To James Madison from Thomas Law, 1 February 1817
From Thomas Law
Feby. 1st 1817.
Dear Sir
Accept the accompanying Letters on a most important subject in which I have endeavored to introduce whatever remains to me of force & perspicuity in expressing of my sentiments.1 I wished & endeavored to obtain the great desideratum by every persuasion & entreaty, without claiming attention, but in vain, reluctantly therefore I have attempted to assail the Goliah Prejudice,2 with my sling & stones. “Magna est veritas et prevalebit,”3 is my motto. Tom Paine has justly remarked that men cannot unthink what has been suggested to them & goes home to their minds.4 Feeling conviction of the necessity & utility of my plan, I should have been culpable had I not obeyed the dictates of my judgement; when I have my sentiments corroborated by yours & Mr Crawfords coinciding opinions, I doubt not of their rectitude. May this beneficial plan & many others give prosperity to your fellow citizens to requite you for the toils vexations & cares of your exalted Station.
It is not for any particular attention received or expected, that I thus intrude, but from a high esteem impressed upon me by a careful observer of your conduct on trying occasions. I am not a flatterer of man in power. “No that my whole life will deny.”5 I therefore will not apologise for this from yrs with unfeigned Esteem & regard
Thomas Law
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. See Law to JM, 1 Feb. 1817, and n. 1.
2. Goliath.
3. Truth is great and will prevail.
4. Law was probably paraphrasing Thomas Paine’s argument, put forward in his 1791 Rights of Man, that “it has never yet been discovered how to make a man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts” (The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner, [2 vols.; New York, 1945], 1:243, 320).
5. “No, that my whole life will belie, for who so at variance as reason and I.” Law paraphrased a line from “To Mrs. Crewe,” by Charles James Fox (W. Davenport Adams, ed., Songs of Society from Anne to Victoria [London, 1880], 33.