a blank which cannot be filled.  If I can obtain for the public the aid of those I have contemplated, I fear nothing.  If this cannot be done, then are we unfortunate indeed!  We shall be unable to realize the prospects which have been held out to the people, and we must fall back into monarchism, for want of heads, not hands, to help us out of it.  This is a common cause, my dear Sir, common to all republicans.  Though I have been too honorably placed in front of those who are to enter the breach so happily made, yet the energies of every individual are necessary, and in the very place where his energies can most serve the enterprise.  I can assure you that your colleagues will be most acceptable to you; one of them, whom you cannot mistake, peculiarly so.  The part which circumstances constrain us to propose to you, is the secretaryship of the navy.  These circumstances cannot be explained by letter.  Republicanism is so rare in those parts which possess nautical skill, that I cannot find it allied there to the other qualifications.  Though you are not nautical by profession, yet your residence and your mechanical science qualify you as well as a gentleman can possibly be, and sufficiently to enable you to choose under-agents perfectly qualified, and to superintend their conduct.  Come forward then, my dear Sir, and give us the aid of your talents and the weight of your character towards the new establishment of republicanism; I say, for its new establishment; for hitherto, we have seen only its travestie.  I have urged thus far, on the belief that your present office would not be an obstacle to this proposition.  I was informed, and I think it was by your brother, that you wished to retire from it, and were only restrained by the fear that a successor of different principles might be appointed.  The late change in your council of appointment will remove this fear.  It will not be improper to say a word on the subject of expense.  The gentlemen who composed General Washington’s first administration took up, too universally, a practice of general entertainment, which was unnecessary, obstructive of business, and so oppressive to themselves, that it was among the motives for their retirement.  Their successors profited from the experiment, and lived altogether as private individuals, and so have ever continued to do.  Here, indeed, it cannot be otherwise our situation being so rural, that during the vacations of the legislature we shall have no society but of the officers of government, and in time of sessions the legislature is become and becoming so numerous, that for the last half dozen years nobody but the President has pretended to entertain them.  I have been led to make the application before official knowledge of the result of our election, because the return of Mr. Van Benthuysen, one of your electors and neighbors, offers me a safe conveyance, at a moment when the post-offices will be peculiarly suspicious and prying.  Your answer may come by post without danger, if directed in some other hand-writing than your own:  and I will pray you to give me an answer as soon as you can make up your mind.