Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXCI.—­TO JAMES MADISON, February 17,1826

TO JAMES MADISON.

Monticello, February 17,1826.

Dear Sir,

Immediately on seeing the overwhelming vote of the House of Representatives against giving us another dollar, I rode to the University and desired Mr. Brockenbrough to engage in nothing new, to stop every thing on hand which could be done without, and to employ all his force and funds in finishing the circular room for the books, and the Anatomical theatre.  These cannot be done without; and for these and all our debts, we have funds enough.  But I think it prudent then to clear the decks thoroughly, to see how we shall stand, and what we may accomplish further.  In the mean time, there have arrived for us in different ports of the United States, ten boxes of books, from Paris, seven from London, and from Germany I know not how many; in all, perhaps, about twenty-five boxes.  Not one of these can be opened until the book-room is completely finished, and all the shelves ready to receive their charge directly from the boxes, as they shall be opened.  This cannot be till May.  I hear nothing definitive of the three thousand dollars duty of which we are asking the remission from Congress.  In the selection of our Law Professor, we must be rigorously attentive to his political principles.  You will recollect, that, before the Revolution, Coke Littleton was the universal elementary book of law students, and a sounder whig never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the British constitution, or in what were called English liberties.  You remember also that our lawyers were then all whigs.  But when his black-letter text, and uncouth but cunning learning got out of fashion, and the honied Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the students’ hornbook, from that moment, that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers now are of that hue.  They suppose themselves, indeed, to be whigs, because they no longer know what whigism or republicanism means.  It is in our seminary that that vestal flame is to be kept alive; it is thence it is to spread anew over our own and the sister States.  If we are true and vigilant in our trust, within a dozen or twenty years a majority of our own legislature will be from our school, and many disciples will have carried its doctrines home with them to their several States, and will have leavened thus the whole mass.  New York has taken strong ground in vindication of the constitution; South Carolina had already done the same.  Although I was against our leading, I am equally against omitting to follow in the same line, and backing them firmly; and i hope that yourself or some other will mark out the track to be pursued by us.