5.  Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

6.  We never repent of having eaten too little.

7.  Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8.  How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

9.  Take things always by their smooth handle.

10.  When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

LETTER CLXXXVI.—­TO JAMES MADISON, December 24, 1825

TO JAMES MADISON.

Monticello, December 24, 1825.

Dear Sir,

I have for sometime considered the question of internal improvement as desperate.  The torrent of general opinion sets so strongly in favor of it as to be irresistible.  And I suppose that even the opposition in Congress will hereafter be feeble and formal, unless something can be done which may give a gleam of encouragement to our friends, or alarm their opponents in their fancied security.  I learn from Richmond, that those who think with us there are in a state of perfect dismay, not knowing what to do, or what to propose.  Mr. Gordon, our representative, particularly, has written to me in very desponding terms, not disposed to yield, indeed, but pressing for opinions and advice on the subject.  I have no doubt you are pressed in the same way, and I hope you have devised and recommended something to them.  If you have, stop here and read no more, but consider all that follows as non avenue.  I shall be better satisfied to adopt implicitly any thing which you may have advised, than any thing occurring to myself.  For I have long ceased to think on subjects of this kind, and pay little attention to public proceedings.  But if you have done nothing in it, then I risk for your consideration what has occurred to me, and is expressed in the enclosed paper.  Bailey’s propositions, which came to hand since I wrote the paper, and which I suppose to have come from the President himself, show a little hesitation in the purposes of his party; and in that state of mind, a bolt shot critically may decide the contest, by its effect on the less bold.  The olive-branch held out to them at this moment may be accepted, and the constitution thus saved at a moderate sacrifice.  I say nothing of the paper, which will explain itself.  The following heads of consideration, or some of them, may weigh in its favor.

It may intimidate the wavering.  It may break the western coalition, by offering the same thing in a different form.  It will be viewed with favor in contrast with the Georgia opposition and fear of strengthening that.  It will be an example of a temperate mode of opposition in future and similar cases.  It will delay the measure a year at least.  It will give us the chance of better times and of intervening accidents; and in no way place us in a worse than our present situation.  I do not dwell on these topics; your mind will develope them.