powers lately or still belligerent,
would give to those rights a precision and notoriety, and cover them
with an authority, which would protect them in an important degree
against future violation; and should any further sanction be necessary,
that of an exclusion of the violating nation from commercial intercourse
with all the others, would be preferred to war, as more analogous to
the offence, more easy and likely to be executed with good faith. The
essential articles of these rights, too, are so few and simple as easily
to be defined.

Having taken no part in the past or existing troubles of Europe, we have
no part to act in its pacification. But as principles may then be settled
in which we have a deep interest, it is a great happiness for us that
they are placed under the protection of an umpire, who, looking beyond
the narrow bounds of an individual nation, will take under the cover of
his equity the rights of the absent and unrepresented. It is only by a
happy concurrence of good characters and good occasions, that a step
can now and then be taken to advance the well being of nations. If the
present occasion be good, I am sure your Majesty's character will not be
wanting to avail the world of it. By monuments of such good offices may
your life become an epoch in the history of the condition of man, and
may He who called it into being for the good of the human family, give
it length of days and success, and have it always in his holy keeping.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XXXI.--TO COLONEL MONROE, May 4, 1806

TO COLONEL MONROE.

Washington, May 4, 1806.

Dear Sir,

I wrote you on the 16th of March by a common vessel, and then expected
to have had, on the rising of Congress, an opportunity of peculiar
confidence to you. Mr. Beckley then supposed he should take a flying
trip to London, on private business. But I believe he does not find it
convenient. He could have let you into the _arcana rerum_, which you
have interests in knowing. Mr. Pinckney's pursuits having been confined
to his peculiar line, he has only that general knowledge of what has
passed here, which the public possess. He has a just view of things so
far as known to him. Our old friend, Mercer, broke off from us some time
ago, at first professing to disdain joining the federalists, yet from
the habit of voting together, becoming soon identified with them.
Without carrying over with him one single person, he is now in a state
of as perfect ob