such as seemed most likely to draw a curtain of separation between you and myself.  Were there no other motive than that of indignation against the author of this outrage on private confidence, whose shaft seems to have been aimed at yourself more particularly, this would make it the duty of every honorable mind to disappoint that aim, by opposing to its impression a seven-fold shield of apathy and insensibility.  With me, however, no such armor is needed.  The circumstances of the times in which we have happened to live, and the partiality of our friends at a particular period, placed us in a state of apparent opposition, which some might suppose to be personal also:  and there might, not be wanting those who wished to make it so, by filling our ears with malignant falsehoods, by dressing up hideous phantoms of their own creation, presenting them to you under my name, to me under yours, and endeavoring to instil into our minds things concerning each other the most destitute of truth.  And if there had been, at any time, a moment when we were off our guard, and in a temper to let the whispers of these people make us forget what we had known of each other for so many years, and years of so much trial, yet all men, who have attended to the workings of the human mind, who have seen the false colors under which passion sometimes dresses the actions and motives of others, have seen also those passions subsiding with time and reflection, dissipating like mists before the rising sun, and restoring to us the sight of all things in their true shape and colors.  It would be strange, indeed, if, at our years, we were to go an age back to hunt up imaginary or forgotten facts, to disturb the repose of affections so sweetening to the evening of our lives.  Be assured, my dear Sir, that I am incapable of receiving the slightest impression from the effort now made to plant thorns on the pillow of age, worth, and wisdom, and to sow tares between friends who have been such for near half a century.  Beseeching you, then, not to suffer your mind to be disquieted by this wicked attempt to poison its peace, and praying you to throw it by among the things which have never happened, I add sincere assurances of my unabated and constant attachment, friendship, and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXVI.—­TO THE PRESIDENT, October 24,1823

TO THE PRESIDENT.

Monticello, October 24,1823.

Dear Sir,

The question presented by the letters you have sent me, is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of Independence.  That made us a nation, this sets our compass, and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us.  And never could we embark on it under circumstances more auspicious.  Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe.  Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs.  America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own.