see in what all this is to end; but surely in something.  The popular movement in the Eastern States is checked, as we expected, and war addresses are showering in from New Jersey and the great trading towns.  However, we still trust that a nearer view of war and a land-tax will oblige the great mass of the people to attend.  At present, the war-hawks talk of septembrizing, deportation, and the examples for quelling sedition set by the French executive.  All the firmness of the human mind is now in a state of requisition.

Salutations to Mrs. Madison; and to yourself, friendship and adieu.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXXXIII.—­TO JAMES MADISON, May 3, 1798

TO JAMES MADISON.

Philadelphia, May 3, 1798.

Dear Sir,

I wrote you last on the 26th; since which yours of the 22nd of April has been received, acknowledging mine of the 12th; so that all appear to have been received to that date.  The spirit kindled up in the towns is wonderful.  These and New Jersey are pouring in their addresses, offering life and fortune.  Even these addresses are not the worst things.  For indiscreet declarations and expressions of passion may be pardoned to a multitude acting from the impulse of the moment.  But we cannot expect a foreign nation to show that apathy to the answers of the President, which are more thrasonic than the addresses.  Whatever chance for peace might have been left us after the publication of the despatches, is completely lost by these answers.  Nor is it France alone, but his own fellow-citizens, against whom his threats are uttered.  In Fenno, of yesterday, you will see one, wherein he says to the address from Newark, ’The delusions and misrepresentations which have misled so many citizens, must be discountenanced by authority as well as by the citizens at large’; evidently alluding to those letters from the Representatives to their constituents, which they have been in the habit of seeking after and publishing:  while those sent by the tory part of the House to their constituents, are ten times more numerous, and replete with the most atrocious falsehoods and calumnies.  What new law they will propose on this subject, has not yet leaked out.  The citizen-bill sleeps.  The alien-bill, proposed by the Senate, has not yet been brought in.  That proposed by the House of Representatives has been so moderated, that it will not answer the passionate purposes of the war gentlemen.  Whether, therefore, the Senate will push their bolder plan, I know not.  The provisional army does not go down so smoothly in the House as it did in the Senate.  They are whittling away some of its choice ingredients; particularly that of transferring their own constitutional discretion over the raising of armies to the President.  A committee of the Representatives have struck out his discretion, and hang the raising of the men on the contingencies of invasion, insurrection,