these hard times require the Bounty of nature to be profusely scatterd to make up for the losses sustaind by letting Money on interest to those who are become Bankrupts Mr Wilson Nicholas has faild for three hundred thousand Dollars. Mr Jeffersons indors’d for him to the amount of twenty...
the revolution of 1800 ... was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76. was in it’s form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.
each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is it’s duty under the constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.But you intimate a wish that my opinion should be known on this subject. no, dear Sir....
Our return to Oak Ridge, and thence to Castle Hill, brought us again among our new and old friends. Among these we were honored by a visit from Mr Jefferson ... It was the first time I had ever seen the sage of Monticello, though I had heard of him often through friends and foes, through good...
my business is to beguile the wearisomness of declining life, as I endeavor to do, by the delights of classical reading and of Mathematical truths, and by the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope & fear.
I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their doctrines dogmas, being hypocrisy and...
fortitude, you know, is one of his four cardinal virtues. that teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards. and to fly too in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road.
the banks, bankrupt law, manufactures, Spanish treaty are nothing. these are occurrences which like waves in a storm will pass under the ship. but the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the Missouri country by revolt, & what more, God only knows. from the battle of Bunker’s hill...
it would seem as if they could not see their way clearly to do it. no government can continue good but under the controul of the people: and their people were so demoralised and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholsome controul. their reformation then was to be taken up ab...
if our legislature does not heartily push our University we must send our children for education to Kentucky or Cambridge. the latter will return them to us fanatics & tories, the former will keep them to add to their population if however we are to go a begging any where for our education, I...
all the states but our own are sensible that knolege is power. the Missouri question is for power. the efforts now generally making thro’ the states to advance their science is for power, while we are sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect like them to oppose by ignorance...
I thank you for your information on the progress & prospects of the Missouri question. it is the most portentous one which ever yet threatened our Union. in the gloomiest moment of the revolutionary war I never had any apprehensions equal to what I feel from this source.
The mansion-house of Mr Jefferson occupies the summit of an eminence, constituting a part of the South west mountain of Virginia, elevated about 600 feet above an arm of the James River, which meanders at its base. This ascent eminence, the ascent of which following the flexures of the road, is...
this Missouri question by a geographical line of division is the most portentous one I have ever contemplated. King is ready to risk the union for any chance of restoring his party to power and wriggling himself to the head of it. nor is Clinton without his hopes nor scrupulous as to the means of...
Our brewing for the use of the present year has been some time over. about the last of Oct. or beginning of Nov. we begin for the ensuing year, and brew malt and brew 3. 60 galln casks successively, which will give so many successive lessons to the person you send. on his return he can try his...
among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it...
But while this Syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in it’s true and high light, as no imposter himself, but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of spiritualism: he...
Altho’ I had laid down, as a law to myself, never to write, talk, or even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs & therefore had ceased to read newspapers. yet the Missouri question arroused and filled me with alarm. the old schism of federal & republican, threatened nothing...
but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral...
We arrived at Monticello, three miles farther, about eleven o’clock, ascending the South West Mountain, on which the house is situated, by a winding carriage-road through the wood. I sent in my letter to Mr. Jefferson, who soon afterwards came out and gave me a polite reception, leading me...
Mr. Jefferson’s appearance is rather prepossessing. He is tall and very thin, a little bent with age, with an intelligent and sprightly countenance. His manners are dignified, but courteous and gentlemanly; and he enters into conversation with great ease and animation.
I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere...
One of the propositions in your letter of the 8th inst. is so exactly suited to my situation and feelings on the subject of the negroes for Francis, that I cannot hesitate a moment to accede to it. it is that which proposes to loan me the stock you mean to lay out in this way, to be paid for two...