You will receive by this conveyance from the
Department of State, the late communications to
Congress, including the adjustment of the rusty and
corrosive affair of the Chesapeake.[41] The pretension
of G. B. which requires us as a neutral nation to assert
agst. one belligerent an obligation to open its
markets to the products of the other, shews a predetermination
to make her orders in Council codurable
with the war, for she cannot be unaware that
nothing but a termination of the war if even that,
will fulfill the condition annexed to their repeal. The

question to be decided, therefore, by Congress, according
to present appearances, simply is, whether all the
trade to which the orders are and shall be applied, is
to be abandoned, or the hostile operation of them,
be hostilely resisted. The apparent disposition is certainly
not in favor of the first alternative, though it is
more than probable, that if the second should be
adopted, the execution of it will be put off till the
close of the Session approaches; with the exception
perhaps of a licence to our Merchantmen to arm in
self-defence, which can scarcely fail to bring on war
in its full extent unless such an evidence of the
disposition of the U. S. to prefer war to submission
should arrest the cause for it. The reparation made
for the attack on the American frigate Chesapeake,
takes one splinter out of our wounds; but besides the
provoking tardiness of the remedy, the moment
finally chosen deprives it of much of its effect, by
giving it the appearance of a mere anadyne to the
excitements in Congs. & the nation produced by the
cotemporary disclosures.

It will afford you pleasure to know that the aggregate
of our Crops was never greater than for the
present year. The grain part of them is particularly
abundant.

I tender you assurances of my great esteem and
friendly respects.