The affectionate sentiments you express on my retirement from the high office conferred on me by my country, are gratefully recieved, & acknoleged with thankfulness. your approbation of the various measures which have been pursued, cannot but be highly consolatory to myself, & encouraging to future functionaries, who will see that their honest endeavors for the public good will recieve due credit with their constituents. that the great & leading measure respecting our foreign intercourse was the most salutary alternative, & preferable to the submission of our rights as a free & independant republic, or to a war at that period, cannot be doubted by candid minds. great and good effects have certainly flowed from it, & greater would have been produced, had they not been, in some degree, frustrated by unfaithful citizens.

If in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem & approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the blood stained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. the care of human life & happiness, & not their destruction, is the first & only legitimate object of good government.