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

TO MATHEW CAREY. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. XI (1785-1790) [1891]

Edition used:

The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890). Vol. XI (1785-1790).

Part of: The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO MATHEW CAREY.

Sir,

The last post brought me your letter of the 22d.—your application to me for the loan of £100 is an evidence of your unacquaintedness with my inability to lend money. To be candid—my expenditures are never behind my income—and this year (occasioned by the severest drouth that ever was known in this neighborhood) instead of selling grain which heretofore has been my principal source of revenue it is not £500 that will purchase enough for the support of my family.—After this disclosure of my situation you will be readily persuaded that inclination to serve without the means of accomplishing it, is of little avail.—This however is the fact so far as it respects the point in question.

As you seem anxious that the contents of your letter should not be known I put it in your own power to destroy it by returning it under the same cover with this.

I wish sucess to your Museum, and am, &c.1

[1 ]“I should be glad to know precisely whether I am to expect any and what part of the £200 on which you assured me in Philadelphia I might absolutely rely, and the half of which you informed me in November, should be sent to me by your servant in ten days if you could not get the residue. I have put the sheriff of this county off three times; if he comes again I must, if I have no further expectation from you, suffer him to make distress, as I raised nothing last year for sale, and allotted this money for the payment of my taxes. . . . In the morning I shall leave home for a meeting of the Directors of the Potomack Co., at the Falls of the Shenandoah, from whence I do not expect to be returned in less than ten days.”—Washington to John Francis Mercer, 11 January, 1788.