station. And yet I hear there are people among you, who think the
experience of our governments has already proved, that republican
governments will not answer. Send those gentry here, to count the
blessings of monarchy. A king's sister, for instance, stopped in the
road, and on a hostile journey, is sufficient cause for him to march
immediately twenty thousand men to revenge this insult, when he had
shown himself little moved by the matter of right then in question.

*****

From all these broils we are happily free, and that God may keep us long
so, and yourself in health and happiness, is the prayer of,

Dear Sir, your most obedient

and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER LXXXVII.--TO GENERAL WASHINGTON, August 14, 1787

TO GENERAL WASHINGTON.

Paris, August 14, 1787.

Dear Sir,

I was happy to find, by the letter of August the 1st, 1786, which you
did me the honor to write to me, that the modern dress for your statue,
would meet your approbation. I found it strongly the sentiment of
West, Copely, Trumbull, and Brown, in London; after which it would be
ridiculous to add, that it was my own. I think a modern in an antique
dress, as just an object of ridicule, as a Hercules or Marius with a
periwig and chapeau bras.

I remember having written to you, while Congress sat at Annapolis, on
the water communication between ours and the western country, and to
have mentioned, particularly, the information I had received of
the plain face of the country between the sources of Big-beaver and
Cayohoga, which made me hope that a canal, of no great expense, might
unite the navigation of Lake Erie and the Ohio. You must since have had
occasion of getting better information on this subject, and if you have,
you would oblige me by a communication of it. I consider this canal, if
practicable, as a very important work.

I remain in hopes of great and good effects from the decision of the
Assembly over which you are presiding. To make our States one as to all
foreign concerns, preserve them several as to all merely domestic,
to give to the federal head some peaceable mode of enforcing its just
authority, to organize that head into legislative, executive, and
judiciary departments, are great desiderata in our federal constitution.
Yet with all its defects, and with all those of our particular
governments, the inconveniences resulting from them are so light, in
comparison with those existing in every other