Although our correspondence is rare, my most sincere regards for you are uninterrupted. I have outlived, & so have you, so many old friends & contemporaries, that the very few left me are the more valuable for their scarcity. New acquaintances I make the most of; but old & valued friends delight me with solid enjoyments, more easily felt than described. And yet, in what is called society, a bystander would suppose that I never had any other than the companions of the day. I seldom mix with what is called now convivial society; but tho’ an inveterate water drinker, I can keep pace with such society by sympathy. I live with my old friends (not seldom with you), as the Swedenborgeans do with departed spirits;— strong attachments & zealous recollections work up the predisposed fancy into a belief of real presence. It is a pleasing delusion, which greybearded scrutiny, & what is called rational investigation, should never extinguish. It is a most agreeable & fascinating Gullibility; whereof it is more wise than foolish to become the willing & unresisting Dupe. Far advanced in my 75th year, (& I believe you have entered it) I have great Reason to be thankful to a beneficent Providence, that I am not afflicted with the chronic, or other maladies of old age. Much I attribute to good spirits, temperate living, & the constant use of the cold bath. I give you this egotistical history, that you may inform me, in return, of the state of your health, which, I fear, has not been so prosperous; but is really a subject of no small interest with me. I have continued in my judicial employment more from habit than uninterrupted inclination; & it is, at times burthensome, & always ill-requited. I see Congress are about new modelling the department: & what they will make of it, I do not know, (possibly they do not themselves know,) nor do I feel much anxiety on the subject. The whole state of things is so different from what we, in our day, contemplated; that it is more surprising our judicial arrangements, formed in the early stage of our national existence, should have continued so long & so effectively, than that they should now be changed. My attention to my judicial duty has abstracted me from my private affairs; which are, however, free from the embarrassments which have overwhelmed many adventurers who had better have been idle. My thorough bass amusement consists in rural enjoyments, which have been more profitable to others than myself. I have given you a specimen of this kind of employment by directing our 4th. volume of Memoirs1 to be sent to you; & I hope it will arrive safely to your hands. There may not be much instruction; but we have assisted in raising our fellow-citizens to proper views of the real & substantial Interests of our country. There is a most gratifying spirit everywhere on this subject, by which the rising generation may profit; but it is too late in the day, for either you or I to enjoy much of its advantages. So we thought, however, in our revolutionary exertions, & yet what a mass of Prosperity & Happiness have we lived to see accumulated in every quarter of our country! When I carry my recollections back to my early knowledge of its husbandry; the contrast exhibited by its present improvement (yet but imperfect) fills me with most pleasing sensations.

There is a jealousy in our mother country still apparent, on most of the rapid improvements we have arrived at; & I have strong expectations that those in agriculture will eer long equal, if not exceed, all others. I keep up a good understanding with the british agricultural people with whom I come in contact; but it amuses me to perceive that, although many are liberal, many are otherwise. Some years ago we sent a volume of our Memoirs to Scotland: It was very civilly received; but several of their leading agricultors took occasion to observe, that we were an hundred years behind them; & even very unequal to english farming. So I left Sawney & John Bull to settle that Point. I sent lately an American sithe & cradle, which they had not before seen; nor was it used in England. Some received it graciously; & I had civil thanks from a vice president of the Board of Agriculture; but he, at the same time, let me know, that it was a flemish & not an american implement. I desired my friend who transmitted the cold civility, to have it labelled “a Flemish implement, sent to England, by the way of the United States of America!” There is an awkward instrument in Flanders containing the rudiments of our sithe & cradle; but as unequal to ours, as their ships to those of our country. Yet ours are American ships; not a little envied & squinted at.

I have been lately reading, with great pleasure, the Life of our late distinguished friend Dr Franklin.2 Have you read it? I see he glosses over, in a letter to the then secretary for foreign affairs, (Livingston,) the Affair of Vergennes sending his secretary to England, pending our negotiations in the treaty of peace. I think you told me all about it;—& I have ever had different impressions from those the Dr. portrays. He says it was merely to ascertain whether or not the british ministry had serious intentions to make an equal, solid, & lasting peace with us & our Allies. I have always believed there was an under plot in the Business. I think something of this appears in your Journal, which I assisted to read in Congress in 1782 & 3.3 Much Bruit4 was made then by the French diplomacy, about your signing the preliminaries without previous notice to them; but I always thought you entirely in the right; not only as a sure security in so important a measure; but to guard against embarrassments, with reason apprehended from the French maneuvres. I voted against an unwarrantable philippic of censure, brought forward in Congress against your conduct, to please the french; & I thought then, & do now, that it was a mean compliance. Our friend Maddison, who was generally then with us, left his friends on that subject, & I never liked him the better for it.

I see Congress have rejected the claim of Beaumachi’s representatives. All my recollections put them in the right in so doing. True, Silas Deane made an ostensible private contract with B.; but I always was taught to believe him a mere show man; & that the supplies were a gift from France, which she could not openly, then, avow. The ^unaccounted^ Money about which much noise has been made, I always believed to have been devoted to secret service & douceurs to french agents, whose remunerations could not publickly appear. All or most of the Articles went thro’ my hands, or under my observation, when in the war office; & a more complete piece of fripponerie never was seen. Very many of the articles were worthless, & among them the brass cannon were ^old^ rampart pieces, only valuable for the metal; which was recast in our foundries. All these things, however, appear now as dreams. What is real, & lives longer than these transactions in my memory, is, that I am, & always have been, truly & affectionately yours—