ire of tranquillity inducing with me a wish to be
withdrawn from public notice. Your father's zeal and talents were too
well known, to derive any additional distinction from the penning these
resolutions. That circumstance, surely, was of far less merit than the,
proposing and carrying them through the legislature of his State. The
only fact in this statement, on which my memory is not distinct, is
the time and occasion of the consultation with your father and Colonel
Nicholas. It took place here I know; but whether any other person was
present, or communicated with, is my doubt. I think Mr. Madison was
either with us, or consulted, but my memory is uncertain as to minute
details.

I fear, Dear Sir, we are now in such another crisis, with this
difference only, that the judiciary branch is alone and single-handed in
the present assaults on the constitution. But its assaults are more sure
and deadly, as from an agent seemingly passive and unassuming. May you
and your cotemporaries meet them with the same determination and effect,
as your father and his did the alien and sedition laws, and preserve
inviolate a constitution, which, cherished in all its chastity and
purity, will prove in the end a blessing to all the nations of the
earth. With these prayers, accept those for your own happiness and
prosperity.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLXI.--TO JEDIDIAH MORSE, March 6, 1822

TO JEDIDIAH MORSE.

Monticello, March 6, 1822.

Sir,

I have duly received your letter of February the 16th, and have now to
express my sense of the honorable station proposed to my ex-brethren
and myself, in the constitution of the society for the civilization and
improvement of the Indian tribes. The object, too, expressed, as that of
the association, is one which I have ever had much at heart, and never
omitted an occasion of promoting, while I have been in situations to
do it with effect, and nothing, even now, in the calm of age and
retirement, would excite in me a more lively interest than an approvable
plan of raising that respectable and unfortunate people from the state
of physical and moral abjection, to which they have been reduced by
circumstances foreign to them. That the plan now proposed is entitled
to unmixed approbation, I am not prepared to say, after mature
consideration, and with all the partialities which its professed object
would rightfully claim from me.

I shall not undertake to draw the line of demarcation betwe