Dear Sir--Having had the honor of communicating to you in my letter of the last of July my purpose of retiring from the office of Secretary of State at the end of the month of September, you were pleased, for particular reasons, to wish its postponement to the close of the year. That term being now arrived, and my propensities to retirement becoming daily more and more irresistible, I now take the liberty of resigning the office into your hands. Be pleased to accept with it my sincere thanks for all the indulgences which you have been so good as to exercise towards me in the discharge of its duties. Conscious that my need of them has been great, I have still ever found them greater, without any other claim on my part than a firm pursuit of what has appeared to me to be right, and a thorough disdain of all means which were not as open and honorable as their object was pure. I carry into my retirement a lively sense of your goodness, and shall continue gratefully to remember it. With very sincere prayers for your life, health, and tranquility, I pray you to accept the homage of the great and constant respect and attachment with which I have the honor to be, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, TH. JEFFERSON. This called forth from Washington the following handsome and affectionate letter: _From George Washington._ Philadelphia, Jan. 1st, 1794. Dear Sir--I yesterday received with sincere regret your resignation of the office of Secretary of State. Since it has been impossible to prevail upon you to forego any longer the indulgence of your desire for private life, the event, however anxious I am to avert it, must be submitted to. But I can not suffer you to leave your station without assuring you that the opinion which I had formed of your integrity and talents, and which dictated your original nomination, has been confirmed by the fullest experience, and that both have been eminently displayed in the discharge of your duty. Let a conviction of my most earnest prayers for your happiness accompany you in your retirement; and while I accept with the warmest thanks your solicitude for my welfare, I beg you to believe that I am, dear Sir, etc. Perhaps no man ever received a higher compliment for the able discharge of his official duties than that paid to Jefferson by his adversaries, who, in opposing his nomination as President, urged as an objection--"that Nature had made him only for a Secretary of State."