Whilst contemplating the causes that produce this auspicious result, we must acknowledge the excellence of the constitutional system and the wisdom of the legislative provisions; but we should be deficient in gratitude and justice did we not attribute a great portion of these advantages to the virtue, firmness, and talents of your Administration, which have been conspicuously displayed in the most trying time and on the most critical occasions. It is therefore with the sincerest regret that we now receive an official notification of your intentions to retire from the public employments of your country.
When we review the various scenes of your public life, so long and so successfully devoted to the most arduous services, civil and military, as well during the struggles of the American Revolution as the convulsive periods of a recent date, we can not look forward to your retirement without our warmest affections and most anxious regards accompanying you, and without mingling with our fellow-citizens at large in the sincerest wishes for your personal happiness that sensibility and attachment can express.
The most effectual consolation that can offer for the loss we are about to sustain arises from the animating reflection that the influence of your example will extend to your successors, and the United States thus continue to enjoy an able, upright, and energetic administration.
JOHN ADAMS,
Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate.
DECEMBER 10, 1796.
REPLY OF THE PRESIDENT.
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 insure 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.
GEORGE WASHINGTON.