paper to be circulated, other than
that by public authority, rigorously limited to the just measure for
circulation. Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation,
are at the mercy of those self-created money-lenders, and are prostrated
by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.
He who lent his money to the public or to an individual, before the
institution of the United States bank, twenty years ago, when wheat was
well sold at a dollar the bushel, and receives now his nominal sum when
it sells at two dollars, is cheated of half his fortune: and by whom? By
the banks, which, since that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars
of their nominal money where there was one at that time.

Reflect, if you please, on these ideas, and use them or not as they
appear to merit. They comfort me in the belief, that they point out a
resource ample enough, without overwhelming war-taxes, for the expense
of the war, and possibly still recoverable; and that they hold up to
all future time a resource within ourselves, ever at the command of
government, and competent to any wars into which we may be forced. Nor
is it a slight object to equalize taxes through peace and war.

*****

Ever affectionately yours.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXI.--TO JOHN ADAMS, June 21, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, June 21, 1813.

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And I too, my dear Sir, like the wood-cutter of Ida, should doubt where
to begin, were I to enter the forest of opinions, discussions,
and contentions which have occurred in our day. I should say with
Theocritus,

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But I shall not do it. The _summum bonum_ with me is now truly
epicurean, ease of body and tranquillity of mind; and to these I wish
to consign my remaining days. Men have differed in opinion, and been
divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of
societies; and in all governments, where they have been permitted freely
to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the
United States, have existed through all time. Whether the power of the
people, or that of the

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should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome
in eternal convulsions; as they now schismatize every people whose minds
and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the
terms of whig and tory belong to natural, as well as to civil
history. T