uld not be for giving up
the ship without efforts to save her. She lived well through the first
squall, and may weather the present one. But, Dear Sir, I am not the
champion called for by our present dangers; _Non tali auxilio, nee
defensoribus istis, tempus eget_.' A waning body, a waning mind,
and waning memory, with habitual ill health, warn me to withdraw and
relinquish the arena to younger and abler athletes. I am sensible
myself, if others are not, that this is my duty. If my distant friends
know it not, those around me can inform them that they should not, in
friendship, wish to call me into conflicts, exposing only the decays
which nature has inscribed among her unalterable laws, and injuring the
common cause by a senile and puny defence.

I will, however, say one word on the subject. The South Carolina
resolutions, Van Buren's motion, and above all Bailey's propositions,
show that other States are coming forward on the subject, and better for
any one to take the lead than Virginia, where opposition is considered
as common-place, and a mere matter of form and habit. We shall see what
our co-States propose, and before the close of the session we may shape
our own course more understandingly.

Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXC.--TO [ANONYMOUS], January 21, 1826

Monticello, January 21, 1826.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of January the 15th is received, and I am entirely
sensible of the kindness of the motives which suggested the caution it
recommended. But I believe what I have done is the only thing I could
have done with honor or conscience. Mr. Giles requested me to state a
fact which he knew himself, and of which he knew me to be possessed.
What use he intended to make of it I knew not, nor had I a right to
inquire, or to indicate any suspicion that he would make an unfair one.
That was his concern, not mine, and his character was sufficient to
sustain the responsibility for it. I knew, too, that if an uncandid use
should be made of it, there would be found those who would so prove it.
Independent of the terms of intimate friendship on which Mr. Giles and
myself have ever lived together, the world's respect entitled him to
the justice of my testimony to any truth he might call for; and how that
testimony should connect me with whatever he may do or write hereafter,
and with his whole career, as you apprehend, is not understood by me.
With his personal c