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Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price
Paris Jan. 8. 1789. Dear Sir
I was favoured with your letter of Oct. 26. and far from
finding any of it's subjects uninteresting as you apprehend,
they were to me, as every thing which comes from you, pleasing
and instructive. I concur with you strictly in your opinion of
the comparative merits of atheism & demonism, and really see
nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think
themselves Christians. your opinions and writings will have effect
in bringing others to reason on this subject. our new constitution,
of which you speak also, has succeeded beyond what I apprehended
it would have done. I did not at first believe that 11. states
of 13. would have consented to a plan consolidating them as much
into one. a change in their dispositions, which had taken place
since I left them, had rendered this consolidation necessary,
that is to say, had called for a federal government which could
walk upon it's own legs, without leaning for support on the
state legislatures. a sense of this necessity, & a submission
to it, is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the
people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government;
that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice,
they may be relied on to set them to rights. you say you are not
sufficiently informed about the nature & circumstances of
the present struggle here. having been on the spot from it's
first. . .
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