fied satisfaction
of having met them, rather than be yoked, with the abject, to his car;
and that, in withdrawing from oppression, you have followed the virtuous
example of a father, whose name will ever be dear to your country and
to mankind. With my prayers that you may be restored to it, that you may
see it re-established in that temperate portion of liberty which does
not infer either anarchy or licentiousness, in that high degree of
prosperity which would be the consequence of such a government, in
that, in short, which the constitution of 1789 would have insured it, if
wisdom could have stayed at that point the fervid but imprudent zeal of
men, who did not know the character of their own countrymen, and that
you may long live in health and happiness under it, and leave to the
world a well educated and virtuous representative and descendant of
your honored father, is the ardent prayer of the sincere and respectful
friend who writes this letter.

LETTER CVIII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, May 27, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, May 27, 1813.

Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone, my Dear Sir, another of
the co-signers of the Independence of our country. And a better man than
Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer
genius, or more honest. We too must go; and that ere long. I believe
we are under half a dozen at present; I mean the signers of the
Declaration. Yourself, Gerry, Carroll, and myself, are all I know to be
living. I am the only one south of the Potomac. Is Robert Treat Paine,
or Floyd living? It is long since I heard of them, and yet I do not
recollect to have heard of their deaths.

Moreton's deduction of the origin of our Indians from the fugitive
Trojans, stated in your letter of January the 26th, and his manner
of accounting for the sprinkling of their Latin with Greeks is really
amusing. Adair makes them talk Hebrew. Reinold Foster derives them from
the soldiers sent by Kouli Khan to conquer Japan. Brerewood, from the
Tartars, as well as our bears, wolves, foxes, &c. which, he says, 'must
of necessity fetch their beginning from Noah's ark, which rested after
the deluge, in Asia, seeing they could not proceed by the course
of nature, as the imperfect sort of living creatures do, from
putrefaction.' Bernard Romans is of opinion that God created an original
man and woman in this part of the globe. Doctor Barton thinks they are
not specifically different from the Pe