Monday, December 12.
Theodore Foster, from the State of Rhode Island; John Brown, from the State of Kentucky; and Henry Tazewell, from the State of Virginia, severally attended.
Address to the President.
Agreeably to the resolution of the 10th instant, the Senate waited on the President of the United States, and the Vice President, in their name, presented the Address then agreed to.
To which the President made the following reply:
Gentlemen: It affords me great satisfaction to find in your Address a concurrence in sentiment with me on the various topics which I presented for your information and deliberation; and that the latter will receive from you an attention proportioned to their respective importance.
For the notice you take of my public services, civil and military, and your kind wishes for my personal happiness, I beg you to accept my cordial thanks. Those services, and greater, had I possessed ability to render them, were due to the unanimous calls of my country, and its approbation is my abundant reward.
When contemplating the period of my retirement, I saw virtuous and enlightened men, among whom I relied on the discernment and patriotism of my fellow-citizens to make the proper choice of a successor; men who would require no influential example to ensure to the United States "an able, upright, and energetic Administration." To such men I shall cheerfully yield the palm of genius and talents to serve our common country; but, at the same time, I hope I may be indulged in expressing the consoling reflection, (which consciousness suggests,) and to bear it with me to my grave, that none can serve it with purer intentions than I have done, or with a more disinterested zeal.
G. WASHINGTON.
The Senate returned to their own Chamber, and then adjourned.