"I shall be employed the ensuing Winter in cutting two or three thousand Cords of Wood on my farm at New Rochelle for the New York market distant twenty miles by water. The Wood is worth 3 1/2 dollars per load as it stands. This will furnish me with ready money, and I shall then be ready for whatever may present itself of most importance next spring. I had intended to build myself a house to my own taste, and a workshop for my mechanical operations, and make a collection, as authors say, of my works, which with what I have in manuscript will make four, or five octavo volumes, and publish them by subscription, but the prospects that are now opening with respect to England hold me in suspence. "It has been customary in a President's discourse to say something about religion. I offer you a thought on this subject. The word, religion, used as a word _en masse_ has no application to a country like America. In catholic countries it would mean exclusively the religion of the romish church; with the Jews, the Jewish religion; in England, the protestant religion or in the sense of the english church, the established religion; with the Deists it would mean Deism; with the Turks, Mahometism &c, &c, As well as I recollect it is _Lego, Religo, Relegio, Religion_, that is say, tied or bound by an oath or obligation. The french use the word properly; when a woman enters a convent, she is called a novitiate; when she takes the oath, she is a _religieuse_, that is, she is bound by an oath. Now all that we have to do, as a Government with the word religion, in this country, is with the civil rights of it, and not at all with its _creeds_. Instead therefore of using the word religion, as a word en masse, as if it meant a creed, it would be better to speak only of its civil rights; _that all denominations of religion are equally protected, that none are dominant, none inferior, that the rights of conscience are equal to every denomination and to every individual and that it is the duty of Government to preserve this equality of conscientious rights_. A man cannot be called a hypocrite for defending the civil rights of religion, but he may be suspected of insincerity in defending its creeds. "I suppose you will find it proper to take notice of the impressment of American seamen by the Captains of British vessels, and procure a list of such captains and report them to their government. This pretence of searching for british seamen is a new pretence for visiting and searching American vessels.... "I am passing some time at this place at the house of a friend till the wood cutting time comes on, and I shall engage some cutters here and then return to New Rochelle. I wrote to Mr. Madison concerning the report that the british Government had cautioned ours not to pay the purchase money for Louisiana, as they intended to take it for themselves. I have received his [negative] answer, and I pray you make him my compliments.