ectual or diversified means than to the
executive. Again; because ministers can go into a court in London,
as witnesses, without interruption to their executive duties, it is
inferred that they would go to a court one thousand or one thousand five
hundred miles off, and that ours are to be dragged from Maine to Orleans
by every criminal who will swear that their testimony 'may be of use to
him.' The Judge says, 'it is apparent that the President's duties,
as chief magistrate, do not demand his whole time, and are not
unremitting.' If he alludes to our annual retirement from the seat
of government, during the sickly season, he should be told that such
arrangements are made for carrying on the public business, at and
between the several stations we take, that it goes on as unremittingly
there, as if we were at the seat of government. I pass more hours in
public business at Monticello than I do here, every day; and it is much
more laborious, because all must be done in writing. Our stations being
known, all communications come to them regularly, as to fixed points.
It would be very different were we always on the road, or placed in the
noisy and crowded taverns where courts are held. Mr. Rodney is expected
here every hour, having been kept away by a sick child. I salute you
with friendship and respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER LV.--TO DOCTOR WISTAR, June 21, 1807

TO DOCTOR WISTAR.

Washington, June 21, 1807.

Dear Sir,

I have a grandson, the son of Mr. Randolph, now about fifteen years of
age, in whose education I take a lively interest.

*****

I am not a friend to placing young men in populous cities, because they
acquire there habits and partialities which do not contribute to the
happiness of their after life. But there are particular branches of
science, which are not so advantageously taught any where else in
the United States as in Philadelphia. The garden at the Woodlands for
Botany, Mr. Peale's Museum for Natural History, your Medical School for
Anatomy, and the able professors in all of them, give advantages not to
be found elsewhere. We propose, therefore, to send him to Philadelphia
to attend the schools of Botany, Natural History, Anatomy, and perhaps
Surgery; but not of Medicine. And why not of Medicine, you will ask?
Being led to the subject, I will avail myself of the occasion to express
my opinions on that science, and the extent of my medical creed. But, to
finish first with respect to