that the vote for and against the bill was perfectly geographical, a northern against a southern vote, and he feared he should be thought to be taking side with a southern party.  I admitted the motive of delicacy, but that it should not induce him to do wrong:  urged the dangers to which the scramble for the fractionary members would always lead.  He here expressed his fear that there would, ere long, be a separation of the Union; that the public mind seemed dissatisfied and tending to this.  He went home, sent for Randolph, the Attorney General, desired him to get Mr. Madison immediately and come to me, and if we three concurred in opinion that he should negative the bill, he desired to hear nothing more about it, but that we would draw the instrument for him to sign.  They came.  Our minds had been before made up.

We drew the instrument.  Randolph carried it to him, and told him we all concurred in it.  He walked with him to the door, and as if he still wished to get off, he said, ‘And you say you approve of this yourself.’  ‘Yes, Sir,’ says Randolph, ‘I do upon my honor.’  He sent it to the House of Representatives instantly.  A few of the hottest friends of the bill expressed passion, but the majority were satisfied, and both in and out of doors it gave pleasure to have, at length, an instance of the negative being exercised.

Written this the 9th of April.

July the 10th, 1792.  My letter of ——­ to the President, directed to him at Mount Vernon, had not found him there, but came to him here.  He told me of this, and that he would take an occasion of speaking with me on the subject.  He did so this day.  He began by observing that he had put it off from day to day, because the subject was painful; to wit, his remaining in office, which that letter solicited.  He said that the declaration he had made when he quitted his military command, of never again entering into public life, was sincere.  That, however, when he was called on to come forward to set the present government in motion, it appeared to him that circumstances were so changed as to justify a change in his resolution:  he was made to believe that in two years all would be well in motion, and he might retire.  At the end of two years he found some things still to be done.  At the end of the third year, he thought it was not worth while to disturb the course of things, as in one year more his office would expire, and he was decided then to retire.  Now he was told there would still be danger in it.  Certainly, if he thought so, he would conquer his longing for retirement.  But he feared it would be said his former professions of retirement had been mere affectation, and that he was like other men, when once in office he could not quit it.  He was sensible, too, of a decay of his hearing, perhaps his other faculties might fall off and he not be sensible of it.  That with respect to the existing causes of uneasiness, he thought there we’re suspicions against a particular party, which had been carried