It has given me inexpressible pleasure to receive a letter from you; for the newspaper statement of your indisposition led me to fear that you were quite ill— I rejoice that you are so much recovered; & I trust, that a good Providence will enable you to join the Supreme Court at Washington, where your presence is so important to the public, & withal so interesting to myself.

I do not now set down to give you an account of my last Circuit, for it is not yet over— I have had a very busy & heavy court, in the two principal states of my Circuit— The opinions already delivered could occupy a hundred or two of printed pages— some of them are very curious; & many of them very intricate— I shall not have time to send you an abstract; but will endeavor to bring it with me, when I come to Washington— Next week I am to try the mutineers of the Fairy¹; & it will be a very laborious trial— They are indicted for capital offences in five different indictments, & will probably be separately tried— How much time will be taken I cannot even conjecture, but I suppose a whole week.

I have read your decisions carefully & entirely agree with you in opinion. I am particularly gratified with your opinion in Halstead vs. the Morriston Aqueduct Cy, because it agrees with a course of reasoning, which I had adopted in a cause lately argued before me, & not yet decided— In the case of the Lessee of Lanning v. Dolph, your decision rests on a ground, that is incontrovertible, if the point be one of jurisdiction— I have sometimes doubted, whether, construing the 11th section of the Judiciary act with the 20th section, it was not fair to consider that Congress intended the limitation of value to be not a check on jurisdiction, but on costs— However your view is the obvious one, & I believe sound.

You ask whether I think, that the value is to be penned on the trial under the general issue. I answer no; & I have so ruled the point several times— It forms no part of the issue, & the effect may otherwise be, that upon a point of jurisdiction the party may lose his right of property. How can any one decide that the verdict is not on the merits? In my circuit the point is very material, for we have the old real actions in use, where the judgment is a bar to a future suit— Your view of the practice entirely accords with that, which I have adopted; & in all cases I have put the party to his plea to the jurisdiction, when he went to contest it, if the jurisdiction was apparent on the record.

I have not time to write more— I have sent you a Box of our own Fish by the schooner Romp of this term, which sails for Norfolk, & the Master (Capt. Noble) has promised me on his arrival at Norfolk to send it by the steamboat to you at Alexandria— I trust you will receive it before Christmas.

God bless you & preserve you is the earnest prayer of your affectionate friend