subsequent Missions which took place in my time, the persons appointed were notified that they could not be continued beyond that period.  All returned within it except Humphreys.  His term was not quite out when General Washington went out of office.  The succeeding administration had no rule for any thing:  so he continued.  Immediately on my coming to the administration, I wrote to him myself, reminded him of the rule I had communicated to him on his departure; that he had then been absent about eleven years, and consequently must return.  On this ground solely he was superseded.  Under these circumstances, your appointment was impossible after an absence of seventeen years.  Under any others, I should never fail to give to yourself and the world proofs of my friendship for you, and of my confidence in you.  Whenever you shall return, you will be sensible in a greater, of what I was in a smaller degree, of the change in this nation from what it was when we both left it in 1784.  We return like foreigners, and, like them, require a considerable residence here to become Americanized.

The state of political opinion continues to return steadily towards republicanism.  To judge from the opposition papers, a stranger would suppose that a considerable check to it had been produced by certain removals of public officers.  But this is not the case.  All offices were in the hands of the federalists.  The injustice of having totally excluded republicans was acknowledged by every man.  To have removed one half, and to have placed republicans in their stead, would have been rigorously just, when it was known that these composed a very great majority of the nation.  Yet such was their moderation in most of the States that they did not desire it.  In these, therefore, no removals took place but for malversation.  In the middle States the contention had been higher, spirits were more sharpened and less accommodating.  It was necessary in these to practise a different treatment, and to make a few changes to tranquillize the injured party.  A few have been made there, a very few still remain to be made.  When this painful operation shall be over, I see nothing else ahead of us which can give uneasiness to any of our citizens, or retard that consolidation of sentiment so essential to our happiness and our strength.  The tory papers will still find fault with every thing.  But these papers are sinking daily, from their dissonance with the sentiments of their subscribers, and very few will shortly remain to keep up a solitary and ineffectual barking.

There is no point in which an American, long absent from his country, wanders so widely from its sentiments as on the subject of its foreign affairs.  We have a perfect horror at every thing like connecting ourselves with the politics of Europe.  It would indeed be advantageous to us to have neutral rights established on a broad ground; but no dependence can be placed in any European coalition for that.