common law, without citing any authority.  And thus we find this chain of authorities hanging link by link, one upon another, and all ultimately on one and the same hook, and that a mistranslation of the words ‘ancien scripture,’ used by Prisot.  Finch quotes Prisot; Wingate does the same.  Sheppard quotes Prisot, Finch, and Wingate.  Hale cites nobody.  The court, in Woolston’s case, cite Hale.  Wood cites Woolston’s case.  Blackstone quotes Woolston’s case and Hale.  And Lord Mansfield, like Hale, ventures it on his own authority.  Here I might defy the best read lawyer to produce another scrip of authority for this judiciary forgery; and I might go on further to show, how some of the Anglo-Saxon priests interpolated into the text of Alfred’s laws, the 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd chapters of Exodus, and the 15th of the Acts of the Apostles, from the 23rd to the 29th verses.  But this would lead my pen and your patience too far.  What a conspiracy this, between Church and State!  Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all!

I must still add to this long and rambling letter, my acknowledgments for your good wishes to the University we are now establishing in this State.  There are some novelties in it.  Of that of a professorship of the principles of government, you express your approbation.  They will be founded in the rights of man.  That of agriculture, I am sure, you will approve:  and that also of Anglo-Saxon.  As the histories and laws left us in that type and dialect, must be the text-books of the reading of the learners, they will imbibe with the language their free principles of government.  The volumes you have been so kind as to send, shall be placed in the library of the University.  Having at this time in England a person sent for the purpose of selecting some Professors, a Mr. Gilmer of my neighborhood, I cannot but recommend him to your patronage, counsel, and guardianship, against imposition, misinformation, and the deceptions of partial and false recommendations, in the selection of characters.  He is a gentleman of great worth and correctness, my particular friend, well educated in various branches of science, and worthy of entire confidence.

Your age of eighty-four and mine of eighty-one years, insure us a speedy meeting.  We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and evil, which in the course of our long lives, we have.both witnessed; and in the mean time, I pray you to accept assurances of my high veneration and esteem for your person and character.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXII.—­TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, June 29, 1824

TO MARTIN VAN BUREN.

Monticello, June 29, 1824.

Dear Sir,

I have to thank you for Mr. Pickering’s elaborate philippic against Mr. Adams, Gerry, Smith, and myself; and I have delayed the acknowledgment until I could read it and make some observations on it.