This letter, with what it encloses, has given you enough, I presume, of law and the prophets.  I will only add to it, therefore, the homage of my respects to Mrs. Adams, and to yourself the assurances of affectionate esteem and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CI.—­TO JAMES MAURY, April 25, 1812

TO JAMES MAURY.

Monticello, April 25, 1812.

My Dear and Ancient Friend and Classmate,

Often has my heart smote me for delaying acknowledgments to you, receiving, as I do, such frequent proofs of your kind recollection in the transmission of papers to me.  But instead of acting on the good old maxim of not putting off to to-morrow what we can do to-day, we are too apt to reverse it, and not to do today what we can put off to to-morrow.  But this duty can be no longer put off.  To-day we are at peace; to-morrow war.  The curtain of separation is drawing between us, and probably will not be withdrawn till one, if not both of us, will be at rest with our fathers.  Let me now, then, while I may, renew to you the declarations of my warm attachment, which in no period of life has ever been weakened, and seems to become stronger as the remaining objects of our youthful affections are fewer.

Our two countries are to be at war, but not you and I. And why should our two countries be at war, when by peace we can be so much more useful to one another?  Surely the world will acquit our government of having sought it.  Never before has there been an instance of a nation’s bearing so much as we have borne.  Two items alone in our catalogue of wrongs will for ever acquit us of being the aggressors; the impressment of our seamen, and the excluding us from the ocean.  The first foundations of the social compact would be broken up, were we definitively to refuse to its members the protection of their persons and property, while in their lawful pursuits.  I think the war will not be short, because the object of England, long obvious, is to claim the ocean as her domain, and to exact transit duties from every vessel traversing it.  This is the sum of her orders of council, which were only a step in this bold experiment, never meant to be retracted if it could be permanently maintained.  And this object must continue her in war with all the world.  To this I see no termination, until her exaggerated efforts, so much beyond her natural strength and resources, shall have exhausted her to bankruptcy.  The approach of this crisis is, I think, visible in the departure of her precious metals, and depreciation of her paper medium.  We, who have gone through that operation, know its symptoms, its course, and consequences.  In England they will be more serious than elsewhere, because half the wealth of her people is now in that medium, the private revenue of her money-holders, or rather of her paper-holders, being, I believe, greater than that of her land-holders.