ing frame cannot long bear up. I am
anxious therefore to get our University so far advanced as may encourage
the public to persevere to its final accomplishment. That secured, I
shall sing my _Nunc demittas_. I hope your labors will be long continued
in the spirit in which they have always been exercised, in maintenance
of those principles on which I verily believe the future happiness of
our country essentially depends. I salute you with affectionate and
great respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CL.--TO JOHN ADAMS, December 10, 1819

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, December 10, 1819.

Dear Sir,

I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of November the 23rd.
The banks, bankrupt-law, manufacturers, Spanish treaty, are nothing.
These are occurrences which, like waves in a storm, will pass under
the ship. But the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose the
Missouri country by revolt, and what more, God only knows. From the
battle of Bunker's Hill to the treaty of Paris, we never had so ominous
a question. It even damps the joy with which I hear of your high health,
and welcomes to me the consequences of my want of it. I thank God that I
shall not live to witness its issue. _Sed haec hactenus_.

I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous letters
of Cicero. They certainly breathe the purest effusions of an exalted
patriot, while the parricide Caesar is lost in odious contrast. When the
enthusiasm, however, kindled by Cicero's pen and principles, subsides
into cool reflection, I ask myself, What was that government which the
virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, and the ambition of Caesar
to subvert? And if Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and
sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power,
have done to lead his fellow-citizens into good government? I do not say
to restore it, because they never had it, from the rape of the Sabines
to the ravages of the Caesars. If their people indeed had been, like
ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be
obvious. 'Restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve
Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a
nation entitled to self-government, and do its will.' But steeped in
corruption, vice, and venality, as the whole nation was, (and nobody
had done more than Caesar to corrupt it,) what could even Cicero, Cato,
Brutus, have done, had it been