the destinies of our government, and it hangs on Mr. Madison and yourself alone.  We shall never see another President and Secretary of the Treasury making all other objects subordinate to this.  Were either of you to be lost to the public, that great hope is lost.  I had always cherished the idea that you would fix on that object the measure of your fame, and of the gratitude which our country will owe you.  Nor can I yield up this prospect to the secondary considerations which assail your tranquillity.  For sure I am, they never can produce any other serious effect.  Your value is too justly estimated by our fellow-citizens at large, as well as their functionaries, to admit any remissness in their support of you.  My opinion always was, that none of us ever occupied stronger ground in the esteem of Congress than yourself, and I am satisfied there is no one who does not feel your aid to be still as important for the future, as it has been for the past.  You have nothing, therefore, to apprehend in the dispositions of Congress, and still less of the President, who, above all men, is the most interested and affectionately disposed to support you.  I hope, then, you will abandon entirely the idea you expressed to me, and that you will consider the eight years to come as essential to your political career.  I should certainly consider any earlier day of your retirement, as the most inauspicious day our new government has ever seen.  In addition to the common interest in this question, I feel particularly for myself the considerations of gratitude which I personally owe you for your valuable aid during my administration of the public affairs, a just sense of the large portion of the public approbation which was earned by your labors, and belongs to you, and the sincere friendship and attachment which grew out of our joint exertions to promote the common good; and of which I pray you now to accept the most cordial and respectful assurances.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LXXXVI.—­TO CAESAR A. RODNEY, February 10, 1810

TO CAESAR A. RODNEY.

Monticello, February 10, 1810.

My Dear Sir,

I have to thank you for your favor of the 31st ultimo, which is just now received.  It has been peculiarly unfortunate for us, personally, that the portion in the history of mankind, at which we were called to take a share in the direction of their affairs, was such an one as history has never before presented.  At any other period, the even-handed justice we have observed towards all nations, the efforts we have made to merit their esteem by every act which candor or liberality could exercise, would have preserved our peace, and secured the unqualified confidence of all other nations in our faith and probity.  But the hurricane which is now blasting the world, physical and moral, has prostrated all the mounds of reason as well as right.  All those calculations which,