We arrived here, my dearest friend, on Saturday last.... No news here.
You will see by the newspapers the motion of Mr. Clark to stop all
intercourse with Great Britain. I believe it is likely to be supported
by our friends. Dayton is quite warm. The other day, when it was
observed in Congress by Tracy that every person who would vote for this
motion of sequestering the British debts must be an enemy to morality
and common honesty, 'I might,' replied Dayton,--'I might with equal
propriety call every person who will refuse to vote for that motion a
slave of Great Britain and an enemy to his country; but if it is the
intention of those gentlemen to submit to every insult and patiently to
bear every indignity, I wish (pointing to the eastern members, with
whom he used to vote),--_I wish to separate myself from the herd_.'
The majority of the Assembly of Pennsylvania had several votes, previous
to the election of a Senator in my place, to agree upon the man.
Sitgreaves, a certain Coleman, of Lancaster County, a fool and a tool,
and James Ross, were proposed and balloted for. Ross had but seven
votes, on account of his being a western man and a man of talents, who
upon great many questions would judge for himself. They divided almost
equally between Sitgreaves and Coleman, and at last agreed to take up
Coleman, in order to please the counties of Lancaster and York. Our
friends, who were the minority, had no meeting, and waited to see what
would be the decision of the other party, in hopes that they might
divide amongst themselves. As soon as they saw Coleman taken up they
united in favor of Ross as the best man they had any chance of carrying,
and they were joined by a sufficient number of the disappointed ones of
the other party to be able to carry him at the first vote. As he comes
chiefly upon our interest, I hope he will behave tolerably well, and,
upon the whole, although it puts any chance of my being again elected a
member of that body beyond possibility itself, I am better pleased with
the fate of the election than most of our adversaries....
PHILADELPHIA, 19th April, 1794.
... I have concluded this day with Mr. Robert Morris, who, in fact, is
the only man who buys. I give him the whole of my claims, but without
warranting any title, for £4000, Pennsylvania currency, one-third
payable this summer, one-third in one year, and one-third in two years.
That sum therefore, my dearest, together with our farm and five or six
hundred pounds cash, makes the whole of our little fortune. Laid out in
cultivated lands in our neighborhood it will provide us amply with all
the necessaries of life, to which you may add that, as property is
gradually increasing in value there, should in future any circumstances
induce us to change our place of abode, we may always sell to
advantage....
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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