a government, in that, in short, which the constitution of 1789 would have insured it, if wisdom could have stayed at that point the fervid but imprudent zeal of men, who did not know the character of their own countrymen, and that you may long live in health and happiness under it, and leave to the world a well educated and virtuous representative and descendant of your honored father, is the ardent prayer of the sincere and respectful friend who writes this letter.

LETTER CVIII.—­TO JOHN ADAMS, May 27, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, May 27, 1813.

Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone, my Dear Sir, another of the co-signers of the Independence of our country.  And a better man than Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest.  We too must go; and that ere long.  I believe we are under half a dozen at present; I mean the signers of the Declaration.  Yourself, Gerry, Carroll, and myself, are all I know to be living.  I am the only one south of the Potomac.  Is Robert Treat Paine, or Floyd living?  It is long since I heard of them, and yet I do not recollect to have heard of their deaths.

Moreton’s deduction of the origin of our Indians from the fugitive Trojans, stated in your letter of January the 26th, and his manner of accounting for the sprinkling of their Latin with Greeks is really amusing.  Adair makes them talk Hebrew.  Reinold Foster derives them from the soldiers sent by Kouli Khan to conquer Japan.  Brerewood, from the Tartars, as well as our bears, wolves, foxes, &c. which, he says, ’must of necessity fetch their beginning from Noah’s ark, which rested after the deluge, in Asia, seeing they could not proceed by the course of nature, as the imperfect sort of living creatures do, from putrefaction.’  Bernard Romans is of opinion that God created an original man and woman in this part of the globe.  Doctor Barton thinks they are not specifically different from the Persians; but, taking afterwards a broader range, he thinks, ’that in all the vast countries of America, there is but one language, nay, that it may be proven, or rendered highly probable, that all the languages of the earth bear some affinity together.’  This reduces it to a question of definition, in which every one is free to use his own:  to wit, What constitutes identity, or difference in two things, in the common acceptation of sameness?  All languages may be called the same, as being all made up of the same primitive sounds, expressed by the letters of the different alphabets.  But, in this sense, all things on earth are the same, as consisting of matter.  This gives up the useful distribution into genera and species, which we form, arbitrarily indeed, for the relief of our imperfect memories.  To aid the question, from whence our Indian tribes descended, some have gone into their religion, their morals, their manners, customs, habits, and physical