My health is
in a great measure restored, and our family join with me in affectionate
recollections and assurances of respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXLVI.--TO M. DE NEUVILLE, December 13, 1818
TO M. DE NEUVILLE.
Monticello, December 13, 1818.
I thank your Excellency for the notice with which your letters favor me,
of the liberation of France from the occupation of the allied powers. To
no one, not a native, will it give more pleasure. In the desolation of
Europe, to gratify the atrocious caprices of Bonaparte, France sinned
much: but she has suffered more than retaliation. Once relieved from
the incubus of her late oppression, she will rise like a giant from
her slumbers. Her soil and climate, her arts and eminent science, her
central position and free constitution, will soon make her greater than
she ever was. And I am a false prophet if she does not, at some future
day, remind of her sufferings those who have inflicted them the most
eagerly. I hope, however, she will be quiet for the present, and risk
no new troubles. Her constitution, as now amended, gives as much of
self-government as perhaps she can yet bear, and will give more, when
the habits of order shall have prepared her to receive more. Besides the
gratitude which every American owes her, as our sole ally during the
war of independence, I am additionally affectioned by the friendships
I contracted there, by the good dispositions I witnessed, and by the
courtesies I received.
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