ercise and enjoy correspondence with the friends I love, and on
subjects which they, or my own inclinations, present. In that case, your
letters shall not be so long on my files unanswered, as sometimes they
have been to my great mortification.

To advert now to the subjects of those of December the 12th and 16th.
Tracy's Commentaries on Montesquieu have never been published in the
original. Duane printed a translation from the original manuscript a few
years ago. It sold, I believe, readily, and whether a copy can now
be had, I doubt. If it can, you will receive it from my bookseller in
Philadelphia, to whom I now write for that purpose. Tracy comprehends,
under the word 'Ideology' all the subjects which the French term
_Morale_, as the correlative to _Physique_, His works on Logic,
Government, Political Economy, and Morality, he considers as making up
the circle of ideological subjects, or of those which are within the
scope of the understanding, and not of the senses. His Logic occupies
exactly the ground of Locke's work on the Understanding. The translation
of that on Political Economy is now printing; but it is no translation
of mine. I have only had the correction of it, which was, indeed, very
laborious. _Le premier jet_ having been by some one who understood
neither French nor English, it was impossible to make it more than
faithful. But it is a valuable work.

The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four
words, 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our inquiries must end;
as the riddles of all the priesthoods end in four more, '_Ubi panis, ibi
deus_.' What all agree in, is probably right; what no two agree in, most
probably wrong. One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small
men as very great, inquired of me lately, with real affection too,
whether he might consider as authentic, the change in my religion much
spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had
been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom
I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was, 'Say
nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its
evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been
honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it
cannot be a bad one.' Affectionately adieu.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXL.--TO JOHN ADAMS, May 5, 1817

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, May 5, 1817.