At Monticello he found Martha and her husband, Thomas Mann Randolph, and induced the young couple to stay with him. Maria was now a tall girl, vivacious and witty, who would soon find a suitor. Devoting himself entirely to his family and domestic cares, Jefferson plunged into the reorganization of his estate left to an overseer for more than ten years, and granted so little attention to politics that he did not even subscribe to any newspaper, being quite content with those published at Richmond. "I think it is Montaigne who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head," he wrote to Edmund Randolph. "I am sure it is true as to everything political, and shall endeavor to estrange myself to everything of that character."[311] Since that time there have been in American politics many instances of politicians who left for a hunting party, or retired to their farms in order to avoid responsibility. This was not the attitude of Jefferson; his was no temporary retirement while waiting for the storm to blow itself over. Had he chosen to remain in Philadelphia, as he had been asked to do by Washington, he would have at least checked Hamilton's personal influence and counterbalanced in Washington's mind the advice and counsels of his enemy. His party had been reorganized and the republicans had just obtained a majority in the new Congress, but his principles were far from being secure. He indicated it himself in the same letter to Randolph when he wrote:
I indulge myself on one political topic only, that is, in declaring to my countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the Representatives to the first and second Congresses, and their implicit devotion to the Treasury. I think I do good in this, because it may produce exertions to reform the evil on the success of which the form of the government is to depend.
Shortly after coming back to Monticello, he discovered, somewhat to his dismay, that the rank and file of the good people of the country did not pay much attention to the political battle which was still raging in Philadelphia. He went to "court" at Charlottesville at the beginning of February and was amazed to find that his neighbors had not heard of Madison's speeches in Congress or even of the recall of Genet.