love for your
fellow-citizens must review successful efforts to promote their
happiness."

After referring to his declaration concerning pecuniary emoluments for
his services, they concluded by saying: "All that remains is, that we
join in our fervent supplications for the blessings of Heaven on our
country, and that we add our own for the choicest of these blessings on
the most beloved of her citizens."

On the eighteenth of May, the entire senate waited upon the president at
his own house, to present their response. After congratulating him on
the complete organization of the federal government, they said:--

"We are sensible, sir, that nothing but the voice of your
fellow-citizens could have called you from a retreat chosen with
the fondest predilections, endeared by habit, and consecrated to
the repose of declining years: we rejoice, and with us all America,
that, in obedience to the call of our common country, you have
returned once more to public life. In you all parties confide, in
you all interests unite; and we have no doubt that your past
services, great as they have been, will be equalled by your future
exertions, and that your prudence and sagacity as a statesman will
tend to avert the dangers to which we were exposed, to give
stability to the present government, and dignity and splendor to
that country which your skill and valor, as a soldier, so eminently
contributed to raise to independence."

To this Washington replied: "The coincidence of circumstances which led
to this auspicious crisis, the confidence reposed in me by my
fellow-citizens, and the assistance I may expect from counsels which
will be dictated by an enlarged and liberal policy, seem to presage a
more prosperous issue to my administration than a diffidence of my
abilities had taught me to anticipate, I now feel myself inexpressibly
happy in a belief that Heaven, which has done so much for our infant
nation, will not withdraw its providential influence before our
political felicity shall have been completed; and in a conviction that
the senate will, at all times, co-operate in every measure which may
tend to promote the welfare of this confederated republic. Thus
supported by a firm trust in the Great Arbiter of the universe, aided by
the collective wisdom of the Union, and imploring the Divine benediction
in our joint exertions in the service of our country, I readily enga