With
this confidence, equally strong in your powers and purposes, I pray you
to accept the assurance of my cordial esteem and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CLXXXI.--TO MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT, June 5,1824
TO MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT.
Monticello, June 5,1824.
Dear and Venerable Sir,
I am much indebted for your kind letter of February the 29th, and for
your valuable volume on the English constitution. I have, read this with
pleasure and much approbation, and think it has deduced the constitution
of the English nation from its rightful root, the Anglo-Saxon, it is
really wonderful, that so many able and learned men should have failed
in their attempts to define it with correctness. No wonder then, that
Paine, who thought more than he read, should have credited the great
authorities who have declared, that the will of Parliament is the
constitution of England. So Marbois, before the French revolution,
observed to me, that the Almanac Royal was the constitution of France.
Your derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons, seems to be made on
legitimate principles. Having driven out the former inhabitants of that
part of the island called England, they became aborigines as to you, and
your lineal ancestors. They doubtless had a constitution; and although
they have not left it in a written formula, to the precise text of which
you may always appeal, yet they have left fragments of their history
and laws, from which it may be inferred with considerable certainty.
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