TO JAMES MONROE.
Dear Sir,—The mail of Saturday brought me
the Copy of your message. It is a fine landscape
of our situation; and cannot fail to give pleasure at
home, and command respect abroad. The recommendation
of a repeal of taxes, is happily shaped:
so also the introduction of the subject of Amending
the Constitution. The only questions which occur
relate to the proposed suppression of the establishment
at Amelia Island, not within our territorial
claim; and to the latitude of the principle on which
the right of a Civilized people is asserted over the
lands of a savage one. I take for granted that the
first point was well considered. And the latter
may be susceptible of qualifying explanations.
I observe you say nothing of a remodelling of the
Judiciary. Perhaps you may have in reserve a
special message, or you may think it best to let the
subject originate in Congress; or it may not appear
to you in the light it does to me. I have long
thought a systematic change in that Dept. proper;
and should have pressed it more when in office,
but for the circumstance, that it involved a personal
accommodation where I might be supposed to feel
an interest biasing my judgment, and diminishing
the attention paid to my opinion.
