we.  We have at times dissented from the measures, and lamented the dilatoriness of Congress.  I recollect an instance the first winter of the war, when, from sloth of proceedings, an embargo was permitted to run through the winter, while the enemy could not cruise, nor consequently restrain the exportation of our whole produce, and was taken off in the spring, as soon as they could resume their stations.  But this procrastination is unavoidable.  How can expedition be expected from a body which we have saddled with an hundred lawyers, whose trade is talking?  But lies, to sow divisions among us, are so stale an artifice of the federal prints, and are so well understood, that they need neither contradiction nor explanation.  As to myself, my confidence in the wisdom and integrity of the administration is so entire, that I scarcely notice what is passing, and have almost ceased to read newspapers.  Mine remain in our post-office a week or ten days, sometimes, unasked for.  I find more amusement in studies to which I was always more attached, and from which I was dragged by the events of the times in which I have happened to live.

I rejoice exceedingly that our war with England was single-handed.  In that of the Revolution, we had France, Spain, and Holland on our side, and the credit of its success was given to them.  On the late occasion, unprepared and unexpecting war, we were compelled to declare it, and to receive the attack of England, just issuing from a general war, fully armed, and freed from all other enemies, and have not only made her sick of it, but glad to prevent, by a peace, the capture of her adjacent possessions, which one or two campaigns more would infallibly have made ours.  She has found that we can do her more injury than any other enemy on earth, and henceforward will better estimate the value of our peace.  But whether her government has power, in opposition to the aristocracy of her navy, to restrain their piracies within the limits of national rights, may well be doubted.  I pray, therefore, for peace, as best for all the world, best for us, and best for me, who have already lived to see three wars, and now pant for nothing more than to be permitted to depart in peace.  That you also, who have longer to live, may continue to enjoy this blessing with health and prosperity, through as long a life as you desire, is the prayer of yours affectionately.

Th:  Jefferson.

P. S. June the 14th.  Before I had sent my letter to the post-office, I received the new treaty of the allied powers, declaring that the French nation shall not have Bonaparte, and shall have Louis XVIII for their ruler.  They are all then as great rascals, as Bonaparte himself.  While he was in the wrong, I wished him exactly as much success as would answer our purposes, and no more.  Now that they are wrong and he in the right, he shall have all my prayers for success, and that he may dethrone every man of them.

LETTER CXXVIII.—­TO JOHN ADAMS, August 10,1815