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Dear Sir, - Under another cover I send you what has occurred to me on the subject of our trade with England. The object of this is, to express my sympathy for your domestic calamity, and to offer my congratulations on the welcome so ardent and so universal, which seems to have greeted you among your fellow-citizens of the West. The same kindness of feeling which has been expressed in that quarter, exists, I believe, in other places. I have been through New York in the course of the summer, and I found almost every where, a hearty approbation, and every where else, at least, an entire and not uneasy acquiescence, in regard to the events of last winter, and to your own agency in producing those events. In New England, with here and there a little expression of spleen from the disappointed, the great majority of the people have the best disposition toward the Government, in all its parts. Our ability in Congress is not so great as it might have been, and as it ought to have been. But that evil admits of no immediate cure.
You must allow me to admonish you to take care of your health. Knowing the ardor and the intensity with which you may probably apply yourself to the duties of your place, I fear very much you may overwork yourself. Somebody (was it not an Austrian minister?) on being asked how he could get through so much business, replied that he did it by repudiating two false maxims, which had obtained currency among men ; that, for his part, he never did any thing to-day, which he could put off till to-morrow ; nor any thing himself, which he could get another to do for him. Without following his example, strictly and literally, I still think you ought to be a good deal governed by the same rules, especially the last.
- Boston
- Source:
- The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, Calvin Colton, 1856
