not within your control. Besides the rubbing through a land carriage of six hundred miles, a carriage may overset in a river or creek, or be crushed with everything in it. The frequency of such accidents to the stages renders all insurance against them impossible. And were they to escape the perils of this journey, I should be liable to the same calls, and they to the same or greater hazards from all those in other parts of the continent who should propose to publish any work in which they might wish. to employ engravings of the same characters. From public, therefore, as well as private considerations, I think that these portraits ought not to be hazarded from their present deposit. Like public records, I make them free to be copied, but, being as originals in this country, they should not be exposed to the accidents or injuries of travelling post. While I regret, therefore, the necessity of declining to comply with your request, I freely and with pleasure offer to receive as a guest any artist whom you shall think proper to engage, and will make them welcome to take copies at their leisure for your use. I wish them to be multiplied for safe preservation, and consider them as worthy a place in every collection. Indeed I do not know how it happened that Mr. Peale did not think of copying them while they were in Philadelphia; and I think it not impossible that either the father or the son might now undertake the journey for the use of their museum. On the ground of our personal esteem for them, they would be at home in my family.

When I received these portraits at Paris, Mr. Daniel Parker of Massachusetts happened to be there, and determined to procure for himself copies from the same originals at Florence; and I think he did obtain them, and that I have heard of their being in the hands of some one in Boston. If so, it might perhaps be easier to get some artist there to take and send you copies. But be this as it may, you are perfectly welcome to the benefit of mine in the way I have mentioned.

The two original portraits of myself taken by Mr. Stewart, after which you enquire, are both in his possession at Boston. One of them only is my property. The President has a copy

from that which Stewart considered as the best of the two; but

I believe it is at his seat in his State.

He was one of my

I thank you for the print of Dr. Rush. early and intimate friends, and among the best of men. The engraving is excellent as is everything from the hand of Mr. Edwin. Accept the assurance of my respect, and good wishes for the success of your work.

TO MR. JOHN F. WATSON.

MONTICELLO, May 17, 1814.

SIR,—I have long been a subscriber to the edition of the Edinburgh Review first published by Mr. Sargeant, and latterly by Eastburn, Kirk & Co., and already possess from No. 30 to 42 inclusive; except that Nos. 31 and 37 never came to hand. These two and No. 29, I should be glad to receive, with all subsequently published, through the channel of Messrs. Fitzwhylson & Potter of Richmond, with whom I originally subscribed, and to whom it is more convenient to make payment by a standing order on my correspondent at Richmond. I willingly also subscribe for the republication of the first twenty-eight numbers to be furnished me through the same channel, for the convenience of payment. This work is certainly unrivalled in merit, and if continued by the same talents, information and principles which distinguish it in every department of science which it reviews, it will become a real Encyclopedia, justly taking its station in our libraries with the most valuable depositories of human knowledge. Of the Quarterly Review I have not seen many numbers. As the antagonist of the other it appears to me a pigmy against a giant. The precept "audi alteram partem," on which it is republished here, should be sacred with the judge who is to decide between the contending claims of individual and individual. It is well enough for the young who have yet opinions to make up in questions of principle in ethics or politics. But to those who have gone through this process with industry, reflection, and singleness

of heart, who have formed their conclusions and acted on them through life, to be reading over and over again what they have already read, considered and condemned, is an idle waste of time. It is not in the history of modern England or among the advocates of the principles or practices of her government, that the friend of freedom, or of political morality, is to seek instruction. There has indeed been a period, during which both were to be found, not in her government, but in the band of worthies who so boldly and ably reclaimed the rights of the people, and wrested from their government theoretic acknowledgments of them This period began with the Stuarts, and continued but one reign after them. Since that, the vital principle of the English constitution is corruption, its practices the natural results of that principle, and their consequences a pampered aristocracy, annihilation of the substantial middle class, a degraded populace, oppressive taxes, general pauperism, and national bankruptcy. Those who long for these blessings here will find their generating principles well developed and advocated by the antagonist of the Edinburgh Review. Still those who doubt should read them; every man's reason being his own rightful umpire. This principle, with that of acquiescence in the will of the majority will preserve us free and prosperous as long as they are sacredly observed. Accept the assurances of my respect.

TO MR. ABRAHAM SMALL.

MONTICELLO, May 20, 1814.

SIR, I thank you for the copy of the American Speaker which you have been so kind as to send me. It is a judicious selection of what has been excellently spoken on both sides of the Atlantic; and according to your request, I willingly add some suggestions, should another edition be called for. To the speeches of Lord Chatham might be added his reply to Horace Walpole, on the Seamen's bill, in the House of Commons, in 1740, one of the severest which history has recorded. Indeed, the subsequent speeches in order, to which that reply gave rise,

being few, short and pithy, well merit insertion in such a collection as this. They are in the twelfth volume of Chandler's Debates of the House of Commons. But the finest thing, in my opinion, which the English language has produced, is the defence of Eugene Aram, spoken by himself at the bar of the York assizes, in 1759, on a charge of murder, and to be found in the Annual Register of that date, or a little after. It had been upwards of fifty years since I had read it, when the receipt of your letter induced me to look up a MS. copy I had preserved, and on re-perusal at this age and distance of time, it loses nothing of its high station in my mind for classical style, close logic, and strong representation. I send you this copy which was taken for me by a school-boy, replete with errors of punctuation, of orthography, and sometimes substitutions of one word for another. It would be better to recur to the Annual Register itself for correctness, where also I think are stated the circumstances and issue of the case. To these I would add the short, the nervous, the unanswerable speech of Carnot, in 1803, on the proposition to declare Bonaparte consul for life. This creed of republicanism should be well translated, and placed in the hands and heart of every friend to the rights of self-government. I consider these speeches of Aram and Carnot, and that of Logan, inserted in your collection, as worthily standing in a line with those of Scipio and Hannibal in Livy, and of Cato and Cæsar in Sallust. On examining the Indian speeches in my possession, I find none which are not already in your collection, except that my copy of the corn-planter's has much in it which yours has not. But observing that the omissions relate to special subjects only, I presume they are made purposely and indeed properly.

I must add more particular thanks for the kind expressions of your letter towards myself. These testimonies of approbation from my fellow-citizens, offered too when the lapse of time may have cooled and matured their opinions, are an ample reward for such services as I have been able to render them, and are peculiarly gratifying in a state of retirement and reflection. I pray you to accept the assurance of my respect.

TO THOMAS LAW, ESQ.

POPLAR FOREST, June 13, 1814.

DEAR SIR,-The copy of your Second Thoughts on Instinctive Impulses, with the letter accompanying it, was received just as I was setting out on a journey to this place, two or three days' distant from Monticello. I brought it with me and read it with great satisfaction, and with the more as it contained exactly my own creed on the foundation of morality in man. It is really curious that on a question so fundamental, such a variety of opinions should have prevailed among men, and those, too, of the most exemplary virtue and first order of understanding. It shows how necessary was the care of the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice. Of all the theories on this question, the most whimsical seems to have been that of Wollaston, who considers truth as the foundation of morality. The thief who steals your guinea does wrong only inasmuch as he acts a lie in using your guinea as if it were his own. Truth is certainly a branch of morality, and a very important one to society. But presented as its foundation, it is as if a tree taken up by the roots, had its stem reversed in the air, and one of its branches planted in the ground. Some have made the love of God the foundation of morality. This, too, is but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to-wit their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have