fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money-lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.  He who lent his money to the public or to an individual, before the institution of the United States bank, twenty years ago, when wheat was well sold at a dollar the bushel, and receives now his nominal sum when it sells at two dollars, is cheated of half his fortune:  and by whom?  By the banks, which, since that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars of their nominal money where there was one at that time.

Reflect, if you please, on these ideas, and use them or not as they appear to merit.  They comfort me in the belief, that they point out a resource ample enough, without overwhelming war-taxes, for the expense of the war, and possibly still recoverable; and that they hold up to all future time a resource within ourselves, ever at the command of government, and competent to any wars into which we may be forced.  Nor is it a slight object to equalize taxes through peace and war.

*****

Ever affectionately yours.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXI.—­TO JOHN ADAMS, June 21, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, June 21, 1813.

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And I too, my dear Sir, like the wood-cutter of Ida, should doubt where to begin, were I to enter the forest of opinions, discussions, and contentions which have occurred in our day.  I should say with Theocritus,

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But I shall not do it.  The summum bonum with me is now truly epicurean, ease of body and tranquillity of mind; and to these I wish to consign my remaining days.  Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies; and in all governments, where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak.  The same political parties which now agitate the United States, have existed through all time.  Whether the power of the people, or that of the

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should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions; as they now schismatize every people whose minds and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot.  And in fact, the terms of whig and tory belong to natural, as well as to civil history.  They denote the temper and constitution of mind of different individuals.  To come to our own country, and to the times when you and I became first acquainted:  we well remember the violent parties which agitated the old Congress, and their bitter contests.  There you and I were together, and the Jays, and the Dickinsons, and other anti-independents were arrayed against us.  They cherished the monarchy of England, and we the rights of our countrymen.  When our present government