However, the time is coming when we shall fetch up the leeway of our vessel.  The changes in your House, I see, are going on for the better, and even the Augean herd over your heads are slowly purging off their impurities.  Hold on then, my dear friend, that we may not shipwreck in the mean while.  I do not see, in the minds of those with whom I converse, a greater affliction than the fear of your retirement; but this must not be, unless to a more splendid and a more efficacious post.  There I should rejoice to see you; I hope I may say, I shall rejoice to see you.  I have long had much in my mind to say to you on that subject.  But double delicacies have kept me silent.  I ought perhaps to say, while I would not give up my own retirement for the empire of the universe, how I can justify wishing one whose happiness I have so much at heart as yours, to take the front of the battle which is fighting for my security.  This would be easy enough to be done, but not at the heel of a lengthy epistle.

Present me respectfully to Mrs. Madison, and pray her to keep you where you are for her own satisfaction and the public good, and accept the cordial affections of us all.  Adieu.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXXII.—­TO M. D’IVERNOIS, February 6,1795

TO M. D’IVERNOIS.

Monticello, February 6,1795.

Dear Sir,

Your several favors on the affairs of Geneva found me here, in the month of December last.  It is now more than a year that I have withdrawn myself from public affairs, which I never liked in my life, but was drawn into by emergencies which threatened our country with slavery, but ended in establishing it free.  I have returned, with infinite appetite, to the enjoyment of my farm, my family, and my books, and had determined to meddle in nothing beyond their limits.  Your proposition, however, for transplanting the college of Geneva to my own country, was too analogous to all my attachments to science, and freedom, the first-born daughter of science, not to excite a lively interest in my mind, and the essays which were necessary to try its practicability.  This depended altogether on the opinions and dispositions of our State legislature, which was then in session.  I immediately communicated your papers to a member of the legislature, whose abilities and zeal pointed him out as proper for it, urging him to sound as many of the leading members of the legislature as he could, and if he found their opinions favorable, to bring forward the proposition; but if he should find it desperate, not to hazard it:  because I thought it best not to commit the honor either of our State or of your college, by an useless act of eclat.  It was not till within these three days that I have had an interview with him, and an account of his proceedings.  He communicated the papers to a great number of the members, and discussed them maturely, but privately, with them.  They