He said, he believed the views of the republican party were perfectly pure, but when men put a machine into motion, it is impossible for them to stop it exactly where they would choose, or to say where it will stop.  That the constitution we have is an excellent one, if we can keep it where it is; that it was, indeed, supposed there was a party disposed to change it into a monarchical form, but that he could conscientiously declare there was not a man in the United States who would set his face more decidedly against it than himself.  Here I interrupted him by saying, ’No rational man in the United States suspects you of any other disposition; but there does not pass a week, in which we cannot prove declarations dropping from the monarchical party, that our government is good for nothing, is a milk-and-water thing which cannot support itself, we must knock it down, and set up something of more energy.  He said, if that was the case, he thought it a proof of their insanity, for that the republican spirit of the Union was so manifest and so solid, that it was astonishing how any one could expect to move it.

He returned to the difficulty of naming my successor; he said Mr. Madison would be his first choice, but that he had always expressed to him such a decision against public office, that he could not expect he would undertake it.  Mr. Jay would prefer his present office.  He said that Mr. Jay had a great opinion of the talents of Mr. King; that there was also Mr. Smith of South Carolina, and E. Rutledge:  but he observed, that, name whom he would, some objections would be made, some would be called speculators, some one thing, some another; and he asked me to mention any characters occurring to me.  I asked him if Governor Johnson of Maryland had occurred to him.  He said he had; that he was a man of great good sense, an honest man, and, he believed, clear of speculations:  but this, says he, is an instance of what I was observing; with all these qualifications, Governor Johnson, from a want of familiarity with foreign affairs, would be in them like a fish out of water; every thing would be new to him, and he awkward in every thing.  I confessed to him that I had considered Johnson rather as fit for the Treasury department.  ‘Yes,’ says he, ’for that he would be the fittest appointment that could be made; he is a man acquainted with figures, and having as good a knowledge of the resources of this country as any man.’  I asked him if Chancellor Livingston had occurred to him.  He said yes; but he was from New York, and to appoint him while Hamilton was in, and before it should be known he was going out, would excite a newspaper conflagration, as the ultimate arrangement would not be known.  He said McLurg had occurred to him as a man of first-rate abilities, but it is said that he is a speculator.  He asked me what sort of a man Wolcot was.  I told him I knew nothing of him myself; I had heard him characterized as a cunning man.  I asked him