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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO J. McHENRY, SECRETARY OF WAR. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 9 (Letters and State Papers 1799-1811) [1854]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 9.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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TO J. McHENRY, SECRETARY OF WAR.

Sir,

I have received your letter of the 20th, and have no objection to the plan you propose of raising a company of cavalry. “Our means!”1 I never think of our means without shuddering. All the declamations, as well as demonstrations, of Trenchard and Gordon, Bolingbroke, Barnard and Walpole, Hume, Burgh and Burke, rush upon my memory and frighten me out of my wits. The system of debts and taxes is levelling all governments in Europe. We have a career to run, to be sure, and some time to pass before we arrive at the European crisis; but we must ultimately go the same way. There is no practicable or imaginable expedient to escape it, that I can conceive.

[1 ]Mr. McHenry, speaking in his letter of the delay to raise six additional companies of cavalry, says;

“I have been influenced, also, to this delay by a desire to husband our means, and guard against interrupting recruiting for the infantry.”

In reality he had been stirred to act by a letter from Mr. Hamilton, shaping the policy suggested. Hamilton’s Works, vol. v. pp. 275, 276.