TO GIDEON GRANGER, ESQ.

MONTICELLO, January 24, 1810.

DEAR SIR,-I was sorry, by a letter from Mr. Barlow the other day, to learn the ill state of your health, and I sincerely wish that this may find you better. Young, temperate and prudent as you are, great confidence may be reposed in the provision nature has made for the restoration of order in your system when it has become deranged; she effects her object by strengthening the whole system, towards which medicine is generally mischevious. Nor are the sedentary habits of office friendly to it. But of all this your own good understanding, instructed by your experience, is the best judge.

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I cannot pass over this occasion of writing to you, the first presented me since retiring from office, without expressing to you my sense of the important aid I received from you in the able and faithful direction of the office committed to your charge. With such auxiliaries, the business and burthen of government becomes all but insensible, and its painful anxieties are relieved by the certainty that all is going right. In no department did I feel this sensation more strongly than in yours, and though at this time of little significance to yourself, it is a relief to my mind. to discharge the duty of bearing this testimony to your valuable services. I must add my acknowledgments for your friendly interference in setting the public judgment to rights with respect to the Connecticut prosecutions, so falsely and maliciously charged on me. I refer to a statement of the facts in the National Intelligencer of many months past, which I was sensible came from your hand. I pray you to be assured of my great and constant attachment, esteem and respect.

TO MR. J. GARLAND JEFFERSON.

MONTICELLO, January 25, 1810.

DEAR SIR,-Your favor of December 12th was long coming to hand. I am much concerned to learn that any disagreeable

impression was made on your mind, by the circumstances which are the subject of your letter. Permit me first to explain the principles which I had laid down for my own observance. In a government like ours, it is the duty of the Chief Magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people. This alone, in any case where the energy of the nation is required, can produce a union of the powers of the whole, and point them in a single direction, as if all constituted but one body and one mind, and this alone can render a weaker nation unconquerable by a stronger one. Towards acquiring the confidence of the people, the very first measure is to satisfy them of his disinterestedness, and that he is directing their affairs with a single eye to their good, and not to build up fortunes for himself and family, and especially, that the officers appointed to transact their business, are appointed because they are the fittest men, not because they are his relations. So prone are they to suspicion, that where a President appoints a relation of his own, however worthy, they will believe that favor and not merit, was the motive. I therefore laid it down as a law of conduct for myself, never to give an appointment to a relation. Had I felt any hesitation in adopting this rule, examples were not wanting to admonish me what to do and what to avoid. Still, the expression of your willingness to act in any office for which you were qualified, could not be imputed to you as blame. It would not readily occur that a person qualified for office ought to be rejected merely because he was related to the President, and the then more recent examples favored the other opinion. In this light I considered the case as presenting itself to your mind, and that the application might be perfectly justifiable on your part, while, for reasons occurring to none perhaps, but the person in my situation, the public interest might render it unadvisable. Of this, however, be assured that I considered the proposition as innocent on your part, and that it never lessened my esteem for you, or the interest I felt in your welfare.

My stay in Amelia was too short, (only twenty-four hours,) to

expect the pleasure of seeing you there. It would be a happiness to me any where, but especially here, from whence I am rarely absent. I am leading a life of considerable activity as a farmer, reading little and writing less. ardor is necessary to guard us from the

Something pursued with tedium-vitae, and the active pursuits lessen most our sense of the infirmities of age. That to the health of youth you may add an old age of vigor, is the sincere prayer of

Yours, affectionately.

TO JUDGE DAVID CAMPBELL.

MONTICELLO, January 28, 1810.

DEAR SIR, Your letter of November 5th, was two months on its passage to me. I am very thankful for all the kind expressions of friendship in it, and I consider it a great felicity, through a long and trying course of life, to have retained the esteem of my early friends unaltered. I find in old age that the impressions of youth are the deepest and most indelible. Some friends, indeed, have left me by the way, seeking, by a different political path, the same object, their country's good, which I pursued with the crowd along the common highway. It is a satisfaction to me that I was not the first to leave them. I have never thought that a difference in political, any more than in religious opinions, should disturb the friendly intercourse of society. There are so many other topics on which friends may converse and be happy, that it is wonderful they would select, of preference, the only one on which they cannot agree. I am sensible of the mark of esteem manifested by the name you have given to your son. Tell him from me, that he must consider as essentially belonging to it, to love his friends and wish no ill to his enemies. I shall be happy to see him here whenever any circumstance shall lead his footsteps this way. You doubt, between law and physic, which profession he shall adopt. His peculiar turn of mind, and your own knowledge of things will best decide this question. Law

is quite overdone. It is fallen to the ground, and a man must have great powers to raise himself in it to either honor or profit. The mob of the profession get as little money and less respect, than they would by digging the earth. The followers of Esculapius are also numerous. Yet I have remarked that wherever one sets himself down in a good neighborhood, not pre-occupied, he secures to himself its practice, and if prudent, is not long in acquiring whereon to retire and live in comfort. The physician is happy in the attachment of the families in which he practices. All think he has saved some one of them, and he finds himself everywhere a welcome guest, a home in every house. If, to the consciousness of having saved some lives, he can add that of having at no time, from want of caution, destroyed the boon he was called on to save, he will enjoy, in age, the happy reflection of not having lived in vain; while the lawyer has only to recollect how many, by his dexterity, have been cheated of their right and reduced to beggary. After all, I end where I began, with the observation that your son's disposition and your prudence, are the best arbiters of this question, and with the assurances of my great esteem and respect.

TO CESAR A. RODNEY.

MONTICELLO, February 10, 1810. MY DEAR SIR,-I have to thank you for your favor of the 31st ultimo, which is just now received. It has been peculiarly unfortunate for us, personally, that the portion in the history of mankind, at which we were called to take a share in the direction of their affairs, was such an one as history has never before presented. At any other period, the even-handed justice we have observed towards all nations, the efforts we have made to merit their esteem by every act which candor or liberality could exercise, would have preserved our peace, and secured the unqualified confidence of all other nations in our faith and probity. But the hurricane which is now blasting the world, physical and

moral, has prostrated all the mounds of reason as well as right. All those calculations which, at any other period, would have been deemed honorable, of the existence of a moral sense in man, individually or associated, of the connection which the laws of nature have established between his duties and his interests, of a regard for honest fame and the esteem of our fellow men, have been a matter of reproach on us, as evidences of imbecility. As if it could be a folly for an honest man to suppose that others could be honest also, when it is their interest to be So. And when is this state of things to end? The death of Bonaparte would, to be sure, remove the first and chiefest apostle of the desolation of men and morals, and might withdraw the Scourge of the land. But what is to restore order and safety on the ocean? The death of George III? Not at all. He is only stupid; and his ministers, however weak and profligate in morals, are ephemeral. But his nation is permanent, and it is that which is the tyrant of the ocean. The principle that force is right, is become the principle of the nation itself. They would not permit an honest minister, were accident to bring such an one into power, to relax their system of lawless piracy. These were the difficulties when I was with you. I know they are not lessened, and I pity you.

It is a blessing, however, that our people are reasonable; that they are kept so well informed of the state of things as to judge for themselves, to see the true sources of their difficulties, and to maintain their confidence undiminished in the wisdom and integrity of their functionaries. Macte virtute therefore. Continue to go straight forward, pursuing always that which is right, as the only clue which can lead us out of the labyrinth. Let nothing be spared of either reason or passion, to preserve the public confidence entire, as the only rock of our safety. In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely. It is visible that their confidence is even now veering in that direction; that they are looking to the executive to give the proper direction to their affairs, with a confidence as auspicious as it is well founded.