We are suffering here both in the gathered and the growing crop.  The lowness of the river, and great quantity of produce brought to Milton this year, render it almost impossible to get our crops to market.  This is the case of mine as well as yours:  and the Hessian fly appears alarmingly in our growing crop.  Every thing is in distress for the want of rain.

Present me respectfully to Mrs. Monroe, and accept yourself assurances of my constant and affectionate esteem.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XCVII.—­TO GENERAL DEARBORN, August 14, 1811

TO GENERAL DEARBORN.

Poplar Forest, August 14, 1811.

Dear General and Friend,

*****

I am happy to learn that your own health is good, and I hope it will long continue so.  The friends we left behind us have fallen out by the way.  I sincerely lament it, because I sincerely esteem them all, and because it multiplies schisms where harmony is safety.  As far as I have been able to judge, however, it has made no sensible impression against the government.  Those who were murmuring before are a little louder now; but the mass of our citizens is firm and unshaken.  It furnishes, as an incident, another proof that they are perfectly equal to the purposes of self-government, and that we have nothing to fear for its stability.  The spirit, indeed, which manifests itself among the tories of your quarter, although I believe there is a majority there sufficient to keep it down in peaceable times, leaves me not without some disquietude.  Should the determination of England, now formally expressed, to take possession of the ocean, and to suffer no commerce on it but through her ports, force a war upon us, I foresee a possibility of a separate treaty between her and your Essex men, on the principles of neutrality and commerce.  Pickering here, and his nephew Williams there, can easily negotiate this.  Such a lure to the quietists in our ranks with you, might recruit theirs to a majority.  Yet, excluded as they would be from intercourse with the rest of the Union and of Europe, I scarcely see the gain they would propose to themselves, even for the moment.  The defection would certainly disconcert the other States, but it could not ultimately endanger their safety.  They are adequate, in all points, to a defensive war.  However, I hope your majority, with the aid it is entitled to, will save us from this trial, to which I think it possible we are advancing.  The death of George may come to our relief; but I fear the dominion of the sea is the insanity of the nation itself also.  Perhaps, if some stroke of fortune were to rid us at the same time from the Mammoth of the land as well as the Leviathan of the ocean, the people of England might lose their fears, and recover their sober senses again.  Tell my old friend, Governor Gerry, that I gave him glory for the rasping with which he rubbed