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| Letter Arlington House 2 March My Dr Messrs Gales & Seaton By your notice of the F of the C & A L of Ireland on Monday I find that you mention laying the address before your readers of a future day. The address has been written in haste & if you should not find it convenient to put in type for even 2 days you had better return it to me by bearer & I will polish it off a little, to save you corrections which no doubt it requires. If however your arrangements have enabled you to put it in type and your labours I know are arduous at the moment, Could I so far engage the good offices of my old friend Stansbury as to let him to give it a supervision & I shall be very truly obliged --- Believe me Dr Sirs Truly your Friend & Srvt George W P Custis PS If you return the ms please say exactly at what time you wish it re sent and it shall be punctually attended to What an age we live in my Dr Sirs. Already I hear at the very first blush of the new Cabinet there is "weeping & wailing & gnashing of teeth". What comes next -- Surely there must be something wrong in the nature & tendency of our institutions for in this acceptation by the people for the Pages for the Constitution never intended that the whole purpose of our best of Government should become a mere scramble for Power -- Remembering as I do the First Day of the Government which occurred on the anniversary of my Birth Day 30th April 1789 surely it is not intended that my aged winter shall behold the failure of the noblest experiment of Civil & Religious Liberty the world ever saw -- pigmies are trying to pull away stone by stone from that great monument of Human wisdom & virtue, the Constitution, which Giants in wisdom & virtue erected for the blessing of this and after ages---but so we go on my DrSirs exclaiming "Can such things be & overcome us like a summer cloud etc etc" Truly Yrs ----------- To Joseph Gales & W W Seaton G. W. P. Custis National Intelligencer March 1829 Washington Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, ARHO 3332 |
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