any thing in our power.  Radically hostile to our navigation and commerce, and fearing its rivalry, she will completely crush it, and force us to resort to agriculture, not aware that we shall resort to manufactures also, and render her conquests over our navigation and commerce useless, at least, if not injurious to herself in the end, and perhaps salutary to us, as removing out of our way the chief causes and provocations to war.

But these are views which concern the present and future generation, among neither of which I count myself.  You may live to see the change in our pursuits, and chiefly in those of your own State, which England will effect.  I am not certain that the change on Massachusetts, by driving her to agriculture, manufactures, and emigration, will lessen her happiness.  But once more to be done with politics.  How does Mrs. Dearborn do?  How do you both like your situation?  Do you amuse yourself with a garden, a farm, or what?  That your pursuits, whatever they be, may make you both easy, healthy, and happy, is the prayer of your sincere friend,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XCII.—­TO J. B. COLVIN, September 20, 1810

TO J. B. COLVIN.

Monticello, September 20, 1810.

Sir,

Your favor of the 14th has been duly received, and I have to thank you for the many obliging things respecting myself which are said in it.  If I have left in the breasts of my fellow-citizens a sentiment of satisfaction with my conduct in the transaction of their business, it will soften the pillow of my repose through the residue of life.

The question you propose, whether circumstances do not sometimes occur, which make it a duty in officers of high trust, to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrassing in practice.  A strict observance of the written laws, is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen:  but it is not the highest.  The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.  To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.  When, in the battle of Germantown, General Washington’s army was annoyed from Chew’s house, he did not hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although the property of a citizen.  When he besieged Yorktown, he leveled the suburbs, feeling that the laws of property must be postponed to the safety of the nation.  While the army was before York, the Governor of Virginia took horses, carriages, provisions, and even men, by force, to enable that army to stay together till it could master the public enemy; and he was justified.  A ship at sea in distress for provisions, meets another having abundance, yet refusing a supply; the law of