case, devoted three-score years and one of their lives, uninterruptedly, to the service of their country? Have the times of those services been as trying as those which have embraced our Revolution, our transition from a colonial to a free structure of government? Have the stations of their trial been of equal importance? Has the share they have borne in holding their new government to its genuine principles, been equally marked? And has the cause of the distress, against which they seek a remedy, proceeded, not merely from themselves, but from errors of the public authorities, disordering the circulating medium, over which they had no control, and which have, in fact, doubled and trebled debts, by reducing, in that proportion, the value of the property which was to pay them? If all these circumstances, which characterize the present case, have taken place in theirs also, then follow the precedent. Be assured, the cases will be so rare as to produce no embarrassment, as never to settle into an injurious habit. The single feature of a sixty years' service, as no other instance of it has yet occurred in our country, so it probably never may again. And should it occur, even once and again, it will not impoverish your treasury, as it takes nothing from that, and asks but a simple permission, by an act of natural right, to do one of moral justice.

TO JOSEPH C. CABELL

J. MSS. MONTICELLO Feb. 7. 26.

DEAR SIR,-I recd yesterday your kind letter of the 2d and am truly sensible of the interest you are

so good as to take in my affairs. I had hoped the length and character of my services might have prevented the fear in the legislature of the indulgence asked being quoted as a precedent in future cases, but I find no fault with their strict adherence to a rule generally useful, altho' relaxable in some cases under their discretion, of which they are the proper judges. If it can be yielded in my case, I can save the house of Monticello and a farm adjoining to end my days in and bury my bones. If not I must sell house and all here and carry my family to Bedford where I have not even a log hut to put my head into. In any case I wish nothing from the treasury. The pecuniary compensns I have recd for my services from time to time have been fully to my own satisfn.

I have been very much mortified by the publicn in the Enquirer of the 4th of two letters from some person called an American citizen who seems to have visited Mr. Madison & myself and has undertaken to state private conversns with us. In one of these he makes me declare that I had intentionally proceeded in a course of dupery of our legislature, teasing them as he makes me say for 6. or 7. sessions for successive aids to the Univty. and asking a part only at a time & intentionally concealing the ultimate cost; and gives an inexact statement of a story of Obrian. Now our annual reports will shew that we constantly gave full and candid accounts of the money expended, and statements of what might still be wanting founded on the Proctor's estimates. No man ever heard me speak of

the grants of the legislre but with acknolegements of their liberality, which I have always declared had gone far beyond what I could have expected in the beginning. Yet the letter writer has given to my expressions an aspect disrespectful of the legislre and calculated to give them offence, which I do absolutely disavow. The writer is called an American citizen. It is evident, if he be so, that he is an adopted one only who after calling on us in his travels thro' the country as a stranger may have obtained naturalisation and settled in Phila. where he is enjoying the society of the Buonapartes &c. The familiar style of his letter to his friend in England and the communicn of it to the literary gazette there indicates sufficiently his foreign birth and connections. I cannot express to you the pain which this unfaithful version and betrayment of private conversn has given me. I feel that it will add to the disfavor I had incurred with a large portion of the legislature by my strenuous labours for the establmt of the University to which they were opposed insomuch as to let it overweigh whatever of satisfactn former services had given them. I have been long sensible that while I was endeavoring to render to our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising genern on the level of our sister states (which they have proudly held heretofore) I was discharging the odious function of a Physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient, insensible of needing it. I am so sure of the future approbn of posterity and of the inestimable effect

we shall have produced in the educn of our country by what we have done as that I cannot repent of the part I have borne in coopern with my colleagues. I disclaim the honors which this writer (among the other errors he had interlarded with the truths of his letters) has ascribed to me of having made the liberal donations of timber & stone from my own estate and of having paid all the contracts for materials myself, and I restore them to their true source the liberal legislators of our country. My pain at these false praises and representations should merit with them an acquittal of any supposed approbn of them by myself. Ever & affectly yours.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH'

J. MSS.

MONTICELLO Feb. 8. 26

MY DEAR JEFFERSON,-I duly recd. your affectionate letter of the 3d and perceive there are greater doubts than I had apprehended whether the legislre will indulge me in my request to them. It is a part of my mortifn to perceive that I had so far overvalued myself as to have counted on it with too much confidence. I see in the failure of this hope a deadly blast of all peace of mind during my remaining days. You kindly encourage me to keep up my spirits. But oppressed with disease, debility, age, and embarrassed affairs, this is difficult. For myself I should not regard a prostration of fortune, but I am overwhelmed at the prospect of the situation in which I may leave my family. My

'From the original in the possession of Archibald Cary Coolidge.

dear & beloved daughter, the cherished companion of my early life and nurse of my age, and her children, rendered as dear to me as if my own from having lived with them from their cradle, left in a comfortless situation, hold up to me nothing but future gloom, and I should not care were life to end with the line I am writing, were it not that in the unhappy state of mind which your father's misfortunes have brought upon him I may yet be of some avail to the family. Their affectionate devotion to me makes a willingness to endure life a duty as long as it can be of any use to them. Yourself particularly, dear Jefferson, I consider as the greatest of the Godsends which heaven has granted me. Without you what could I do under the difficulties now environing me. This has been produced in some degree by my unskilful management and devoting my life to the service of my country, but much also by the unfortunate fluctuations in the value of our money and the long continued depression of the farming business. But for these last I am confident my debts might be paid leaving me Monticello and the Bedford estate. But where there are no bidders property however great offers no resource for the payment of debts. In the payment of debts all must go for little or nothing. Perhaps however even in this case I may have no right to complain, as these misfortunes have been held back for my last days when few remain to me. I duly acknolege that I have gone thro' a long life with fewer circumstances of affliction than are the lot of most men. Uninterrupted health, a