Several years later he wrote to his
trusted friend, John Jay:
I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical
form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds
speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how
irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph for our enemies to
verify their predictions! What a triumph for the advocates of
despotism to find, that we are incapable of governing ourselves,
and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely
ideal and fallacious! Would to God, that wise measures may be
taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much
reason to apprehend.[1]
[Footnote 1: Hapgood, 285.]
In the renewal of his life at Mount Vernon, Washington gave almost
as much attention to the cultivation of friendship as to that of his
estate. He pursued with great zest the career of planter-farmer. "I
think," he wrote a friend, "with you, that the life of a husbandman
of all others is the most delectable. It is honorable, it is amusing,
and, with judicious management, it is profitable. To see plants rise
from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the
laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy to
be conceived than expressed."[1]
[Footnote 1: Hapgood, 288.
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