One reason for suggesting the discontinuance of the daily post was, that it is not kept up by contract, but at the expense of the United States. But the principal reason was to avoid giving ground for clamor. The general idea is, that those who receive annual compensations should be constantly at their posts. Our constituents might not in the first moment consider 1st, that we all have property to take care of, which we cannot abandon for temporary salaries; 2d, that we have health to take care of, which at this season cannot be preserved at Washington; 3d, that while at our separate homes our public duties are fully executed, and at much greater personal labor than while we are together when a short conference saves a long letter. I am aware that in the present crisis some incident might turn up where a day's delay might infinitely overweigh a month's expense of the daily post. Affectionate salutations. TO MR. COOPER. MONTICELLO, September 1, 1807. DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 9th is received, and with it the copy of Dr. Priestley's Memoirs, for which I return you many thanks. I shall read them with great pleasure, as I revered the character of no man living more than his. With another part of your letter I am sensibly affected. I have not here my correspondence with Governor McKean to turn to, but I have no reason to doubt that the particular letter referred to may have been silent on the subject of your appointment as stated. The facts are these: The opinion I have ever entertained, and still entertain as strongly as ever, of your abilities and integrity, was such as made it my wish, from the moment I came to the administration, that you should be employed in some public way. On a review, however, of all circumstances, it appeared to me that the State of Pennsylvania had occasions for your service, which would be more acceptable than any others to yourself because they would leave you in the enjoyment of the society of Dr. Priestley, to which your attachment was known. I therefore expressed my solicitude respecting you to Governor McKean, whose desires to serve yourself and the public by employing you I knew to be great, and of course that you were an object of mutual concern, and I received his information of having found employment for your talents with the sincerest pleasure. But pressed as I am perpetually by an overflow of business, and adopting from necessity the rule of never answering any letter, or part of a letter, which can do without answer, in replying to his which related to other subjects, I probably said nothing on that, because my former letter had sufficiently manifested how pleasing the circumstance must be to me, and my time and practice did not permit me to be repeating things already said. This is a candid statement of that incident, and I hope you will see in it a silence accounted for on grounds far different from that of a continuance of my