nearly doubling that of the last year, and raising the whole mass to near four hundred millions, or forty for one, of the wholesome amount of circulation for a population of eight millions circumstanced as we are, and you remember how rapidly our money went down after our forty for one establishment in the revolution. I doubt if the present trash can hold as long. I think the three hundred and eighty millions must blow all up in the course of the present year, or certainly it will be consummated by the re-duplication to take place of course at the legislative meetings of the next winter. Should not prudent men, who possess stock in any monied institution, either draw and hoard the cash now while they can, or exchange it for canal stock, or such other as being bottomed on immovable property, will remain unhurt by the crush? I have been endeavoring to persuade a friend in our legislature to try and save this State from the general ruin by timely interference. I propose to him, First, to prohibit instantly, all foreign paper. Secondly, to give our banks six months to call in all their five-dollar bills (the lowest we allow); another six months to call in their ten-dollar notes, and six months more to call in all below fifty dollars. This would produce so gradual a diminution of medium, as not to shock contracts already made--would leave finally, bills of such size as would be called for only in transactions between merchant and merchant, and ensure a metallic circulation for those of the mass of citizens. But it will not be done. You might as well, with the sailors, whistle to the wind, as suggest precautions against having too much money. We must bend then before the gale, and try to hold fast ourselves by some plank of the wreck. God send us all a safe deliverance, and to yourself every other species and degree of happiness. P. S. I return your letter of November 15th, as it requests, and supposing that the late publication of the life of our good and really great Rittenhouse may not have reached you, I send a copy for your acceptance. Even its episodes and digressions may add to the amusement it will furnish you. But if the history of the world were written on the same scale, the whole world would not hold it. Rittenhouse, as an astronomer, would stand on a line with any of his time, and as a mechanician, he certainly has not been equalled. In this view he was truly great; but, placed along side of Newton, every human character must appear diminutive, and none would have shrunk more feelingly from the painful parallel than the modest and amiable Rittenhouse, whose genius and merit are not the less for this exaggerated comparison of his over zealous biographer. TO MR. JOHN CLARKE. MONTICELLO, January 27, 1814.