Your favor of the 12th. was duly recd. and I thank you, as Mr. Quincy doubtless does for your obliging execution of the task requested of you.

Like some other partial friends you greatly overate my Consent to be made a candidate for the approaching Convention. It was given with a very just, as well as unfeigned reluctance. When I recollect the years that have passed over my head, since I served in the Convention which formed the Constitution of the State, or even those since I served in that which formed the Constitution of the U. S. and that I am now the sole surviving member of each of those Bodies, I might well have claimed at this day an exemption from any like undertaking, or rather have pleaded my disqualifications for it. Having done neither, I can not now shrink from the call, should it be made by the District; and must console myself for the sterility of my public duty, with the private gratification of visiting once more the Metropolis of my native State, & taking by the hand the friends I may find there. I need not say that yours will be of the number.