he closed his sentence, and baffled the charge vociferated. I do not think he took the position in the middle of the floor which you mention. On the contrary, I think I recollect him standing in the very place which he continued afterwards habitually to occupy in the house.

The censure of Mr. E. Randolph on Mr. Henry in the case of Philips, was without foundation. I remember the case, and took my part in it. Philips was a mere robber, who availing himself of the troubles of the times, collected a banditti, retired to the Dismal Swamp, and from thence sallied forth, plundering and maltreating the neighboring inhabitants, and covering himself, without authority, under the name of a British subject. Mr. Henry, then Governor, communicated the case to me. We both thought the best proceeding would be by bill of attainder, unless he delivered himself up for trial within a given time. Philips was afterwards taken; and Mr. Randolph being Attorney General, and apprehending he would plead that he was a British subject, taken in arms, in support of his lawful sovereign, and as a prisoner of war entitled to the protection of the law of nations, he thought the safest proceeding would be to indict him at common law as a felon and robber. Against this I believe Philips urged the same plea: he was overruled and found guilty.

I recollect nothing of a doubt on the re-eligibility of Mr. Henry to the government when his term expired in 1779, nor can I conceive on what ground such a doubt could have been entertained, unless perhaps that his first election in June, 1776, having been before we were nationally declared independent, some might suppose it should not be reckoned as one of the three constitutional elections.

Of the projects for appointing a Dictator there are said to have been two. I know nothing of either but by hearsay. The first was in Williamsburg in December, 1776. The Assembly had the month before appointed Mr. Wythe, Mr. Pendleton, George Mason, Thomas L. Lee, and myself, to revise the whole body of laws, and adapt them to our new form of government.

I left the House early in December to prepare to join the Committee at Fredericksburg, the place of our first meeting. What passed, therefore, in the House in December, I know not, and have not the journals of that session to look into. The second proposition was in June, 1781, at the Staunton session of the legislature. No trace of this last motion is entered on the journals of that date, which I have examined. This is a further proof that the silence of the journals is no evidence against the fact of an abortive motion. Among the names of the members found on the journal of the Staunton session, are John Taylor of Caroline, General Andrew Moore, and General Edward Stevens of Culpeper, now living. It would be well to ask information from each of them, that their errors of memory, or of feeling, may be corrected by collation.

You ask if I would have any objection to be quoted as to the fact of rescinding the last of Mr. Henry's resolutions. None at all as to that fact, or its having been passed by a majority of one vote only; the scene being as present to my mind as that in which I am now writing. But I do not affirm, although I believe it was the sixth resolution.

It is truly unfortunate that those engaged in public affairs so rarely make notes of transactions passing within their knowledge. Hence history becomes fable instead of fact. The great outlines may be true, but the incidents and coloring are according to the faith or fancy of the writer. Had Judge Marshall taken half your pains in sifting and scrutinizing facts, he would not have given to the world, as true history, a false copy of a record under his eye. Burke again has copied him, and being a second writer on the spot, doubles the credit of the copy. When writers are so indifferent as to the correctness of facts, the verification of which lies at their elbow, by what measure shall we estimate their relation of things distant, or of those given to us through the obliquities of their own vision? Our records, it is true, in the case under contemplation, were destroyed by the malice and Vandalism of the British military, perhaps of their government, under whose orders they committed so much use

less mischief. But printed copies remained, as your examination has proved. Those which were apocryphal, then, ought not to have been hazarded without examination. Should you be able to ascertain the genuineness of the sixth and seventh resolutions, I would ask a line of information, to rectify or to confirm my own. impressions respecting them. Ever affectionately yours.

TO THOMAS COOPER.

MONTICELLO, August 25, 1814.

