on all occasions, that very pile of authorities from which it would be said he drew his conclusion, and which, of course, would explain it, and the terms in which it is couched.  Thus we should have retained the same chaos of law-lore from which we wished to be emancipated, added to the evils of the uncertainty which a new text and new phrases would have generated.  An example of this may be found in the old statutes, and commentaries on them, in Coke’s second institute; but more remarkably, in the institute of Justinian, and the vast masses, explanatory or supplementary of that, which fill the libraries of the civilians.  We were deterred from the attempt by these considerations, added to which, the bustle of the times did not permit leisure for such an undertaking.

Your request of my opinion on this subject has given you the trouble of these observations.  If your firmer mind in encountering difficulties, would have added your vote to the minority of the committee, you would have had on your side one of the greatest men of our age, and, like him, have detracted nothing from the sentiments of esteem and respect which I bore to him, and tender with sincerity the assurance of to yourself.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CV.—­TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE, October 1, 1812

TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE.

Monticello, October 1, 1812.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of September the 20th has been duly received, and I cannot but be gratified by the assurance it expresses, that my aid in the councils of our government would increase the public confidence in them; because it admits an inference that they have approved of the course pursued, when I heretofore bore a part in those councils.  I profess, too, so much of the Roman principle, as to deem it honorable for the general of yesterday to act as a corporal to-day, if his services can be useful to his country; holding that to be false pride, which postpones the public good to any private or personal considerations.  But I am past service.  The hand of age is upon me.  The decay of bodily faculties apprizes me that those of the mind cannot be unimpaired, had I not still better proofs.  Every year counts by increased debility, and departing faculties keep the score.  The last year it was the sight, this it is the hearing, the next something else will be going, until all is gone.  Of all this I was sensible before I left Washington, and probably my fellow-laborers saw it before I did.  The decay of memory was obvious:  it is now become distressing.  But the mind, too, is weakened.  When I was young, mathematics was the passion of my life.  The same passion has returned upon me, but with unequal powers.  Processes which I then read off with the facility of common discourse, now cost me labor, and time, and slow investigation.  When I offered this, therefore, as one of the reasons deciding my retirement from