University of Virginia Library

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

I have recd your letter, with the unsealed one for
Monroe & have forwarded the latter. Your subsequent
one, which I calculate to have been written
on the 12th inst, came to hand two days ago. I
feel for your situation but you must bear it. Every
consideration private as well as public requires a
further sacrifice of your longings for the repose of
Monticello; you must not make your final exit from
public life till it will be marked with justifying circumstances
which all good citizens will respect, &
to which your friends can appeal. At the present
crisis, what would the former think, what could
the latter say? The real motives, whatever they
might be would either not be admitted or could
not be explained; and if they should be viewed as
satisfactory at a future day, the intermediate effects

would not be lessened & could not be compensated.
—I am anxious to see what reception Genest will
find in Philada.. I hear that the fiscal party in Alexa.
was an over match for those who wished to testify
the American sentiment. George Town it is said repaired
the omission. A public dinner was intended
for him at Fredericksburg, but he passed with such
rapidity that the compliment miscarried. It would
not be amiss, if a knowledge of this would in a proper
mode get to him. I think it certain that he will be
misled if he takes either the fashionable cant of the
Cities or the cold caution of the Govt. for the sense
of the public; and I am equally persuaded that
nothing but the habit of implicit respect will save
the Executive from blame if thro' the mask of Neutrality,
a secret Anglomany should betray itself. I
forgot when I requested your attention to my plows,
to ask the favor of you to pay for them & to let me
know the amount of your several advances. . . .