I sincerely wish, Sir, it had been in my power to have given you a more agreeable account of this claim.  But as the case actually is, the most substantial service is to state it exactly, and not to foster false expectations.  I remember with great sensibility all the attentions you were so good as to render me while I resided in Paris, and shall be made happy by every occasion which can be given me of acknowledging them, and the expressions of your friendly recollection are particularly soothing to me.

Accept, I pray you, the assurances of my high consideration and constant esteem.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCLXXIX.—­TO DOCTOR JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, March 21, 1801

TO DOCTOR JOSEPH PRIESTLEY.

Washington, March 21, 1801.

Dear Sir,

I learned some time ago that you were in Philadelphia, but that it was only for a fortnight; and I supposed you were gone.  It was not till yesterday I received information that you were still there, had been very ill, but were on the recovery.  I sincerely rejoice that you are so.  Yours is one of the few lives precious to mankind, and for the continuance of which every thinking man is solicitous.  Bigots may be an exception.  What an effort, my dear Sir, of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone through.  The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put every thing into the hands of power and priestcraft.  All advances in science were proscribed as innovations.  They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors.  We were to look backwards not forwards for improvement:  the President himself declaring in one of his answers to addresses, that we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science.  This was the real ground of all the attacks on you:  those who live by mystery and charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy, the most sublime and benevolent but most perverted system that ever shone on man, endeavored to crush your well-earned and well-deserved fame.  But it was the Lilliputians upon Gulliver.  Our countrymen have recovered from the alarm into which art and industry had thrown them; science and honesty are replaced on their high ground; and you, my dear Sir, as their great apostle, are on its pinnacle.  It is with heartfelt satisfaction that, in the first moments of my public action, I can hail you with welcome to our land, tender to you the homage of its respect and esteem, cover you under the protection of those laws which were made for the wise and good like you, and disclaim the legitimacy of that libel on legislation, which under the form of a law was for some time placed among them.*

     [* In the margin, is written by the author, ‘Alien law.’]