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.
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