and have no reason to repent it, or to change my course.  At this time of life, too, tranquillity is the summum bonum.  But although I decline all newspaper controversy, yet when falsehoods have been advanced, within the knowledge of no one so much as myself, I have sometimes deposited a contradiction in the hands of a friend, which, if worth preservation, may, when I am no more, nor those whom I might offend, throw light on history, and recall that into the path of truth.  And if of no other value, the present communication may amuse you with anecdotes not known to every one.

I had meant to have added some views on the amalgamation of parties, to which your favor of the 8th has some allusion; an amalgamation of name, but not of principle.  Tories are tories still, by whatever name they may be called.  But my letter is already too unmercifully long, and I close it here with assurances of my great esteem and respectful consideration.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXIII.—­TO EDWARD EVERETT, October 15, 1824

TO EDWARD EVERETT.

Monticello, October 15, 1824.

Dear Sir,

I have yet to thank you for your O. B. K. oration, delivered in presence of General la Fayette.  It is all excellent, much of it sublimely so, well worthy of its author and his subject, of whom we may truly say, as was said of Germanicus, ‘Fruitur fama sui.’

Your letter of September the 10th gave me the first information that mine to Major Cartwright had got into the newspapers; and the first notice, indeed, that he had received it.  I was a stranger to his person, but not to his respectable and patriotic character.  I received from him a long and interesting letter, and answered it with frankness, going without reserve into several subjects, to which his letter had led, but on which I did not suppose I was writing for the newspapers.  The publication of a letter in such a case, without the consent of the writer, is not a fair practice.

The part which you quote, may draw on me the host of judges and divines.  They may cavil, but cannot refute it.  Those who read Prisot’s opinion with a candid view to understand, and not to chicane it, cannot mistake its meaning.  The reports in the Year-books were taken very short.  The opinions of the judges were written down sententiously, as notes or memoranda, and not with all the developement which they probably used in delivering them.  Prisot’s opinion, to be fully expressed, should be thus paraphrased.  ’To such laws as those of holy church have recorded, and preserved in their ancient books and writings, it is proper for us to give credence; for so is, or so says, the common law, or law of the land, on which all manner of other laws rest for their authority, or are founded; that is to say, the common law, or the law of the land common to us all, and established by the authority of us all, is that from which is