Yours of the 10th is received, and I have to acknowledge a copious supply of the turnip-seed requested.  Besides taking care myself, I shall endeavor again to commit it to the depository of the neighborhood, generally found to be the best precaution against losing a good thing.  I will add a word on the political part of our letters.  I believe we do not differ on either of the points you suppose.  On education certainly not; of which the proofs are my bill for the diffusion of knowledge, proposed near forty years ago, and my uniform endeavors, to this day, to get our counties divided into wards, one of the principal objects of which is, the establishment of a primary school in each.  But education not being a branch of municipal government, but, like the other arts and sciences, an accident only, I did not place it, with election, as a fundamental member in the structure of government.  Nor, I believe, do we differ as to the county courts.  I acknowledge the value of this institution; that it is in truth our principal executive and judiciary, and that it does much for little pecuniary reward.  It is their self-appointment I wish to correct; to find some means of breaking up a cabal, when such a one gets possession of the bench.  When this takes place, it becomes the most afflicting of tyrannies, because its powers are so various, and exercised on every thing most immediately around us.  And how many instances have you and I known of these monopolies of county administration!  I knew a county in which a particular family (a numerous one) got possession of the bench, and for a whole generation. never admitted a man on it who was not of its clan or connection. 1 know a county now of one thousand and five hundred militia, of which sixty are federalists.  Its court is of thirty members, of whom twenty are federalists, (every third man of the sect.) There are large and populous districts in it without a justice, because without a federalist for appointment:  the militia are as disproportionably under federal officers.  And there is no authority on earth which can break up this junto, short of a general convention.  The remaining one thousand four hundred and forty, free, fighting, and paying citizens, are governed by men neither of their choice nor confidence, and without a hope of relief.  They are certainly excluded from the blessings of a free government for life, and indefinitely, for aught the constitution has provided.  This solecism may be called any thing but republican, and ought undoubtedly to be corrected.  I salute you with constant friendship and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXXXVII.—­TO SAMUEL KERCHIVAL, September 5, 1816

TO SAMUEL KERCHIVAL.

Monticello, September 5, 1816.

Sir,