Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

I hope your editorial venture may succeed. There is only one objection to it, which would however apply to every other enterprise for making money, that is. The expence is present, the profit future. Does the establishment rest on a solid basis, or is its present prosperity at all dependent on the party excitement which now prevails? It will call your attention off from your legal studies, but it will have the good effect of habituating you to composition. Attend to your Grammar. In one of your numbers, I recollect seeing the relation who, in one of its inflexions, applied to inanimate object, & another fault more gross, but which I do not recollect. Your manner is very metaphysical, & possesses somewhat of the Bentham obscurity, whom you have been studying I suppose, however excellent your sense may be, you will not be much read, because it is hard to come at your meaning, & your style is not on a level with ordinary intellects. However, you have thought hard, & put your mind with vigour to the subject. Do not accustom yourself to read entirely abstruse authors, & to look for Mathematical demonstration where moral evidence can alone be brought to bear. ’tis not in the nature of things. Read some lighter works where the imagination is allowed more play, & those writers who abound in sense, but more of the common practical, superficial kind. At any rate be not exclusive in your reading, that is what I mean to recommend. It will generate habits disadvantageous to you if ever you should practice at the bar. Perhaps, however, I may be wrong. But I speak not without experience

There is a bad chance for subscribers here. They have generally gone to the extent of their subscribing power; for besides the New Orleans papers there are two published at Donaldsonville; one for the administration, the other for Jackson. White is the administration candidate for Congress in opposition to Livingston. That you have seen, no doubt, in the N. O. papers. In the Capital the party fever is raging very high: we are comparatively cool here, in the Country. The dull, inert leaven of the yeomanry here, is not easily set to work, as with you. The people of Ascension, you know swore they would not vote for Adams, at the last election, because he had, through negligence, suffered his levee to break, inundated their lands & subjected them to a heavy parish tax—meaning Kit Adams. But I must not [. . .] of my constituents. Black White, Porter, Winchester, Gov Johnson are all for Adams. Randall, Nicholls Col Nicholas, myself &c are for Jackson. In Ascension J. has a majority: In La Fourche A. Our paper prospers & has nearly deposed the administration paper, its predecessor.

The partnership has borrowed $600 in Bank. I am to have $250 for you. Perhaps I may scrape together $100 more. This you must try & make do until november when we shall be able to make you a remittance [. . .] with the proceeds of the crop. Penny says he will send some of the first sugar made to Town, for the purpose. I wish Mr Tournillon. was entirely disengaged from his embarassments. He would assist us I think. Do not omit writing to him occasionally

Your Affectionate letter to Grandmother Brown did arrive ’till after her death. It would have been a solace to her during her last sickness, to have received such a memorial of your unabated affection.

Mr Tournillon returned about a week since from Bandstown. he was gone only twenty one days, I beleive, which tel shows you what a small matter such a voyage is. He found Julian well, not much grown. he likes the establishment

Mde Habine is dead; which event will make an accession to Uncle Ws fortune of $40 or 50,000. He would say to that, that he does not possess a cent, But for all practical purposes it is his: It feeds him, clothes him, pampers his appetite &c & goes to his children after his death; or rather after her death.