that their government perfects itself, and leaves
room for the honest, the industrious, and wise; in which case, your own
talents, and those of the persons for whom you have interested yourself,
will, I am sure, find welcome and distinction. My good wishes will
always attend you, as a consequence of the esteem and regard with which
I am, Dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXIII.--TO JAMES MADISON, April 27, 1795

TO JAMES MADISON.

Monticello, April 27, 1795.

Dear Sir,

Your letter of March the 23rd came to hand the 7th of April, and
notwithstanding the urgent reasons for answering a part of it
immediately, yet as it mentioned that you would leave Philadelphia
within a few days, I feared that the answer might pass you on the road.
A letter from Philadelphia by the last post having announced to me your
leaving that place the day preceding its date, I am in hopes this will
find you in Orange. In mine, to which yours of March the 23rd was an
answer, I expressed my hope of the only change of position I ever wished
to see you make, and I expressed it with entire sincerity, because there
is not another person in the United States, who being placed at the helm
of our affairs, my mind would be so completely at rest for the fortune
of our political bark. The wish too was pure, and unmixed with any thing
respecting myself personally.

For as to myself, the subject had been thoroughly weighed and decided
on, and my retirement from office had been meant from all office, high
or low, without exception. I can say, too, with truth, that the subject
had not been presented to my mind by any vanity of my own. I know myself
and my fellow citizens too well to have ever thought of it. But the idea
was forced upon me by continual insinuations in the public papers, while
I was in office. As all these came from a hostile quarter, I knew that
their object was to poison the public mind as to my motives, when they
were not able to charge me with facts. But the idea being once presented
to me, my own quiet required that I should face it and examine it. I did
so thoroughly, and had no difficulty to see that every reason which
had determined me to retire from the office I then held, operated more
strongly against that which was insinuated to be my object. I decided
then on those general grounds which could alone be present to my mind
at that time, that is to say, reputation, tranquillit