The departure of my brother-in-law Govert Jean van Persyn for the United States finally places me in the condition to fulfill my duty which the circumstances of the time, my extremely busy life, and the effect which all of this together has had on my spirit, have too long compelled me to neglect.1 Two years ago especially, when my turn came to preside over our university, and this turn fell during the most turbulent of times, and continued through the new revolution which followed them, I was overwhelmed with worry and trepidation. I will not conceal from your excellency that in this period I was plunged into a deep melancholy and that the more I had always been a friend to freedom, the more I trembled to see widely adopted, among those in my nation who, as in France, proclaimed themselves the defenders of freedom, the principle “that the People have a right to do, 435 whatever they choose.” I believed, together with one of the most expert legislators, “that, indeed, the People may break the bands of Society in the forms of Despotism, because such is their pleasure; that they may indeed go through the opération by the plenitude of their irresistible power; but that the Nation will meet with ample punishment in their own misery, and the Leaders, who delude them, in the detestation of their own Posterity.”2 As the period approached when everything seemed to indicate that we would put these sad truths to the test (and I have been predicting this period for three and a half years), I lost my former liveliness, and my health suffered from it. There, sir, is the reason that day after day I postponed the expression of my respect by personal letter, and of my gratitude for all of the consideration you have had for me, for which I hope one day to make a public account. This period which I have just mentioned, so critical for us, came at last, as did the one which resolved the problem, proposed by your excellency in one of your letters.3 After having suffered all of the horrors that follow of necessity the concentration of every power in only one numerous and popular assembly, France has arrived at last at this bicameral system, so decried by those in whose eyes all order, all subordination, all balance in government is aristocracy. Time will tell whether such a huge republic shall long survive without a third branch, with which we may certainly do without in Geneva, in the valleys of Appenzell and in any country which resembles them in breadth, custom, or resources. The experiment made by the French was a very useful one for my nation, but a horrifying one too. And yet my nation is going to run the same gauntlet: a national convention, modeled precisely upon that of France, is supposed to bring freedom and happiness.— “They know not, what a more than Herculean task it is, to unite the opinions of a free People, upon any system of Government whatever.”

Under these circumstances, Providence seems to have prepared the United States of America to be an asylum for all those who love freedom with right order, and for whom freedom cannot exist wherever laws do not preside, but rather men. Soon this species of individual will no longer be suited to the atmosphere of Europe. Soon, after having spun through the whole circle from the arbitrary power of a single one, via the arbitrary power of the masses, we will return to the place whence we started out. And legislators, steeped in the principles of Thomas Paine and Rousseau, after having had nations test out an ideal which has never existed among men what with their passions and their immoderation, will merely reap from so much blood spilled, from so much misery poured out over our region of the globe, only that which states the famed writer from whom I borrow these words: the detestation of our Posterity.

Imbued by these principles, sir, I would go seek, next to you, next to the glorious Washington, next to John Jay and to other men of the same caliber, that serenity of mind, that tranquility, that eludes us here. But my career, devoted in any case to a kind of work that I cannot easily abandon, is already too far along for me to resolve to leave my nation. Nevertheless, my way of thinking is exemplified in the advice I gave to the bearer of the 436 present letter, my brother-in-law and my spouse’s youngest brother. Lieutenant of the French Guards, assigned as captain of a company of infantry by the provinces of the Netherlands in 1787, distinguished by specific charges with which he was entrusted by them, he lost his rank, a portion of his possessions, and his fortune in the revolution of that year, which readied us for that of January 1795. He went to help France, and served, as captain of a company, in all of the military campaigns of 1792 up until last March. There are few military actions in the Netherlands where he was not to be found. Recalled, then, to Holland along with all of the Batavian officers who were serving in France, in order to be placed again in the army which was then being raised, he shared in the fate of some of the bravest among them who refused to scheme and scrape to secure a position. What we call the army in our country was organized, and there was no question of that. He did not want to remain pensioned; he simply asked for severance pay for what he had lost, obtained it, and resolved, mostly according to my advice, to go make use of what was left him in order to settle in your midst. Allow me, sir, to sue for the favor of that same friendship with which your excellency has always honored me, on behalf of this person dear to me. He possesses as of now a small capital of 6 or 7,000 Dutch florins, to set up a business for which we believe he is well suited. I will back all credit he may require in this enterprise. And I hope that, if necessary, you would willingly attest to my guarantee and my resources to that effect.

Pray you find agreeable as well, sir, as a light token of my respect, that I offer you a copy of the theses which I published in series for training the youth in this university, and that I add another copy of it for the academy of Cambridge which I hope you will kindly have delivered to them along with the letter enclosed herein.4

My whole life long, I shall not fail to be, with the truest and most respectful sentiments, sir, your excellency’s most humble and most obedient servant