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

TO JOHN ARMSTRONG. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. XII (1790-1794) [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. XII (1790-1794).

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

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TO JOHN ARMSTRONG.

Dear General,

Acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 29th of December, and offering to you my best thanks for the interest it expresses in my behalf, I beg you to be persuaded, that neither my late silence nor my present brevity is in any degree the consequence of diminished regard. Your friendship receives from me the same grateful and affectionate return, which I have ever made to it; but the multiplied duties of my public station allow me little or no leisure for the cultivation of private regards; and the necessity of a prior attention to those duties cannot fail, my dear Sir, to excuse me to you.

Having in all cases of application for appointment to office prescribed as an invariable rule to myself, the right of remaining to the last moment free and unengaged, I did not find myself at liberty, even in your regard, to deviate from that rule, which you will be so good as to assign as the reason why I did not answer your letter of last spring.

I have the best disposition to serve the person, whom you then recommended, and, in whatever may comport with circumstances and public propriety, I shall be happy to do so. At present I know not what offices may be created, and applicants multiply with every new office, and some of them come forward under such fair pretensions and pressing wants, that preference is difficult and painful to a degree. In a word, to a man, who has no ends to serve, nor friends to provide for, nomination to office is the most irksome part of the executive trust.

The concern which you take in my health, enhances the pleasure I have in assuring you, that it is now perfectly reëstablished. It will add greatly to my enjoyment to hear that yours is also improved.

I am, dear Sir, &c.