Passy, 3 June, 1778.
On the 13th of February I left you. It is now the 3d of June, and I have
not received a line nor heard a word, directly nor indirectly,
concerning you, since my departure. This is a situation of mind in which
I never was before, and I assure you I feel a great deal of anxiety at
it; yet I do not wonder at it, because I suppose few vessels have sailed
from Boston since ours. I have shipped for you the articles you
requested, and the black cloth for your father, to whom present my most
affectionate and dutiful respects. Captain Tucker, if he should not be
unlucky, will give you an account of your things.
It would be endless to attempt a description of this country. It is one
great garden. Nature and art have conspired to render everything here
delightful. Religion and government, you will say, ought to be excepted.
With all my heart. But these are no afflictions to me, because I have
well fixed it in my mind as a principle, that every nation has a right
to that religion and government which it chooses, and as long as any
people please themselves in these great points, I am determined they
shall not displease me.
There is so much danger that my letter may fall into malicious hands,
that I should not choose to be too free in my observations upon the
customs and manners of this people. But thus much I may say with truth
and without offense, that there is no people in the world who take so
much pains to please, nor any whose endeavors in this way have more
success. Their arts and manners, taste and language, are more respected
in Europe than those of any other nation. Luxury, dissipation, and
effeminacy are pretty nearly of the same degree of excess here and in
every other part of Europe. The great cardinal virtue of temperance,
however, I believe flourishes here more than in any other part of
Europe.
My dear countrymen! how shall I persuade you to avoid the plague of
Europe! Luxury has as many and as bewitching charms on your side of the
ocean as on this; and luxury, wherever she goes, effaces from human
nature the image of the Divinity. If I had power I would forever banish
and exclude from America all gold, silver, precious stones, alabaster,
marble, silk, velvet, and lace.
Oh, the tyrant! the American ladies would say. What! Aye, my dear girls,
these passions of yours which are so easily alarmed, and others of my
own sex which are exactly like them, have done and will do the work of
tyrants in all ages. Tyrants different from me, whose power has
banished, not gold indeed, but other things of greater value, wisdom,
virtue, and liberty. My son and servant are well. I am, with an ardor
that words have not power to express,
Yours.