down his herd of traitors.  Let them have justice and protection against personal violence, but no favor.  Powers and pre-eminences conferred on them are daggers put into the hands of assassins, to be plunged into our own bosoms in the moment the thrust can go home to the heart.  Moderation can never reclaim them.  They deem it timidity, and despise without fearing the tameness from which it flows.  Backed by England, they never lose the hope that their day is to come, when the terrorism of their earlier power is to be merged in the more gratifying system,of deportation and the guillotine.  Being now hors de combat myself, I resign to others these cares.  A long attack of rheumatism has greatly enfeebled me, and warns me, that they will not very long be within my ken.  But you may have to meet the trial, and in the focus of its fury.  God send you a safe deliverance, a happy issue out of all afflictions, personal and public, with long life, long health, and friends as sincerely attached, as yours affectionately,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XCVIII.—­TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH

TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH.

Poplar Forest, December 5, 1811.

Dear Sir,

While at Monticello I am so much engrossed by business or society, that I can only write on matters of strong urgency.  Here I have leisure, as I have every where the disposition, to think of my friends.  I recur, therefore, to the subject of your kind letters relating to Mr. Adams and myself, which a late occurrence has again presented to me.  I communicated to you the correspondence which had parted Mrs. Adams and myself, in proof that I could not give friendship in exchange for such sentiments as she had recently taken up towards myself, and avowed and maintained in her letters to me.  Nothing but a total renunciation of these could admit a reconciliation, and that could be cordial only in proportion as the return to ancient opinions was believed sincere.  In these jaundiced sentiments of hers I had associated Mr. Adams, knowing the weight which her opinions had with him, and notwithstanding she declared in her letters that they were not communicated to him.  A late incident has satisfied me that I wronged him as well as her in not yielding entire confidence to this assurance on her part.  Two of the Mr. ------, my neighbors and friends, took a tour to the northward during the last summer.  In Boston they fell into company with Mr. Adams, and by his invitation passed a day with him at Braintree.  He spoke out to them every thing which came uppermost, and as it occurred to his mind, without any reserve, and seemed most disposed to dwell on those things which happened during his own administration.  He spoke of his masters, as he called his Heads of departments, as acting above his control, and often against his opinions.  Among many other topics, he adverted to the unprincipled licentiousness of the press against myself, adding, ’I always loved Jefferson, and still love him.’