We have to join in mutual congratulations on the appointment of our friend Correa, to be Minister or Envoy of Portugal, here.  This, I hope, will give him to us, for life.  Nor will it at all interfere with his botanical rambles or journeys.  The government of Portugal is so peaceable and inoffensive, that it has never any altercations with its friends.  If their minister abroad writes them once a quarter that all is well, they desire no more.  I learn (though not from Correa himself) that he thinks of paying us a visit as soon as he is through his course of lectures.  Not to lose this happiness again by my absence, I have informed him I shall set out for Poplar Forest the 20th instant, and be back the first week of July.  I wish you and he could concert your movements so as to meet here, and that you would make this your headquarters.  It is a good central point from which to visit your connections; and you know our practice of placing our guests at their ease, by showing them we are so ourselves, and that we follow our necessary vocations, instead of fatiguing them by hanging unremittingly on their shoulders.

I salute you with affectionate esteem and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXXXIII.*—­TO BENJAMIN AUSTIN, January 9, 1816

TO BENJAMIN AUSTIN.

Monticello, January 9, 1816.

     [* This letter was accidentally misplaced, and is now
     inserted out of its regular order.]

Dear Sir,

I acknowledge with pleasure your letter of the 9th of December last.

Your opinions on the events which have taken place in France, are entirely just, so far as these events are yet developed.  But we have reason to suppose, that they have not reached their ultimate termination.  There is still an awful void between the present, and what is to be the last chapter of that history; and I fear it is to be filled with abominations, as frightful as those which have already disgraced it.  That nation is too high-minded, has too much innate force, intelligence, and elasticity, to remain quiet under its present compression.  Samson will arise in his strength, and probably will ere long burst asunder the cords and the webs of the Philistines.  But what are to be the scenes of havoc and horror, and how widely they may spread between the brethren of one family, our ignorance of the interior feuds and antipathies of the country places beyond our view.  Whatever may be the convulsions, we cannot but indulge the pleasing hope, they will end in the permanent establishment of a representative government; a government in which the will of the people will be an effective ingredient.  This important element has taken root in the European mind, and will have its growth.  Their rulers, sensible of this, are already offering this modification of their governments, under the plausible pretence that it is a voluntary concession on their