DEAR SIR,-In my letter of January 16th, I mentioned to you that it had long been in contemplation to get an University established in this State, in which all the branches of science useful to us, and at this day, should be taught in their highest degree, and that this institution should be incorporated with the College and funds of William and Mary. But what are the sciences useful to us, and at this day thought useful to anybody? A glance over Bacon's arbor scientia will show the foundation for this question, and how many of his ramifications of science. are now lopt off as nugatory. To be prepared for this new establishment, I have taken some pains to ascertain those branches which men of sense, as well as of science, deem worthy of cultivation. To the statements which I have obtained from other sources, I should highly value an addition of one from yourself. You know our country, its pursuits, its faculties, its relations with others, its means of establishing and maintaining an institution of general science, and the spirit of economy with which it requires that these should be administered. Will you then so far contribute to our views as to consider this subject, to make a statement of the branches of science which you think worthy of being taught, as I have before. said, at this day, and in this country? But to accomodate them to our economy, it will be necessary further to distribute them into groups, each group comprehending as many branches as one industrious Professor may competently teach, and, as much as may be, a duly

associated family, or class, of kindred sciences. The object of this is to bring the whole circle of useful science under the direction of the smallest number of professors possible, and that our means may be so frugally employed as to effect the greatest possible good. We are about to make an effort for the introduction of this institution.

On the subject of patent rights, on which something has passed between us before, you may have noted that the patent board, while it existed, had proposed to reduce their decisions to a system of rules as fast as the cases presented should furnish materials. They had done but little when the business was turned over to the courts of justice, on whom the same duty has now devolved. A rule has occurred to me, which I think would reach many of our cases, and go far towards securing the citizen against the vexation of frivolous patents. It is to consider the invention of any new mechanical power, or of any new combination of the mechanical powers already known, as entitled to an exclusive grant; but that the purchaser of the right to use the invention should be free to apply it to every purpose of which it is susceptible. For instance, the combination of machinery for threshing wheat, should be applicable to the threshing of rye, oats, beans, &c. The spinning machine to everything of which it may be found capable; the chain of buckets, of which we have been possessed thousands of years, we should be free to use for raising water, ore, grains, meals, or anything else we can make it raise. These rights appear sufficiently distinct, and the distinction sound enough, to be adopted by the judges, to whom it could not be better suggested than through the medium of the Emporium, should any future paper of that furnish place for the hint.

Since the change of government in France, I am in hopes the author of the Review of Montesquieu will consent to be named, and perhaps may publish there his original work; not that their press is free, but that the present government will be restrained by public opinion, whereas the late military despotism respected that of the army only. I salute you with friendship and respect.

TO MR. DELAPLAINE.

MONTICELLO, August 28, 1814. SIR,-Your SIR, Your letter of the 17th is received. I have not the book of Munoz containing the print of Columbus. That work came out after I left Europe, and we have not the same facility of acquiring new continental publications here as there. I have no doubt that entire credit is to be given to the account of the print rendered by him in the extract from his work which you have sent me; and as you say that several have attempted translations of it, each differing from the other, and none satisfactory to yourself, I will add to your stock my understanding of it, that by a collation of the several translations, the author's meaning may be the better elicited.

Translation. "This first volume presents at the beginning the portrait of the discoverer, designed and engraved with care. Among many paintings and prints which are falsely sold as his likenesses, I have seen one only which can be such, and it is that which is preserved in the house of the most excellent Duke of Berwick and Lina, a descendant of our hero; a figure of the natural size, painted, as would seem, in the last century, by an indifferent copyist, in which, nevertheless, appear some catches from the hand of Antonio del Rincon, a celebrated painter of the Catholic kings. The description given by Fernando Colon, of the countenance of his father, has served to render the likeness more resembling, and to correct the faults which are observable in some of the features either imperfectly seized by the artist, or disfigured by the injuries of time."

Paraphrase explanatory of the above. Columbus was employed by Ferdinand and Isabella, on his voyage of discovery in 1492. Debry tells us that "before his departure, his portrait was taken by order of the king and queen," and most probably by Rincon, their first painter. Rincon died in 1500, and Columbus in 1506. Fernando, his son, an ecclesiastic, wrote the life of his father in 1530, and describes in that his father's counteAn indifferent hand in the 17th century, copied Rincon's

nance.