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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