render it best for the whole that you should repair to its assistance, the difficulty would then be, how to keep men out of the field. I have undertaken to hint this matter to your Excellency, not only on my own sense of its importance to us, but at the solicitations of many members of weight in our legislature, which has not yet assembled to speak their own desires. A few days will bring to me that relief which the constitution has prepared for those oppressed with the labors of my office, and a long declared resolution of relinquishing it to abler hands, has prepared my way for retirement to a private station: still, as an individual, I should feel the comfortable effects of your presence, and have (what I thought could not have been) an additional motive for that gratitude, esteem, and respect, with which I have the honor to be, your Excellency's most obedient humble servant. TO THE MARQUIS LA FAYETTE. MONTICELLO, August 4, 1781. SIR,--I am much obliged by the trouble you took in forwarding to me the letter of his Excellency, the President of Congress. It found me in Bedford, an hundred miles southward of this, where I was confined till within these few days, by an unfortunate fall from my horse. This has occasioned the delay of the answer which I now take the liberty of enclosing to you, as the confidential channel of conveyance, pointed out by the President. I thank you also for your kind sentiments and friendly offer on the occasion, which, that I cannot avail myself of, has given me more mortification than almost any occurrence of my life. I lose an opportunity, the only one I ever had, and perhaps ever shall have, of combining public service with private gratification. Of seeing countries whose improvements in science, in arts, and in civilization, it has been my fortune to admire at a distance, but never to see, and at the same time of lending some aid to a cause, which has been handed on from its first organization to its present stage, by every effort of which my poor faculties were capable. These, however, have not been such as to give satisfaction to some of my countrymen, and it has become necessary for me to remain in the State till a later period in the present year, than is consistent with an acceptance of what has been offered me.[102] Declining higher objects, therefore, my only one must be to show that suggestion and fact are different things, and that public misfortune may be produced as well by public poverty and private disobedience to the laws, as by the misconduct of public servants.[103] The independence of private life under the protection of republican laws will, I hope, yield me the happiness from which no slave is so remote as the minister of a commonwealth. From motives of private esteem as well as public gratitude, I shall pray it to be your lot in every line of life, as no one can with more truth subscribe himself