t your pursuits, whatever they
be, may make you both easy, healthy, and happy, is the prayer of your
sincere friend,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XCII.--TO J. B. COLVIN, September 20, 1810

TO J. B. COLVIN.

Monticello, September 20, 1810.

Sir,

Your favor of the 14th has been duly received, and I have to thank you
for the many obliging things respecting myself which are said in it.
If I have left in the breasts of my fellow-citizens a sentiment of
satisfaction with my conduct in the transaction of their business, it
will soften the pillow of my repose through the residue of life.

The question you propose, whether circumstances do not sometimes occur,
which make it a duty in officers of high trust, to assume authorities
beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes
embarrassing in practice. A strict observance of the written laws, is
doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen: but it is not the
highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our
country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by
a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself,
with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with
us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. When, in the battle
of Germantown, General Washington's army was annoyed from Chew's
house, he did not hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although
the property of a citizen. When he besieged Yorktown, he leveled the
suburbs, feeling that the laws of property must be postponed to the
safety of the nation. While the army was before York, the Governor of
Virginia took horses, carriages, provisions, and even men, by force, to
enable that army to stay together till it could master the public enemy;
and he was justified. A ship at sea in distress for provisions,
meets another having abundance, yet refusing a supply; the law of
self-preservation authorizes the distressed to take a supply by
force. In all these cases, the unwritten laws of necessity, of
self-preservation, and of the public safety, control the written laws of
_meum_ and _tuum_. Further to exemplify the principle, I will state an
hypothetical case. Suppose it had been made known to the executive of
the Union in the autumn of 1805, that we might have the Floridas for
a reasonable sum, that that sum had not indeed been so appropriated
by law, but that Congress were to meet within three weeks, and might