The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
PERSONAL HABITS
A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind. It
carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and
dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for
what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government. Laboring
always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead, threatening to
overwhelm us.
In your day, French depredations; in mine,
English, and the Berlin and Milan decrees; now, the English orders of
council, and the piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it
will be the impressment of our seamen or something else; and so we
have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond
example in the history of man. And I do believe we shall continue to
growl, to multiply and prosper until we exhibit an association,
powerful, wise and happy, beyond what has yet been seen by men. As for
France and England, with all their preeminence in science, the one is
a den of robbers, and the other of pirates. And if science produces no
better fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine and destitution of national
morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and
estimable, as our neighboring savages are. But whither is senile
garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final
leave. I think little of them and say less. I have given up newspapers
in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I
find myself much the happier. Sometimes, indeed, I look back to former
occurrences, in remembrance of our old friends and fellow laborers,
who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side
of the Potomac, and on this side, myself alone. You and I have been
wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a
considerable activity of body and mind. I am on horseback three or
four hours of every day; visit three or four times a year a possession
I have ninety miles distant, performing the winter journey on
horseback.
to John Adams, 21 January 1812
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