TO GIDEON GRANGER, ESQ.
Monticello, January 24, 1810.
Dear Sir,—I was sorry, by a letter from Mr. Barlow the other day, to learn the ill state of your health, and I sincerely wish that this may find you better. Young, temperate and prudent as you are, great confidence may be reposed in the provision nature has made for the restoration of order in your system when it has become deranged; she effects her object by strengthening the whole system, towards which medicine is generally mischevous. Nor are the sedentary habits of office friendly to it. But of all this your own good understanding, instructed by your experience, is the best judge. * * * * * I cannot pass over this occasion of writing to you, the first presented me since retiring from office, without expressing to you my sense of the important aid I received from you in the able and faithful direction of the office committed to your charge. With such auxiliaries, the business and burthen of government becomes all but insensible, and its painful anxieties are relieved by the certainty that all is going right. In no department did I feel this sensation more strongly than in yours, and though at this time of little significance to yourself, it is a relief to my mind to discharge the duty of bearing this testimony to your valuable services. I must add my acknowledgments for your friendly interference in setting the public judgment to rights with respect to the Connecticut prosecutions, so falsely and maliciously charged on me. I refer to a statement of the facts in the National Intelligencer of many months past, which I was sensible came from your hand. I pray you to be assured of my great and constant attachment, esteem and respect.