Dear Sir,—I have received your friendly letters of 4th and 16th instant, and have a grateful sense of the motives which dictated them. I can assure you that I feel a great reluctance to part with my personal and political friends, and that every consideration merely personal to myself and detached from my family urges a continuance in public life. My habits are formed and cannot be altered. I feel alive to everything connected with the interest, happiness, and reputation of the United States. Whatever affects unfavorably either of them makes me more unhappy than any private loss or inconvenience. Although I have nothing to do with it, the continued suspension of specie payments, which I consider as a continued unnecessary violation of the public faith, occupies my thoughts more than any other subject. I feel as a passenger in a storm,—vexed that I cannot assist. This I understand to be very generally the feeling of every statesman out of place. Be this as it may, although I did and do believe that for the present at least I could not be of much public utility in France, I did in my private letter to the President place my declining on the ground of private considerations. In that respect my views are limited to the mere means of existence without falling in debt I do not wish to accumulate any property. I will not do my family the injury of impairing the little I have. My health is frail; they may soon lose me, and I will not leave them dependent on the bounty of others. Was I to go to France, and my compensation and private income (this last does not exceed $2500 a year) did not enable me to live as I ought, I must live as I can. I ask your forgiveness for entering in those details, but you have treated me as a friend, and I write to you as such. You have from friendship wished that I would reconsider my first decision, and I will avail myself of the permission. It will be understood that in the mean while, if the delay is attended with any public inconvenience, a new appointment may immediately take place. My motive for writing when I did was a fear that, specially with respect to other missions, the belief that I would go to France might induce the President to make different arrangements from those he would have adopted on a contrary supposition.
On the 27th January, 1816, Mr. Monroe replied by again urging Mr. Gallatin to accept, and pressing for a quick decision. On the 2d February Mr. Gallatin wrote his final acceptance.
GALLATIN TO JEFFERSON.
Washington, 1st April, 1816.
... After what I had written to you you could hardly have expected that I would have accepted the French mission. It was again offered to me in so friendly a manner and from so friendly motives that I was induced to accept. Nor will I conceal that I did not feel yet old enough, or had I philosophy enough, to go into retirement and abstract myself altogether from public affairs. I have no expectation, however, that in the present state of France I can be of any utility there, and hope that I will not make a long stay in that country....
Mr. Gallatin, like most men, had the faculty of deceiving himself. In writing these lines, he was so inconsistent as to ignore the fact that he had already refused to return to public life on the ground that he must provide for his family. He was driven into still greater inconsistencies a few days later.
MADISON TO GALLATIN.
Washington, April 12, 1816.
Dear Sir,—Mr. Dallas has signified to me that, it being his intention not to pass another winter in Washington, he has thought it his duty to give me an opportunity of selecting a successor during the present session of Congress; intimating a willingness, however, to remain, if desired, in order to put the National Bank in motion.
Will it be most agreeable to you to proceed on your mission to France, or are you willing again to take charge of a department heretofore conducted by you with so much reputation and usefulness, on the resignation of Mr. Dallas, which will, it is presumed, take effect about the 1st of October? In the latter case it will be proper that a nomination be forthwith made for the foreign appointment. Favor me with your determination as soon as you can make it convenient, accepting in the mean time my affectionate respects.