h the legislature, who were personally
intimate with both the means and measures, acquitted me with justice and
thanks, yet General Lee has put all those imputations among the
romances of his historical novel, for the amusement of credulous and
uninquisitive readers. Not that I have seen the least disposition to
censure you. On the contrary, your conduct on the attack of Washington
has met the praises of every one, and your plan for regulars and
militia, their approbation. But no campaign is as yet opened. No
generals have yet an interest in shifting their own incompetence on you,
no army agents, their rogueries. I sincerely pray you may never meet
censure where you will deserve most praise, and that your own happiness
and prosperity may be the result of your patriotic services.

Ever and affectionately yours.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXXI.--TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE, February 14, 1815

TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.

Monticello, February 14, 1815.

Mr Dear Friend,

Your letter of August the 14th has been received and read, again and
again, with extraordinary pleasure. It is the first glimpse which has
been furnished me of the interior workings of the late unexpected but
fortunate revolution of your country. The newspapers told us only that
the great beast was fallen; but what part in this the patriots acted,
and what the egoists, whether the former slept while the latter were
awake to their own interests only, the hireling scribblers of the
English press said little, and knew less. I see now the mortifying
alternative under which the patriot there is placed, of being either
silent, or disgraced by an association in opposition with the remains
of Bonaparteism. A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to
be expected by your nation; nor am I confident they are prepared
to preserve it. More than a generation will be requisite, under the
administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge in
the general mass of the people, and their habituation to an independent
security of person and property, before they will be capable of
estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of a sacred adherence
to the principles on which it rests for preservation. Instead of that
liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if
recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared
people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one. Possibly you
may remember, at t