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LETTERS
by Thomas Jefferson
A YOUTH OF SIXTEEN
_To John Harvie_
_Shadwell, Jan. 14, 1760_
SIR, -- I was at Colo. Peter Randolph's about a Fortnight ago,
& my Schooling falling into Discourse, he said he thought it would be
to my Advantage to go to the College, & was desirous I should go, as
indeed I am myself for several Reasons. In the first place as long
as I stay at the Mountains the Loss of one fourth of my Time is
inevitable, by Company's coming here & detaining me from School. And
likewise my Absence will in a great Measure put a Stop to so much
Company, & by that Means lessen the Expences of the Estate in
House-Keeping. And on the other Hand by going to the College I shall
get a more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter be serviceable
to me; & I suppose I can pursue my Studies in the Greek & Latin as
well there as here, & likewise learn something of the Mathematics. I
shall be glad of your opinion.
OLD COKE AND YOUNG LADIES
_To John Page_
_Fairfield, December 25, 1762_
DEAR PAGE, -- This very day, to others the day of greatest
mirth and jollity, sees me overwhelmed with more and greater
misfortunes than have befallen a descendant of Adam for these
thousand years past, I am sure; and perhaps, after excepting Job,
since the creation of the world. I think his misfortunes were
somewhat greater than mine: for although we may be pretty nearly on a
level in other respects, yet, I thank my God, I have the advantage of
brother Job in this, that Satan has not as yet put forth his hand to
load me with bodily afflictions. You must know, dear Page, that I am
now in a house surrounded with enemies, who take counsel together
against my soul; and when I lay me down to rest, they say among
themselves, come let us destroy him. I am sure if there is such a
thing as a Devil in this world, he must have been here last night and
have had some hand in contriving what happened to me. Do you think
the cursed rats (at his instigation, I suppose) did not eat up my
pocket-book, which was in my pocket, within a foot of my head? And
not contented with plenty for the present, they carried away my
jemmy-worked silk garters, and half a dozen new minuets I had just
got, to serve, I suppose, as provision for the winter. But of this I
should not have accused the Devil, (because, you know rats will be
rats, and hunger, without the addition of his instigations, might
have urged them to do this,) if something worse, and from a different
quarter, had not happened. You know it rained last night, or if you
do not know it, I am sure I do. When I went to bed, I laid my watch
in the usual place, and going to take her up after I arose this
morning, I found her in the same place, it's true! but _Quantum
mutatus ab illo!_ all afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof
of the house, and as silent and still as the rats that had eat my
pocket-book. Now, you know, if chance had had anything to do in this
matter, there were a thousand other spots where it might have chanced
to leak as well as at this one, which was perpendicularly over my
watch. But I'll tell you; it's my opinion that the Devil came and
bored the hole over it on purpose. Well, as I was saying, my poor
watch had lost her speech. I should not have cared much for this,
but something worse attended it; the subtle particles of the water
with which the case was filled, had, by their penetration, so
overcome the cohesion of the particles of the paper, of which my dear
picture and watch-paper were composed, that, in attempting to take
them out to dry them, good God! _Mens horret referre!_ My cursed
fingers gave them such a rent, as I fear I never shall get over.
This, cried I, was the last stroke Satan had in reserve for me: he
knew I cared not for anything else he could do to me, and was
determined to try this last most fatal expedient. _"Multis fortunae
vulneribus percussus, huic uni me imparem sensi, et penitus
succubui!"_ I would have cried bitterly, but I thought it beneath the
dignity of a man, and a man too who had read {ton onton, ta men
ephemin, ta dok ephemin}. However, whatever misfortunes may attend
the picture or lover, my hearty prayers shall be, that all the health
and happiness which Heaven can send may be the portion of the
original, and that so much goodness may ever meet with what may be
most agreeable in this world, as I am sure it must be in the next.
And now, although the picture be defaced, there is so lively an image
of her imprinted in my mind, that I shall think of her too often, I
fear, for my peace of mind; and too often, I am sure, to get through
old Coke this winter; for God knows I have not seen him since I
packed him up in my trunk in Williamsburg. Well, Page, I do wish the
Devil had old Coke, for I am sure I never was so tired of an old dull
scoundrel in my life. What! are there so few inquietudes tacked to
this momentary life of our's, that we must need be loading ourselves
with a thousand more? Or, as brother Job says, (who, by the bye, I
think began to whine a little under his afflictions,) "Are not my
days few? Cease then, that I may take comfort a little before I go
whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness, and the
shadow of death." But the old fellows say we must read to gain
knowledge, and gain knowledge to make us happy and admired. _Mere
jargon!_ Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No.
And as for admiration, I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes
most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired.
Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to
esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the
saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty; and
since these are the only persons whose esteem is worth a wish, I do
not know but that, upon the whole, the advice of these old fellows
may be worth following.
You cannot conceive the satisfaction it would give me to have a
letter from you. Write me very circumstantially everything which
happened at the wedding. Was she there? because, if she was, I ought
to have been at the Devil for not being there too. If there is any
news stirring in town or country, such as deaths, courtships, or
marriages, in the circle of my acquaintance, let me know it.
Remember me affectionately to all the young ladies of my
acquaintance, particularly the Miss Burwells, and Miss Potters, and
tell them that though that heavy earthly part of me, my body, be
absent, the better half of me, my soul, is ever with them; and that
my best wishes shall ever attend them. Tell Miss Alice Corbin that I
verily believe the rats knew I was to win a pair of garters from her,
or they never would have been so cruel as to carry mine away. This
very consideration makes me so sure of the bet, that I shall ask
everybody I see from that part of the world what pretty gentleman is
making his addresses to her. I would fain ask the favour of Miss
Becca Burwell to give me another watch-paper of her own cutting,
which I should esteem much more, though it were a plain round one,
than the nicest in the world cut by other hands -- however, I am
afraid she would think this presumption, after my suffering the other
to get spoiled. If you think you can excuse me to her for this, I
should be glad if you would ask her. Tell Miss Sukey Potter that I
heard, just before I came out of town, that she was offended with me
about something, what it is I do not know; but this I know, that I
never was guilty of the least disrespect to her in my life, either in
word or deed; as far from it as it has been possible for one to be.
I suppose when we meet next, she will be _endeavouring_ to repay an
imaginary affront with a real one: but she may save herself the
trouble, for nothing that she can say or do to me shall ever lessen
her in my esteem, and I am determined always to look upon her as the
same honest-hearted, good-humored, agreeable lady I ever did. Tell
-- tell -- in short, tell them all ten thousand things more than
either you or I can now or ever shall think of as long as we live.
My mind has been so taken up with thinking of my acquaintances,
that, till this moment, I almost imagined myself in Williamsburg,
talking to you in our old unreserved way; and never observed, till I
turned over the leaf, to what an immoderate size I had swelled my
letter -- however, that I may not tire your patience by further
additions, I will make but this one more, that I am sincerely and
affectionately, Dear Page, your friend and servant.
P. S. I am now within an easy day's ride of Shadwell, whither I
shall proceed in two or three days.
A VISIT TO ANNAPOLIS
_To John Page_
_Annapolis, May 25, 1766_
DEAR PAGE -- I received your last by T. Nelson whom I luckily
met on my road hither. surely never did small hero experience greater
misadventures than I did on the first two or three days of my
travelling. twice did my horse run away with me and greatly endanger
the breaking my neck on the first day. on the second I drove two
hours through as copious a rain as ever I have seen, without meeting
with a single house to which I could repair for shelter. on the third
in going through Pamunkey, being unacquainted with the ford, I passed
through water so deep as to run over the cushion as I sat on it, and
to add to the danger, at that instant one wheel mounted a rock which
I am confident was as high as the axle, and rendered it necessary for
me to exercise all my skill in the doctrine of gravity, in order to
prevent the center of gravity from being left unsupported the
consequence of which would according to Bob. Carter's opinion have
been the corruition of myself, chair and all into the water. whether
that would have been the case or not, let the learned determine: it
was not convenient for me to try the experiment at that time, and I
therefore threw my whole weight on the mounted wheel and escaped the
danger. I confess that on this occasion I was seised with a violent
hydrophobia. I had the pleasure of passing two or three days on my
way hither at the two Will. Fitzhugh's and Col'o. Harrison's where
were S. Potter, P. Stith, and Ben Harrison, since which time I have
seen no face known to me before, except Cap't. Mitchell's who is
here. -- but I will now give you some account of what I have seen in
this metropolis. the assembly happens to be sitting at this time.
their upper and lower house, as they call them, sit in different
houses. I went into the lower, sitting in an old courthouse, which,
judging from it's form and appearance, was built in the year one. I
was surprised on approaching it to hear as great a noise and hubbub
as you will usually observe at a publick meeting of the planters in
Virginia. the first object which struck me after my entrance was the
figure of a little old man dressed but indifferently, with a yellow
queue wig on, and mounted in the judge's chair. this the gentleman
who walked with me informed me was the speaker, a man of a very fair
character, but who by the bye, has very little the air of a speaker.
at one end of the justices' bench stood a man whom in another place I
should from his dress and phis have taken for Goodall the lawyer in
Williamsburgh, reading a bill then before the house with a schoolboy
tone and an abrupt pause at every half dozen words. this I found to
be the clerk of the assembly. the mob (for such was their appearance)
sat covered on the justices' and lawyers' benches, and were divided
into little clubs amusing themselves in the common chit chat way. I
was surprised to see them address the speaker without rising from
their seats, and three, four, and five at a time without being
checked. when a motion was made, the speaker instead of putting the
question in the usual form, only asked the gentlemen whether they
chose that such or such a thing should be done, and was answered by a
yes sir, or no sir: and tho' the voices appeared frequently to be
divided, they never would go to the trouble of dividing the house,
but the clerk entered the resolutions, I supposed, as he thought
proper. in short everything seems to be carried without the house in
general's knowing what was proposed. the situation of this place is
extremely beautiful, and very commodious for trade having a most
secure port capable of receiving the largest vessels, those of 400
hh'ds being able to brush against the sides of the dock. the houses
are in general better than those in Williamsburgh, but the gardens
more indifferent. the two towns seem much of a size. they have no
publick buildings worth mentioning except a governor's house, the
hull of which after being nearly finished, they have suffered to go
to ruin. I would give you an account of the rejoicings here on the
repeal of the stamp act, but this you will probably see in print
before my letter can reach you. I shall proceed tomorrow to
Philadelphia where I shall make the stay necessary for inoculation,
thence going on to New-York I shall return by water to Williamsburgh,
about the middle of July, till which time you have the prayers of
Dear Page
Your affectionate friend
P. S. I should be glad if you could in some indirect manner,
without discovering that it was my desire, let J. Randolph know when
I propose to be in the city of Williamsburgh.
THE STUDY OF LAW
_To Thomas Turpin_
_Shadwell, Feb. 5, 1769_
DEAR SIR, -- I am truly concerned that it is not in my power to
undertake the superintendance of your son in his studies; but my
situation both present and future renders it utterly impossible. I
do not expect to be here more than two months in the whole between
this and November next, at which time I propose to remove to another
habitation which I am about to erect, and on a plan so contracted as
that I shall have but one spare bedchamber for whatever visitants I
may have. nor have I reason to expect at any future day to pass a
greater proportion of my time at home. thus situated it would even
have been injustice to Phill to have undertaken to give him an
assistance which will not be within my power; a task which I
otherwise should with the greatest pleasure have taken on me, and
would have desired no higher satisfaction than to see him hold that
rank in the profession to which his genius and application must
surely advance him. these however encourage me to hope that the
presence of an assistant will be little necessary. I always was of
opinion that the placing a youth to study with an attorney was rather
a prejudice than a help. we are all too apt by shifting on them our
business, to incroach on that time which should be devoted to their
studies. the only help a youth wants is to be directed what books to
read, and in what order to read them. I have accordingly recommended
strongly to Phill to put himself into apprenticeship with no one, but
to employ his time for himself alone. to enable him to do this to
advantage I have laid down a plan of study which will afford him all
the assistance a tutor could, without subjecting him to the
inconvenience of expending his own time for the emolument of another.
one difficulty only occurs, that is, the want of books. but this I
am in hopes you will think less of remedying when it is considered
that had he been placed under the care of another, a proper
collection of books must have been provided for him before he engaged
in the practice of his profession; for a lawyer without books would
be like a workman without tools. the only difference then is that
they must now be procured something earlier. should you think it
necessary, it would be better to consider the money laid out in books
as a part of the provision made for him and to deduct it from what
you intended to give him, than that he should be without them. I
have given him a catalogue of such as will be necessary, amounting in
the whole to about pound 100 sterling, but divided into four
invoices. Should Phill enter on the plan of study recommended, I
shall endeavor as often as possible to take your house in on my way
to and from Williamsburgh as it will afford me the double
satisfaction of observing his progress in science and of seeing
yourself, my aunt, and the family. I am Dear Sir with great respect
Your most humble servant
A GENTLEMAN'S LIBRARY
_To Robert Skip with a List of Books_
_Monticello, Aug. 3, 1771_
I sat down with a design of executing your request to form a
catalogue of books to the amount of about 50 lib. sterl. But could
by no means satisfy myself with any partial choice I could make.
Thinking therefore it might be as agreeable to you I have framed such
a general collection as I think you would wish and might in time find
convenient to procure. Out of this you will chuse for yourself to
the amount you mentioned for the present year and may hereafter as
shall be convenient proceed in completing the whole. A view of the
second column in this catalogue would I suppose extort a smile from
the face of gravity. Peace to its wisdom! Let me not awaken it. A
little attention however to the nature of the human mind evinces that
the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That
they are pleasant when well written every person feels who reads.
But wherein is its utility asks the reverend sage, big with the
notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and
Roman reading with which his head is stored?
I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the
principles and practices of virtue. When any original act of charity
or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or
imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a
strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts
also. On the contrary when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we
are disgusted with it's deformity, and conceive an abhorence of vice.
Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous
dispositions, and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body
acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit, and in
the instance of which we speak the exercise being of the moral
feelings produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously. We
never reflect whether the story we read be truth or fiction. If the
painting be lively, and a tolerable picture of nature, we are thrown
into a reverie, from which if we awaken it is the fault of the
writer. I appeal to every reader of feeling and sentiment whether
the fictitious murther of Duncan by Macbeth in Shakespeare does not
excite in him as great a horror of villany, as the real one of Henry
IV. by Ravaillac as related by Davila? And whether the fidelity of
Nelson and generosity of Blandford in Marmontel do not dilate his
breast and elevate his sentiments as much as any similar incident
which real history can furnish? Does he not in fact feel himself a
better man while reading them, and privately covenant to copy the
fair example? We neither know nor care whether Lawrence Sterne
really went to France, whether he was there accosted by the
Franciscan, at first rebuked him unkindly, and then gave him a peace
offering: or whether the whole be not fiction. In either case we
equally are sorrowful at the rebuke, and secretly resolve _we_ will
never do so: we are pleased with the subsequent atonement, and view
with emulation a soul candidly acknowleging it's fault and making a
just reparation. Considering history as a moral exercise, her
lessons would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of those
recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with such
circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic
emotion of virtue. We are therefore wisely framed to be as warmly
interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The field of
imagination is thus laid open to our use and lessons may be formed to
illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life.
Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually
impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than
by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were
written. This is my idea of well written Romance, of Tragedy, Comedy
and Epic poetry. -- If you are fond of speculation the books under
the head of Criticism will afford you much pleasure. Of Politics and
Trade I have given you a few only of the best books, as you would
probably chuse to be not unacquainted with those commercial
principles which bring wealth into our country, and the
constitutional security we have for the enjoiment ofthat wealth. In
Law I mention a few systematical books, as a knowledge of the
minutiae of that science is not neces-sary for a private gentleman.
In Religion, History, Natural philosophy, I have followed the same
plan in general, -- But whence the necessity of this collection?
Come to the new Rowanty, from which you may reach your hand to a
library formed on a more extensive plan. Separated from each other
but a few paces the possessions of each would be open to the other.
A spring centrically situated might be the scene of every evening's
joy. There we should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them
in music, chess or the merriments of our family companions. The
heart thus lightened our pillows would be soft, and health and long
life would attend the happy scene. Come then and bring our dear
Tibby with you, the first in your affections, and second in mine.
Offer prayers for me too at that shrine to which tho' absent I pray
continual devotions. In every scheme of happiness she is placed in
the foreground of the picture, as the princi-pal figure. Take that
away, and it is no picture for me. Bear my affections to Wintipock
clothed in the warmest expressions of sincerity; and to yourself be
every human felicity. Adieu.
ENCLOSURE
_FINE ARTS_.
Observations on gardening. Payne. 5/
Webb's essay on painting. 12mo 3/
Pope's Iliad. 18/
------- Odyssey. 15/
Dryden's Virgil. 12mo. 12/
Milton's works. 2 v. 8vo. Donaldson. Edinburgh 1762. 10/
Hoole's Tasso. 12mo. 5/
Ossian with Blair's criticisms. 2 v. 8vo. 10/
Telemachus by Dodsley. 6/
Capell's Shakespear. 12mo. 30/
Dryden's plays. 6v. 12mo. 18/
Addison's plays. 12mo. 3/
Otway's plays. 3 v. 12mo. 9/
Rowe's works. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Thompson's works. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Young's works. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Home's plays. 12mo. 3/
Mallet's works. 3 v. 12mo. 9/
Mason's poetical works. 5/
Terence. Eng. 3/
Moliere. Eng. 15/
Farquhar's plays. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Vanbrugh's plays. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Steele's plays. 3/
Congreve's works. 3 v. 12mo. 9/
Garric's dramatic works. 2 v. 8vo. 10/
Foote's dramatic works. 2 v. 8vo. 10/
Rousseau's Eloisa. Eng. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
----- Emilius and Sophia. Eng. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Marmontel's moral tales. Eng. 2 v. 12mo. 12/
Gil Blas. by Smollett. 6/
Don Quixot. by Smollett 4 v. 12mo. 12/
David Simple. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Roderic Random. }
2 v. 12mo. 6/ }
Peregrine Pickle. } _these are written by Smollett_
4 v. 12mo. 12/ }
Launcelot }
Graves. 6/ }
Adventures of a }
guinea. 2 v. }
12mo. 6/ }
Pamela. 4 v. 12mo. }
12/ } _these are by Richardson._
Clarissa. 8 v. 12mo. }
24/
Grandison. 7 v. }
12mo. 9/ }
Fool of quality. 3 v. }
12mo. 9/ }
Feilding's works. 12 v. 12mo. pound 1.16
Constantia. 2 v. }
12mo. 6/ } _by Langhorne._
Solyman and }
Almena. 12mo. }
3/ }
Belle assemblee. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Vicar of Wakefeild. 2 v. 12mo. 6/. by
Dr. Goldsmith
Sidney Bidulph. 5 v. 12mo. 15/
Lady Julia Mandeville. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Almoran and Hamet. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Tristam Shandy. 9 v. 12mo. pound 1.7
Sentimental journey. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Fragments of antient poetry. Edinburgh. 2/
Percy's Runic poems. 3/
Percy's reliques of antient English
poetry. 3 v. 12mo. 9/
Percy's Han Kiou Chouan. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Percy's Miscellaneous Chinese peices. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Chaucer. 10/
Spencer. 6 v. 12mo. 15/
Waller's poems. 12mo. 3/
Dodsley's collection of poems. 6 v. 12mo. 18/
Pearch's collection of poems. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Gray's works. 5/
Ogilvie's poems. 5/
Prior's poems. 2 v. 12mo. Foulis. 6/
Gay's works. 12mo. Foulis. 3/
Shenstone's works. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Dryden's works. 4 v. 12mo. Foulis. 12/
Pope's works. by Warburton. 12mo. pound 1.4
Churchill's poems. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Hudibrass. 3/
Swift's works. 21 v. small 8vo. pound 3.3
Swift's literary correspondence. 3 v. 9/
Spectator. 9 v. 12mo. pound 1.7
Tatler. 5 v. 12mo. 15/
Guardian. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Freeholder. 12mo. 3/
Ld. Lyttleton's Persian letters. 12mo. 3/
_CRITICISM ON THE FINE ARTS._
Ld. Kaim's elements of criticism.
2 v. 8vo. 10/
Burke on the sublime and beautiful.
8vo. 5/
Hogarth's analysis of beauty. 4to.
pound 1.1
Reid on the human mind. 8vo. 5/
Smith's theory of moral sentiments.
8vo. 5/
Johnson's dictionary. 2 v. fol. pound 3
Capell's prolusions. 12mo. 3/
_POLITICKS, TRADE._
Montesquieu's spirit of the laws.
2 v. 12mo. 6/
Locke on government. 8vo. 5/
Sidney on government. 4to. 15/
Marmontel's Belisarius. 12mo. Eng.
3/
Ld. Bolingbroke's political works.
5 v. 8vo. pound 1.5
Montesquieu's rise & fall of the Roman
governmt. 12mo. 3/
Steuart's Political oeconomy. 2 v.
4to. pound 1.10
Petty's Political arithmetic. 8vo. 5/
_RELIGION._
Locke's conduct of the mind in
search of truth. 12mo. 3/
Xenophon's memoirs of Socrates. by
Feilding. 8vo. 5/
Epictetus. by Mrs. Carter. 2 v.
12mo. 6/
Antoninus by Collins. 3/
Seneca. by L'Estrange. 8vo. 5/
Cicero's Offices. by Guthrie. 8vo. 5/
Cicero's Tusculan questions. Eng. 3/
Ld. Bolingbroke's Philosophical
works. 5 v. 8vo. pound 1.5
Hume's essays. 4 v. 12mo. 12/
Ld. Kaim's Natural religion. 8vo. 6/
Philosophical survey of Nature. 3/
Oeconomy of human life. 2/
Sterne's sermons. 7 v. 12mo. pound 1.1
Sherlock on death. 8vo. 5/
Sherlock on a future state. 5/
_LAW._
Ld. Kaim's Principles of equity. fol.
pound 1.1
Blackstone's Commentaries. 4 v.
4to. pound 4.4
Cuningham's Law dictionary. 2 v.
fol. pound 3
_HISTORY. ANTIENT._
Bible. 6/
Rollin's Antient history. Eng. 13 v.
12mo. pound 1.19
Stanyan's Graecian history. 2 v. 8vo.
