self-indulgence would be a price beyond his competence. As a sanatory measure, therefore, it becomes one of duty in the public guardians. Yet I do not think it follows necessarily that imported spirits should be subjected to similar enhancement, until they become as cheap as those made at home. A tax on whiskey is to discourage its consumption; a tax on foreign spirits encourages whiskey by removing its rival from competition. The price and present duty throw foreign spirits already out of competition with whiskey, and accordingly they are used but to a salutary extent. You see no persons besotting themselves with imported spirits, wines, liquors, cordials, &c. Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making. Foreign spirits, wines, teas, coffee, segars, salt, are articles of as innocent consumption as broadcloths and silks and ought, like them, to pay but the average ad valorem duty of other imported comforts. All of them are ingredients in our happiness, and the government which steps out of the ranks of the ordinary articles of consumption to select and lay under disproportionate burthens a particular one, because it is a comfort, pleasing to the taste, or necessary to health, and will therefore be bought, is, in that particular, a tyranny. Taxes on consumption like those on capital or income, to be just, must be uniform. I do not mean to say that it may not be for the general interest to foster for awhile certain infant manufactures, until they are strong enough to stand against foreign rivals; but when evident that they will never be so, it is against right, to make the other

When it was

branches of industry support them. found that France could not make sugar under 6 h. a lb., was it not tyranny to restrain her citizens from importing at 1 h.? or would it not have been so to have laid a duty of 5 h. on the imported? The permitting an exchange of industries with other nations is a direct encouragement of your own, which without that, would bring you nothing for your comfort, and would of course cease to be produced.

On the question of the next Presidential election, I am a mere looker on. I never permit myself to express an opinion, or to feel a wish on the subject. I indulge a single hope only, that the choice may fall on one who will be a friend of peace, of economy, of the republican principles of our constitution, and of the salutary distribution of powers made by that between the general and the local governments, to this, I ever add sincere prayers for your happiness and prosperity.

DEAR SIR,-On my late return from Bedford I found here your three favors of May 9. 13. &. The millet you have been so kind as to send me is not yet arrived. Accept my thanks for it as well as for the details as to it's culture & produce. I shall turn it over to my grandson T. J. Randolph, to whom I have committed the management of the whole of my agricultural concerns, in which I was never skilful and am now entirely unequal from age and

debility. He had recd. some seed of the same kind from another quarter and had sowed an acre & a half by way of experiment. To this he will add what you are so kind as to send if it comes in time. We had heard much of it's great produce & particularly in Kentucky. We have also obtained a little of the genuine Guinee grass, a plant of great & nutritious produce. This too is under trial. Withdrawn entirely from agriculture I am equally so from the business of the world & especially from political concerns which I trust entirely to the genern of the day, without enquiry, or reading but a single newspaper. I shall therefore accdg to your permission consign the several valuable pamphlets you have sent me to some of our members of Congress or others in power, who may use them to advantage. I am sure however I should read your vinegar & pepper letters with pleasure should you send them on; for whenever I have been confounded in the labyrinth of politics of Pennsylve especially I have ever applied to you for their clue & have found myself kept right by your informn. I am all alive however to the war of Spain & it's atrocious invasion by France. I trust it will end in an Universal insurrection of continental Europe & in the establmt of representative government in every country of it. We surely see the finger of providence in the insanity of France which brings on this great consummation.

I learn from you with great satisfn the details concerning your family, and their happy & prosperous progress in life. in life. Your own losses by endorsements

are heavy indeed. I do not know whether you may recollect how loudly my voice was raised agt. the establmt of banks in the begng. But like that of Cassandra it was not listened to. I was set down as a madman by those who have since been victims to them. I little thought then how much I was to suffer by them myself, for I too am taken in by endorsements for a friend to the amount of 20,000 D. for the payment of which I shall have to make sale of that much of my property the ensuing winter. And yet the general revoln of fortunes which these instrmns have produced seem not at all to have cured our country of this mania.

Your last letter first enables me to return you the thanks so long due & unrendered for the two prints of Bonaparte, being the first informn I have recd that they came from you. They came to me without the least indicn from what quarter. I went to the village of Milton, & enquired of the boatmen, who could tell me nothing more than that they were delivered to them for me by a person whom they did not know, and the present was so magnificent that I really suspected it came from Joseph Bonaparte or some of the refugee French Generals who were then with us. Dr. Watson first suggested that he believed they had come from you and that you had never learnt their safe arrival. I prayed him on his return to Phila to ascertain the fact, and your letter now, for the first time gives me the informn desired. I pray you to be assured that nothing but this ignorance could so long have withheld my just acknolegmts for this mark of your frdshp so splendid

& so acceptable. You suppose that in some letter of mine an idea is conveyed of dissatsn on my part for something mentd. by you on the subject of my religion. Certainly no letter of mine to you can ever have expressed such an idea. I never heard of any animadversion of yours on my religion & I believe that is one of the subjects on which our conversn never turned, and that neither of us ever knew what was the religion of the other. On this point I suppose we are both equally tolerant & charitable.

I am far from being in the condn of easy-writing which your letter supposes, with 2 crippled wrists, the one scarcely able to move my pen, the other to hold my paper. This double misfortune, the one of antr date now aggravated by age, the other recent, renders writing so slow & painful that nothing can induce me to approach the writing table but business indispensable or the irresistible impulse to assure my friends, as I now do you, of my constant & affecte frdshp & respect.

TO WILLIAM BRANCH GILES

J. MSS.

MONTICELLO, June 9. 23.

DEAR SIR, I received yesterday your favor of the 31st ult. and my Grandson Th: J. R. having set out to Richmond the day before I immediately inclosed the papers to him by mail and informed him that I should be ready if thot necessary, to bear testimony to the honble character of our decd. friend, as I knew him. I am sorry to learn that you

VOL. XII.-19.