to fill the office. Should the doubts you have sometimes
expressed, whether it would be eligible for you to continue, still exist
in your mind, the acceptance of the commission gives you time to satisfy
yourself by further experience, and to make the time and manner of
withdrawing, should you ultimately determine on that, agreeable to
yourself. Be assured, that whether you continue or retire, it will be
with every disposition on my part to be just and friendly to you.

*****

I salute you with friendship and respect.

Th: Jefferson.

[* In the margin is written by the author, 'La Fayette.']

LETTER XVIII.--TO MRS. ADAMS, September 11, 1804

TO MRS. ADAMS.

Monticello, September 11, 1804,

Your letter, Madam, of the 18th of August has been some days received,
but a press of business has prevented the acknowledgment of it: perhaps,
indeed, I may have already trespassed too far on your attention. With
those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned to be perfectly
indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only
truth to set it to rights, I cannot be as passive. The act of personal
unkindness alluded to in your former letter, is said in your last to
have been the removal of your eldest son from some office to which
the judges had appointed him. I conclude, then, he must have been a
commissioner of bankruptcy. But I declare to you, on my honor, that
this is the first knowledge I have ever had that he was so. It may be
thought, perhaps, that I ought to have inquired who were such, before
I appointed others. But it is to be observed, that the former law
permitted the judges to name commissioners occasionally only, for every
case as it arose, and not to make them permanent officers. Nobody,
therefore, being in office, there could be no removal. The judges, you
well know, have been considered as highly federal; and it was noted
that they confined their nominations exclusively to federalists. The
legislature, dissatisfied with this, transferred the nomination to the
President, and made the offices permanent. The very object in passing
the law was, that he should correct, not confirm, what was deemed the
partiality of the judges. I thought it therefore proper to inquire,
not whom they had employed, but whom I ought to appoint to fulfil
the intentions of the law. In making these appointments, I put in a
proportion of federalists, equal, I believe, to the proportion they bear
in numb