10/
Livy. (the late translation). 12/
Sallust by Gordon. 12mo. 12/
Tacitus by Gordon. 12mo. 15/
Caesar by Bladen. 8vo. 5/
Josephus. Eng. 1.0
Vertot's Revolutions of Rome. Eng.
9/
Plutarch's lives. by Langhorne. 6 v.
8vo. pound 1.10
Bayle's Dictionary. 5 v. fol. pound 7.10.
Jeffery's Historical & Chronological
chart. 15/
_HISTORY. MODERN._
Robertson's History of Charles the
Vth. 3 v. 4to. pound 3.3
Bossuet's history of France. 4 v.
12mo. 12/
Davila. by Farneworth. 2 v. 4to.
pound 1.10.
Hume's history of England. 8 v.
8vo. pound 2.8.
Clarendon's history of the rebellion.
6 v. 8vo. pound 1.10.
Robertson's history of Scotland.
2 v. 8vo. 12/
Keith's history of Virginia. 4to. 12/
Stith's history of Virginia. 6/
_NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. NATURAL HISTORY &c._
Nature displayed. Eng. 7 v. 12mo.
Franklin on Electricity. 4to. 10/
Macqueer's elements of Chemistry.
2 v. 8vo. 10/
Home's principles of agriculture.
8vo. 5/
Tull's horse-hoeing husbandry. 8vo.
5/
Duhamel's husbandry. 4to. 15/
Millar's Gardener's diet. fol. pound 2.10.
Buffon's natural history. Eng.
pound 2.10.
A compendium of Physic & Surgery.
Nourse. 12mo. 1765. 3/
Addison's travels. 12mo. 3/
Anson's voiage. 8vo. 6/
Thompson's travels. 2 v. 12mo. 6/
Lady M. W. Montague's letters. 3 v.
12mo. 9/
_MISCELLANEOUS._
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THE SUBLINE OSSIAN
_To Charles McPherson_
_Albemarle, in Virga, Feb. 25, 1773_
DEAR SIR, -- Encouraged by the small acquaintance which I had
the pleasure of having contracted with you during your residence in
this country, I take the liberty of making the present application to
you. I understood you were related to the gentleman of your name
(Mr. James McPherson), to whom the world is so much indebted for the
elegant collection, arrangement, and translation of Ossian's poems.
These pieces have been and will, I think, during my life, continue to
be to me the sources of daily pleasures. The tender and the sublime
emotions of the mind were never before so wrought up by the human
hand. I am not ashamed to own that I think this rude bard of the
North the greatest poet that has ever existed. Merely for the
pleasure of reading his works, I am become desirous of learning the
language in which he sung, and of possessing his songs in their
original form. Mr. McPherson, I think, informs us he is possessed of
the originals. Indeed, a gentleman has lately told me he had seen
them in print; but I am afraid he has mistaken a specimen from
Temora, annexed to some of the editions of the translation, for the
whole works. If they are printed, it will abridge my request and
your trouble, to the sending me a printed copy; but if there be more
such, my petition is, that you would be so good as to use your
interest with Mr. McPherson to obtain leave to take a manuscript copy
of them, and procure it to be done. I would choose it in a fair,
round hand, on fine paper, with a good margin, bound in parchments as
elegantly as possible, lettered on the back, and marbled or gilt on
the edges of the leaves. I would not regard expense in doing this.
I would further beg the favor of you to give me a catalogue of the
books written in that language, and to send me such of them as may be
necessary for learning it. These will, of course, include a grammar
and dictionary. The cost of these, as well as the copy of Ossian,
will be (for me), on demand, answered by Mr. Alexander McCaul,
sometime of Virginia, merchant, but now of Glasgow, or by your friend
Mr. Ninian Minzees, of Richmond, in Virginia, to whose care the books
may be sent. You can, perhaps, tell me whether we may ever hope to
see any more of those Celtic pieces published. Manuscript copies of
any which are in print, it would at any time give me the greatest
happiness to receive. The glow of one warm thought is to me worth
more than money. I hear with pleasure from your friend that your
path through life is likely to be smoothed by success. I wish the
business and the pleasures of your situation would admit leisure now
and then to scribble a line to one who wishes you every felicity, and
would willingly merit the appellation of, dear sir, Your friend and
humble servant.
NEWS FROM BOSTON
_To William Small_
_May 7, 1775_
DEAR SIR, -- I had the pleasure by a gentleman who saw you at
Birmingham to hear of your welfare. By Capt. Aselby of the
True-patriot belonging to Messrs. Farrell & Jones of Bristol I send
you 3 doz. bottles of Madeira, being the half of a present which I
had laid by for you. The capt was afraid to take more on board lest
it should draw upon him the officers of the customs. The remaining
three doz. therefore I propose to send by Cap;att Drew belonging to
the same mercantile house, who is just arrived here. That which goes
by Aselby will be delivered by him to your order, the residue by
Drew, or by Farrell & Jones, I know not which as yet. I hope you
will find it fine as it came to me genuine from the island & has been
kept in my own cellar eight years. Within this week we have received
the unhappy news of an action of considerable magnitude, between the
King's troops and our brethren of Boston, in which it is said five
hundred of the former, with the Earl of Percy, are slain. That such
an action has occurred, is undoubted, though perhaps the
circumstances may not have reached us with truth. This accident has
cut off our last hope of reconciliation, and a phrensy of revenge
seems to have seized all ranks of people. It is a lamentable
circumstance, that the only mediatory power, acknowledged by both
parties, instead of leading to a reconciliation of his divided
people, should pursue the incendiary purpose of still blowing up the
flames, as we find him constantly doing, in every speech and public
declaration. This may, perhaps, be intended to intimidate into
acquiescence, but the effect has been most unfortunately otherwise.
A little knowledge of human nature, and attention to its ordinary
workings, might have foreseen that the spirits of the people here
were in a state, in which they were more likely to be provoked, than
frightened, by haughty deportment. And to fill up the measure of
irritation, a proscription of individuals has been substituted in the
room of just trial. Can it be believed, that a grateful people will
suffer those to be consigned to execution, whose sole crime has been
the developing and asserting their rights? Had the Parliament
possessed the power of reflection, they would have avoided a measure
as impotent, as it was inflammatory. When I saw Lord Chatham's bill,
I entertained high hope that a reconciliation could have been brought
about. The difference between his terms, and those offered by our
Congress, might have been accommodated, if entered on, by both
parties, with a dispostion to accommodate. But the dignity of
Parliament, it seems, can brook no opposition to its power. Strange,
that a set of men, who have made sale of their virtue to the
Minister, should yet talk of retaining dignity! But I am getting
into politics, though I sat down only to ask your acceptance of the
wine, and express my constant wishes for your happiness. This
however seems to be ensured by your philosophy & peaceful vocation.
I shall still hope that amidst public dissention private friendship
may be preserved inviolate and among the warmest you can ever possess
is that of your humble servt.
RECONCILIATION OR INDEPENDENCE
_To John Randolph_
_Monticello, August 25, 1775_
DEAR SIR, -- I received your message by Mr. Braxton &
immediately gave him an order on the Treasurer for the money which
the Treasurer assured me should be answered on his return. I now
send the bearer for the violin & such music appurtaining to her as
may be of no use to the young ladies. I beleive you had no case to
her. If so, be so good as to direct Watt Lenox to get from Prentis's
some bays or other coarse woollen to wrap her in & then to pack her
securely in a wooden box. I am sorry the situation of our country
should render it not eligible to you to remain longer in it. I hope
the returning wisdom of Great Britain will, ere long, put an end to
this unnatural contest. There may be people to whose tempers and
dispositions contention is pleasing, and who, therefore, wish a
continuance of confusion, but to me it is of all states but one, the
most horrid. My first wish is a restoration of our just rights; my
second, a return of the happy period, when, consistently with duty, I
may withdraw myself totally from the public stage, and pass the rest
of my days in domestic ease and tranquillity, banishing every desire
of ever hearing what passes in the world. Perhaps (for the latter
adds considerably to the warmth of the former wish), looking with
fondness towards a reconciliation with Great Britain, I cannot help
hoping you may be able to contribute towards expediting this good
work. I think it must be evident to yourself, that the Ministry have
been deceived by their officers on this side of the water, who (for
what purpose I cannot tell) have constantly represented the American
opposition as that of a small faction, in which the body of the
people took little part. This, you can inform them, of your own
knowledge, is untrue. They have taken it into their heads, too, that
we are cowards, and shall surrender at discretion to an armed force.
The past and future operations of the war must confirm or undeceive
them on that head. I wish they were thoroughly and minutely
acquainted with every circumstance relative to America, as it exists
in truth. I am persuaded, this would go far towards disposing them
to reconciliation. Even those in Parliament who are called friends
to America, seem to know nothing of our real determinations. I
observe, they pronounced in the last Parliament, that the Congress of
1774 did not mean to insist rigorously on the terms they held out,
but kept something in reserve, to give up; and, in fact, that they
would give up everything but the article of taxation. Now, the truth
is far from this, as I can affirm, and put my honor to the assertion.
Their continuance in this error may, perhaps, produce very ill
consequences. The Congress stated the lowest terms they thought
possible to be accepted, in order to convince the world they were not
unreasonable. They gave up the monopoly and regulation of trade, and
all acts of Parliament prior to 1764, leaving to British generosity
to render these, at some future time, as easy to America as the
interest of Britain would admit. But this was before blood was
spilt. I cannot affirm, but have reason to think, these terms would
not now be accepted. I wish no false sense of honor, no ignorance of
our real intentions, no vain hope thatpartial concessions of right
will be accepted, may induce the Ministry to trifle with
accommodation, till it shall be out of their power ever to
accommodate. If, indeed, Great Britain, disjointed from her
colonies, be a match for the most potent nations of Europe, with the
colonies thrown into their scale, they may go on securely. But if
they are not assured of this, it would be certainly unwise, by trying
the event of another campaign, to risk our accepting a foreign aid,
which, perhaps, may not be attainable, but on condition of
everlasting avulsion from Great Britain. This would be thought a
hard condition, to those who still wish for reunion with their parent
country. I am sincerely one of those, and would rather be in
dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on anyother
nation on earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those, too,
who, rather than submit to the rights of legislating for us, assumed
by the British Parliament, and which late experience has shown they
will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole Island
in the ocean.
If undeceiving the Minister, as to matters of fact, may change
his disposition, it will, perhaps, be in your power, by assisting to
do this, to render service to the whole empire, at the most critical
time, certainly, that it has ever seen. Whether Britain shall
continue the head of the greatest empire on earth, or shall return to
her original station in the political scale of Europe, depends,
perhaps, on the resolutions of the succeeding winter. God send they
may be wise and salutary for us all. I shall be glad to hear from
you as often as you may be disposed to think of things here. You may
be at liberty, I expect, to communicate some things, consistently
with your honor, and the duties you will owe to a protecting nation.
Such a communication among individuals, may be mutually beneficial to
the contending parties. On this or any future occasion, if I affirm
to you any facts, your knowledge of me will enable you to decide on
their credibility; if I hazard opinions on the dispositions of men or
other speculative points, you can only know they are my opinions. My
best wishes for your felicity, attend you, wherever you go, and
believe me to be assuredly, Your friend and servant.
P. S. My collection of classics, & of books of parliamentary
learning particularly is not so complete as I could wish. As you are
going to the land of literature & of books you may be willing to
dispose of some of yours here & replace them there in better
editions. I should be willing to treat on this head with any body
you may think proper to empower for that purpose.
SAXONS, NORMANS, AND LAND TENURE
_To Edmund Pendleton_
_Philadelphia, Aug. 13, 1776_
DEAR SIR, -- Your's of Aug. 3. came to hand yesterday; having
had no moment to spare since, I am obliged to set down to answer it
at a Committee table while the Committee is collecting. My thoughts
therefore on the subject you propose will be merely extempore. The
opinion that our lands were allodial possessions is one which I have
very long held, and had in my eye during a pretty considerable part
of my law reading which I found always strengthened it. It was
mentioned in a very hasty production, intended to have been put under
a course of severe correction, but produced afterwards to the world
in a way with which you are acquainted. This opinion I have thought
& still think to prove if ever I should have time to look into books
again. But this is only meant with respect to the English law as
transplanted here. How far our acts of assembly or acceptance of
grants may have converted lands which were allodial into feuds I have
never considered. This matter is now become a mere speculative
point; & we have it in our power to make it what it ought to be for
the public good.
It may be considered in the two points of view 1st. as bringing
a revenue into the public treasury. 2d. as a tenure. I have only
time to suggest hints on each of these heads. 1. Is it consistent
with good policy or free government to establish a perpetual revenue?
is it not against the practice of our wise British ancestors? have
not the instances in which we have departed from this in Virginia
been constantly condemned by the universal voice of our country? is
it safe to make the governing power when once seated in office,
independent of it's revenue? should we not have in contemplation &
prepare for an event (however deprecated) which may happen in the
possibility of things; I mean a reacknowledgment of the British
tyrant as our king, & previously strip him of every prejudicial
possession? Remember how universally the people run into the idea of
recalling Charles the 2d after living many years under a republican
government. -- As to the second was not the separation of the
property from the perpetual use of lands a mere fiction? Is not it's
history well known, & the purposes for which it was introduced, to
wit, the establishment of a military system of defence?
Was it not afterwards made an engine of immense oppression? Is
it wanting with us for the purpose of military defence? May not it's
other legal effects (such as them at least as are valuable) be
performed in other more simple ways? Has it not been the practice of
all other nations to hold their lands as their personal estate in
absolute dominion? Are we not the better for what we have hitherto
abolished of the feudal system? Has not every restitution of the
antient Saxon laws had happy effects? Is it not better now that we
return at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest &
most perfect ever yet devised by the wit of man, as it stood before
the 8th century.
The idea of Congress selling out unlocated lands has been
sometimes dropped, but we have alwais met the hint with such
determined opposition that I believe it will never be proposed. -- I
am against selling the lands at all. The people who will migrate to
the Westward whether they form part of the old, or of a new colony
will be subject to their proportion of the Continental debt then
unpaid. They ought not to be subject to more. They will be a people
little able to pay taxes. There is no equity in fixing upon them the
whole burthen of this war, or any other proportion than we bear
ourselves. By selling the lands to them, you will disgust them, and
cause an avulsion of them from the common union. They will settle
the lands in spite of everybody. -- I am at the same time clear that
they should be appropriated in small quantities. It is said that
wealthy foreigners will come in great numbers, & they ought to pay
for the liberty we shall have provided for them. True, but make them
pay in settlers. A foreigner who brings a settler for every 100, or
200 acres of land to be granted him pays a better price than if he
had put into the public treasury 5/ or 5 pound. That settler will be
worth to the public 20 times as much every year, as on our old plan
he would have paid in one paiment. I have thrown these loose
thoughts together only in obedience to your letter, there is not an
atom of them which would not have occurred to you on a moment's
contemplation of the subject. Charge yourself therefore with the
trouble of reading two pages of such undigested stuff.
By Saturday's post the General wrote us that Ld. Howe had got
(I think 100) flat bottomed boats alongside, & 30 of them were then
loaded with men; by which it was concluded he was preparing to
attack, yet this is Tuesday & we hear nothing further. The General
has by his last return, 17000 some odd men, of whom near 4000 are
sick & near 3000 at out posts in Long Island &c. So you may say he
has but 10000 effective men to defend the works of New York. His
works however are good & his men in spirits, which I hope will be
equal to an addition of many thousands. He had called for 2000 men
from the flying camp which were then embarking to him & would
certainly be with him in time even if the attack was immediate. The
enemy have (since Clinton & his army joined them) 15.000 men of whom
not many are sick. Every influence of Congress has been exerted in
vain to double the General's force. It was impossible to prevail on
the people to leave their harvest. That is now in, & great numbers
are in motion, but they have no chance to be there in time. Should
however any disaster befall us at New York they will form a great
army on the spot to stop the progress of the enemy. I think there
cannot be less than 6 or 8000 men in this city & between it & the
flying camp. Our council complain of our calling away two of the
Virginia battalions. But is this reasonable. They have no British
enemy, & if human reason is of any use to conjecture future events,
they will not have one. Their Indian enemy is not to be opposed by
their regular battalions. Other colonies of not more than half their
military strength have 20 battalions in the field. Think of these
things & endeavor to reconcile them not only to this, but to yield
greater assistance to the common cause if wanted. I wish every
battalion we have was now in New York. -- We yesterday received
dispatches from the Commissioners at Fort Pitt. I have not read
them, but a gentleman who has, tells me they are favorable. The
Shawanese & Delewares are disposed to peace. I believe it, for this
reason. We had by different advices information from the Shawanese
that they should strike us, that this was against their will, but
that they must do what the Senecas bid them. At that time we knew
the Senecas meditated war. We directed a declaration to be made to
the six nations in general that if they did not take the most
decisive measures for the preservation of neutrality we would never
cease waging war with them while one was to be found on the face of
the earth. They immediately changed their conduct and I doubt not
have given corresponding information to the Shawanese and Delewares.
I hope the Cherokees will now be driven beyond the Missisipi &
that this in future will be declared to the Indians the invariable
consequence of their beginning a war. Our contest with Britain is
too serious and too great to permit any possibility of avocation from
the Indians. This then is the season for driving them off, & our
Southern colonies are happily rid of every other enemy & may exert
their whole force in that quarter.
I hope to leave this place some time this month.
I am Dear Sir, Your affectionate friend
P. S. Mr. Madison of the college & Mr. Johnson of Fredsb'gh
are arrived in New York. They say nothing material had happened in
England. The French ministry was changed.
THE VIRGINIA CONSTITUTION
_To Edmund Pendleton_
_Philadelpha, Aug. 26, 1776_
DEAR SIR -- Your's of the 10'th. inst. came to hand about three
days ago, the post having brought no mail with him the last week.
You seem to have misapprehended my proposition for the choice of a
Senate. I had two things in view: to get the wisest men chosen, & to
make them perfectly independent when chosen. I have ever observed
that a choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished
for it's wisdom. This first secretion from them is usually crude &
heterogeneous. But give to those so chosen by the people a second
choice themselves, & they generally will chuse wise men. For this
reason it was that I proposed the representatives (& not the people)
should chuse the Senate, & thought I had notwithstanding that made
the Senators (when chosen) perfectly independant of their electors.
However I should have no objection to the mode of election proposed
in the printed plan of your committee, to wit, that the people of
each county should chuse twelve electors, who should meet those of
the other counties in the same district & chuse a senator. I should
prefer this too for another reason, that the upper as well as lower
house should have an opportunity of superintending & judging of the
situation of the whole state & be not all of one neighborhood as our
upper house used to be. So much for the wisdom of the Senate. To
make them independent, I had proposed that they should hold their
places for nine years, & then go out (one third every three years) &
be incapable for ever of being re-elected to that house. My idea was
that if they might be re-elected, they would be casting their eye
forward to the period of election (however distant) & be currying
favor with the electors, & consequently dependant on them. My reason
for fixing them in office for a term of years rather than for life,
was that they might have in idea that they were at a certain period
to return into the mass of the people & become the governed instead
of the governor which might still keep alive that regard to the
public good that otherwise they might perhaps be induced by their
independance to forget. Yet I could submit, tho' not so willingly to
an appointment for life, or to any thing rather than a mere creation
by & dependance on the people. I think the present mode of election
objectionable because the larger county will be able to send & will
always send a man (less fit perhaps) of their own county to the
exclusion of a fitter who may chance to live in a smaller county. --
I wish experience may contradict my fears. -- That the Senate as
well as lower [or shall I speak truth & call it upper] house should
hold no office of profit I am clear; but not that they should of
necessity possess distinguished property. You have lived longer than
I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better
grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think
integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I beleive the
decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest & more
disinterested than those of wealthy men: & I can never doubt an
attachment to his country in any man who has his family & peculium in
it: -- Now as to the representative house which ought to be so
constructed as to answer that character truly. I was for extending
the right of suffrage (or in other words the rights of a citizen) to
all who had a permanent intention of living in the country. Take
what circumstances you please as evidence of this, either the having
resided a certain time, or having a family, or having property, any
or all of them. Whoever intends to live in a country must wish that
country well, & has a natural right of assisting in the preservation
of it. I think you cannot distinguish between such a person residing
in the country & having no fixed property, & one residing in a
township whom you say you would admit to a vote. -- The other point
of equal representation I think capital & fundamental. I am glad you
think an alteration may be attempted in that matter. -- The
fantastical idea of virtue & the public good being a sufficient
security to the state against the commission of crimes, which you say
you have heard insisted on by some, I assure you was never mine. It
is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object
to. Punishments I know are necessary, & I would provide them, strict
& inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be
inflicted for murther & perhaps for treason if you would take out of
the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their
nature. Rape, buggery &c -- punish by castration. All other crimes
by working on high roads, rivers, gallies &c. a certain time
proportioned to the offence. But as this would be no punishment or
change of condition to slaves (me miserum!) let them be sent to other
countries. By these means we should be freed from the wickedness of
the latter, & the former would be living monuments of public
vengeance. Laws thus proportionate & mild should never be dispensed
with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge
be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally
& impartially to every description of men; those of the judge, or of
the executive power, will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical,
capricious designing man. -- I am indebted to you for a topic to
deny to the Pensylvania claim to a line 39 complete degrees from the
equator. As an advocate I shall certainly insist on it; but I wish
they would compromise by an extension of Mason & Dixon's line. --
They do not agree to the temporary line proposed by our assembly.
We have assurance (not newspaper, but Official) that the French
governors of the West Indies have received orders not only to furnish
us with what we want but to protect our ships. They will convoy our
vessels, they say, thro' the line of British cruisers. What you will
see in the papers of capt Weeks is indubitably true. The inhabitants
of S't. Pierre's went out in boats to see the promised battle, but
the British captain chose not to shew. -- By our last letters from
N. York the enemy had landed 8000 men on Long island. On Friday a
small party, about 40, of them were out maroding & had got some
cattle in a barn. Some riflemen (with whom was our Jamieson)
attacked them, took away the cattle, they retired as far as the house
of Judge Lifford where were their officer's quarters, they were
beaten thence also, & the house burnt by the riflemen. It is alwais
supposed you know that good execution was done. One officer was
killed & left with 9 guineas in his pocket, which shews they were in
a hurry; the swords & fusees of three other officers were found, the
owners supposed to be killed or wounded & carried away. On Saturday
about 2000 of them attempted to march to Bedford. Colo Hans's
battalion of 300 Pennsylvania riflemen having posted themselves in a
cornfeild & a wood to advantage attacked them. The enemy had some of
their Jagers with the m, who it seems are German riflemen used to the
woods. General Sullivan (who commands during the illness of Gen'l.
