Your favor of the 31st instant has been received, and I think it will be fortunate if any circumstance should produce a discharge of the present scanty grand jury, and a future summons of a fuller:  though the same views of protecting the offender may again reduce the number to sixteen, in order to lessen the chance of getting twelve to concur.  It is understood, that wherever Burr met with subjects who did not choose to embark in his projects, unless approved by their government, he asserted that he had that approbation.  Most of them took his word for it, but it is said that with those who would not, the following stratagem was practised.  A forged letter, purporting to be from General Dearborn, was made to express his approbation, and to say that I was absent at Monticello, but that there was no doubt that, on my return, my approbation of his enterprises would be given.  This letter was spread open on his table, so as to invite the eye of whoever entered his room; and he contrived occasions of sending up into his room, those whom he wished to become witnesses of his acting under sanction.  By this means, he avoided committing himself to any liability to prosecution for forgery, and gave another proof of being a great man in little things, while he is really small in great ones.  I must add General Dearborn’s declaration, that he never wrote a letter to Burr in his life, except that when here, once in a winter, he usually wrote him a billet of invitation to dine.  The only object of sending you the enclosed letters is to possess you of the fact, that you may know how to pursue it, if any of your witnesses should know any thing of it.  My intention in writing to you several times, has been to convey facts or observations occurring in the absence of the Attorney General, and not to make to the dreadful drudgery you are going through the unnecessary addition of writing me letters in answer, which I beg you to relieve yourself from, except when some necessity calls for it.

I salute you with friendship and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XLVII.—­TO DOCTOR HORATIO TURPIN, June 10, 1807

TO DOCTOR HORATIO TURPIN.

Washington, June 10, 1807.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of June the 1st has been duly received.  To a mind like yours, capable in any question of abstracting it from its relation to yourself, I may safely hazard explanations, which I have generally avoided to others, on questions of appointment.  Bringing into office no desires of making it subservient to the advancement of my own private interests, it has been no sacrifice, by postponing them, to strengthen the confidence of my fellow-citizens.  But I have not felt equal indifference towards excluding merit from office, merely because it was related to me.  However, I have thought it my duty so to do, that my constituents may be satisfied, that, in selecting persons for the