only the heads of his demonstrations, so that nothing can be conjectured of their details.  Lord Kaims once proposed an essence of dung, one pint of which should manure an acre.  If he or Mr. Bertrand could have rendered it so portable, I should have been one of those who would have been greatly obliged to them.  I find on a more minute examination of my lands that the short visits heretofore made to them, permitted, that a ten years’ abandonment of them to the ravages of overseers, has brought on them a degree of degradation far beyond what I had expected.  As this obliges me to adopt a milder course of cropping, so I find that they have enabled me to do it, by having opened a great deal of lands during my absence.  I have therefore determined on a division of my farms into six fields, to be put under this rotation:  first year, wheat; second, corn, potatoes, peas; third, rye, or wheat, according to circumstances; fourth and fifth, clover where the fields will bring it, and buckwheat dressings where they will not; sixth, folding, and buckwheat dressings.  But it will take me from three to six years to get this plan under way.  I am not yet satisfied that my acquisition of overseers from the head of Elk has been a happy one, or that much will be done this year towards rescuing my plantations from their wretched condition.  Time, patience, and perseverance must be the remedy:  and the maxim of your letter, ’slow and sure,’ is not less a good one in agriculture than in politics.  I sincerely wish it may extricate us from the event of a war, if this can be done saving our faith and our rights.  My opinion of the British government is, that nothing will force them to do justice but the loud voice of their people, and that this can never be excited but by distressing their commerce.  But I cherish tranquillity too much, to suffer political things to enter my mind at all.  I do not forget that I owe you a letter for Mr. Young; but I am waiting to get full information.  With every wish for your health and happiness, and my most friendly respects for Mrs. Washington, I have the honor to be, Dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXX.—­TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE, September 7, 1794

TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

Monticello, September 7, 1794.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of August the 28th finds me in bed under a paroxysm of the rheumatism which has now kept me for ten days in constant torment, and presents no hope of abatement.  But the express and the nature of the case requiring immediate answer, I write to you in this situation.  No circumstances, my Dear Sir, will ever more tempt me to engage in any thing public.  I thought myself perfectly fixed in this determination when I left Philadelphia, but every day and hour since has added to its inflexibility.  It is a great pleasure to me to retain the esteem and