Green) sent some musquetry to support the riflemen. The enemy gave
way & were driven half a mile beyond their former station. Among the
dead left on the way, were three Jagers. Gen'l. Washington had sent
over 6 battal's. to join Sullivan who had before three thousand, some
say & rightly I beleive 6000; & had posted 5 battalions more on the
water side ready to join Sullivan if the enemy should make that the
field of trial, or to return to N. York if wanted there. A general
embarkation was certainly begun. 13. transports crouded with men had
fallen down to the narrows & others loading. So that we expect every
hour to hear of this great affair. Washington by his last return had
23,000 men of whom however 5000 were sick. Since this, Colo Aylett
just returned from there, tells us he has received 16 new England
battalions, so that we may certainly hope he has 25,000 effective,
which is about the strength of the enemy probably, tho' we have never
heard certainly that their last 5000, are come, in which case I
should think they have but 20,000. Washington discovers a
confidence, which he usually does only on very good grounds. He sais
his men are high in spirits. Those ordered to Long island went with
the eagerness of young men going to a dance. A few more skirmishes
would be an excellent preparative for our people. Provisions on
Staten island were become so scarce that a cow sold for ten pounds, a
sheep for ten dollars. They were barreling up all the horse flesh
they could get. -- Colo Lee being not yet come I am still here, &
suppose I shall not get away till about this day se'nnight. I shall
see you in Williamsburgh the morning of the Assembly. Adieu.
FIRST LETTER TO ADAMS
_To John Adams_
_Williamsburgh, May 16, 1777_
DEAR SIR -- Matters in our part of the continent are too much
in quiet to send you news from hence. Our battalions for the
Continental service were some time ago so far filled as rendered the
recommendation of a draught from the militia hardly requisite, and
the more so as in this country it ever was the most unpopular and
impracticable thing that could be attempted. Our people even under
the monarchical government had learnt to consider it as the last of
all oppressions. I learn from our delegates that the Confederation
is again on the carpet. A great and a necessary work, but I fear
almost desperate. The point of representation is what most alarms
me, as I fear the great and small colonies are bitterly determined
not to cede. Will you be so good as to recollect the proposition I
formerly made you in private and try if you can work it into some
good to save our union? It was that any proposition might be
negatived by the representatives of a majority of the people of
America, or of a majority of the colonies of America. The former
secures the larger the latter the smaller colonies. I have mentioned
it to many here. The good whigs I think will so far cede their
opinions for the sake of the Union, and others we care little for.
The journals of congress not being printed earlier gives more
uneasiness than I would ever wish to see produced by any act of that
body, from whom alone I know our salvation can proceed. In our
assembly even the best affected think it an indignity to freemen to
be voted away life and fortune in the dark. Our house have lately
written for a M.S. copy of your journals, not meaning to desire a
communication of any thing ordered to be kept secret. I wish the
regulation of the post office adopted by Congress last September
could be put in practice. It was for the riders to travel night and
day, and to go their several stages three times a week. The speedy
and frequent communication of intelligence is really of great
consequence. So many falshoods have been propagated that nothing now
is beleived unless coming from Congress or camp. Our people merely
for want of intelligence which they may rely on are become lethargick
and insensible of the state they are in. Had you ever a leisure
moment I should ask a letter from you sometime directed to the care
of Mr. Dick, Fredericksburgh: but having nothing to give in return it
would be a tax on your charity as well as your time. The esteem I
have for you privately, as well as for your public importance will
always render assurances of your health and happiness agreeable. I
am Dear Sir Your friend and servt:
"THE FAVORITE PASSION OF MY SOUL"
_To Giovanni Fabbroni_
_Williamsburg in Virginia, June 8, 1778_
SIR, -- Your letter of Sep. 15. 1777 from Paris comes safe to
hand. We have not however had the pleasure of seeing Mr. De Cenis,
the bearer of it in this country, as he joined the army in
Pennsylvania as soon as he arrived. I should have taken particular
pleasure in serving him on your recommendation. From the kind
anxiety expressed in your letter as well as from other sources of
information we discover that our enemies have filled Europe with
Thrasonic accounts of victories they had never won and conquests they
were fated never to make. While these accounts alarmed our friends
in Europe they afforded us diversion. We have long been out of all
fear for the event of the war. I enclose you a list of the killed,
wounded, and captives of the enemy from the commencement of
hostilities at Lexington in April, 1775, until November, 1777, since
which there has been no event of any consequence. This is the best
history of the war which can be brought within the compass of a
letter. I believe the account to be near the truth, tho' it is
difficult to get at the numbers lost by an enemy with absolute
precision. Many of the articles have been communicated to us from
England as taken from the official returns made by their General. I
wish it were in my power to send you as just an account of our loss.
But this cannot be done without an application to the war office
which being in another county is at this time out of my reach. I
think that upon the whole it has been about one half the number lost
by them, in some instances more, but in others less. This difference
is ascribed to our superiority in taking aim when we fire; every
soldier in our army having been intimate with his gun from his
infancy. If there could have been a doubt before as to the event of
the war it is now totally removed by the interposition of France, &
the generous alliance she has entered into with us. Tho' much of my
time is employed in the councils of America I have yet a little
leisure to indulge my fondness for philosophical studies. I could
wish to correspond with you on subjects of that kind. It might not
be unacceptable to you to be informed for instance of the true power
of our climate as discoverable from the thermometer, from the force &
direction of the winds, the quantity of rain, the plants which grow
without shelter in winter &c. On the other hand we should be much
pleased with contemporary observations on the same particulars in
your country, which will give us a comparative view of the two
climates. Farenheit's thermometer is the only one in use with us, I
make my daily observations as early as possible in the morning &
again about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, these generally showing the
maxima of cold & heat in the course of 24 hours. I wish I could
gratify your Botanical taste; but I am acquainted with nothing more
than the first principles of that science; yet myself & my friends
may furnish you with any Botanical subjects which this country
affords, and are not to be had with you; and I shall take pleasure in
procuring them when pointed out by you. The greatest difficulty will
be the means of conveyance during the continuance of the war.
If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this
world, it is to your country its music. This is the favorite passion
of my soul, & fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a
state of deplorable barbarism. From the line of life in which we
conjecture you to be, I have for some time lost the hope of seeing
you here. Should the event prove so, I shall ask your assistance in
procuring a substitute, who may be a proficient in singing, & on the
Harpsichord. I should be contented to receive such an one two or
three years hence, when it is hoped he may come more safely and find
here a greater plenty of those useful things which commerce alone can
furnish. The bounds of an American fortune will not admit the
indulgence of a domestic band of musicians, yet I have thought that a
passion for music might be reconciled with that economy which we are
obliged to observe. I retain for instance among my domestic servants
a gardener (Ortolans), a weaver (Tessitore di lino e lin), a cabinet
maker (Stipeltaio) and a stone cutter (Scalpellino laborante in
piano) to which I would add a vigneron. In a country where like
yours music is cultivated and practised by every class of men I
suppose there might be found persons of those trades who could
perform on the French horn, clarinet or hautboy & bassoon, so that
one might have a band of two French horns, two clarinets, & hautboys
& a bassoon, without enlarging their domestic expenses. A certainty
of employment for a half dozen years, and at the end of that time to
find them if they choose a conveyance to their own country might
induce them to come here on reasonable wages. Without meaning to
give you trouble, perhaps it might be practicable for you in [your]
ordinary intercourse with your people, to find out such men disposed
to come to America. Sobriety and good nature would be desirable
parts of their characters. If you think such a plan practicable, and
will be so kind as to inform me what will be necessary to be done on
my part I will take care that it shall be done. The necessary
expenses, when informed of them, I can remit before they are wanting,
to any port in France, with which country alone we have safe
correspondence. I am Sir with much esteem your humble servant.
"A TRUE WHIG IN SCIENCE"
_To David Rittenhouse_
_Monticello in Albemarle, Virginia, July 19, 1778_
DEAR SIR, -- I sincerely congratulate you on the recovery of
Philadelphia, and wish it may be found uninjured by the enemy -- how
far the interests of literature may have suffered by the injury or
removal of the Orrery (as it is miscalled) the publick libraries,
your papers & implements, are doubts which still excite anxiety. We
were much disappointed in Virginia generally on the day of the great
eclipse, which proved to be cloudy. In Williamsburgh, where it was
total, I understand only the beginning was seen. At this place which
is in Lat. 38 degrees-8' and Longitude West from Williamsburgh about
1 degrees-45' as is conjectured, eleven digits only were supposed to
be covered, as it was not seen at all till the moon had advanced
nearly one third over the sun's disc. Afterwards it was seen at
intervals through the whole. The egress particularly was visible.
It proved however of little use to me for want of a time piece that
could be depended on; which circumstance, together with the
subsequent restoration of Philadelphia to you, has induced me to
trouble you with this letter to remind you of your kind promise of
making me an accurate clock; which being intended for astronomical
purposes only, I would have divested of all apparatus for striking or
for any other purpose, which by increasing it's complication might
disturb it's accuracy. A companion to it, for keeping seconds, and
which might be moved easily, would greatly add to it's value. The
theodolite, for which I spoke to you also, I can now dispense with,
having since purchased a most excellent one.
Writing to a philosopher, I may hope to be pardoned for
intruding some thoughts of my own tho' they relate to him personally.
Your time for two years past has, I believe, been principally
employed in the civil government of your country. Tho' I have been
aware of the authority our cause would acquire with the world from
it's being known that yourself & Doc't. Franklin were zealous friends
to it and am myself duly impressed with a sense of the arduousness of
government, and the obligation those are under who are able to
conduct it, yet I am also satisfied there is an order of geniusses
above that obligation, & therefore exempted from it, nobody can
conceive that nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the
occupations of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for which
even the conduct of providence might have been arraigned, had he been
by birth annexed to what was so far below him. Cooperating with
nature in her ordinary economy we should dispose of and employ the
geniusses of men according to their several orders and degrees. I
doubt not there are in your country many persons equal to the task of
conducting government: but you should consider that the world has but
one Ryttenhouse, & that it never had one before. The amazing
mechanical representation of the solar system which you conceived &
executed, has never been surpassed by any but the work of which it is
a copy. Are those powers then, which being intended for the
erudition of the world are, like air and light, the world's common
property, to be taken from their proper pursuit to do the commonplace
drudgery of governing a single state, a work which my be executed by
men of an ordinary stature, such as are always & everywhere to be
found? Without having ascended mount Sinai for inspiration, I can
pronounce that the precept, in the decalogue of the vulgar, that they
shall not make to themselves "the likeness of anything that is in the
heavens above" is reversed for you, and that you will fulfil the
highest purposes of your creation by employing yourself in the
perpetual breach of that inhibition. For my own country in
particular you must remember something like a promise that it should
be adorned with one of them. The taking of your city by the enemy
has hitherto prevented the proposition from being made & approved by
our legislature. The zeal of a true whig in science must excuse the
hazarding these free thoughts, which flow from a desire of promoting
the diffusion of knowledge & of your fame, and from one who can
assure you truly that he is with much sincerity & esteem Your most
obed't. & most humble serv't.
P. S. If you can spare as much time as to give me notice of
the receipt of this, & what hope I may form of my clocks, it will
oblige me. If sent to Fredericksburgh it will come safe to hand.
WAR AND HUMANITY
_To Patrick Henry_
_Albemarle, March 27, 1779_
Sir, -- A report prevailing here, that in consequence of some
powers from Congress, the Governor and Council have it in
contemplation to remove the Convention troops, either wholly or in
part, from their present situation, I take the liberty of troubling
you with some observations on that subject. The reputation and
interest of our country, in general, may be affected by such a
measure: it would, therefore, hardly be deemed an indecent liberty in
the most private citizen, to offer his thoughts to the consideration
of the Executive. The locality of my situation, particularly in the
neighborhood of the present barracks, and the public relation in
which I stand to the people among whom they are situated, together
with a confidence which a personal knowledge of the members of the
Executive gives me, that they will be glad of information from any
quarter, on a subject interesting to the public, induce me to hope
that they will acquit me of impropriety in the present
representation.
By an article in the Convention of Saratoga, it is stipulated,
on the part of the United States, that the officers shall not be
separated from their men. I suppose the term officers, includes
_general_ as well as _regimental_ officers. As there are general
officers who command all the troops, no part of them can be separated
from these officers without a violation of the article: they cannot,
of course, be separated from one another, unless the same general
officer could be in different places at the same time. It is true,
the article adds the words, "as far as circumstances will admit."
This was a necessary qualification; because, in no place in America,
I suppose, could there have been found quarters for both officers and
men together; those for the officers to be according to their rank.
So far, then, as the circumstances of the place where they should be
quartered, should render a separation necessary, in order to procure
quarters for the officers, according to their rank, the article
admits that separation. And these are the circumstances which must
have been under the contemplation of the parties; both of whom, and
all the world beside (who are ultimate judges in the case), would
still understand that they were to be as near in the environs of the
camp, as convenient quarters could be procured; and not that the
qualification of the article destroyed the article itself, and laid
it wholly at our discretion. Congress, indeed, have admitted of this
separation; but are they so far lords of right and wrong as that our
consciences may be quiet with their dispensation? Or is the case
amended by saying they leave it optional in the Governor and Council
to separate the troops or not? At the same time that it exculpates
not them, it is drawing the Governor and Council into a participation
in the breach of faith. If indeed it is only proposed, that a
separation of the troops shall be referred to the consent of their
officers; that is a very different matter. Having carefully avoided
conversation with them on public subjects, I cannot say, of my own
knowledge, how they would relish such a proposition. I have heard
from others, that they will choose to undergo anything together,
rather than to be separated, and that they will remonstrate against
it in the strongest terms. The Executive, therefore, if voluntary
agents in this measure, must be drawn into a paper war with them, the
more disagreeable, as it seems that faith and reason will be on the
other side. As an American, I cannot help feeling a thorough
mortification, that our Congress should have permitted an infraction
of our public honor; as a citizen of Virginia, I cannot help hoping
and confiding, that our Supreme Executive, whose acts will be
considered as the acts of the Commonwealth, estimate that honor too
highly to make its infraction their own act. I may be permitted to
hope, then, that if any removal takes place, it will be a general
one; and, as it is said to be left to the Governor and Council to
determine on this, I am satisfied that, suppressing every other
consideration, and weighing the matter dispassionately, they will
determine upon this sole question, Is it for the benefit of those for
whom they act, that the Convention troops should be removed from
among them? Under the head of interest, these circumstances, viz.,
the expense of building barracks, said to have been pound 25,000, and
of removing the troops back-wards and forwards, amounting to, I know
not how much, are not to be permitted, merely because they are
Continental expenses; for we are a part of the Continent; we must pay
a shilling of every dollar wasted. But the sums of money which, by
these troops, or on their account, are brought into, and expended in
this State, are a great and local advantage. This can require no
proof. If, at the conclusion of the war, for instance, our share of
the Continental debt should be twenty millions of dollars, or say
that we are called on to furnish an annual quota of two millions four
hundred thousand dollars, to Congress, to be raised by tax, it is
obvious that we should raise these given sums with greater or less
ease, in proportion to the greater or less quantity of money found in
circulation among us. I expect that our circulating money is
[increased?], by the presence of these troops, at the rate of $30,000
a week, at the least. I have heard, indeed, that an objection arises
to their being kept within this State, from the information of the
commissary that they cannot be subsisted here. In attending to the
information of that officer, it should be borne in mind that the
county of King William and its vicinities are one thing, the
territory of Virginia another. If the troops could be fed upon long
letters, I believe the gentleman at the head of that department in
this country, would be the best commissary upon earth. But till I
see him determined to act, not to write; to sacrifice his domestic
ease to the duties of his appointment, and apply to the resources of
this country, wheresoever they are to be had, I must entertain a
different opinion of him. I am mistaken if, for the animal
subsistence of the troops hitherto, we are not principally indebted
to the genius and exertions of Hawkins, during the very short time he
lived after his appointment to that department, by your board. His
eye immediately pervaded the whole State, it was reduced at once to a
regular machine, to a system, and the whole put into movement and
animation by the fiat of a comprehensive mind. If the Commonwealth
of Virginia cannot furnish these troops with bread, I would ask of
the commissariat, which of the thirteen is now become the grain
colony? If we are in danger of famine from the addition of four
thousand mouths, what is become of that surplus of bread, the
exportation of which used to feed the West Indies and Eastern States,
and fill the colony with hard money? When I urge the sufficiency of
this State, however, to subsist these troops, I beg to be understood,
as having in contemplation the quantity of provisions necessary for
their real use, and not as calculating what is to be lost by the
wanton waste, mismanagement, and carelessness of those employed about
it. If magazines of beef and pork are suffered to rot by slovenly
butchering, or for want of timely provision and sale; if quantities
of flour are exposed, by the commissaries entrusted with the keeping
it, to pillage and destruction; and if, when laid up in the
Continental stores, it is still to be embezzled and sold, the land of
Egypt itself would be insufficient for their supply, and their
removal would be necessary, not to a more plentiful country, but to
more able and honest commissaries. Perhaps the magnitude of this
question, and its relation to the whole State, may render it worth
while to await the opinion of the National Council, which is now to
meet within a few weeks. There is no danger of distress in the
meantime, as the commissaries affirm they have a great sufficiency of
provisions for some time to come. Should the measure of removing
them into another State be adopted, and carried into execution,
before the meeting of Assembly, no disapprobation of theirs will
bring them back, because they will then be in the power of others,
who will hardly give them up.
Want of information as to what may be the precise measure
proposed by the Governor and Council, obliges me to shift my ground,
and take up the subject in every possible form. Perhaps, they have
not thought to remove the troops out of this State altogether, but to
some other part of it. Here, the objections arising from the
expenses of removal, and of building new barracks, recur. As to
animal food, it may be driven to one part of the country as easily as
to another: that circumstance, therefore, may be thrown out of the
question. As to bread, I suppose they will require about forty or
forty-five thousand bushels of grain a year. The place to which it
is to be brought to them, is about the centre of the State. Besides,
that the country round about is fertile, all the grain made in the
counties adjacent to any kind of navigation, may be brought by water
to within twelve miles of the spot. For these twelve miles, wagons
must be employed; I suppose half a dozen will be a plenty. Perhaps,
this part of the expense might have been saved, had the barracks been
built on the water; but it is not sufficient to justify their being
abandoned now they are built. Wagonage, indeed, seems to the
commissariat an article not worth economising. The most wanton and
studied circuity of transportation has been practised: to mention
only one act, they have bought quantities of flour for these troops
in Cumberland, have ordered it to be wagoned down to Manchester, and
wagoned thence up to the barracks. This fact happened to fall within
my own knowledge. I doubt not there are many more such, in order
either to produce their total removal, or to run up the expenses of
the present situation, and satisfy Congress that the nearer they are
brought to the commissary's own bed, the cheaper they will be
subsisted. The grain made in the western counties may be brought
partly in wagons, as conveniently to this as to any other place;
perhaps more so, on account of its vicinity to one of the best passes
through the Blue Ridge; and partly by water, as it is near to James
river, to the navigation of which, ten counties are adjacent above
the falls. When I said that the grain might be brought hither from
all the counties of the State adjacent to navigation, I did not mean
to say it would be proper to bring it from all. On the contrary, I
think the commissary should be instructed, after the next harvest,
not to send one bushel of grain to the barracks from below the falls
of the rivers, or from the northern counties. The counties on tide
water are accessible to the calls for our own army. Their supplies
ought, therefore, to be husbanded for them. The counties in the
northwestern parts of the State are not only within reach for our own
grand army, but peculiarly necessary for the support of Macintosh's
army; or for the support of any other northwestern expedition, which
the uncertain conduct of the Indians should render necessary;
insomuch, that if the supplies of that quarter should be misapplied
to any other purpose, it would destroy, in embryo, every exertion,
either for particular or general safety there. The counties above
tide water, in the middle and southern and western parts of the
country, are not accessible to calls for either of those purposes,
but at such an expense of transportation as the article would not
bear. Here, then, is a great field, whose supplies of bread cannot
be carried to our army, or rather, which will raise no supplies of
bread, because there is nobody to eat them. Was it not, then, wise
in Congress to remove to that field four thousand idle mouths, who
must otherwise have interfered with the pasture of our own troops?
And, if they are removed to any other part of the country, will it
not defeat this wise purpose? The mills on the waters of James
river, above the falls, open to canoe navigation, are very many.
Some of them are of great note, as manufacturers. The barracks are
surrounded by mills. There are five or six round about
Charlottesville. Any two or three of the whole might, in the course
of the winter, manufacture flour sufficient for the year. To say the
worst, then, of this situation, it is but twelve miles wrong. The
safe custody of these troops is another circumstance worthy
consideration. Equally removed from the access of an eastern or
western enemy; central to the whole State, so that should they
attempt an irruption in any direction, they must pass through a great
extent of hostile country; in a neighborhood thickly inhabited by a
robust and hardy people zealous in the American cause, acquainted
with the use of arms, and the defiles and passes by which they must
issue: it would seem, that in this point of view, no place could have
been better chosen.
Their health is also of importance. I would not endeavor to
show that their lives are valuable to us, because it would suppose a
possibility, that humanity was kicked out of doors in America, and
interest only attended to. The barracks occupy the top and brow of a
very high hill, (you have been untruly told they were in a bottom.)
They are free from bog, have four springs which seem to be plentiful,
one within twenty yards of the piquet, two within fifty yards, and
another within two hundred and fifty, and they propose to sink wells
within the piquet. Of four thousand people, it should be expected,
according to the ordinary calculations, that one should die every
day. Yet, in the space of near three months, there have been but
four deaths among them; two infants under three weeks old, and two
others by apoplexy. The officers tell me, the troops were never
before so healthy since they were embodied.
