with the confidence of all parties. Your nomination has given a
spring to hope, which was dead before.

I leave this place in three days, and therefore shall not here have
the pleasure of learning your determination. But it will reach me in my
retirement, and enrich the tranquillity of that scene. It will add to
the proofs which have convinced me that the man who loves his country on
its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power,
can never be divorced from it, can never refuse to come forward when he
finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding
off. Make then an effort, my friend, to renounce your domestic comforts
for a few months, and reflect that to be a good husband and good father
at this moment, you must be also a good citizen. With sincere wishes for
your acceptance and success, I am, with unalterable esteem, Dear Sir,
your affectionate friend and servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CCXV.--TO EDWARD RUTLEDGE, June 24, 1797

TO EDWARD RUTLEDGE.

Philadelphia, June 24, 1797.

My Dear Sir,

I have to acknowledge your two favors of May the 4th and 19th, and
to thank you for your attentions to the commissions for the pease and
oranges, which I learn have arrived in Virginia. Your draft I hope will
soon follow on Mr. John Barnes, merchant here, who, as I before advised
you, is directed to answer it.

When Congress first met, the assemblage of facts presented in the
President's speech, with the multiplied accounts of spoliations by
the French West-Indians, appeared, by sundry votes on the address, to
incline a majority to put themselves in a posture of war. Under this
influence the address was formed, and its spirit would probably have
been pursued by corresponding measures, had the events of Europe been of
an ordinary train. But this has been so extraordinary, that numbers have
gone over to those, who, from the first, feeling with sensibility the
French insults, as they had felt those of England before, thought now
as they thought then, that war measures should be avoided, and those
of peace pursued. Their favorite engine, on the former occasion,
was commercial regulations, in preference to negotiations, to war
preparation, and increase of debt. On the latter, as we have no commerce
with France, the restriction of which could press on them, they wished
for negotiation. Those of the opposite sentiment had, on the former
occasion, preferred negotiation,