Thomas Jefferson Papers

Thomas Cooper to Thomas Jefferson, 14 September 1810

From Thomas Cooper

Sepr 14. 1810 Northumberland Pennsylvania

Dear Sir

I acknowledge with many thanks your kind letter giving me an account of your application to Mr Cabell. I shall be able in a year or two to form a very interesting collection of American ores and minerals, which I shall so form and arrange as to be an elementary collection for the use of Tyro’s in my part of the back Country, rather than a curious collection for the amusement of adepts in the science. I observe with very sincere pleasure, that Mineralogy & Chemistry are becoming fashionable studies in this state; this will be no trifling step on the road to independence. The result of the present Census will make the british monopolists hate us more than ever. The ministerial backers, the sheffields, the Sidmouths, the Cannings & the Stevens’s will open upon us with redoubled rancour. Let them: oderint dum metuant.

I have the satisfaction to say, that the Bar of Philadelphia has nearly come round to my Opinion in the Insurance case.

I remain Dear sir with very great esteem

Your obliged friend

Thomas Cooper

RC (MHi); endorsed by TJ as received 23 Sept. 1810 and so recorded in SJL.

Cooper was probably referring to James Stephen (stevens’s), who called for restrictions on neutral trade in an 1805 pamphlet and strongly supported the British orders in council in the House of Commons (ODNB description begins H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, 60 vols. description ends ).

Index Entries

  • Cabell, Joseph Carrington; and mineralogy search
  • Canning, George; British foreign minister search
  • Cooper, Thomas; and mineralogy search
  • Cooper, Thomas; letters from search
  • Dempsey v. Insurance Company of Pennsylvania search
  • Great Britain; House of Commons search
  • mineralogy; and T. Cooper search
  • Sheffield, John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of search
  • Sidmouth, Henry Addington, Viscount; British prime minister search
  • Stephen, James search