But is an enemy so execrable, that, though in captivity, his
wishes and comforts are to be disregarded and even crossed? I think
not. It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war
as much as possible. The practice, therefore, of modern nations, of
treating captive enemies with politeness and generosity, is not only
delightful in contemplation, but really interesting to all the world,
friends, foes, and neutrals. Let us apply this: the officers, after
considerable hardships, have all procured quarters, comfortable and
satisfactory to them. In order to do this, they were obliged, in
many instances, to hire houses for a year certain, and at such
exorbitant rents, as were sufficient to tempt independent owners to
go out of them, and shift as they could. These houses, in most
cases, were much out of repair. They have repaired them at a
considerable expense. One of the general officers has taken a place
for two years, advanced the rent for the whole time, and been
obliged, moreover, to erect additional buildings for the
accommodation of part of his family, for which there was not room in
the house rented. Independent of the brick work, for the carpentry
of these additional buildings, I know he is to pay fifteen hundred
dollars. The same gentleman, to my knowledge, has paid to one person
three thousand six hundred and seventy dollars for different articles
to fix himself commodiously. They have generally laid in their
stocks of grain and other provisions, for it is well known that
officers do not live on their rations. They have purchased cows,
sheep, &c., set in to farming, prepared their gardens, and have a
prospect of comfort and quiet before them. To turn to the soldiers:
the environs of the barracks are delightful, the ground cleared, laid
off in hundreds of gardens, each enclosed in its separate paling;
these well prepared, and exhibiting a fine appearance. General
Riedezel alone laid out upwards of two hundred pounds in garden seeds
for the German troops only. Judge what an extent of ground these
seeds would cover. There is little doubt that their own gardens will
furnish them a great abundance of vegetables through the year. Their
poultry, pigeons and other preparations of that kind, present to the
mind the idea of a company of farmers, rather than a camp of
soldiers. In addition to the barracks built for them by the public,
and now very comfortable, they have built great numbers for
themselves, in such messes as fancied each other; and the whole
corps, both officers and men, seem now happy and satisfied with their
situation. Having thus found the art of rendering captivity itself
comfortable, and carried it into execution, at their own great
expense and labor, their spirits sustained by the prospect of
gratifications rising before their eyes, does not every sentiment of
humanity revolt against the proposition of stripping them of all
this, and removing them into new situations, where, from the advanced
season of the year, no preparations can be made for carrying
themselves comfortably through the heats of summer; and when it is
known that the necessary advances for the conveniences already
provided, have exhausted their funds and left them unable to make the
like exertions anew. Again, review this matter, as it may regard
appearances. A body of troops, after staying a twelvemonth at
Boston, are ordered to take a march of seven hundred miles to
Virginia, where, it is said, they may be plentifully subsisted. As
soon as they are there, they are ordered on some other march,
because, in Virginia, it is said, they cannot be subsisted.
Indifferent nations will charge this either to ignorance, or to whim
and caprice; the parties interested, to cruelty. They now view the
proposition in that light, and it is said, there is a general and
firm persuasion among them, that they were marched from Boston with
no other purpose than to harass and destroy them with eternal
marches. Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way,
is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object
shifts light. A character of steadiness in our councils, is worth
more than the subsistence of four thousand people.
There could not have been a more unlucky concurrence of
circumstances than when these troops first came. The barracks were
unfinished for want of laborers, the spell of weather the worst ever
known within the memory of man, no stores of bread laid in, the
roads, by the weather and number of wagons, soon rendered impassable:
not only the troops themselves were greatly disappointed, but the
people in the neighborhood were alarmed at the consequences which a
total failure of provisions might produce. In this worst state of
things, their situation was seen by many and disseminated through the
country, so as to occasion a general dissatisfaction, which even
seized the minds of reasonable men, who, if not affected by the
contagion, must have foreseen that the prospect must brighten, and
that great advantages to the people must necessarily arise. It has,
accordingly, so happened. The planters, being more generally sellers
than buyers, have felt the benefit of their presence in the most
vital part about them, their purses, and are now sensible of its
source. I have too good an opinion of their love of order to believe
that a removal of these troops would produce any irregular proofs of
their disapprobation, but I am well assured it would be extremely
odious to them.
To conclude. The separation of these troops would be a breach
of public faith, therefore I suppose it is impossible; if they are
removed to another State, it is the fault of the commissaries; if
they are removed to any other part of the State, it is the fault of
the commissaries; and in both cases, the public interest and public
security suffer, the comfortable and plentiful subsistence of our own
army is lessened, the health of the troops neglected, their wishes
crossed, and their comforts torn from them, the character of whim and
caprice, or, what is worse, of cruelty, fixed on us as a nation, and,
to crown the whole, our own people disgusted with such a proceeding.
I have thus taken the liberty of representing to you the facts
and the reasons, which seem to militate against the separation or
removal of these troops. I am sensible, however, that the same
subject may appear to different persons, in very different lights.
What I have urged as reasons, may, to sounder minds, be apparent
fallacies. I hope they will appear, at least, so plausible, as to
excuse the interposition of
Your Excellency's most obedient and most humble servant.
THE TRAITOR ARNOLD
_To J. P. G. Muhlenberg_
_Richmond, Jan. 31, 1781_
SIR, -- Acquainted as you are with the treasons of Arnold, I
need say nothing for your information, or to give you a proper
sentiment of them. You will readily suppose that it is above all
things desirable to drag him from those under whose wing he is now
sheltered. On his march to and from this place I am certain it might
have been done with facility by men of enterprise & firmness. I
think it may still be done though perhaps not quite so easily.
Having peculiar confidence in the men from the Western side of the
Mountains, I meant as soon as they should come down to get the
enterprise proposed to a chosen number of them, such whose courage &
whose fidelity would be above all doubt. Your perfect knowlege of
those men personally, and my confidence in your discretion, induce me
to ask you to pick from among them proper characters, in such number
as you think best, to reveal to them our desire, & engage them to
undertake to seize and bring off this greatest of all traitors.
Whether this may be best effected by their going in as friends &
awaiting their opportunity, or otherwise is left to themselves. The
smaller the number the better; so that they be sufficient to manage
him. Every necessary caution must be used on their part, to prevent
a discovery of their design by the enemy, as should they be taken,
the laws of war will justify against them the most rigorous sentence.
I will undertake if they are successful in bringing him off alive,
that they shall receive five thousand guineas reward among them. And
to men formed for such an enterprise it must be a great incitement to
know that their names will be recorded with glory in history with
those of Vanwert, Paulding & Williams. The enclosed order from Baron
Steuben will authorize you to call for & dispose of any force you may
think necessary, to place in readiness for covering the enterprise &
securing the retreat of the party. Mr. Newton the bearer of this, &
to whom its contents are communicated in confidence, will provide men
of trust to go as guides. These may be associated in the enterprise
or not, as you please; but let that point be previously settled that
no difficulties may arise as to the parties entitled to participate
of the reward. You know how necessary profound secrecy is in this
business, even if it be not undertaken.
WELCOME TO THE MARGUIS
_To Lafayette_
_Richmond, March 10th, 1781_
SIR, -- Intending that this shall await your arrival in this
State I with great joy welcome you on that event. I am induced to
from the very great esteem your personal character and the Hopes I
entertain of your relieving us from our enemy within this State.
Could any circumstances have rendered your presence more desirable or
more necessary it is the unfortunate one which obliges me to enclose
you the enclosed papers.
I trust that your future Acquaintance with the Executive of the
State will evince to you that among their faults is not to be counted
a want of dispostion to second the views of the Commander against our
common Enemy. We are too much interested in the present scene & have
too much at stake to leave a doubt on that Head. Mild Laws, a People
not used to prompt obedience, a want of provisions of War & means of
procuring them render our orders often ineffectual, oblige us to
temporise & when we cannot accomplish an object in one way to attempt
it in another. Your knowledge of these circumstances with a temper
to accommodate them ensure me your cooperation in the best way we
can, when we shall be able to pursue the way we would wish.
I still hope you will find our preparations not far short of
the Information I took the Liberty of giving you in my letter of the
8th instant. I shall be very happy to receive your first
Applications for whatever may be necessary for the public service and
to convince you of our disposition to promote it as far as the
Abilities of the State and Powers of the Executive will enable us.
APPEAL TO THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
_To George Washington_
_Charlottesville, May 28th, 1781_
SIR, -- I make no doubt you will have heard, before this shall
have the honour of being presented to your Excellency, of the
junction of Ld Cornwallis with the force at Petersburg under Arnold,
who had succeeded to the command on the death of Majr. Genl Phillips.
I am now advised that they have evacuated Petersburg, joined at
Westover a reinforcement of 2000 men just arrived from New york,
crossed James River, and on the 26th instant, were three miles
advanced on their way towards Richmond; at which place Majr Genl the
Marquis Fayette, lay with three thousand men Regulars and militia:
these being the whole number we could arm, until the arrival of the
1100 arms from Rhode Island, which are about this time at the place
where our Public stores are deposited. The whole force of the Enemy
within this State, from the best intelligence I have been able to
get, is I think about 7000 men, infantry and cavalry, including,
also, the small garrison left at Portsmouth: a number of privateers,
which are constantly ravaging the Shores of our rivers, prevent us
from receiving any aid from the Counties lying on navigable waters;
and powerful operations meditated against our Western frontier, by a
joint force of British, and Indian Savages, have as your Excellency
before knew, obliged us to embody, between two and three thousand men
in that quarter. Your Excellency will judge from this State of
things, and from what you know of our country, what it may probably
suffer during the present campaign. Should the Enemy be able to
produce no opportunity of annihilating the Marquis's army a small
proportion of their force may yet restrain his movements effectually
while the greater part employed in detachment to waste an unarmed
country and lead the minds of the people to acquiesce under those
events which they see no human power prepared to ward off. We are
too far removed from the other scenes of war to say whether the main
force of the Enemy be within this State. But I suppose they cannot
anywhere spare so great an army for the operations of the field.
Were it possible for this circumstance to justify in your Excellency
a determination to lend us your personal aid, it is evident from the
universal voice, that the presence of their beloved Countryman, whose
talents have so long been successfully employed, in establishing the
freedom of kindred States, to whose person they have still flattered
themselves they retained some right and have ever looked up as their
dernier resort in distress. That your appearance among them I say
would restore full confidence of salvation, and would render them
equal to whatever is not impossible. I cannot undertake to foresee
and obviate the difficulties which lie in the way of such a
resolution: The whole subject is before you of which I see only
detached parts; and your judgment will be formed on a view of the
whole. Should the danger of this State and its consequence to the
Union be such as to render it best for the whole that you should
repair to its assistance the difficulty would be how to keep men out
of the field. I have undertaken to hint this matter to your
Excellency not only on my own sense of its importance to us but at
the solicitations of many members of weight in our Legislature which
has not yet Assembled to speak their own desires.
A few days will bring to me that relief which the constitution
has prepared for those oppressed with the labours of my office and a
long declared resolution of relinquishing it to abler hands has
prepared my way for retirement to a private station: still as an
individual I should feel the comfortable effects of your presence,
and have (what I thought could not have been) an additional motive
for that gratitude, esteem, & respect with which I have the honour to
be, your Excellency's most obedient humble servant.
LIMITS OF PUBLIC DUTY
_To James Monroe_
_Monticello, May 20, 1782_
DEAR SIR, -- I have been gratified with the receipt of your two
favours of the 6th & 11th inst. It gives me pleasure that your
county has been wise enough to enlist your talents into their
service. I am much obliged by the kind wishes you express of seeing
me also in Richmond, and am always mortified when anything is
expected from me which I cannot fulfill, & more especially if it
relate to the public service. Before I ventured to declare to my
countrymen my determination to retire from public employment, I
examined well my heart to know whether it were thoroughly cured of
every principle of political ambition, whether no lurking particle
remained which might leave me uneasy when reduced within the limits
of mere private life. I became satisfied that every fibre of that
passion was thoroughly eradicated. I examined also in other views my
right to withdraw. I considered that I had been thirteen years
engaged in public service, that during that time I had so totally
abandoned all attention to my private affairs as to permit them to
run into great disorder and ruin, that I had now a family advanced to
years which require my attention & instruction, that to these were
added the hopeful offspring of a deceased friend whose memory must be
forever dear to me who have no other reliance for being rendered
useful to themselves & their country, that by a constant sacrifice of
time, labour, loss, parental & family duties, I had been so far from
gaining the affection of my countrymen, which was the only reward I
ever asked or could have felt, that I had even lost the small
estimation I before possessed. That however I might have comforted
myself under the disapprobation of the well-meaning but uninformed
people yet that of their representatives was a shock on which I had
not calculated: that this indeed had been followed by an exculpatory
declaration. But in the meantime I had been suspected & suspended in
the eyes of the world without the least hint then or afterwards made
public which might restrain them from supposing that I stood
arraigned for treason of the heart and not merely weakness of the
head; and I felt that these injuries, for such they have been since
acknowledged had inflicted a wound on my spirit which will only be
cured by the all-healing grave. If reason & inclination unite in
justifying my retirement, the laws of my country are equally in favor
of it. Whether the state may command the political services of all
it's members to an indefinite extent, or if these be among the rights
never wholly ceded to the public power, is a question which I do not
find expressly decided in England. Obiter dictums on the subject I
have indeed met with, but the complexion of the times in which these
have dropped would generally answer them, besides that this species
of authority is not acknowledged in our profession. In this country
however since the present government has been established the point
has been settled by uniform, pointed & multiplied precedents.
Offices of every kind, and given by every power, have been daily &
hourly declined & resigned from the declaration of independance to
this moment. The genl assembly has accepted these without
discrimination of office, and without ever questioning them in point
of right. If a difference between the office of a delegate & any
other could ever have been supposed, yet in the case of Mr. Thompson
Mason who declined the office of delegate & was permitted so to do by
the house that supposition has been proved to be groundless. But
indeed no such distinction of offices can be admitted. Reason and
the opinions of the lawyers putting all on a footing as to this
question and so giving to the delegate the aid of all the precedents
of the refusal of other offices. The law then does not warrant the
assumption of such a power by the state over it's members. For if it
does where is that law? nor yet does reason, for tho' I will admit
that this does subject every individual if called on to an equal tour
of political duty yet it can never go so far as to submit to it his
whole existence. If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a
greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling &
indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less right in himself
than one of his neighbors or indeed all of them put together. This
would be slavery & not that liberty which the bill of rights has made
inviolable and for the preservation of which our government has been
charged. Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as
the establishment of the opinion that the state has a _perpetual_
right to the services of all it's members. This to men of certain
ways of thinking would be to annihilate the blessing of existence; to
contradict the giver of life who gave it for happiness & not for
wretchedness; and certainly to such it were better that they had
never been born. However with these I may think public service &
private misery inseparably linked together, I have not the vanity to
count myself among those whom the state would think worth oppressing
with perpetual service. I have received a sufficient memento to the
contrary. I am persuaded that having hitherto dedicated to them the
whole of the active & useful part of my life I shall be permitted to
pass the rest in mental quiet. I hope too that I did not mistake the
modes any more than the matter of right when I preferred a simple act
of renunciation to the taking sanctuary under those disqualifications
provided by the law for other purposes indeed, but which afford
asylum also for rest to the wearied. I dare say you did not expect
by the few words you dropped on the right of renunciation to expose
yourself to the fatigue of so long a letter, but I wished you to see
that if I had done wrong I had been betrayed by a semblance of right
at least.
I take the liberty of inclosing to you a letter for Genl
Chastellux for which you will readily find means of conveyance. But
I meant to give you more trouble with the one to Pelham who lives in
the neighborhood of Manchester & to ask the favor of you to send it
by your servant express which I am in hopes may be done without
absenting him from your person but during those hours in which you
will be engaged in the house. I am anxious that it should be
received immediately. Mrs Jefferson has added another daughter to
our family. She has been ever since & still continues very
dangerously ill. It will give me great pleasure to see you here
whenever you can favor us with your company. You will find me still
busy but in lighter occupations. But in these & all others you will
find me to retain a due sense of your friendship & to be with sincere
esteem, Dr Sir
Your mo ob & mo hble servt.
P. S. did you ever receive a copy of the Parl. debates &
Histor. Register with a letter left for you with Mr Jas. Buchanan?
"A SINGLE EVENT. . ."
_To Chastellux_
_Ampthill, Nov. 26, 1782_
DEAR SIR, -- I received your friendly letters of ----- and June
30 but the latter not till the 17th of Oct. It found me a little
emerging from the stupor of mind which had rendered me as dead to the
world as she was whose loss occasioned it. Your letter recalled to
my memory that there were persons still living of much value to me.
If you should have thought me remiss in not testifying to you sooner
how deeply I had been impressed with your worth in the little time I
had the happiness of being with you you will I am sure ascribe it to
it's true cause the state of dreadful suspense in which I had been
kept all the summer & the catastrophe which closed it. Before that
event my scheme of life had been determined. I had folded myself in
the arms of retirement, and rested all prospects of future happiness
on domestic & literary objects. A single event wiped away all my
plans and left me a blank which I had not the spirits to fill up. In
this state of mind an appointment from Congress found me, requiring
me to cross the Atlantic. And that temptation might be added to duty
I was informed at the same time from his Excy the Chevalier de
Luzerne that a vessel of force would be sailing about the middle of
Dec. in which you would be passing to France. I accepted the
appointment and my only object now is so to hasten over those
obstacles which would retard my departure as to be ready to join you
in your voyage, fondly measuring your affections by my own &
presuming your consent. It is not certain that by any exertion I can
be in Philadelphia by the middle of December. The contrary is most
probable. But hoping it will not be much later and counting on those
procrastinations which usually attend the departure of vessels of
size I have hopes of being with you in time. This will give me full
leisure to learn the result of your observations on the natural
bridge, to communicate to you my answers to the queries of Monsr de
Marbois, to receive edification from you on these and on other
subjects of science, considering chess too as a matter of science.
Should I be able to get out in tolerable time and any extraordinary
delays attend the sailing of the vessel I shall certainly do myself
the honor of waiting on his Excy Count Rochambeau at his Head
quarters and assuring him in person of my high respect and esteem for
him -- an object of which I have never lost sight. To yourself I am
unable to express the warmth of those sentiments of friendship &
attachment with which I have the honour to be, Dr Sir,
Your most obedt & mo hble servt.
ADVICE TO A YOUNG DAUGHTER
_To Martha Jefferson_
_Annapolis, Nov. 28, 1783_
MY DEAR PATSY -- After four days journey I arrived here without
any accident and in as good health as when I left Philadelphia. The
conviction that you would be more improved in the situation I have
placed you than if still with me, has solaced me on my parting with
you, which my love for you has rendered a difficult thing. The
acquirements which I hope you will make under the tutors I have
provided for you will render you more worthy of my love, and if they
cannot increase it they will prevent it's diminution. Consider the
good lady who has taken you under her roof, who has undertaken to see
that you perform all your exercises, and to admonish you in all those
wanderings from what is right or what is clever to which your
inexperience would expose you, consider her I say as your mother, as
the only person to whom, since the loss with which heaven has been
pleased to afflict you, you can now look up; and that her displeasure
or disapprobation on any occasion will be an immense misfortune which
should you be so unhappy as to incur by any unguarded act, think no
concession too much to regain her good will. With respect to the
distribution of your time the following is what I should approve.
from 8. to 10 o'clock practise music.
from 10. to 1. dance one day and draw another
from 1. to 2. draw on the day you dance, and write a letter the
next day.
from 3. to 4. read French.
from 4. to 5. exercise yourself in music.
from 5. till bedtime read English, write &c.
Communicate this plan to Mrs. Hopkinson and if she approves of
it pursue it. As long as Mrs. Trist remains in Philadelphia
cultivate her affections. She has been a valuable friend to you and
her good sense and good heart make her valued by all who know her and
by nobody on earth more than by me. I expect you will write to me by
every post. Inform me what books you read, what tunes you learn, and
inclose me your best copy of every lesson in drawing. Write also one
letter every week either to your aunt Eppes, your aunt Skipwith, your
aunt Carr, or the little lady from whom I now inclose a letter, and
always put the letter you so write under cover to me. Take care that
you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word
consider how it is spelt, and if you do not remember it, turn to a
dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. I
have placed my happiness on seeing you good and accomplished, and no
distress which this world can now bring on me could equal that of
your disappointing my hopes. If you love me then, strive to be good
under every situation and to all living creatures, and to acquire
those accomplishments which I have put in your power, and which will
go far towards ensuring you the warmest love of your affectionate
father,
P. S. Keep my letters and read them at times that you may
always have present in your mind those things which will endear you
to me.
THE MAMMOTH AND WESTERN EXPLORATION
_To George Rogers Clark_
_Annapolis, Dec. 4, 1783_
DEAR SIR -- I received here about a week ago your obliging
letter of Oct. 12. 1783. with the shells and seeds for which I return
you many thanks. You are also so kind as to keep alive the hope of
getting for me as many of the different species of bones, teeth and
tusks of the _Mammoth_ as can now be found. This will be most
acceptable. Pittsburg and Philadelphia or Winchester will be the
surest channel of conveyance. I find they have subscribed a very
large sum of money in England for exploring the country from the
Missisipi to California. They pretend it is only to promote knolege.
I am afraid they have thoughts of colonising into that quarter. Some
of us have been talking here in a feeble way of making the attempt to
search that country. But I doubt whether we have enough of that kind
of spirit to raise the money. How would you like to lead such a
party? Tho I am afraid our prospect is not worth asking the
question. The definitive treaty of peace is at length arrived. It
is not altered from the preliminaries. The cession of the territory
West of Ohio to the United states has been at length accepted by
Congress with some small alterations of the conditions. We are in
daily expectation of receiving it with the final approbation of
Virginia. Congress have been lately agitated by questions where they
should fix their residence. They first resolved on Trentown. The
Southern states however contrived to get a vote that they would give
half their time to Georgetown at the Falls of Patowmac. Still we
consider the matter as undecided between the Delaware and Patowmac.
We urge the latter as the only point of union which can cement us to
our Western friends when they shall be formed into separate states.
I shall always be happy to hear from you and am with very particular
esteem Dr. Sir Your friend & humble servt.
MORE ADVICE
_To Martha Jefferson_
_Annapolis, Dec. 11, 1783_
MY DEAR PATSY -- I wrote you by the post this day fortnight,
since which I h received two letters from you. I am afraid that you
may not have sent to the post office and therefore that my letter may
be still lying there. Tho' my business here may not let me write to
you every week yet it will not be amiss for you to enquire at the
office every week. I wrote to Mr. House by the last post. Perhaps
his letter may still be in the office. I hope you will have good
sense enough to disregard those foolish predictions that the world is
to be at an end soon. The almighty has never made known to any body
at what time he created it, nor will he tell any body when he means
to put an end to it, if ever he means to do it. As to preparations
for that event, the best way is for you to be always prepared for it.
