. 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.

You will have seen in the newspapers some proceedings in the
legislature, which have cost me much mortification. My own debts had
become considerable, but not beyond the effect of some lopping of
property, which would have been little felt, when our friend ---- gave
me the coup de grace. Ever since that I have been paying twelve hundred
dollars a year interest on his debt, which, with my own, was absorbing
so much of my annual income, as that the maintenance of my family was
making deep and rapid inroads on my capital, and had already done it.
Still, sales at a fair price