Thomas's Massachusetts Spy, Or, Worcester Gazette

Letter from Gen. Washington.

The Literary Journal and Belles-Lettres Repository, an interesting Miscellany, published monthly in New-York, by C. S. Van Winkle, and conducted by a fraternity of literary gentlemen, contains a series of Letters from General Washington, never before published, from which we select the following as exhibiting a felicitous specimen of the ease with which a great man can lapse into playfulness and familiarity.

N. Y. American.

MOUNT-VERNON, APRIL 25, 1788.

My dear Marquis--

In reading your very friendly and acceptable letter, of the 21st of December, 1787, which came to hand by the last mail, I was, as you may well suppose, not less delighted than surprized, to come across that plain American word-" My Wife." A Wife !-well my dear Marquis, I can hardly refrain from smiling, to find that you are caught at last. I saw by the eulogium you often made on the happiness of domestick life in America, that you had swallowed the bait, and that you would, as surely as you are a philosopher and a soldier, be taken one day or other. So your day has at length come--I am glad of it with all my heart and soul--it is good enough for you. Now you are well served for coming to fight in favour of the American rebels, all the way across the Atlantick ocean, by catching that terrible contagion which, like the small-pox, or the plague, a man can only have once in his life, because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in America- I don't know how you manage the matter in France.) for his life-time. And yet, after all the maledictions you so richly merit on the subject, the worst wish I can have in my heart to make against Madame de Chastellux and yourself, is, that you may neither of you get the better of this domestick felicity during the course of your mortal existence.

If so wonderful an event should have occasioned me,' my dear Marquis, to have written in a strange style, you will understand me as clearly as if I had said (what in plain English is the simple truth) do me the justice to believe that I take a heart-felt interest in whatsoever concerns your happiness; in this view, I sincerely congratulate you on your auspicious matrimonial connexion.

I am happy to find that Madame de Chastellux, is so immediately connected with the Duchess of Orleans, as I have always understood that this noble lady was an illustrious pattern of connubial love, as well as an excellent model of virtue in general.

While you have been making love under the bands of Hymen, the great personages of the north have been making war under the inspiration, or rather the infatuation, of Mars. Now, for my part, I humbly conceive you had much the best and wisest of the bargain; for certainly it is more consonant to all the principles of reason and religion, (natural and revealed) to replenish the earth with inhabitants, rather than depopulate it by killing those already in existence; besides, it is time for the age of knight-errantry and mad heroism to be at an end.

Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, do not care, I suppose, how many seeds of war are sown; but, for the sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be wished that the manly employment of agriculture, and the humanizing benefit of commerce, should supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into ploughshares -the spears into pruning hooks-and, as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more."

I will now give you little news from this side of the Atlantick, and then finish :As for us, we are plodding on in the dark road of peace and politicks.-- We, who live in these ends of the earth, only hear of the rumours of war like the roar of distant thunder. It is to be hoped that our remote local situation will prevent us from being swept into its vortex.

The Constitution, which was proposed by the Federal Convention, has been adopted by the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia. No State has rejected it. The Convention of Maryland is now sitting, and will probably adopt it, as that of South-Carolina will do in May. The other Conventions will assemble early in the summer. Hitherto there has been much greater unanimity in favour of the proposed government than could have reasonably been expected. Should it be adopted, (and I think it will be) America will lift up her head again, and, in a few years, become respectable among the nations. It is a flattering and consolatory reflection that our rising republick has the good wishes of all philosophers, patriots, and virtuous men, in all nations, and that they look upon it as a kind of asylum for mankind. God grant that we may not be disappointed in our honest expectations, by our folly or perverseness!

With sentiments of the purest attachment and esteem, I have the honour to be, my dear Marquis, your most obedient and humble servant,

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

P. S.-If the Duke de Lauzun is still with you, I beg you will thank him, in my name, for his kind remembrance of me, and make my compliments to him.

May 1st.

Since writing the above, I have been favoured with a duplicate of your letter, in the hand-writing of a lady, and cannot close this without acknowledging my obligations to the flattering post-script of the fair transcriber. In fact, my dear Marquis, the characters of this interpreter of your sentiments are so much fairer than those through which I have been accustomed to decypher them, that I already consider myself as no small gainer by your matrimonial connexion--especially as I hope that your amiable amanuensis will not forget, at some times, to add a few annotations of her own to your original text.

G. W.