The only way to be so is never to do nor say a bad thing. If ever
you are about to say any thing amiss or to do any thing wrong,
consider before hand. You will feel something within you which will
tell you it is wrong and ought not to be said or done: this is your
conscience, and be sure to obey it. Our maker has given us all, this
faithful internal Monitor, and if you always obey it, you will always
be prepared for the end of the world: or for a much more certain
event which is death. This must happen to all: it puts an end to the
world as to us, and the way to be ready for it is never to do a wrong
act. I am glad you are proceeding regularly under your tutors. You
must not let the sickness of your French master interrupt your
reading French, because you are able to do that with the help of your
dictionary. Remember I desired you to send me the best copy you
should make of every lesson Mr. Cimitiere should set you. In this I
hope you will be punctual because it will let me see how you are
going on. Always let me know too what tunes you play. Present my
compliments to Mrs. Hopkinson, Mrs. House and Mrs. Trist. I had a
letter from your uncle Eppes last week informing me that Polly is
very well, and Lucy recovered from an indispostion. I am my dear
Patsy your affectionate father,
AMERICAN "POLITICS & POVERTY"
_To Chastellux_
_Annapolis, Jan. 16, 1784_
DEAR SIR -- L't. Colo Franks being appointed to carry to Paris
one of the copies of our ratifn of the Def. treaty, & being to depart
in the instant of his appointm't. furnishes me a hasty oppy of
obtruding myself on your recollection. Should this prove troublesome
you must take the blame as having exposed yourself to my esteem by
letting me become acquainted with your merit. Our transactions on
this side the water must now have become uninteresting to the rest of
the world. We are busy however among ourselves endeavoring to get
our new governments into regular and concerted motion. For this
purpose I beleive we shall find some additions requisite to our
Confederation. As yet every thing has gone smoothly since the war.
We are diverted with the European acc'ts. of the anarchy & opposition
to govmt in America. Nothing can be more untrue than these
relations. There was indeed some disatisfaction in the army at not
being paid off before they were disbanded, and a very trifling mutiny
of 200 souldiers in Philadelphia, on the latter occasion Congress
left that place disgusted with the pusillanimity of the govmt and not
from any want of security to their own persons. The indignation
which the other states felt at this insult to their delegates has
enlisted them more warmly in support of Congress & the people, the
legislature, & the Exec. themselves of Pennsvta have made the most
satisfactory atonements. Some people also of warm blood undertook to
resolve as commees for proscribing the refugees. But they were few,
scattered here & there through the several states, were absolutely
unnoticed by those both in & out of power, and never expressed an
idea of not acquiescing ultimately under the decisions of their
governments. The greatest difficulty we find is to get money from
them. The reason is not founded in their unwillingness, but in their
real inability. You were a witness to the total destruction of our
commerce, devastation of our country, and absence of the precious
metals. It cannot be expected that these should flow in but through
the channels of commerce, or that these channels can be opened in the
first instant of peace. Time is requisite to avail ourselves of the
productions of the earth, and the first of these will be applied to
renew our stock of those necessaries of which we had been totally
exhausted. But enough of America it's politics & poverty. --
Science I suppose is going on with you rapidly as usual. I am in
daily hopes of seeing something from your pen which may portray us to
ourselves. Aware of the bias of self love & prejudice in myself and
that your pictures will be faithful I am determined to annihilate my
own opinions and give full credit to yours. I must caution you to
distrust information from my answers to Monsr. de Marbois' queries.
I have lately had a little leisure to revise them. I found some
things should be omitted, many corrected, and more supplied &
enlarged. They are swelled to treble bulk. Being now too much for
M.S. copies I think the ensuing spring to print a dozen or 20 copies
to be given to my friends, not suffering another to go out. As I
have presumed to place you in that number I shall take the liberty of
sending you a copy as a testimony of the sincere esteem and affection
with which I have the honor to be D'r Sir Your mo. ob. & mo. hbl
serv't
WESTERN COMMERCE
_To George Washington_
_Annapolis, Mar. 15, 1784_
D'r. SIR, -- Since my last nothing new has occurred, I suppose
the crippled state of Congress is not new to you. We have only 9
states present, 8. of whom are represented by two members each, and
of course, on all great questions not only an unanimity of States but
of members is necessary. An unanimity which never can be obtained on
a matter of any importance. The consequence is that we are wasting
our time & labour in vain efforts to do business. -- Nothing less
than the presence of 13. States, represented by an odd number of
delegates will enable us to get forward a single capital point. The
deed for the cession of Western territory by Virginia was executed &
accepted on the 1'st instant. I hope our country will of herself
determine to cede still further to the meridian of the mouth of the
great Kanhaway. Further she cannot govern; so far is necessary for
her own well being. The reasons which call for this boundary (which
will retain all the waters of the Kanhaway) are 1. That within that
are our lead mines. 2. This river rising in N. Carola traverses our
whole latitude and offers to every part of it a channel for
navigation & commerce to the Western Country, but 3. It is a channel
which can not be opened but at immense expense and with every
facility which an absolute power over both shores will give. 4. This
river & it's waters forms a band of good land passing along our whole
frontier, and forming on it a barrier which will be strongly seated.
5. For 180 miles beyond these waters is a mountainous barren which
can never be inhabited & will of course form a safe separation
between us & any other State. 6. This tract of country lies more
convenient to receive it's government from Virginia than from any
other State. 7. It will preserve to us all the upper parts of
Yohogany & Cheat rivers within which much will be done to open these
which are the true doors to the Western commerce. The union of this
navigation with that of the Patowmac is a subject on which I
mentioned that I would take the liberty of writing to you. I am sure
it's value and practicability are both well known to you. This is
the moment however for seizing it if ever we mean to have it. All
the world is becoming commercial. Was it practicable to keep our new
empire separated from them we might indulge ourselves in speculating
whether commerce contributes to the happiness of mankind. But we
cannot separate ourselves from them. Our citizens have had too full
a taste of the comforts furnished by the arts & manufactures to be
debarred the use of them. We must then in our defence endeavour to
share as large a portion as we can of this modern source of wealth &
power. That offered to us from the Western Country is under a
competition between the Hudson, the Patowmac & the Missisipi itself.
Down the last will pass all heavy commodities. But the navigation
through the gulf of Mexico is so dangerous, & that up the Missisipi
so difficult & tedious, that it is not probable that European
merchandize will return through that channel. It is most likely that
flour, lumber & other heavy articles will be floated on rafts which
will be themselves an article of sale as well as their loading, the
navigators returning by land or in light batteaux. There will
therefore be a rivalship between the Hudson & Patowmac for the
residue of the commerce of all the country Westward of L. Erie, on
the waters of the lakes, of the Ohio & upper parts of the Missisipi.
To go to N. York, that part of the trade which comes from the lakes
or their waters must first be brought into L. Erie. So also must
that which comes from the waters of the Missisipi, and of course must
cross at some portage into the waters of the lakes. When it shall
have entered L. Erie it must coast along it's Southern Shore on
account of the number & excellence of it's harbours, the Northern,
tho' shortest, having few harbours & these unsafe. Having reached
Cuyahoga, to proceed on to N. York will be 970 miles from thence &
five portages, whereas it is but 430 miles to Alexandria, if it turns
into the Cuyahoga & passes through that, Big beaver, Ohio, Yohogany
(or Monongahela & Cheat) & Patowmac, & there are but two portages.
For the trade of the Ohio or that which shall come into it from it's
own waters or the Missisipi, it is nearer to Alexandria than to New
York by 730 miles, and is interrupted by one portage only. Nature
then has declared in favour of the Patowmac, and through that channel
offers to pour into our lap the whole commerce of the Western world.
But unfortunately the channel by the Hudson is already open & known
in practice; ours is still to be opened. This is the moment in which
the trade of the West will begin to get into motion and to take it's
direction. It behoves us then to open our doors to it. I have
lately pressed this subject on my friends in the General assembly,
proposing to them to endeavor to have a tax laid which shall bring
into a separate chest from five to ten thousand pounds a year, to be
employed first in opening the upper waters of the Ohio & Patowmac,
where a little money & time will do a great deal, leaving the great
falls for the last part of the work. To remove the idea of
partiality I have suggested the propriety & justice of continuing
this fund till all the rivers shall be cleared successively. But a
most powerful objection always arises to propositions of this kind.
It is that public undertakings are carelessly managed and much money
spent to little purpose. To obviate this objection is the purpose of
my giving you the trouble of this discussion. You have retired from
public life. You have weighed this determination & it would be
impertinence in me to touch it. But would the superintendence of
this work break in too much on the sweets of retirement & repose? If
they would I stop here. Your future time & wishes are sacred in my
eye. If it would be only a dignified amusement to you, what a
monument of your retirement would it be! It is one which would
follow that of your public life and bespeak it the work of the same
great hand. I am confident that would you either alone or jointly
with any persons you think proper be willing to direct this business,
it would remove the only objection the weight of which I apprehend.
Tho' the tax should not come in till the fall, it's proceeds should
be anticipated by borrowing from some other fund to enable the work
to be begun this summer. When you view me as not owning, nor ever
having a prospect of owning one inch of land on any water either of
the Patowmac or Ohio, it will tend to apologize for the trouble I
have given you of this long letter, by showing that my zeal in this
business is public & pure. The best atonement for the time I have
occupied you will be not to add to it longer than while I assure you
of the sincerity & esteem with which I have the honour to be D'r. Sir
Your most obedient & most humble servt.
P. S. The hurry of time in my former letter prevented my
thanking you for your polite & friendly invitation to Mount Vernon.
I shall certainly pay my respects there to Mrs Washington & yourself
with great pleasure whenever it shall be in my power.
THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI
_To George Washington_
_Annapolis, Apr. 16, 1784_
DEAR SIR -- I received your favor of Apr. 8. by Colo. Harrison.
The subject of it is interesting, and, so far as you have stood
connected with it, has been matter of anxiety to me; because whatever
may be the ultimate fate of the institution of the Cincinnati, as in
it's course it draws to it some degree of disapprobation, I have
wished to see you standing on ground separated from it, and that the
character which will be handed to future ages at the head of our
revolution may in no instance be compromitted in subordinate
altercations. The subject has been at the point of my pen in every
letter I have written to you, but has been still restrained by the
reflection that you had among your friends more able counsellors,
and, in yourself, one abler than them all. Your letter has now
rendered a duty what was before a desire, and I cannot better merit
your confidence than by a full and free communication of facts &
sentiments, as far as they have come within my observation. When the
army was about to be disbanded, & the officers to take final leave,
perhaps never again to meet, it was natural for men who had
accompanied each other thro' so many scenes of hardship, of
difficulty and danger, who in a variety of instances must have been
rendered mutually dear by those aids & good offices to which their
situations had given occasion; it was natural I say for these to
seize with fondness any proposition which promised to bring them
together again at certain & regular periods. And this I take for
granted was the origin & object of this institution; & I have no
suspicion that they foresaw, much less intended, those mischiefs,
which exist perhaps in the forebodings of politicians only. I doubt
however whether, in it's execution, it would be found to answer the
wishes of those who framed it, and to foster those friendships it was
intended to preserve. The members would be brought together at their
annual assemblies no longer to encounter a common enemy, but to
encounter one another in debate & sentiment. For something I suppose
is to be done at these meetings, & however unimportant, it will
suffice to produce difference of opinion, contradiction & irritation.
The way to make friends quarrel is to put them in disputation under
the public eye. An experience of near twenty years has taught me
that few friendships stand this test, & that public assemblies, where
every one is free to act & speak, are the most powerful looseners of
the bands of private friendship. I think therefore that this
institution would fail in it's principal object, the perpetuation of
the personal friendships contracted thro' the war.
The objections of those who are opposed to the institution
shall be briefly sketched. You will readily fill them up. They urge
that it is against the confederation -- against the letter of some of
our constitutions; -- against the spirit of all of them -- that the
foundation on which all these are built is the natural equality of
man, the denial of every preeminence but that annexed to legal
office, & particularly the denial of a preeminence by birth; that
however, in their present dispositions, citizens might decline
accepting honorary instalments into the order, a time may come when a
change of dispositions would render these flattering, when a well
directed distribution of them might draw into the order all the men
of talents, of office & wealth, and in this case would probably
procure an ingraftment into the government; that in this they will be
supported by their foreign members, & the wishes & influence of
foreign courts; that experience has shewn that the hereditary
branches of modern governments are the patrons of privilege &
prerogative, & not of the natural rights of the people whose
oppressors they generally are: that besides these evils, which are
remote, others may take place more immediately; that a distinction is
kept up between the civil & military, which it is for the happiness
of both to obliterate; that when the members assemble they will be
proposing to do something, & what that something may be will depend
on actual circumstances; that being an organized body under habits of
subordination, the first obstructions to enterprize will be already
surmounted; that the moderation & virtue of a single character has
probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others
have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to
establish; that he is not immortal, & his successor, or some of his
successors, may be led by false calculation into a less certain road
to glory:
What are the sentiments of Congress on this subject, & what
line they will pursue, can only be stated conjecturally. Congress,
as a body, if left to themselves, will in my opinion say nothing on
the subject. They may however be forced into a declaration by
instructions from some of the states, or by other incidents. Their
sentiments, if forced from them, will be unfriendly to the
institution. If permitted to pursue their own path, they will check
it by side blows whenever it comes in their way, & ---, in
competitions for office, on equal or nearly equal ground, will give
silent preferences to those who are not of the fraternity. My
reasons for thinking this are 1. The grounds on which they lately
declined the foreign order proposed to be conferred on some of our
citizens. 2. The fourth of the fundamental articles of constitution
for the new states. I inclose you the report. It has been
considered by Congress, recommitted & reformed by a committee
according to sentiments expressed on other parts of it, but the
principle referred to, having not been controverted at all, stands in
this as in the original report. It is not yet confirmed by Congress.
3. Private conversations on this subject with the members. Since the
receipt of your letter I have taken occasion to extend these; not
indeed to the military members, because, being of the order, delicacy
forbade it; but to the others pretty generally; and among these I
have as yet found but one who is not opposed to the institution, &
that with an anguish of mind, tho' covered under a guarded silence,
which I have not seen produced by any circumstance before. I arrived
at Philadelphia before the separation of the last Congress, & saw
there & at Princetown some of its members not now in delegation.
Burke's piece happened to come out at that time, which occasioned
this institution to be the subject of conversation. I found the same
impressions made on them which their successors have received. I
hear from other quarters that it is disagreeable generally to such
citizens as have attended to it, & therefore will probably be so to
all when any circumstance shall present it to the notice of all.
This, Sir, is as faithful an account of sentiments & facts as I
am able to give you. You know the extent of the circle within which
my observations are at present circumscribed, & can estimate how far,
as forming a part of the general opinion, it may merit notice, or
ought to influence your particular conduct.
It remains now to pay obedience to that part of your letter
which requests sentiments on the most eligible measures to be pursued
by the society at their next meeting. I must be far from pretending
to be a judge of what would in fact be the most eligible measures for
the society. I can only give you the opinions of those with whom I
have conversed, & who, as I have before observed, are unfriendly to
it. They lead to these conclusions. 1. If the society proceeds
according to it's institution, it will be better to make no
applications to Congress on that subject or any other in their
associated character. 2. If they should propose to modify it, so as
to render it unobjectionable, I think this would not be effected
without such a modification as would amount almost to annihilation;
for such would it be to part with it's inheritability, it's
organization, & it's assemblies. 3. If they shall be disposed to
discontinue the whole, it would remain with them to determine whether
they would chuse it to be done by their own act only, or by a
reference of the matter to Congress which would infallibly produce a
recommendation of total discontinuance.
You will be sensible, Sir, that these communications are
without all reserve. I supposed such to be your wish, & mean them
but as materials with such others as you may collect, for your better
judgment to work on. I consider the whole matter as between
ourselves alone, having determined to take no active part in this or
anything else, which may lead to altercation, or disturb that quiet &
tranquillity of mind to which I consign the remaining portion of my
life. I have been thrown back by events on a stage where I had never
more thought to appear. It is but for a time however, & as a day
labourer, free to withdraw, or be withdrawn at will. While I remain
I shall pursue in silence the path of right, but in every situation,
public or private, I shall be gratified by all occasions of rendering
you service, & of convincing you there is no one to whom your
reputation & happiness are dearer.
HOT-AIR BALLOONS
_To Dr. Philip Turpin_
_Annapolis, Apr. 28, 1784_
DEAR SIR -- Supposing you may not have received intelligence to
be relied on as to the reality & extent of the late discovery of
traversing the air in ballons, & having lately perused a book in
which everything is brought together on that subject as low down as
Decemb. last, I will give you a detail of it. I will state the
several experiments, with the most interesting circumstances
attending them, by way of table, which will give you a clearer view &
in less compass.
They suppose the minimum of these ballons to be of 6 inches
diameter: these are constructed of gold-beaters' skin & filled with
inflammeable air. this air produced from iron-filings, the vitriolic
acid & distilled water is, in weight, to Atmospheric air as 7. to 43.
on an average of the trials: & when produced from the filings of
Zinc, the Marine acid & distilled water, is to the Atmospheric air as
5. to 53. or 1. to 10 1/2. but Montgolfier's air is half the weight
of Atmospheric. this is produced by burning straw & wool. the straw
must be dry & open, & the wool shred very fine, so that they may make
a clear flame, with as little smoke as possible. 50 lb. of straw & 5
lb. of wool filled the ballons of Oct. 19. & Nov. 21. in five
minutes. these ballons contained 60,000 cubic feet. no analysis of
this air is given us. Mons'r de Saintford the author of the book,
gives us a very great & useless display of Mathematical learning,
which certainly has as yet had very little to do with this discovery:
& when he comes to the chemical investigations, which are
interesting, he sais little. the ballons sometimes were torn by the
pressure of the internal air being insufficiently counteracted in the
higher regions of the Atmosphere. these rents were of 6. or 7. f.
length, yet the machine descended with a gentle equable motion & not
with an accelerated one. by the trials at Versailles & Champ de Mars
it appears that they will go with a moderate wind 150. leagues in 24
hours. there are yet two principal desiderata. 1. the cheapest &
easiest process of making the lightest inflammable air. 2. an
envelopment which will be light, strong, impervious to the air &
proof against rain. supplies of gas are desireable
too, without being oblirry fire with the machine: for in those
in which men ascended there was a store of straw & wool laid in the
gallery which surrounded the bottom of the ballon & in which the men
stood, & a chaffing dish of 3. feet cube in which they burnt the
materials to supply air. it is conjectured that these machines may be
guided by oars & raised & depressed by having vessels wherein, by the
aid of pumps, they can produce a vacuum or condensation of
atmospheric air at will. they are, from some new circumstances,
strengthened in the opinion that there are generally opposite or
different currents in the atmosphere: & that if the current next the
earth is not in the direction which suits you, by ascending higher
you may find one that does. between these there is probably a region
of eddy where you may be stationary if philosophical experiments be
your object. the uses of this discovery are suggested to be 1.
transportation of commodities under some circumstances. 2.
traversing deserts, countries possessed by an enemy, or ravaged by
infectious disorders, pathless & inaccessible mountains. 3.
conveying intelligence into a beseiged place, or perhaps enterprising
on it, reconnoitring an army &c. 4. throwing new lights on the
thermometer, barometer, hygrometer, rain, snow, hail, wind & other
phenomena of which the Atmosphere is the theatre. 5. the discovery
of the pole which is but one day's journey in a baloon. from where
the ice has hitherto stopped adventurers. 6. raising weights;
lightening ships over bars. 7. housebreaking, smuggling &c. some of
these objects are ludicrous, others serious, important & probable. I
will give you the figures of the baloons on the last page.
Congress has determined to adjourn on the 3d of June to meet in
November at Trenton. a vessel arrived here yesterday which left
London the 25th of March. she brings papers to the 20th of that
month. mr. Pitt was still in place, supported by the city of London,
the nation in general, & the House of Lords. still however the
majority in the H. of commons was against him, tho reduced to 12. it
was thought the parliament would be dissolved.
Be so good as to present my dutiful respects to my uncle & aunt
& to be assured of the esteem with which I am Dr. Sir
your friend & serv't
"NIL DESPERANDUM"
_To Richard Price_
_Paris, Feb. 1, 1785_
SIR, -- The copy of your Observations on the American
Revolution which you were so kind as to direct to me came duly to
hand, and I should sooner have acknowledged the receipt of it but
that I awaited a private conveiance for my letter, having experienced
much delay and uncertainty in the posts between this place and
London. I have read it with very great pleasure, as have done many
others to whom I have communicated it. The spirit which it breathes
is as affectionate as the observations themselves are wise and just.
I have no doubt it will be reprinted in America and produce much good
there. The want of power in the federal head was early perceived,
and foreseen to be the flaw in our constitution which might endanger
its destruction. I have the pleasure to inform you that when I left
America in July the people were becoming universally sensible of
this, and a spirit to enlarge the powers of Congress was becoming
general. Letters and other information recently received shew that
this has continued to increase, and that they are likely to remedy
this evil effectually. The happiness of governments like ours,
wherein the people are truly the mainspring, is that they are never
to be despaired of. When an evil becomes so glaring as to strike
them generally, they arrouse themselves, and it is redressed. He
only is then the popular man and can get into office who shews the
best dispositions to reform the evil. This truth was obvious on
several occasions during the late war, and this character in our
governments saved us. Calamity was our best physician. Since the
peace it was observed that some nations of Europe, counting on the
weakness of Congress and the little probability of a union in measure
among the States, were proposing to grasp at unequal advantages in
our commerce. The people are become sensible of this, and you may be
assured that this evil will be immediately redressed, and redressed
radically. I doubt still whether in this moment they will enlarge
those powers in Congress which are necessary to keep the peace among
the States. I think it possible that this may be suffered to lie
till some two States commit hostilities on each other, but in that
moment the hand of the union will be lifted up and interposed, and
the people will themselves demand a general concession to Congress of
means to prevent similar mischeifs. Our motto is truly "nil
desperandum." The apprehensions you express of danger from the want
of powers in Congress, led me to note to you this character in our
governments, which, since the retreat behind the Delaware, and the
capture of Charlestown, has kept my mind in perfect quiet as to the
ultimate fate of our union; and I am sure, from the spirit which
breathes thro your book, that whatever promises permanence to that
will be a comfort to your mind. I have the honour to be, with very
sincere esteem and respect, Sir,
Your most obedient and most humble serv't.
