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BENJAMIN KISSAM TO JAY.
what ground I stand; and professional pride shall
give me no uneasiness, while you continue to turn it,
with Satan behind your back.
Yours, truly,
John Jay.
benjamin kissam to jay.
Dear Sir :
I just now received your long letter of the 12th inst.,
and am not a little pleased with the humour and freedom
of sentiment which characterize it. It would give me pain
if I thought you could even suspect me capable of wishing to impose any restraint upon you, in this high and
inestimable privilege of friendship. Because I can see no
reason why the rights of one relation in life should destroy
those of another, I detest that forbidding pride which, with
formal ceremony, can stalk over the social rights of others,
and elevate the soul in a vain conceit of its own dignity
and importance; founded merely in some adventitious circumstance of relative superiority. Take this, therefore, if
you please, as a nolli prosequi for the heinous crime of
writing a free and familiar letter to me; with this further,
that whenever you transgress in the other extreme, you
must not expect to meet with the same mercy.
I really believe, Jay, your pen was directed by the rapid
whirl of imagination; nay, I am convinced that this whirl
was begun, continued, and ended with a strong tide. I
can't help conceiving it under the idea of a mill-tide, which
keeps the wheels in a quick rotation, save only with this
difference, that the motion of that is uniform, yours irregular—an irregularity, however, that bespeaks the grandeur,
not the meanness of the intellectual source from whence the
current flows. . . .
| Title | The correspondence and public papers of John Jay - 1 |
| Creator | Jay, John |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Title | 00000038 |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Transcript | BENJAMIN KISSAM TO JAY. what ground I stand; and professional pride shall give me no uneasiness, while you continue to turn it, with Satan behind your back. Yours, truly, John Jay. benjamin kissam to jay. Dear Sir : I just now received your long letter of the 12th inst., and am not a little pleased with the humour and freedom of sentiment which characterize it. It would give me pain if I thought you could even suspect me capable of wishing to impose any restraint upon you, in this high and inestimable privilege of friendship. Because I can see no reason why the rights of one relation in life should destroy those of another, I detest that forbidding pride which, with formal ceremony, can stalk over the social rights of others, and elevate the soul in a vain conceit of its own dignity and importance; founded merely in some adventitious circumstance of relative superiority. Take this, therefore, if you please, as a nolli prosequi for the heinous crime of writing a free and familiar letter to me; with this further, that whenever you transgress in the other extreme, you must not expect to meet with the same mercy. I really believe, Jay, your pen was directed by the rapid whirl of imagination; nay, I am convinced that this whirl was begun, continued, and ended with a strong tide. I can't help conceiving it under the idea of a mill-tide, which keeps the wheels in a quick rotation, save only with this difference, that the motion of that is uniform, yours irregular—an irregularity, however, that bespeaks the grandeur, not the meanness of the intellectual source from whence the current flows. . . . |
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