The writings of George Washington; being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes and illustrations. By Jared Sparks.

_ET. 52.] LIFE OF WASHINGTON. 405
practical agriculturist. He was fond of adorning and
improving his grounds as an amusement, and was devoted to the cultivation of his farms, upon a thorough,
economical, and systematic plan, both as a means of
increasing his property, and as being suited to his
tastes and early habits.
His first care, after establishing himself at Mount
Vernon, was to examine minutely into the state of
his private affairs, which had become deranged by his
long absence and the disorders of the times. His
fortune was ample for a republican citizen, and a man
who derived neither consequence nor pleasure from
display, but it had necessarily suffered a diminution
during the war. Adhering rigidly to the resolution
he had formed, when he accepted the command of
the army, not to receive any remuneration from the
public, either in the shape of pay or other pecuniary
reward, he now considered it a duty to repair the
losses he had sustained, as well by economy in his
style of living, as by all the usual efforts to increase
the productiveness of his estates.
Some of his countrymen, estimating his services to
the public at their just value, and knowing the injury
his private affairs had suffered in consequence of
them, hoped to change his purpose of refusing pecuniary compensation. A few days before he resigned
his commission, the Supreme Executive Council of
Pennsylvania sent the following instructions on this
subject to the delegates in Congress from that State.
"Though his Excellency General Washington proposes in a short time to retire, yet his illustrious actions and virtues render his character so splendid and
venerable, that, it is highly probable, the admiration
and esteem of the world may make his life in a very
considerable degree public, as numbers will be de