Can you send me Woodmason's bills for the two copying presses, for the
Marquis de la Fayette and the Marquis de Chastellux? The latter makes
one article in a considerable account, of old standing, and which I
cannot present for want of this article. I do not know whether it is
to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new
constitution. I beg leave, through you, to place them where due. It will
yet be three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There
are very good articles in it; and very bad. I do not know which
preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in
the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against
a chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been
disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of
Polish Kings, should have for ever excluded the idea of one continuable
for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying.
The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat, and
model into every form, lies about our being in anarchy, that the world
has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them,
the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more
wonderful, we have believed them ourselves.
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