of our lives. Be assured, my dear Sir, that I am incapable of receiving the slightest impression from the effort now made to plant thorns on the pillow of age, worth and wisdom, and to sow tares between friends who have been such for near half a century. Beseeching you then, not to suffer your mind to be disquieted by this wicked attempt to poison its peace, and praying you to throw it by among the things which have never happened, I add sincere assurances of my unabated and constant attachment, friendship and respect.

DEAR SIR,-I return you Mr. Coxe's letter which has cost me much time at two or three different attempts to decypher it. Had I such a correspondent I should certainly admonish him that if he would not so far respect my time as to write to me. legibly, I should so far respect it myself as not to waste it in decomposing and recomposing his hieroglyphics.

The jarrings between the friends of Hamilton and Pickering will be of advantage to the cause of truth. It will denudate the monarchism of the former and justify our opposition to him, and the malignity of the latter which nullifies his testimony in all cases which his passion can discolor. God bless you, and preserve you many years.

J. MSS.

TO JAMES MONROE

MONTICELLO, Oct. 19. 23.

DEAR SIR,-I forward you the inclosed letter on the same ground on which it is addressed to me, and not that Duane has any moral claims on us. His defection from the republican ranks, his transition to the Federalists, and giving triumph, in an important state, to wrong over right, have dissolved, of his own seeking, his connection with us. Yet the energy of his press, when our cause was laboring, and all but lost, under the overwhelming weight of it's powerful adversaries, it's unquestionable effect in the revolution produced in the public mind, which arrested the rapid march of our government towards monarchy, overweigh in fact the demerit of his desertion, when we had become too strong to suffer from it sensibly. He is in truth the victim of passions which his principles were not strong enough to controul. Altho therefore we are not bound to clothe him with the best robe, to put a ring on his finger, and to kill the fatted calf for him, yet neither should we leave him to eat husks with the swine. His advocate may look too high when he talks of the Post office; but if some more secondary birth should be vacant (as Depy collector, Inspector, Nav. officer) something which would feed and cover him decently, I am persuaded it would be a gratification to the old republicans, who do not feel that all he has done is cancelled by one false step. As to any particular demerits towards yourself, without recollecting them, I am sure you were above their infliction, & the more so as he was then fighting

openly in the ranks of the enemy. But all this is left to your own feelings and reflection, being written only "ut valeat quantum valere potest." Dios guarde a Vm muchos anos.'

I

1 Jefferson later wrote to Monroe:

"MONTO. July 2. 24.

"DEAR SIR,-I took the liberty some time last fall of placing Mr. Duane under your notice, should anything occur adapted to his qualifns and to his situation which I understood to be needy in the extreme. His talents and informn are certainly great, and the services he rendered us when we needed them and his personal sacrifices and sufferings were signal and efficacious and left on us a moral duty not to forget him under misfortune. His subsequent aberrations were after we were too strong to be injured by them. I have lately recd. a letter from him, which I inclose because it will better shew his prospects of distress and anxieties for relief than anything I could say. Whether the latter may too much influence his reasonable hopes, you are the proper judge. If they do, his former merits will still claim a recollection on any proper occasion which may occur. I perform a duty in communicating his wish, yours will be to weigh it's relations to the public service. I congratulate you on the return of repose after a campaign so agitating as the late one. Your nephew who was so kind as to call on me a day or two ago, gave me hopes we should see you here. During the summer or early autumn I have a visit to Bedford in contempln, the time of which is quite immaterial, and could I previously know when that of your visit to Albemarle will probably be, I should so arrange mine as not to miss the pleasure of seeing you here. I salute you with sincere & affectionate respect." He also wrote to Duane:

MONTICELLO May 31. 24. "DEAR SIR,-I received a few days ago a pamphlet on the subject of America, England and the Holy alliance, and read it with unusual interest and concurrence of opn. It furnished a simple and satisfy key for the solution of all the riddles of British conduct & policy. While considering and conjecturing who could be its author, I happened to cast my eye on the few words of superscription, and thot the handwriting not unknown to me. I turned to my letters of correspdce. and found it's tally which left me no longer at a loss to whom my thanks should be addressed, and to return these thanks is the object of this letter. In Nov. last I received a letter from some friend of yours who chose to be anonymous, suggesting that your situation might be bettered and the government advantaged by availing itself of your services in some line. I immediately wrote to a friend whose

MONTICELLO, October 24, 1823. DEAR SIR,-The question presented by the letters you have sent me, is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of Independence. That made us a nation, this sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us. And never could we embark on it under circumstances more auspicious. Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. America, North, and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicil of despotism, our endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it. By acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the bands, bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government, situation enabled him to attend to this. I have received no answer but hope it is kept in view. I am long since withdrawn from the political world, think little, read less, and know all but nothing of what is going on; but I have not forgotten the past nor those who were fellow-laborers in the gloomy hours of federal ascendancy when the spirit of republicanism was beaten down, its votaries arraigned as criminals, and such threats denounced as posterity would never believe. My means of service are slender; but such as they are, if you can make them useful to you in any sollicitn. they shall be sincerely employed. In the mean time, I assure you my continued frdshp & respect."

wars.

and emancipate a continent at one stroke, which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty, Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one, or all on earth; and with her on our side we need not fear the whole world. With her then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause. Not that I would purchase even her amity at the price of taking part in her But the war in which the present proposition might engage us, should that be its consequence, is not her war, but ours. Its object is to introduce and establish the American system, of keeping out of our land all foreign powers, of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of our nations. It is to maintain our own principle, not to depart from it. And if, to facilitate this, we can effect a division in the body of the European powers, and draw over to our side its most powerful member, surely we should do it. But I am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that it will prevent instead of provoking war. With Great Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war. For how would they propose to get at either enemy without superior fleets? Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of nations, by the interference of any one in the internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Bonaparte, and now