_, but that I
presume you have seen it.

June, 1802.
To Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America.

Sir,

My high respect for your character, as a politician, and a man,
makes me desirous of connecting my name, in some measure with
yours while it is in my power, by means of some publication, to do
it.

The first part of this work, which brought the history to the fall
of the western empire, was dedicated to a zealous friend of civil
and religious liberty, but in a private station. What he, or any
other friend of liberty in Europe, could only do by their good
wishes, by writing, or by patriot suffering, you, Sir, are
actually accomplishing, and upon a theatre of great and growing
extent.

It is the boast of this country to have a constitution the most
favourable to political liberty, and private happiness, of any in
the world, and all say that it was yourself, more than any other
individual, that planned and established it; and to this opinion
your conduct in various public offices, and now in the highest,
gives the clearest attestation.

Many have appeared the friends of the rights of man while they were
subject to the power of others, and especially when they were
sufferers by it; but I do not recollect one besides yourself who
retained the same principles, and acted by them, in a station of
real power. You, Sir, have done more than this; having proposed to
relinquish some part of the power which the constitution gave you;
and instead of adding to the burden of the people, it has been
your endeavour to lighten those burdens tho the necessary
consequence must be the diminution of your influence. May this
great example, which I doubt not will demonstrate the
practicability of truly republican principles, by the actual
existence of a form of government calculated to answer all the
useful purposes of government (giving equal protection to all, and
leaving every man in the possession of every power that he can
exercise to his own advantage, without infringing on the equal
liberty of others) be followed in other countries, and at length
become universal.

Another reason why I wish to prefix your name to this work, and
more appropriate to the subject o