and candor of my fellow-citizens, as to leave to their judgment, and dismiss from my own notice any future torture of words or circumstances which this writer may devise for their deception. Indeed, could such a denunciation, and on such proof, bereave me of that confidence and consolation, I should, through the remainder of life, brood over the afflicting belief that I had lived and labored in vain. TO MR. GOODENOW. MONTICELLO, June 13, 1822. SIR,--I thank you for the volume of American Jurisprudence, which you have been so kind as to send me. I am now too old to read books solidly, unless they promise present amusement or future benefit. To me books of law offer neither. But I read your 6th chapter with interest and satisfaction, on the question whether the common law (of England) makes a part of the laws of our general government? That it makes more or less a part of the laws of the States is, I suppose, an unquestionable fact. Not by _birthright_, a conceit as inexplicable as the trinity, but by adoption. But, as to the general government, the Virginia Report on the alien and sedition laws, has so completely pulverized this pretension that nothing new can be said on it. Still, seeing that judges of the Supreme Court, (I recollect, for example, Elsworth and Story) had been found capable of such paralogism, I was glad to see that the Supreme Court had given it up. In the case of Libel in the United States district Court of Connecticut, the rejection of it was certainly sound; because no law of the general government had made it an offence. But such a case might, I suppose, be sustained in the State Courts which have state laws against libels. Because as to the portions of power within each State assigned to the general government, the President is as much the Executive of the State, as their particular governor is in relation to State powers. These, however, are speculations with which I no longer trouble myself; and therefore, to my thanks, I will only add assurances of my great respect. TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE. MONTICELLO, June 26, 1822. DEAR SIR,--I have received and read with thankfulness and pleasure your denunciation of the abuses of tobacco and wine. Yet, however sound in its principles, I expect it will be but a sermon to the wind. You will find it is as difficult to inculcate these sanative precepts on the sensualities of the present day, as to convince an Athanasian that there is but one God. I wish success to both attempts, and am happy to learn from you that the latter, at least, is making progress, and the more rapidly in proportion as our Platonizing Christians make more stir and noise about it. The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. 1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect. 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.