ON AMERICAN DEGENERACY
_To Chastellux_
_Paris, June 7, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- I have been honored with the receipt of your
letter of the 2nd instant, and am to thank you, as I do sincerely,
for the partiality with which you receive the copy of the Notes on my
country. As I can answer for the facts therein reported on my own
observation, and have admitted none on the report of others, which
were not supported by evidence sufficient to command my own assent, I
am not afraid that you should make any extracts you please for the
Journal de Physique, which come within their plan of publication.
The strictures on slavery and on the constitution of Virginia, are
not of that kind, and they are the parts which I do not wish to have
made public, at least, till I know whether their publication would do
most harm or good. It is possible, that in my own country, these
strictures might produce an irritation, which would indispose the
people towards the two great objects I have in view; that is, the
emancipation of their slaves, and the settlement of their
constitution on a firmer and more permanent basis. If I learn from
thence, that they will not produce that effect, I have printed and
reserved just copies enough to be able to give one to every young man
at the College. It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and
not to the one now in power, for these great reformations. The other
copy, delivered at your hotel, was for Monsieur de Buffon. I meant
to ask the favor of you to have it sent to him, as I was ignorant how
to do it. I have one also for Monsieur Daubenton, but being utterly
unknown to him, I cannot take the liberty of presenting it, till I
can do it through some common acquaintance.
I will beg leave to say here a few words on the general
question of the degeneracy of animals in America. 1. As to the
degeneracy of the man of Europe transplanted to America, it is no
part of Monsieur de Buffon's system. He goes, indeed, within one
step of it, but he stops there. The Abbe Raynal alone has taken that
step. Your knowledge of America enables you to judge this question,
to say, whether the lower class of people in America, are less
informed and less susceptible of information, than the lower class in
Europe: and whether those in America, who have received such an
education as that country can give, are less improved by it than
Europeans of the same degree of education. 2. As to the aboriginal
man of America, I know of no respectable evidence on which the
opinion of his inferiority of genius has been founded, but that of
Don Ulloa. As to Robertson, he never was in America, he relates
nothing on his own knowledge, he is a compiler only of the relations
of others, and a mere translator of the opinions of Monsieur de
Buffon. I should as soon, therefore, add the translators of
Robertson to the witnesses of this fact, as himself. Paw, the
beginner of this charge, was a compiler from the works of others; and
of the most unlucky description; for he seems to have read the
writings of travellers, only to collect and republish their lies. It
is really remarkable, that in three volumes 12mo, of small print, it
is scarcely possible to find one truth, and yet, that the author
should be able to produce authority for every fact he states, as he
says he can. Don Ulloa's testimony is of the most respectable. He
wrote of what he saw, but he saw the Indian of South America only,
and that, after he had passed through ten generations of slavery. It
is very unfair, from this sample, to judge of the natural genius of
this race of men; and after supposing that Don Ulloa had not
sufficiently calculated the allowance which should be made for this
circumstance, we do him no injury in considering the picture he draws
of the present Indians of South America, as no picture of what their
ancestors were, three hundred years ago. It is in North America we
are to seek their original character. And I am safe in affirming,
that the proofs of genius given by the Indians of North America,
place them on a level with whites in the same uncultivated state.
The North of Europe furnishes subjects enough for comparison with
them, and for a proof of their equality. I have seen some thousands
myself, and conversed much with them, and have found in them a
masculine, sound understanding. I have had much information from men
who had lived among them, and whose veracity and good sense were so
far known to me, as to establish a reliance on their information.
They have all agreed in bearing witness in favor of the genius of
this people. As to their bodily strength, their manners rendering it
disgraceful to labor, those muscles employed in labor will be weaker
with them, than with the European laborer; but those which are
exerted in the chase, and those faculties which are employed in the
tracing an enemy or a wild beast, in contriving ambuscades for him,
and in carrying them through their execution, are much stronger than
with us, because they are more exercised. I believe the Indian,
then, to be, in body and mind, equal to the white man. I have
supposed the black man, in his present state, might not be so; but it
would be hazardous to affirm, that, equally cultivated for a few
generations, he would not become so. 3. As to the inferiority of the
other animals of America, without more facts, I can add nothing to
what I have said in my Notes.
As to the theory of Monsieur de Buffon, that heat is friendly,
and moisture adverse to the production of large animals, I am lately
furnished with a fact by Dr. Franklin, which proves the air of London
and of Paris to be more humid than that of Philadelphia, and so
creates a suspicion that the opinion of the superior humidity of
America may, perhaps, have been too hastily adopted. And supposing
that fact admitted, I think the physical reasonings urged to show,
that in a moist country animals must be small, and that in a hot one
they must be large, are not built on the basis of experiment. These
questions, however, cannot be decided, ultimately, at this day. More
facts must be collected, and more time flow off, before the world
will be ripe for decision. In the mean time, doubt is wisdom.
I have been fully sensible of the anxieties of your situation,
and that your attentions were wholly consecrated, where alone they
were wholly due, to the succour of friendship and worth. However
much I prize your society, I wait with patience the moment when I can
have it without taking what is due to another. In the mean time, I
am solaced with the hope of possessing your friendship, and that it
is not ungrateful to you to receive assurances of that with which I
have the honor to be, Dear Sir,
your most obedient,
and most humble servant,
SOME THOUGHTS ON TREATIES
_To James Monroe_
_Paris, June 17, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- I received three days ago your favor of Apr. 12.
You therein speak of a former letter to me, but it has not come to
hand, nor any other of later date than the 14th of December. My last
letter to you was of the 11th of May by Mr. Adams who went in the
packet of that month. These conveiances are now becoming deranged.
We have had expectations of their coming to Havre which would
infinitely facilitate the communication between Paris & Congress: but
their deliberations on the subject seem to be taking another turn.
They complain of the expence, and that their commerce with us is too
small to justify it. They therefore talk of sending a packet every
six weeks only. The present one therefore, which should have sailed
about this time, will not sail until the 1st of July. However the
whole matter is as yet undecided. I have hoped that when Mr. St.
John arrives from N. York he will get them replaced on their monthly
system. By the bye what is the meaning of a very angry resolution of
Congress on this subject? I have it not by me and therefore cannot
cite it by date, but you will remember it, and will oblige me by
explaining it's foundation. This will be handed you by Mr. Otto who
comes to America as Charge des Affaires in the room of Mr. Marbois
promoted to the Intendancy of Hispaniola, which office is next to
that of Governor. He becomes the head of the civil as the Governor
is of the military department. I am much pleased with Otto's
appointment. He is good humored, affectionate to America, will see
things in a friendly light when they admit of it, in a rational one
always, and will not pique himself on writing every trifling
circumstance of irritation to his court. I wish you to be acquainted
with him, as a friendly intercourse between individuals who do
business together produces a mutual spirit of accommodation useful to
both parties. It is very much our interest to keep up the affection
of this country for us, which is considerable. A court has no
affections, but those of the people whom they govern influence their
decisions even in the most arbitrary governments. -- The negociations
between the Emperor & Dutch are spun out to an amazing length. At
present there is no apprehension but that they will terminate in
peace. This court seems to press it with ardour and the Dutch are
averse considering the terms cruel & unjust as they evidently are.
The present delays therefore are imputed to their coldness & to their
forms. In the mean time the Turk is delaying the demarcation of
limits between him and the emperor, is making the most vigorous
preparations for war, and has composed his ministry of war-like
characters deemed personally hostile to the emperor. Thus time seems
to be spinning outboth by the Dutch & Turks, & time is wanting for
France. Every year's delay is a great thing to her. It is not
impossible therefore but that she may secretly encourage the delays
of the Dutch & hasten the preparations of the Porte while she is
recovering vigour herself and, in order to be able to present such a
combination to the emperor as may dictate to him to be quiet. But
the designs of these courts are inscrutable. It is our interest to
pray that this country may have no continental war till our peace
with England is perfectly settled. The merchants of this country
continue as loud & furious as ever against the Arret of August 1784,
permitting our commerce with their islands to a certain degree. Many
of them have actually abandoned their trade. The Ministry are
disposed to be firm, but there is a point at which they will give
way, that is if the clamours should become such as to endanger their
places. It is evident that nothing can be done by us, at this time,
if we may hope it hereafter. I like your removal to N. York, and
hope Congress will continue there and never execute the idea of
building their federal town. Before it could be finished a change of
Members in Congress or the admission of new states would remove them
somewhere else. It is evident that when a sufficient number of the
Western states come in they will remove it to George town. In the
mean time it is our interest that it should remain where it is, and
give no new pretensions to any other place. I am also much pleased
with the proposition to the states to invest Congress with the
regulation of their trade, reserving it's revenue to the states. I
think it a happy idea, removing the only objection which could have
been justly made to the proposition. The time too is the present,
before the admission of the Western states. I am very differently
affected towards the new plan of opening our land office by dividing
the lands among the states and selling them at vendue. It separates
still more the interests of the states which ought to be made joint
in every possible instance in order to cultivate the idea of our
being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people
shall look up to Congress as their head. And when the states get
their portions they will either fool them away, or make a job of it
to serve individuals. Proofs of both these practices have been
furnished, and by either of them that invaluable fund is lost which
ought to pay our public debt. To sell them at vendue, is to give
them to the bidders of the day be they many or few. It is ripping up
the hen which lays golden eggs. If sold in lots at a fixed price as
first proposed, the best lots will be sold first. As these become
occupied it gives a value to the interjacent ones, and raises them,
tho' of inferior quality, to the price of the first. I send you by
Mr. Otto a copy of my book. Be so good as to apologize to Mr.
Thomson for my not sending him one by this conveiance. I could not
burthen Mr. Otto with more on so long a road as that from here to
l'Orient. I will send him one by a Mr. Williams who will go ere
long. I have taken measures to prevent it's publication. My reason
is that I fear the terms in which I speak of slavery and of our
constitution may produce an irritation which will revolt the minds of
our countrymen against reformation in these two articles, and thus do
more harm than good. I have asked of Mr. Madison to sound this
matter as far as he can, and if he thinks it will not produce that
effect, I have then copies enough printed to give one to each of the
young men at the college, and to my friends in the country.
_I am sorry_ to see a possibility of _A. L.'s being put into_
the _Treasury. He_ has no _talents_ for the _office_, and what _he
has_ will be _employed_ in _rummaging old accounts_ to _involve_ you
in _eternal war with R. M._ and _he_ will in a short time _introduce_
such _dissensions_ into the _Commission_ as to _break it up_. If _he
goes_ on the _other appointment to Kaskaskia he will produce a
revolt_ of that _settlement from_ the _U. S. I thank you_ for _your
attention_ to _my outfit. For_ the _articles_ of _household
furniture_, _clothes_, and a _carriage_, _I have already paid 28,000
livres_ and _have_ still _more_ to _pay._ For the _greatest part_ of
_this I_ have _been obliged_ to _anticipate my salary_ from which
_however I_ shall never be able to _repay_ it. _I find_ that by a
_rigid economy_, _bordering_ however on _meanness I_ can _save_
perhaps _$500_ a _month_, at _least_ in _the summer._ The _residue_
goes for _expences_ so much of _course_ & of _necessity that I_
cannot _avoid_ them _without abandoning all respect_ to _my public
character. Yet I_ will _pray you to touch_ this _string_, which _I
know to be a tender one_ with _Congress_ with the utmost _delicacy.
I_ had _rather be ruined_ in _my fortune_, than in their _esteem._ If
they _allow me half_ a _year's salary_ as an _outfit I_ can _get
through my debts in time. If they raise_ the _salary_ to what _it
was, or even pay our house rent_ & _taxes, I_ can _live with more
decency. I trust_ that _Mr. A.'s house_ at _the Hague_ & _Dr. F.'s
at Passy_ the _rent_ of which had been always _allowed him_ will
_give just expectations_ of the _same allowance_ to _me. Mr. Jay_
however did not _charge it. But he lived oeconomically_ and _laid up
money._ I will take the liberty of hazarding to you some thoughts on
the policy of entering into treaties with the European nations, and
the nature of them. I am not wedded to these ideas, and therefore
shall relinquish them chearfully when Congress shall adopt others,
and zealously endeavor to carry theirs into effect. First as to the
policy of making treaties. Congress, by the Confederation have no
original and inherent power over the commerce of the states. But by
the 9'th. article they are authorized to enter into treaties of
commerce. The moment these treaties are concluded the jurisdiction
of Congress over the commerce of the states springs into existence,
and that of the particular states is superseded so far as the
articles of the treaty may have taken up the subject. There are two
restrictions only on the exercise of the power of treaty by Congress.
1'st. that they shall not by such treaty restrain the legislatures of
the states from imposing such duties on foreigners as their own
people are subject to. 2'dly. nor from prohibiting the exportation or
importation of any particular species of goods. Leaving these two
points free, Congress may by treaty establish any system of commerce
they please. But, as I before observed, it is by treaty alone they
can do it. Though they may exercise their other powers by resolution
or ordinance, those over commerce can only be exercised by forming a
treaty, and this probably by an accidental wording of our
Confederation. If therefore it is better for the states that
Congress should regulate their commerce, it is proper that they
should form treaties with all nations with whom we may possibly
trade. You see that my primary object in the formation of treaties
is to take the commerce of the states out of the hands of the states,
and to place it under the superintendence of Congress, so far as the
imperfect provisions of our constitution will admit, and until the
states shall by new compact make them more perfect. I would say then
to every nation on earth, _by treaty_, your people shall trade freely
with us, & ours with you, paying no more than the most favoured
nation, in order to put an end to the right of individual states
acting by fits and starts to interrupt our commerce or to embroil us
with any nation. As to the terms of these treaties, the question
becomes more difficult. I will mention three different plans. 1.
that no duties shall be laid by either party on the productions of
the other. 2. that each may be permitted to equalize their duties to
those laid by the other. 3. that each shall pay in the ports of the
other such duties only as the most favoured nations pay. 1. Were the
nations of Europe as free and unembarrassed of established system as
we are, I do verily believe they would concur with us in the first
plan. But it is impossible. These establishments are fixed upon
them, they are interwoven with the body of their laws & the
organization of their government & they make a great part of their
revenue; they cannot then get rid of them. 2. The plan of equal
imposts presents difficulties insurmountable. For how are the equal
imposts to be effected? Is it by laying in the ports of A. an equal
percent on the goods of B. with that which B. has laid in his ports
on the goods of A.? But how are we to find what is that percent?
For this is not the usual form of imposts. They generally pay by the
ton, by the measure, by the weight, & not by the value. Besides if
A. sends a million's worth of goods to B. & takes back but the half
of that, and each pays the same percent, it is evident that A. pays
the double of what he recovers in the same way with B. This would be
our case with Spain. Shall we endeavour to effect equality then by
saying A. may levy so much on the sum of B.'s importations into his
ports, as B. does on the sum of A's importations into the ports of
B.? But how find out that sum? Will either party lay open their
custom house books candidly to evince this sum? Does either keep
their books so exactly as to be able to do it? This proposition was
started in Congress when our institutions were formed, as you may
remember, and the impossibility of executing it occasioned it to be
disapproved. Besides who should have a right of deciding when the
imposts were equal. A. would say to B. my imposts do not raise so
much as yours; I raise them therefore. B. would then say you have
made them greater than mine, I will raise mine, and thus a kind of
auction would be carried on between them, and a mutual imitation,
which would end in anything sooner than equality, and right. 3. I
confess then to you that I see no alternative left but that which
Congress adopted, of each party placing the other on the footing of
the most favoured nation. If the nations of Europe from their actual
establishments are not at liberty to say to America that she shall
trade in their ports duty free they may say she may trade there
paying no higher duties than the most favoured nation. And this is
valuable in many of these countries where a very great difference is
made between different nations. There is no difficulty in the
execution of this contract, because there is not a merchant who does
not know, or may not know, the duty paid by every nation on every
article. This stipulation leaves each party at liberty to regulate
their own commerce by general rules; while it secures the other from
partial and oppressive discriminations. The difficulty which arises
in our case is, with the nations having American territory. Access
to the West Indies is indispensably necessary to us. Yet how to gain
it, when it is the established system of these nations to exclude all
foreigners from their colonies. The only chance seems to be this,
our commerce to the mother countries is valuable to them. We must
endeavor then to make this the price of an admission into their West
Indies, and to those who refuse the admission we must refuse our
commerce or load theirs by odious discriminations in our ports. We
have this circumstance in our favour too, that what one grants us in
their islands, the others will not find it worth their while to
refuse. The misfortune is that with this country we gave this price
for their aid in the war, and we have now nothing more to offer. She
being withdrawn from the competition leaves Gr. Britain much more at
liberty to hold out against us. This is the difficult part of the
business of treaty, and I own it does not hold out the most
flattering prospect. -- I wish you would consider this subject and
write me your thoughts on it. Mr. Gherry wrote me on the same
subject. Will you give me leave to impose on you the trouble of
communicating this to him? It is long, and will save me much labour
in copying. I hope he will be so indulgent as to consider it as an
answer to that part of his letter, and will give me his further
thoughts on it.
Shall I send you so much of the Encyclopedia as is already
published or reserve it here till you come? It is about 40 vols.
which probably is about half the work. Give yourself no uneasiness
about the money. Perhaps I may find it convenient to ask you to pay
trifles occasionally for me in America. I sincerely wish you may
find it convenient to come here. The pleasure of the trip will be
less than you expect but the utility greater. It will make you adore
your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty,
laws, people & manners. My God! how little do my country men know
what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other
people on earth enjoy. I confess I had no idea of it myself. While
we shall see multiplied instances of Europeans going to live in
America, I will venture to say no man now living will ever see an
instance of an American removing to settle in Europe & continuing
there. Come then & see the proofs of this, and on your return add
your testimony to that of every thinking American, in order to
satisfy our countrymen how much it is their interest to preserve
uninfected by contagion those peculiarities in their government &
manners to which they are indebted for these blessings. Adieu, my
dear friend. Present me affectionately to your collegues. If any of
them think me worth writing to, they may be assured that in the
epistolary account I will keep the debit side against them. Once
more adieu.
June 19. Since writing the above we receive the following
account. Mons. Pilatre de Rosiere, who has been waiting some months
at Boulogne for a fair wind to cross the channel, at length took his
ascent with a companion. The wind changed after a while and brought
him back on the French coast. Being at a height of about 6000 f.
some accident happened to his baloon of inflammable air. It burst,
they fell from that height & were crushed to atoms. There was a
Montgolfier combined with the baloon of inflammable air. It is
suspected the heat of the Montgolfier rarified too much the
inflammable air of the other & occasioned it to burst. The
Montgolfier came down in good order.
ROYAL SCANDAL AND THIRD-RANK BIRDS
_To Abigail Adams_
_Paris, June 21, 1785_
DEAR MADAM -- I have received duly the honor of your letter,
and am now to return you thanks for your condescension in having
taken the first step for settling a correspondence which I so much
desired; for I now consider it as _settled_ and proceed accordingly.
I have always found it best to remove obstacles first. I will do so
therefore in the present case by telling you that I consider your
boasts of the splendour of your city and of it's superb hackney
coaches as a flout, and declaring that I would not give the polite,
self-denying, feeling, hospitable, goodhumoured people of this
country and their amability in every point of view, (tho' it must be
confessed our streets are somewhat dirty, and our fiacres rather
indifferent) for ten such races of rich, proud, hectoring, swearing,
squibbing, carnivorous animals as those among whom you are; and that
I do love this _people_ with all my heart, and think that with a
better religion and a better form of government and their present
governors their condition and country would be most enviable. I pray
you to observe that I have used the term _people_ and that this is a
noun of the masculine as well as feminine gender. I must add too
that we are about reforming our fiacres, and that I expect soon an
Ordonance that all their drivers shall wear breeches unless any
difficulty should arise whether this is a subject for the police or
for the general legislation of the country, to take care of. We have
lately had an incident of some consequence, as it shews a spirit of
treason, and audaciousness which was hardly thought to exist in this
country. Some eight or ten years ago a Chevalier --- was sent on a
message of state to the princess of --- of --- of (before I proceed
an inch further I must confess my profound stupidity; for tho' I have
heard this story told fifty times in all it's circumstances, I
declare I am unable to recollect the name of the ambassador, the name
of the princess, and the nation he was sent to; I must therefore
proceed to tell you the naked story, shorn of all those precious
circumstances) some chevalier or other was sent on some business or
other to some princess or other. Not succeeding in his negociation,
he wrote on his return the following song.
Ennivre du brillant poste
Que j'occupe recemment,
Dans une chaise de poste
Je me campe fierement:
Et je vais en ambassade
Au nom de mon souverain
Dire que je suis malade,
Et que lui se porte bien.
Avec une joue enflee
Je debarque tout honteux:
La princesse boursoufflee,
Au lieu d'une, en avoit deux;
Et son altesse sauvage
Sans doute a trouve mauvais
Que j'eusse sur mon visage
La moitie de ses attraits.
Princesse, le roi mon maitre
M'a pris pour Ambassadeur;
Je viens vous faire connoitre
Quelle est pour vous son ardeur.
Quand vous seriez sous le chaume,
Il donneroit, m'a-t-il dit,
La moitie de son royaume
Pour celle de votre lit.
La princesse a son pupitre
Compose un remerciment:
Elle me donne une epitre
Que j'emporte lestement,
Et je m'en vais dans la rue
Fort satisfait d'ajouter
A l'honneur de l'avoir vue
Le plaisir de la quitter.
This song run through all companies and was known to every
body. A book was afterwards printed, with a regular license, called
`Les quatres saisons litteraires' which being a collection of little
things, contained this also and all the world bought it or might buy
it if they would, the government taking no notice of it. It being
the office of the Journal de Paris to give an account and criticism
of new publications, this book came in turn to be criticised by the
redacteur, and he happened to select and print in his journal this
song as a specimen of what the collection contained. He was seised
in his bed that night and has been never since heard of. Our
excellent journal de Paris then is suppressed and this bold traitor
has been in jail now three weeks, and for ought any body knows will
end his days there. Thus you see, madam, the value of energy in
government; our feeble republic would in such a case have probably
been wrapt in the flames of war and desolation for want of a power
lodged in a single hand to punish summarily those who write songs.
