1060. CABINET OFFICERS, Public Confidence in.—
It is essential to assemble in
the outset persons to compose our Administration,
whose talents, integrity and revolutionary
name and principles may inspire the
nation at once, with unbounded confidence,
and impose an awful silence on all the maligners
of republicanism; as may suppress in embryo
the purpose avowed by one of their most
daring and effective chiefs, of beating down
the Administration. These names do not
abound at this day. So few are they, that
yours cannot be spared among them without
leaving a blank which cannot be filled. If I
can obtain for the public the aid of those I
have contemplated, I fear nothing. If this
cannot be done, then we are unfortunate indeed!
We shall be unable to realize the prospects
which have been held out to the people,
and we must fall back into monarchism, for
want of heads, not hands to help us out of it.
This is a common cause, common to all republicans.
Though I have been too honorably
placed in front of those who are to enter the
breach so happily made, yet the energies of
every individual are necessary, and in the very
place where his energies can most serve the
enterprise. * * * The part which circumstances
constrain us to propose to you is the
Secretaryship of the Navy. * * * Come
forward, then, and give us the aid of your
talents, and the weight of your character towards
the new establishment of republicanism:
I say, for its new establishment, for
hitherto we have only seen its travesty.—
To Robert R. Livingston. Washington ed. iv, 338.
Ford ed., vii, 464.
(M.
Dec. 1800)
