reason to know it than myself.  I receive daily bitter proofs of it from people who never saw me, nor know any thing of me but through Porcupine and Fenno.  At this moment all the passions are boiling over, and one who keeps himself cool and clear of the contagion, is so far below the point of ordinary conversation, that he finds himself insulated in every society.  However, the fever will not last.  War, land-tax, and stamp-tax are sedatives which must cool its ardor.  They will bring on reflection, and that, with information, is all which our countrymen need, to bring themselves and their affairs to rights.  They are essentially republicans.  They retain unadulterated the principles of ’75, and those who are conscious of no change in themselves have nothing to fear in the long run.  It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war:  but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves.  If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.  In that, I have no doubt, we shall act as one man.  But if we can ward off actual war till the crisis of England is over, I shall hope we may escape it altogether.

I am, with much esteem, Dear Sir, your must obedient, humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCXXXV.—­TO JAMES MADISON, May 31, 1798

TO JAMES MADISON.

Philadelphia, May 31, 1798.

Dear Sir,

I wrote you last on the 24th; since which yours of the 20th has been received.  I must begin by correcting two errors in my last.  It was false arithmetic to say, that two measures therein mentioned to have been carried by majorities of eleven, would have failed if the fourteen absentees (wherein a majority of six is ours) had been present.  Six coming over from the other side would have turned the scale, and this was the idea floating in my mind, which produced the mistake.  The second error was in the version of Mr. Adams’s expression, which I stated to you.  His real expression was, ’that he would not unbrace a single nerve for any treaty France could offer; such was their entire want of faith, morality, &c.’

The bill from the Senate for capturing French armed vessels found hovering on our coast, was passed in two days by the lower House, without a single alteration; and the Ganges, a twenty-gun sloop, fell down the river instantly to go on a cruise.  She has since been ordered to New York, to convoy a vessel from that to this port.  The alien-bill will be ready to-day, probably, for its third reading in the Senate.  It has been considerably modified, particularly by a proviso saving the rights of treaties.  Still, it is a most detestable thing.  I was glad, in yesterday’s discussion, to hear it admitted on all hands, that laws of the United States, subsequent to a treaty, control its operation, and that the legislature