The fate of poor Pilatre de Rosiere will have reached you before this
does, and with more certainty than we yet know it. This will damp
for a while the ardor of the Phaetons of our race who are endeavoring
to learn us the way to heaven on wings of our own. I took a trip
yesterday to Sannois and commenced an acquaintance with the old
Countess d'Hocquetout. I received much pleasure from it and hope it
has opened a door of admission for me to the circle of literati with
which she is environed. I heard there the Nightingale in all it's
perfection: and I do not hesitate to pronounce that in America it
would be deemed a bird of the third rank only, our mockingbird, and
fox-coloured thrush being unquestionably superior to it. The squibs
against Mr. Adams are such as I expected from the polished, mild
tempered, truth speaking people he is sent to. It would be ill
policy to attempt to answer or refute them. But counter-squibs I
think would be good policy. Be pleased to tell him that as I had
before ordered his Madeira and Frontignac to be forwarded, and had
asked his orders to Mr. Garvey as to the residue, which I doubt not
he has given, I was afraid to send another order about the Bourdeaux
lest it should produce confusion. In stating my accounts with the
United states, I am at a loss whether to charge house rent or not.
It has always been allowed to Dr. Franklin. Does Mr. Adams mean to
charge this for Auteuil and London? Because if he does, I certainly
will, being convinced by experience that my expences here will
otherwise exceed my allowance. I ask this information of you, Madam,
because I think you know better than Mr. Adams what may be necessary
and right for him to do in occasions of this class. I will beg the
favor of you to present my respects to Miss Adams. I have no secrets
to communicate to her in cypher at this moment, what I write to Mr.
Adams being mere commonplace stuff, not meriting a communication to
the Secretary. I have the honour to be with the most perfect esteem
Dr. Madam Your most obedient and most humble servt.,
A STATUE OF WASHINGTON
_To the Virginia Delegates in Congress_
_Paris, July 12, 1785_
GENTLEMEN, -- In consequence of the orders of the Legislative &
Executive bodies of Virginia, I have engaged Monsr. Houdon to make
the Statue of Genl. Washington. For this purpose it is necessary for
him to see the General. He therefore goes with Doctr. Franklin, &
will have the honor of delivering you this himself. As his journey
is at the expence of the State according to our contract, I will pray
you to favor him with your patronage & counsels, and to protect him
as much as possible from those impositions to which strangers are but
too much exposed. I have advised him to proceed in the stages to the
General's. I have also agreed, if he can see General Greene & Gates,
whose busts he has a desire to make, that he may make a moderate
deviation for this purpose, after he is done with General Washington.
But the most important object with him is to be employed to
make General Washington's equestrian statue for Congress. Nothing
but the expectation of this could have engaged him to have undertaken
this voyage. The pedestrian statue for Virginia will not make it
worth the business he loses by absenting himself. I was therefore
obliged to assure him of my recommendations for this greater work.
Having acted in this for the state, you will I hope think yourselves
in some measure bound to patronize & urge his being employed by
Congress. I would not have done this myself, nor asked you to do it,
did I not see that it would be better for Congress to put this
business into his hands, than those of any other person living, for
these reasons: 1. he is without rivalship the first statuary of this
age; as a proof of which he receives orders from every other country
for things intended to be capital: 2. he will have seen General
Washington, have taken his measures in every part, and of course
whatever he does of him will have the merit of being original, from
which other workmen can only furnish copies. 3. He is in possession
of the house, the furnaces, & all the apparatus provided for making
the statue of Louis XV. If any other workman is employed, this will
all be to be provided anew and of course to be added to the price of
the statue, for no man can ever expect to make two equestrian
statues. The addition which this would be to the price will much
exceed the expectation of any person who has not seen that apparatus.
In truth it is immense. As to the price of the work it will be much
greater than Congress is aware of, probably. I have enquired
somewhat into this circumstance, and find the prices of those made
for two centuries past have been from 120.000 guineas down to 16.000
guineas, according to the size. And as far as I have seen, the
smaller they are, the more agreeable. The smallest yet made is
infinitely above the size of the life, and they all appear outree and
monstrous. That of Louis XV. is probably the best in the world, and
it is the smallest here. Yet it is impossible to find a point of
view from which it does not appear a monster, unless you go so far as
to lose sight of the features and finer lineaments of the face and
body. A statue is not made, like a mountain, to be seen at a great
distance. To perceive those minuter circumstances which constitute
its beauty you must be near it, and, in that case, it should be so
little above the size of the life, as to appear actually of that size
from your point of view. I should not therefore fear to propose that
the one intended by Congress should be considerably smaller than any
of those to be seen here; as I think it will be more beautiful, and
also cheaper. I have troubled you with these observations as they
have been suggested to me from an actual sight of works in this kind,
& supposed they might assist you in making up your minds on this
subject. In making a contract with Monsr. Houdon it would not be
proper to advance money, but as his disbursements and labour advance.
As it is a work of many years, this will render the expence
insensible. The pedestrian statue of marble is to take three years.
The equestrian of course much more. Therefore the sooner it is begun
the better.
"AN HONEST HEART. . . A KNOWING HEAD"
_To Peter Carr_
_Paris, August 19, 1785_
DEAR PETER, -- I received, by Mr. Mazzei, your letter of April
the 20th. I am much mortified to hear that you have lost so much
time; and that when you arrived in Williamsburg, you were not at all
advanced from what you were when you left Monticello. Time now
begins to be precious to you. Every day you lose, will retard a day
your entrance on that public stage whereon you may begin to be useful
to yourself. However, the way to repair the loss is to improve the
future time. I trust, that with your dispositions, even the
acquisition of science is a pleasing employment. I can assure you,
that the possession of it is, what (next to an honest heart) will
above all things render you dear to your friends, and give you fame
and promotion in your own country. When your mind shall be well
improved with science, nothing will be necessary to place you in the
highest points of view, but to pursue the interests of your country,
the interests of your friends, and your own interests also, with the
purest integrity, the most chaste honor. The defect of these virtues
can never be made up by all the other acquirements of body and mind.
Make these then your first object. Give up money, give up fame, give
up science, give the earth itself and all it contains, rather than do
an immoral act. And never suppose, that in any possible situation,
or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable
thing, however slightly so it may appear to you. Whenever you are to
do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask
yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act
accordingly. Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise
them whenever an opportunity arises; being assured that they will
gain strength by exercise, as a limb of the body does, and that
exercise will make them habitual. From the practice of the purest
virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts
in every moment of life, and in the moment of death. If ever you
find yourself environed with difficulties and perplexing
circumstances, out of which you are at a loss how to extricate
yourself, do what is right, and be assured that that will extricate
you the best out of the worst situations. Though you cannot see,
when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth,
justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of
the labyrinth, in the easiest manner possible. The knot which you
thought a Gordian one, will untie itself before you. Nothing is so
mistaken as the supposition, that a person is to extricate himself
from a difficulty, by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by
trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the
difficulties ten fold; and those who pursue these methods, get
themselves so involved at length, that they can turn no way but their
infamy becomes more exposed. It is of great importance to set a
resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no
vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself
to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third
time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without
attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This
falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time
depraves all its good dispositions.
An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the
second. It is time for you now to begin to be choice in your
reading; to begin to pursue a regular course in it; and not to suffer
yourself to be turned to the right or left by reading any thing out
of that course. I have long ago digested a plan for you, suited to
the circumstances in which you will be placed. This I will detail to
you, from time to time, as you advance. For the present, I advise
you to begin a course of antient history, reading every thing in the
original and not in translations. First read Goldsmith's history of
Greece. This will give you a digested view of that field. Then take
up antient history in the detail, reading the following books, in the
following order: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophontis Hellenica,
Xenophontis Anabasis, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus,
Justin. This shall form the first stage of your historical reading,
and is all I need mention to you now. The next, will be of Roman
history (*). From that, we will come down to modern history. In
Greek and Latin poetry, you have read or will read at school, Virgil,
Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles.
Read also Milton's Paradise Lost, Shakspeare, Ossian, Pope's and
Swift's works, in order to form your style in your own language. In
morality, read Epictetus, Xenophontis Memorabilia, Plato's Socratic
dialogues, Cicero's philosophies, Antoninus, and Seneca. In order to
assure a certain progress in this reading, consider what hours you
have free from the school and the exercises of the school. Give
about two of them, every day, to exercise; for health must not be
sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong. As to
the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a
moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and
independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of
that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on
the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your
walks. Never think of taking a book with you. The object of walking
is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even
to think while you walk; but divert your attention by the objects
surrounding you. Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate
yourself to walk very far. The Europeans value themselves on having
subdued the horse to the uses of man; but I doubt whether we have not
lost more than we have gained, by the use of this animal. No one has
occasioned so much, the degeneracy of the human body. An Indian goes
on foot nearly as far in a day, for a long journey, as an enfeebled
white does on his horse; and he will tire the best horses. There is
no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without
fatigue. I would advise you to take your exercise in the afternoon:
not because it is the best time for exercise, for certainly it is
not; but because it is the best time to spare from your studies; and
habit will soon reconcile it to health, and render it nearly as
useful as if you gave to that the more precious hours of the day. A
little walk of half an hour, in the morning, when you first rise, is
advisable also. It shakes off sleep, and produces other good effects
in the animal economy. Rise at a fixed and an early hour, and go to
bed at a fixed and early hour also. Sitting up late at night is
injurious to the health, and not useful to the mind. Having ascribed
proper hours to exercise, divide what remain, (I mean of your vacant
hours) into three portions. Give the principal to History, the other
two, which should be shorter, to Philosophy and Poetry. Write to me
once every month or two, and let me know the progress you make. Tell
me in what manner you employ every hour in the day. The plan I have
proposed for you is adapted to your present situation only. When
that is changed, I shall propose a corresponding change of plan. I
have ordered the following books to be sent to you from London, to
the care of Mr. Madison. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's
Hellenics, Anabasis and Memorabilia, Cicero's works, Baretti's
Spanish and English Dictionary, Martin's Philosophical Grammar, and
Martin's Philosophia Britannica. I will send you the following from
hence. Bezout's Mathematics, De la Lande's Astronomy, Muschenbrock's
Physics, Quintus Curtius, Justin, a Spanish Grammar, and some Spanish
books. You will observe that Martin, Bezout, De la Lande, and
Muschenbrock are not in the preceding plan. They are not to be
opened till you go to the University. You are now, I expect,
learning French. You must push this; because the books which will be
put into your hands when you advance into Mathematics, Natural
philosophy, Natural history, &c. will be mostly French, these
sciences being better treated by the French than the English writers.
Our future connection with Spain renders that the most necessary of
the modern languages, after the French. When you become a public
man, you may have occasion for it, and the circumstance of your
possessing that language, may give you a preference over other
candidates. I have nothing further to add for the present, but
husband well your time, cherish your instructors, strive to make
every body your friend; and be assured that nothing will be so
pleasing, as your success, to, Dear Peter,
Your's affectionately,
(*) Livy, Sullust, Caesar, Cicero's epistles, Suetonius,
Tacitus, Gibbon.
COMMERCE AND SEA POWER
_To John Jay_
_Paris, Aug. 23, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- I shall sometimes ask your permission to write you
letters, not official but private. The present is of this kind, and
is occasioned by the question proposed in yours of June 14. "whether
it would be useful to us to carry all our own productions, or none?"
Were we perfectly free to decide this question, I should reason as
follows. We have now lands enough to employ an infinite number of
people in their cultivation. Cultivators of the earth are the most
valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant,
the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to it's
liberty & interests by the most lasting bonds. As long therefore as
they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into
mariners, artisans or anything else. But our citizens will find
employment in this line till their numbers, & of course their
productions, become too great for the demand both internal & foreign.
This is not the case as yet, & probably will not be for a
considerable time. As soon as it is, the surplus of hands must be
turned to something else. I should then perhaps wish to turn them to
the sea in preference to manufactures, because comparing the
characters of the two classes I find the former the most valuable
citizens. I consider the class of artificers as the panders of vice
& the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally
overturned. However we are not free to decide this question on
principles of theory only. Our people are decided in the opinion
that it is necessary for us to take a share in the occupation of the
ocean, & their established habits induce them to require that the sea
be kept open to them, and that that line of policy be pursued which
will render the use of that element as great as possible to them. I
think it a duty in those entrusted with the administration of their
affairs to conform themselves to the decided choice of their
constituents: and that therefore we should in every instance preserve
an equality of right to them in the transportation of commodities, in
the right of fishing, & in the other uses of the sea. But what will
be the consequence? Frequent wars without a doubt. Their property
will be violated on the sea, & in foreign ports, their persons will
be insulted, imprisoned &c. for pretended debts, contracts, crimes,
contraband, &c., &c. These insults must be resented, even if we had
no feelings, yet to prevent their eternal repetition, or in other
words, our commerce on the ocean & in other countries must be paid
for by frequent war. The justest dispositions possible in ourselves
will not secure us against it. It would be necessary that all other
nations were just also. Justice indeed on our part will save us from
those wars which would have been produced by a contrary disposition.
But to prevent those produced by the wrongs of other nations? By
putting ourselves in a condition to punish them. Weakness provokes
insult & injury, while a condition to punish it often prevents it.
This reasoning leads to the necessity of some naval force, that being
the only weapon with which we can reach an enemy. I think it to our
interest to punish the first insult; because an insult unpunished is
the parent of many others. We are not at this moment in a condition
to do it, but we should put ourselves into it as soon as possible.
If a war with England should take place, it seems to me that the
first thing necessary would be a resolution to abandon the carrying
trade because we cannot protect it. Foreign nations must in that
case be invited to bring us what we want & to take our productions in
their own bottoms. This alone could prevent the loss of those
productions to us & the acquisition of them to our enemy. Our seamen
might be employed in depredations on their trade. But how dreadfully
we shall suffer on our coasts, if we have no force on the water,
former experience has taught us. Indeed I look forward with horror
to the very possible case of war with an European power, & think
there is no protection against them but from the possession of some
force on the sea. Our vicinity to their West India possessions & to
the fisheries is a bridle which a small naval force on our part would
hold in the mouths of the most powerful of these countries. I hope
our land office will rid us of our debts, & that our first attention
then will be to the beginning a naval force of some sort. This alone
can countenance our people as carriers on the water, & I suppose them
to be determined to continue such.
I wrote you two public letters on the 14th inst., since which I
have received yours of July 13. I shall always be pleased to receive
from you in a private way such communications as you might not chuse
to put into a public letter.
BOOKS FOR A STATESMAN
_To James Madison_
_Paris, September 1, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- My last to you by Monsieur de Doradour, was dated
May the 11th. Since that, I have received yours of January the 22nd,
with six copies of the revisal, and that of April the 27th, by Mr.
Mazzei.
All is quiet here. The Emperor and Dutch have certainly
agreed, though they have not published their agreement. Most of his
schemes in Germany must be postponed, if they are not prevented, by
the confederacy of many of the Germanic body, at the head of which is
the King of Prussia, and to which the Elector of Hanover is supposed
to have acceded. The object of the league is to preserve the members
of the empire in their present state. I doubt whether the jealousy
entertained of this prince, and which is so fully evidenced by this
league, may not defeat the election of his nephew to be King of the
Romans, and thus produce an instance of breaking the lineal
succession. Nothing is as yet done between him and the Turks. If
any thing is produced in that quarter, it will not be for this year.
The court of Madrid has obtained the delivery of the crew of the brig
Betsey, taken by the Emperor of Morocco. The Emperor had treated
them kindly, new clothed them, and delivered them to the Spanish
minister, who sent them to Cadiz. This is the only American vessel
ever taken by the Barbary States. The Emperor continues to give
proofs of his desire to be in friendship with us, or, in other words,
of receiving us into the number of his tributaries. Nothing further
need be feared from him. I wish the Algerines may be as easily dealt
with. I fancy the peace expected between them and Spain, is not
likely to take place. I am well informed that the late proceedings
in America, have produced a wonderful sensation in England in our
favor. I mean the disposition which seems to be becoming general, to
invest Congress with the regulation of our commerce, and, in the mean
time, the measures taken to defeat the avidity of the British
government, grasping at our carrying business. I can add with truth,
that it was not till these symptoms appeared in America, that I have
been able to discover the smallest token of respect towards the
United States, in any part of Europe. There was an enthusiasm
towards us, all over Europe, at the moment of the peace. The torrent
of lies published unremittingly, in every day's London paper, first
made an impression, and produced a coolness. The republication of
these lies in most of the papers of Europe, (done probably by
authority of the governments, to discourage emigrations) carried them
home to the belief of every mind. They supposed every thing in
America was anarchy, tumult, and civil war. The reception of the
Marquis Fayette gave a check to these ideas. The late proceedings
seem to be producing a decisive vibration in our favor. I think it
possible that England may ply before them. It is a nation which
nothing but views of interest can govern. If they produce us good
there, they will here also. The defeat of the Irish propositions is
also in our favor.
I have at length made up the purchase of books for you, as far
as it can be done at present. The objects which I have not yet been
able to get, I shall continue to seek for. Those purchased, are
packed this morning in two trunks, and you have the catalogue and
prices herein enclosed. The future charges of transportation shall
be carried into the next bill. The amount of the present is 1154
livres 13 sous, which, reckoning the French crown of six livres at
six shillings and eight pence, Virginia money, is pound 64, 3s.
which sum you will be so good as to keep in your hands, to be used
occasionally in the education of my nephews, when the regular
resources disappoint you. To the same use I would pray you to apply
twenty-five guineas, which I have lent the two Mr. Fitzhughs of
Marmion, and which I have desired them to repay into your hands. You
will of course deduct the price of the revisals, and of any other
articles you may have been so kind as to pay for me. Greek and Roman
authors are dearer here, than, I believe, any where in the world.
Nobody here reads them; wherefore they are not reprinted. Don Ulloa,
in the original, is not to be found. The collection of tracts on the
economies of different nations, we cannot find; nor Amelot's travels
into China. I shall send these two trunks of books to Havre, there
to wait a conveyance to America; for as to the fixing the packets
there, it is as uncertain as ever. The other articles you mention,
shall be procured as far as they can be. Knowing that some of them
would be better got in London, I commissioned Mr. Short, who was
going there, to get them. He has not yet returned. They will be of
such a nature, as that I can get some gentleman who may be going to
America, to take them in his portmanteau. Le Maire being now able to
stand on his own legs, there will be no necessity for your advancing
him the money I desired, if it is not already done. I am anxious to
hear from you on the subject of my Notes on Virginia. I have been
obliged to give so many of them here, that I fear their getting
published. I have received an application from the Directors of the
public buildings, to procure them a plan for their capitol. I shall
send them one taken from the best morsel of antient architecture now
remaining. It has obtained the approbation of fifteen or sixteen
centuries, and is, therefore, preferable to any design which might be
newly contrived. It will give more room, be more convenient, and
cost less, than the plan they sent me. Pray encourage them to wait
for it, and to execute it. It will be superior in beauty to any
thing in America, and not inferior to any thing in the world. It is
very simple. Have you a copying press? If you have not, you should
get one. Mine (exclusive of paper which costs a guinea a ream) has
cost me about fourteen guineas. I would give ten times that sum, to
have had it from the date of the stamp act. I hope you will be so
good as to continue your communications, both of the great and small
kind, which are equally useful to me. Be assured of the sincerity
with which I am, Dear Sir,
your friend and servant,
ENCLOSURE
_livres sous den_
Dictionnaire de Trevoux. 5 vol. fol. , 5f12 . . . 28 - 0 - 0
La Conquista di Mexico. De Solis. fol. 7f10.
relieure 7f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 - 10
Traite de morale et de bonheur. 12mo. 2 v. in 1. 2 - 8
Wicquefort de l'Ambassadeur. 2. v. 4to. . . . . . 7 - 4
Burlamaqui. Principes du droit Politique 4to.
3f12 relieure 2f5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 - 17
Conquista de la China por el Tartaro por Palafox.
12mo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 -
Code de l'humanite de Felice. 13. v. 4to. . . . . 104 - 0
13. first livrasons of the Encyclopedie 47. vols.
4to. (being 48f less than subscription) . . . . 348 - 0
14th. livraison of do. 4. v. 4to. . . . . . . . . 24 - 0
Peyssonel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 - 0
Bibliotheque physico-oeconomique. 4. v. 12mo.
10f4. rel. 3f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 - 4
Cultivateur Americain. 2. v. 8vo. 7f17. rel. 2f10. 10 - 7
Mirabeau sur l'ordre des Cincinnati. 10f10. rel. 1f5
(prohibited). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 - 15
Coutumes Amglo-Normads de Houard. 4. v.
4to. 40f rel. 10f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 - 0
Memories sur l'Amerique 4 v. 4to. . . . . . . . . 24 - 0
Tott sur les Turcs. 4. v. in 2. 8vo. 10f. rel. 2f10 12 - 10
Neckar sur l'Administration des Finances de
France. 3. v. 12mo. 7f10 rel. 2f5 . . . . . . . 9 - 15
le bon-sens. 12mo. 6f rel. 15s (prohibited). . . 6 - 15
_livres sous den_
Mably. Princess de morale.
1. V. 12mo. . . . . 3 12 }
etude de l'histoire 1. . 2 10 }
maniere d'ecrire
l'histoire 1. . . . 2 8 }
constitution
d'Amerique 1. . . . 1 16 } relieure de
sur l'histoire de II vols. ,
France. 2. v. . . . 6 } 15s. 8f5 41 - 1
droit de l'Europe
3.v. . . . . . . 7 10 }
ordres des societies . . . 2 }
principes des
negotiations. . . . 2 10 }
entretiens de Phocion . . 2 }
des Romains . . . . . 2 10 }
-------
32 16
Wanting to complete Mably's works which I have
not been able to procure
les principes de legislation
sur les Grecs
sur la Pologne.
