The criminal is preserved to become the rallying point of all the disaffected and the worthless of the United States, and to be the pivot on which all the intrigues and the conspiracies which foreign governments may wish to disturb us with, are to turn. If he is convicted of the misdemeanor, the Judge must in decency give us respite by some short confinement of him; but we must expect it to be very short. Be assured yourself, and communicate the same assurance to your colleagues, that your and their zeal and abilities have been displayed in this affair to my entire satisfaction and your own honor. I salute you with great esteem and respect. TO THE SECRETARY AT WAR. MONTICELLO, September 6, 1807. DEAR SIR,--I enclose you the letters of Mr. Granger and Mr. J. Nicholas, by the latter of which you will see that an Indian rupture in the neighborhood of Detroit becomes more probable, if it has not already taken place. I see in it no cause for changing the opinion given in mine of August 28, but on the contrary, strong reason for hastening the measures therein recommended. We must make ever memorable examples of the tribe or tribes which shall have taken up the hatchet. I salute you with affection and respect. TO THOMAS PAINE. MONTICELLO, September 6, 1807. DEAR SIR,--I received last night your favor of August 29, and with it a model of a contrivance for making one gun-boat do nearly double execution. It has all the ingenuity and simplicity which generally mark your inventions. I am not nautical enough to judge whether two guns may be too heavy for the bow of a gun-boat, or whether any other objection will countervail the advantage it offers, and which I see visibly enough. I send it this day to the Secretary of the Navy, within whose department it lies to try and to judge it. Believing, myself, that gun-boats are the only _water_ defence which can be useful to us, and protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy, I am pleased with everything which promises to improve them. The battle of Friedland, armistice with Russia, conquest of Prussia, will be working on the British stomach when they will receive information of the outrage they have committed on us. Yet, having entered on the policy proposed by their champion "war in disguise," of making the property of all nations lawful plunder to support a navy which their own resources cannot support, I doubt if they will readily relinquish it. That war with us had been predetermined may be fairly inferred from the diction of Berkley's order, the Jesuitism of which proves it ministerial from its being so timed as to find us in the midst of Burr's rebellion as they expected, from the contemporaneousness of the Indian excitements, and of the wide and sudden spread of their maritime spoliations. I salute you with great esteem and respect.