From George Washington to Jonathan Boucher, 30 July 1770
To Jonathan Boucher
Mount Vernon July 30th 1770
Dr Sir
The Books you wrote for, I hope you will receive in good order by Joe, as I desired Lund Washington to pack them up carefully & see them put into the Portmanteau1—No thread came from Mr Addison’s, nor any from Mr Digges’s to which place I sent, thinking it might be contrivd there along with Jacks Key’s. We coud easily have carried down, & most certainly shoud have done so if it had ever got this length.
That there shoud be a dissatisfaction, and Murmuring at the Virginia Association (by those who are more strictly Bound) I do not much wonder at; but it was the best that the friends to the cause coud obtain here, and tho. too much relaxd from the Spirit, with which a measure of this sort ought to be conducted, yet, will be attended with better effects (I expect) than the last; inasmuch as it will become general, & adopted by the Trade. Upon the whole, I think the People of Virginia have too large latitude, & wish that the Inhabitants of the North may not have too little: what I woud be understood to mean by it is, that their Publick Virtue may not be put to too severe a tryal to stand the Test much longer, if their Importations are not equal to the real necessities of the People, whether it is, or is not, I cannot undertake to judge but suppose they are not, by the defection of New York, & attempts (tho. unsuccessful as yet) in other places to admit a general Importations of Goods; Tea only excepted.2
So soon as you are able to get the Simples from Mr Johnson Mrs Washington will be much obligd in having Joe sent with them3—We set out this day for Fredericksburg & expect to be back about the 9th or 10th of next Month.4 My love attends Jack. I am Dr Sir Yr Most Obedt Servt
Go: Washington
ALS, IEN. GW sent the letter “pr Joe.”
1. Boucher’s letter asking GW to send books is missing. For GW’s ordering books for John Parke Custis, see GW to Robert Cary & Co., 25 July 1769, and GW to Boucher, 4 Dec. 1769, n.1. Boucher was at Mount Vernon from 23 to 25 July, and young Custis left Mount Vernon on 26 July to go “to Annapolis to School” (, 2:255, 256).
2. For reference to the new Virginia nonimportation agreement, see GW to George William Fairfax, 27 June 1770, n.2.
3. For the medicine that Thomas Johnson was arranging to have his brother John Johnson send to GW for Martha Parke Custis, see Thomas Johnson to GW, 18 June, n.4, GW to Thomas Johnson, 20 July, and GW to Boucher, 15 Aug. 1770.
4. GW left with Mrs. Washington and her daughter to go to Fredericksburg on 30 July, and they spent the night of 31 July and 1 Aug. at his mother’s. On 2 Aug. he met with those officers who came to Fredericksburg to describe how the 200,000 acres that were being awarded to them should be divided among the participants in the Fort Necessity campaign of 1754. See Advertisement, 16 Dec. 1769, n.1. GW got back to Mount Vernon on 9 August. See , 2:256–57, 260–62.