An eloquent reflection on his public career - photo 1
An eloquent reflection on his public career - photo 2

An eloquent reflection on his public career

Lot 45
22.04.2021 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 125 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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Archive
ID 517691
Lot 45 | An eloquent reflection on his public career
Estimate value
$ 25 000 – 35 000
WASHINGTON, George. Autograph letter signed to Jean Luzac, Mount Vernon, 2 December 1797.

Two pages, bifolium, 230 x 188mm (small marginal loss affecting several words at the lower right corner of first page, light marginal wear, hinge remnants along top margin).

Washington eloquently reflects on his career in his final retirement from public life. Washington responds to a laudatory note and the gift of a book from the influential Dutch republican editor, and in so doing, takes stock of his lengthy and eventful public career: "To have steered my Bark amid the intricacies of variegated public employment, to a haven of rest with an approving conscience; and while receiving the approbation of my own country for the part I have acted, to meet similar proofs of it from many of the moderate & virtuous of other countries consummates my greatest wish and all my ambition and in my eye is more precious than any thing that Power or riches could have bestowed."

Luzac (1746-1807) was, like Washington, a critic of the violent excesses of the French Revolution. In his 30 September 1797 letter to Luzac, who had been persecuted for his writings by the pro-French Batavian Republic, wrote that "…my attachment to the true repubican principles authorise me to testify to you my way of thinking—Defender of these principles I have been the victim of them, when I have combatted the usurpations of Despotism, I am the victim at this time, in combatting the opposite extreme, that our unhappy Europe runs into, but to see the illustrious Washington, the founder of the glorious American liberty, march between these two extremes, upon the same line that I have constantly traced—there is my justification, my consolation…" (Luzac to GW, Leyden [30] September 1797, Papers of George Washington, Digital Edition). To this sentiment Washington responds: "In times of turbulance, when the passions are afloat, calm reason is swallowed up in the extremes to w[hi]ch measures are attempted to be carried; but when those subside and the empire of it is resumed, the man who acts from principle—who pursues the paths of truth, moderation & justice, will regain his influence. Such, I persuade myself will be, if it has not already been, your case.–"

Luzac's had sent Washington a copy of his recently-published Oratio De Socrate Cive: Publice Habita which was dedicated to John Adams, who had provided him with reports on the constitutional debates taking place in Massachusetts. Luzac would publish a Dutch translation of the Massachusetts Constitution, which helped bolster popular support for the American Revolution in the Netherlands. (See McCullough,John Adams, p. 249). Washington acknowledged as much in closing: " To the writings & conduct of men of this description (amongst whom you have always been placed) America is much indebted. And ⟨as a private citizen,⟩ for that is the class in which I now move, I offer you my thanks for the part you avow to have acted—and for the Annals you have been pleased to record of one who with pleasure subscribes himself …" Published from the letterpress copy in the Papers of George Washington, Digital Edition: Luzac to GW, [30] September 1796, fn 2. Provenance: Rosenbach, Catalogue 9, No. 212, 1926.
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