strengthen habits of harmony and
fraternity. In such a case, it seems to me it would be safer and wiser
to ask an express grant of the power. This would render its exercise
smooth and acceptable to all, and insure to it all the facilities which
the could contribute, to prevent that kind of abuse which all will fear,
because all know it is so much practised in public bodies, I mean the
bartering of votes. It would reconcile every one, if limited by the
proviso, that the federal proportion of each State should be expended
within the State. With this single security against partiality and
corrupt bargaining, I suppose there is not a State, perhaps not a man
in the Union, who would not consent to add this to the powers of the
General Government. But age has weaned me from questions of this kind.
My delight is now in the passive occupation of reading; and it is
with great reluctance I permit my mind ever to encounter subjects of
difficult investigation. You have many years yet to come of vigorous
activity, and I confidently trust they will be employed in cherishing
every measure which may foster our brotherly union, and perpetuate a
constitution of government destined to be the primitive and precious
model of what is to change the condition of man over the globe. With
this confidence, equally strong in your powers and purposes, I pray you
to accept the assurance of my cordial esteem and respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXI.--TO MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT, June 5,1824

TO MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT.

Monticello, June 5,1824.

Dear and Venerable Sir,

I am much indebted for your kind letter of February the 29th, and for
your valuable volume on the English constitution. I have, read this with
pleasure and much approbation, and think it has deduced the constitution
of the English nation from its rightful root, the Anglo-Saxon, it is
really wonderful, that so many able and learned men should have failed
in their attempts to define it with correctness. No wonder then, that
Paine, who thought more than he read, should have credited the great
authorities who have declared, that the will of Parliament is the
constitution of England. So Marbois, before the French revolution,
observed to me, that the Almanac Royal was the constitution of France.
Your derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons, seems to be made on
legitimate principles. Having driven out the former inhabitants of that
part of the island called England, they became