Your letter of the 21st from Alexandria, gives me great pleasure, not only by its announcing your capacity to bear the Journey, but also your determination to apply yourself seriously to a radical removal of your malady, which requires every attention to remedies, & a perseverance in the application of them. You say your "appetite improves every day." Permit me to say, freely but sincerely, that I have often lamented that your appetite was often your worst enemy; & its indulgence in improper gratifications has often nourished, in place of destroying your disease. I have known so many instances of mischief produced by a return of appetite to convalescents, that I do not always hail it as a blessing. I once knew a hardy scotchman killed, when convalescent & recovering from a bilious complaint, by gratifying his appetite in the treat of a broiled scotch herring.

Perseverando should be your motto, if your liver be affected. I have had pain enough in my sympathies with my late Daughter Maria, on this account. Her incipient hepatic disease was not taken in time; tho' nothing was spared in its progress. Chapman had experience enough in her case, to teach him a full knowledge of the disease. Your mountain excursion, & sulphur waters, are much to be depended on. The York Springs are preferred in Liver-complaints. I know not the component parts of the Bedford waters. Crede quod habes, et habes. Strong faith in remedies, is a powerful auxiliary to their efficacy.

I am in the midst of a heavy district court. I am taken in by an oversight in the retryal of the Negro case sent up to the Circuit Court in an imperfect Verdict. It ought to have been sent back by you. But the Lawyers smuggled it on me, & I did not percieve that it was the same case, 'till after the Jury was sworn. There is another, of the same Complexion, to be tried. It is very unpleasant to sacrifice the most agreeable month in the year to a black business. Congress would have done one good thing, had they pass'd the proposed law on this subject. But they seem to have pass'd their time in talking; & that, too often, most disgracefully. The french chamber of deputies is not exceeded, but nearly matched, by some of our congressional orators.

Some legalized Kidnappers might be usefully employed in scouring our State of all your fugitive Slaves; & if you could colonize all the sooty race, nothing better could be done. Our Magistrates are inhibited by Act of Assembly, from cognizance of Slave cases. Our Supreme Court Judges have lately discovered that they are not "Judges of a County, City, or Town corporate"—so they refuse to act. I am therefore burthened with this detestable duty. Only the Recorder of the City, does anything in it; & he evades it when he can. I delivered to his Master, a short time ago, a fugitive Slave, in a plain case; agreed by some of the tenderest abolitionists to be inevitable. On his return from Belmont, the Master kept his Slave at a Tavern on the Turnpike, until a negotiation for his purchase could be concluded. Two hundred blacks, with Knives & Bludgeons, surrounded the Tavern, & would have proceeded to extremities; but were appeased by some prudent abolitionists. A purse was made up to pay the Master half price, to which the blacks contributed; & mischief so far prevented. I sent another to Gaol, a day or two past, to avoid a black mob; & there he shall remain for cooling. This is a blessed State of Things; but I think it will rouse our intelligent Citizens to some reflection on the danger occurring from good principles abused. I think a counter current already begins to flow.

The Negro I ordered to be whipped for Larceny, at the last Circuit Court, is pardoned; thro' the powerful mediation of our anti flagellating benevolents. I am not sorry that a sensation in our city is hereby forestalled; but our Marshall was so tickled with his escape from the cat & nine tailed duty, that I desired him to reexamine the pardon, & see whether it was not himself, & not the Negro, who had received Mercy.

The riveted prejudices of some of our abolition men are truly surprising. A Witness in the cause now trying, examined to discredit another, declared that no person assisting in the capture of a fugitive Slave was to be believed on his oath. In a case in which the issue of a Slave were said, by our law, to be free, I asked a decent abolitionist whether <illegible> was doing our city common Justice, to fix on its poor list, all the children of fugitive slaves born here? He replied they would oblige the owners to maintain them. When I stated the difficulty of compelling the owners to pay so monstrous & absurd a charge, he said they would find a mode of doing it, by attachment on the slave claimed, or catching the Master within our Jurisdiction. A Witness, to day, declared, that although he knew strict law was favourable to the returning a slave to his owner, yet strict morality was against it; & he deemed every safe measure justifiable to prevent such return. You see what a blessed time I have with such casuists, who compose Jurymen & Witnesses. I pray you to recover your health, so that you may be strong, & work hard in your colonization Scheme; so that all the subjects of such wise lucubration may be returned to the happy regions of their forefathers, where no judges or juries are employed in restoring fugitive slaves. very affectionately yours,