I have no
ambition to gratify, although I have duties to fulfil."
Under the date of December 9, 1824, he says: "The public interest shall
never be postponed to my individual concerns, although ruin to myself
may result from it."
When once asked for something like a defence of some parts of his
political career, which he declined to give, he said: "There is no act
of my whole life, public or private, which I regret; none that I am
solicitous should not be scrutinized; none the motives or objects of
which I cannot instantly explain, in a way which candor will approve."
On the 1st of December, 1824, he writes: "If I know myself, there is no
office, place, or appointment within the gift of man which I wish, and
none I would accept save from my native State. To her I have never felt
myself at liberty to refuse myself under any circumstances, when she
thought proper to call me to her side. But even from her I want nothing
but that protection which she affords in common to all her citizens. My
gratitude would constrain me to sacrifice everything to obey her
wishes." On another occasion, when his creed was called for, he wrote:
"As a Virginian, I would willingly suffer this inconvenience and make
this sacrifice, and much more, for Virginia; but I should feel myself
unworthy of her name, if I did not scorn to stoop to the meanness of
blazoning to her view my own merits, which, if they exist at all, none
ought to know so well as my countrymen, or to vindicate myself against
suspicions which, if without foundation, they ought not to entertain.
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