Chronologie des empires anciennes
de la Combe. 5 - 0 - 0
de l'histoire universelle
de Hornot. . 1. v. 8vo.4f 4 - 0 - 0
de l'histoire universelle
de Berlie. . 1.v. 8vo. 2f10 rel. 1f5 3 - 15
des empereurs Romains
par Richer. . 2. v. 8vo. 8f rel. 2f10 10 - 10
des Juifs . . . 1. v. 8vo. 3f10 rel. 1f5 4 - 15
de l'histoire universelle
par Du Fresnoy. 2. v. 8vo. 13f rel. 2f10 15 - 10
de l'histoire du Nord.
par La Combe .2. v. 8vo. 10f. rel. 2f10 12 - 10
de France. par
Henault. . . 3. v. 8vo. 12f. rel. 5f 15 - 15
_livres sous den_
Memories de Voltaire. 2. v. in 1. 2f10 rel. 15s. . 3 - 5 - 0
Linnaei Philosophia Botanica. 1. v. 8vo. 7f rel. 1f5 8 - 5
Genera plantarum 1. v. 8vo. 8f rel. 1f5 . . . . . 9 - 5
Species plantarum. 4. v. 8vo. 32f rel. 5f . . . . 37 - 0
Systema naturae 4. v. 8vo. 26f rel. 5f . . . . . . 31 - 0
Clayton. Flora Virginica. 4to. 12f. rel. 2f10. . . . 14 - 10
D'Albon sur l'interet de plusieurs nations. 4. v.
12mo. 12f. rel. 3f.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 - 0
Systeme de la nature de Diderot. 3. v. 8vo. 21f
(prohibited) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 - 0
Coussin histoire Romaine.
2.v.in 1. 12mo. }
de Constantinople 8. v. in 10. } 16. vols.
de l'empire de l'Occident 2. v. } 12mo. 36 - 0 - 0
de l'eglise. 5. v. in 3. }
Droit de la Nature. por Wolff. 6. v. 12mo. 15f rel.
4f10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 - 10
Voyage de Paget 8vo. 3. v. in 1. . . . . . . . . . . 9
Mirabeau. Ami des hommes 5. v. 12mo. }
Theorie de l'import 2. v. in 1. 12mo.} 12
BUFFON. SUPPLEMENT II. 12. Oiseaux 17. 18.
Mineraux 1. 2. 3. 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24.
Lettres de Pascal. 12mo. 2f. rel. 15s. . . . . . . . 2 - 15
Le sage a la cour et le roi voiageur (prohibited). . 10 - 15
Principles de legislation universelle 2. v. 8vo. . . 12 - 0
Ordonnances de la Marine par Valin. 2. v. 4to. . . . 22
Diderot sur les sourds and muets }
12mo. 3f12. sur les } 4. v. 12mo. 13 - 7
aveugles 3f. sur la nature 3f. }
sur la morale 3f15 }
Mariana's history of Spain II. v. 12mo.. . . . . . . 21
2 trunks & packing paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 - 0
----------
1154 - 13
CLIMATE AND AMERICAN CHARACTER
_To Chastellux_
_Paris, Sep. 2, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- You were so kind as to allow me a fortnight to
read your journey through Virginia. but you should have thought of
this indulgence while you were writing it, and have rendered it less
interesting if you meant that your readers should have been longer
engaged with it. in fact I devoured it at a single meal, and a second
reading scarce allowed me sang-froid enough to mark a few errors in
the names of persons and places which I note on a paper herein
inclosed, with an inconsiderable error or two in facts which I have
also noted because I supposed you wished to state them correctly.
from this general approbation however you must allow me to except
about a dozen pages in the earlier part of the book which I read with
a continued blush from beginning to end, as it presented me a lively
picture of what I wish to be, but am not. no, my dear Sir, the
thousand millionth part of what you there say, is more than I
deserve. it might perhaps have passed in Europe at the time you wrote
it, and the exaggeration might not have been detected. but consider
that the animal is now brought there, and that every one will take
his dimensions for himself. the friendly complexion of your mind has
betrayed you into a partiality of which the European spectator will
be divested. respect to yourself therefore will require indispensably
that you expunge the whole of those pages except your own judicious
observations interspersed among them on animal and physical subjects.
with respect to my countrymen there is surely nothing which can
render them uneasy, in the observations made on them. they know that
they are not perfect, and will be sensible that you have viewed them
with a philanthropic eye. you say much good of them, and less ill
than they are conscious may be said with truth. I have studied their
character with attention. I have thought them, as you found them,
aristocratical, pompous, clannish, indolent, hospitable, and I should
have added, disinterested, but you say attached to their interest.
this is the only trait in their character wherein our observations
differ. I have always thought them so careless of their interests, so
thoughtless in their expences and in all their transactions of
business that I had placed it among the vices of their character, as
indeed most virtues when carried beyond certain bounds degenerate
into vices. I had even ascribed this to it's cause, to that warmth
of their climate which unnerves and unmans both body and mind. while
on this subject I will give you my idea of the characters of the
several states.
In the north they are In the south they are
cool fiery
sober voluptuary
laborious indolent
persevering unsteady
independant independant
jealous of their own liberties, zealous for their own liberties,
and just to those of others but trampling on those of
others.
interested generous
chicaning candid
superstitious and hypocritical in without attachment or
pretensions
their religion to any religon but that
of the heart.
these characteristics grow weaker and weaker by gradation from
North to South and South to North, insomuch that an observing
traveller, without the aid of the quadrant may always know his
latitude by the character of the people among whom he finds himself.
it is in Pennsylvania that the two characters seem to meet and blend,
and form a people free from the extremes both of vice and virtue.
peculiar circumstances have given to New York the character which
climate would have given had she been placed on the South instead of
the north side of Pennsylvania. perhaps too other circumstances may
have occasioned in Virginia a transplantation of a particular vice
foreign to it's climate. you could judge of this with more
impartiality than I could, and the probability is that your estimate
of them is the most just. I think it for their good that the vices
of their character should be pointed out to them that they may amend
them; for a malady of either body or mind once known is half cured.
I wish you would add to this piece your letter to mr. Madison on the
expediency of introducing the arts into America. I found in that a
great deal of matter, very many observations, which would be useful
to the legislators of America, and to the general mass of citizens.
I read it with great pleasure and analysed it's contents that I might
fix them in my own mind.
I have the honor to be with very sincere esteem, dear Sir, your
most obedient and most humble servt.
"THIS BEAUTIFUL ART"
_To James Madison_
_Paris, September 20, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- By Mr. Fitzhugh, you will receive my letter of the
first instant. He is still here, and gives me an opportunity of
again addressing you much sooner than I should have done, but for the
discovery of a great piece of inattention. In that letter I send you
a detail of the cost of your books, and desire you to keep the amount
in your hands, as if I had forgot that a part of it was in fact your
own, as being a balance of what I had remained in your debt. I
really did not attend to it in the moment of writing, and when it
occurred to me, I revised my memorandum book from the time of our
being in Philadelphia together, and stated our account from the
beginning, lest I should forget or mistake any part of it. I enclose
you this statement. You will always be so good as to let me know,
from time to time, your advances for me. Correct with freedom all my
proceedings for you, as, in what I do, I have no other desire than
that of doing exactly what will be most pleasing to you.
I received this summer a letter from Messrs. Buchanan and Hay,
as Directors of the public buildings, desiring I would have drawn for
them, plans of sundry buildings, and, in the first place, of a
capitol. They fixed, for their receiving this plan, a day which was
within about six weeks of that on which their letter came to my hand.
I engaged an architect of capital abilities in this business. Much
time was requsite, after the external form was agreed on, to make the
internal distribution convenient for the three branches of
government. This time was much lengthened by my avocations to other
objects, which I had no right to neglect. The plan however was
settled. The gentlemen had sent me one which they had thought of.
The one agreed on here, is more convenient, more beautiful, gives
more room, and will not cost more than two thirds of what that would.
We took for our model what is called the Maison quarree of Nismes,
one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful and precious
morsel of architecture left us by antiquity. It was built by Caius
and Lucius Caesar, and repaired by Louis XIV., and has the suffrage
of all the judges of architecture, who have seen it, as yielding to
no one of the beautiful monuments of Greece, Rome, Palmyra, and
Balbec, which late travellers have communicated to us. It is very
simple, but it is noble beyond expression, and would have done honor
to our country, as presenting to travellers a specimen of taste in
our infancy, promising much for our maturer age. I have been much
mortified with information, which I received two days ago from
Virginia, that the first brick of the capitol would be laid within a
few days. But surely, the delay of this piece of a summer would have
been repaired by the savings in the plan preparing here, were we to
value its other superiorities as nothing. But how is a taste in this
beautiful art to be formed in our countrymen, unless we avail
ourselves of every occasion when public buildings are to be erected,
of presenting to them models for their study and imitation? Pray try
if you can effect the stopping of this work. I have written also to
E. R. on the subject. The loss will be only of the laying the bricks
already laid, or a part of them. The bricks themselves will do again
for the interior walls, and one side wall and one end wall may
remain, as they will answer equally well for our plan. This loss is
not to be weighed against the saving of money which will arise,
against the comfort of laying out the public money for something
honorable, the satisfaction of seeing an object and proof of national
good taste, and the regret and mortification of erecting a monument
of our barbarism, which will be loaded with execrations as long as it
shall endure. The plans are in good forwardness, and I hope will be
ready within three or four weeks. They could not be stopped now, but
on paying their whole price, which will be considerable. If the
undertakers are afraid to undo what they have done, encourage them to
it by a recommendation from the Assembly. You see I am an enthusiast
on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am
not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen,
to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the
world, and procure them its praise.
I shall send off your books, in two trunks, to Havre, within
two or three days, to the care of Mr. Limozin, American agent there.
I will advise you, as soon as I know by what vessel he forwards them.
Adieu.
Your's affectionately,
MARS AND MINERVA
_To Abigail Adams_
_Paris, Sep. 25, 1785_
DEAR MADAM -- Mr. Short's return the night before last availed
me of your favour of Aug. 12. I immediately ordered the shoes you
desired which will be ready tomorrow. I am not certain whether this
will be in time for the departure of Mr. Barclay or of Colo. Franks,
for it is not yet decided which of them goes to London. I have also
procured for you three plateaux de dessert with a silvered
ballustrade round them, and four figures of Biscuit. The former cost
192't, the latter 12't each, making together 240 livres or 10. Louis.
The merchant undertakes to send them by the way of Rouen through the
hands of Mr. Garvey and to have them delivered in London. There will
be some additional expences of packing, transportation and duties
here. Those in England I imagine you can save. When I know the
amount I will inform you of it, but there will be no occasion to
remit it here. With respect to the figures I could only find three
of those you named, matched in size. These were Minerva, Diana, and
Apollo. I was obliged to add a fourth, unguided by your choice.
They offered me a fine Venus; but I thought it out of taste to have
two at table at the same time. Paris and Helen were presented. I
conceived it would be cruel to remove them from their peculiar
shrine. When they shall pass the Atlantic, it will be to sing a
requiem over our freedom and happiness. At length a fine Mars was
offered, calm, bold, his faulchion not drawn, but ready to be drawn.
This will do, thinks I, for the table of the American Minister in
London, where those whom it may concern may look and learn that
though Wisdom is our guide, and the Song and Chase our supreme
delight, yet we offer adoration to that tutelar god also who rocked
the cradle of our birth, who has accepted our infant offerings, and
has shewn himself the patron of our rights and avenger of our wrongs.
The groupe then was closed, and your party formed. Envy and malice
will never be quiet. I hear it already whispered to you that in
admitting Minerva to your table I have departed from the principle
which made me reject Venus: in plain English that I have paid a just
respect to the daughter but failed to the mother. No Madam, my
respect to both is sincere. Wisdom, I know, is social. She seeks
her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a
rival -- but, Allons, let us turn over another leaf, and begin the
next chapter. I receive by Mr. Short a budget of London papers.
They teem with every horror of which human nature is capable.
Assassinations, suicides, thefts, robberies, and, what is worse than
assassination, theft, suicide or robbery, the blackest slanders!
Indeed the man must be of rock, who can stand all this; to Mr. Adams
it will be but one victory the more. It would have illy suited me.
I do not love difficulties. I am fond of quiet, willing to do my
duty, but irritable by slander and apt to be forced by it to abandon
my post. These are weaknesses from which reason and your counsels
will preserve Mr. Adams. I fancy it must be the quantity of animal
food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible
of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their
churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries
of that description from hence would avail more than those who should
endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy. But
what do the foolish printers of America mean by retailing all this
stuff in our papers? As if it was not enough to be slandered by
one's enemies without circulating the slanders among his friends
also.
To shew you how willingly I shall ever receive and execute your
commissions, I venture to impose one on you. From what I recollect
of the diaper and damask we used to import from England I think they
were better and cheaper than here. You are well acquainted with
those of both countries. If you are of the same opinion I would
trouble you to send me two sets of table cloths and napkins for 20
covers each, by Colo. Franks or Mr. Barclay who will bring them to
me. But if you think they can be better got here I would rather
avoid the trouble this commission will give. I inclose you a
specimen of what is offered me at 100. livres for the table cloth and
12 napkins. I suppose that, of the same quality, a table cloth 2.
aunes wide and 4. aunes long, and 20 napkins of 1. aune each, would
cost 7. guineas. -- I shall certainly charge the publick my house
rent and court taxes. I shall do more. I shall charge my outfit.
Without this I can never get out of debt. I think it will be
allowed. Congress is too reasonable to expect, where no imprudent
expences are incurred, none but those which are required by a decent
respect to the mantle with which they cover the public servants, that
such expences should be left as a burthen on our private fortunes.
But when writing to you, I fancy myself at Auteuil, and chatter on
till the last page of my paper awakes me from my reverie, and tells
me it is time to assure you of the sincere respect and esteem with
which I have the honour to be Dear Madam your most obedient and most
humble servt.,
P.S. The cask of wine at Auteuil, I take chearfully. I
suppose the seller will apply to me for the price. Otherwise, as I
do not know who he is, I shall not be able to find him out.
THE VAUNTED SCENE
_To Charles Bellini_
_Paris, September 30, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- Your estimable favor, covering a letter to Mr.
Mazzei, came to hand on the 26th instant. The letter to Mr. Mazzei
was put into his hands in the same moment, as he happened to be
present. I leave to him to convey to you all his complaints, as it
will be more agreeable to me to express to you the satisfaction I
received, on being informed of your perfect health. Though I could
not receive the same pleasing news of Mrs. Bellini, yet the
philosophy with which I am told she bears the loss of health, is a
testimony the more, how much she deserved the esteem I bear her.
Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe! It is not
necessary for your information, that I should enter into details
concerning it. But you are, perhaps, curious to know how this new
scene has struck a savage of the mountains of America. Not
advantageously, I assure you. I find the general fate of humanity
here, most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation, offers
itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or
the anvil. It is a true picture of that country to which they say we
shall pass hereafter, and where we are to see God and his angels in
splendor, and crowds of the damned trampled under their feet. While
the great mass of the people are thus suffering under physical and
moral oppression, I have endeavored to examine more nearly the
condition of the great, to appreciate the true value of the
circumstances in their situation, which dazzle the bulk of
spectators, and, especially, to compare it with that degree of
happiness which is enjoyed in America, by every class of people.
Intrigues of love occupy the younger, and those of ambition, the
elder part of the great. Conjugal love having no existence among
them, domestic happiness, of which that is the basis, is utterly
unknown. In lieu of this, are substituted pursuits which nourish and
invigorate all our bad passions, and which offer only moments of
ecstacy, amidst days and months of restlessness and torment. Much,
very much inferior, this, to the tranquil, permanent felicity with
which domestic society in America, blesses most of its inhabitants;
leaving them to follow steadily those pursuits which health and
reason approve, and rendering truly delicious the intervals of those
pursuits.
In science, the mass of the people is two centuries behind
ours; their literati, half a dozen years before us. Books, really
good, acquire just reputation in that time, and so become known to
us, and communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is not
this delay compensated, by our being placed out of the reach of that
swarm of nonsensical publications, which issues daily from a thousand
presses, and perishes almost in issuing? With respect to what are
termed polite manners, without sacrificing too much the sincerity of
language, I would wish my countrymen to adopt just so much of
European politeness, as to be ready to make all those little
sacrifices of self, which really render European manners amiable, and
relieve society from the disagreeable scenes to which rudeness often
subjects it. Here, it seems that a man might pass a life without
encountering a single rudeness. In the pleasures of the table they
are far before us, because, with good taste they unite temperance.
They do not terminate the most sociable meals by transforming
themselves into brutes. I have never yet seen a man drunk in France,
even among the lowest of the people. Were I to proceed to tell you
how much I enjoy their architecture, sculpture, painting, music, I
should want words. It is in these arts they shine. The last of
them, particularly, is an enjoyment, the deprivation of which with
us, cannot be calculated. I am almost ready to say, it is the only
thing which from my heart I envy them, and which, in spite of all the
authority of the Decalogue, I do covet. But I am running on in an
estimate of things infinitely better known to you than to me, and
which will only serve to convince you, that I have brought with me
all the prejudices of country, habit and age. But whatever I may
allow to be charged to me as prejudice, in every other instance, I
have one sentiment at least, founded in reality: it is that of the
perfect esteem which your merit and that of Mrs. Bellini have
produced, and which will for ever enable me to assure you of the
sincere regard, with which I am, Dear Sir,
your friend and servant,
BRITISH HOSTILITY, AMERICAN COMMERCE
_To G. K. van Hogendorp_
_Paris, Oct. 13, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- Having been much engaged lately, I have been
unable sooner to acknolege the receipt of your favor of Sep. 8. What
you are pleased to say on the subject of my Notes is more than they
deserve. The condition in which you first saw them would prove to
you how hastily they had been originally written; as you may remember
the numerous insertions I had made in them from time to time, when I
could find a moment for turning to them from other occupations. I
have never yet seen Monsr. de Buffon. He has been in the country all
the summer. I sent him a copy of the book, & have only heard his
sentiments on one particular of it, that of the identity of the
Mammoth & Elephant. As to this he retains his opinion that they are
the same. If you had formed any considerable expectations from our
Revised code of laws you will be much disappointed. It contains not
more than three or four laws which could strike the attention of the
foreigner. Had it been a digest of all our laws, it would not have
been comprehensible or instructive but to a native. But it is still
less so, as it digests only the British statutes & our own acts of
assembly, which are but a supplementary part of our law. The great
basis of it is anterior to the date of the Magna charta, which is the
oldest statute extant. The only merit of this work is that it may
remove from our book shelves about twenty folio volumes of our
statutes, retaining all the parts of them which either their own
merit or the established system of laws required.
You ask me what are those operations of the British nation
which are likely to befriend us, and how they will produce this
effect? The British government as you may naturally suppose have it
much at heart to reconcile their nation to the loss of America. This
is essential to the repose, perhaps even to the safety of the King &
his ministers. The most effectual engines for this purpose are the
public papers. You know well that that government always kept a kind
of standing army of news writers who without any regard to truth, or
to what should be like truth, invented & put into the papers whatever
might serve the minister. This suffices with the mass of the people
who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true
paragraphs of a newspaper. When forced to acknolege our independance
they were forced to redouble their efforts to keep the nation quiet.
Instead of a few of the papers formerly engaged, they now engaged
every one. No paper therefore comes out without a dose of paragraphs
against America. These are calculated for a secondary purpose also,
that of preventing the emigrations of their people to America. They
dwell very much on American bankruptcies. To explain these would
require a long detail, but would shew you that nine tenths of these
bankruptcies are truly English bankruptcies in no wise chargeable on
America. However they have produced effects the most desirable of
all others for us. They have destroyed our credit & thus checked our
disposition to luxury; & forcing our merchants to buy no more than
they have ready money to pay for, they force them to go to those
markets where that ready money will buy most. Thus you see they
check our luxury, they force us to connect ourselves with all the
world, & they prevent foreign emigrations to our country all of which
I consider as advantageous to us. They are doing us another good
turn. They attempt without disguise to possess themselves of the
carriage of our produce, & to prohibit our own vessels from
participating of it. This has raised a general indignation in
America. The states see however that their constitutions have
provided no means of counteracting it. They are therefore beginning
to invest Congress with the absolute power of regulating their
commerce, only reserving all revenue arising from it to the state in
which it is levied. This will consolidate our federal building very
much, and for this we shall be indebted to the British.
You ask what I think on the expediency of encouraging our
states to be commercial? Were I to indulge my own theory, I should
wish them to practise neither commerce nor navigation, but to stand
with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China. We should
thus avoid wars, and all our citizens would be husbandmen. Whenever
indeed our numbers should so increase as that our produce would
overstock the markets of those nations who should come to seek it,
the farmers must either employ the surplus of their time in
manufactures, or the surplus of our hands must be employed in
manufactures, or in navigation. But that day would, I think be
distant, and we should long keep our workmen in Europe, while Europe
should be drawing rough materials & even subsistence from America.
But this is theory only, & a theory which the servants of America are
not at liberty to follow. Our people have a decided taste for
navigation & commerce. They take this from their mother country: &
their servants are in duty bound to calculate all their measures on
this datum: we wish to do it by throwing open all the doors of
commerce & knocking off its shackles. But as this cannot be done for
others, unless they will do it for us, & there is no great
probability that Europe will do this, I suppose we shall be obliged
to adopt a system which may shackle them in our ports as they do us
in theirs.
With respect to the sale of our lands, that cannot begin till a
considerable portion shall have been surveyed. They cannot begin to
survey till the fall of the leaf of this year, nor to sell probably
till the ensuing spring. So that it will be yet a twelve-month
before we shall be able to judge of the efficacy of our land office
to sink our national debt. It is made a fundamental that the
proceeds shall be solely & sacredly applied as a sinking fund to
discharge the capital only of the debt. It is true that the tobaccos
of Virginia go almost entirely to England. The reason is that they
owe a great debt there which they are paying as fast as they can. --
I think I have now answered your several queries, & shall be happy to
receive your reflections on the same subjects, & at all times to hear
of your welfare & to give you assurances of the esteem with which I
have the honor to be Dear Sir your most obedient & most humble
servant.
ON EUROPEAN EDUCATION
_To John Banister, Jr._
_Paris, October 15, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- I should sooner have answered the paragraph in
your letter, of September the 19th, respecting the best seminary for
the education of youth, in Europe, but that it was necessary for me
to make inquiries on the subject. The result of these has been, to
consider the competition as resting between Geneva and Rome. They
are equally cheap, and probably are equal in the course of education
pursued. The advantage of Geneva, is, that students acquire there
the habit of speaking French. The advantages of Rome, are, the
acquiring a local knowledge of a spot so classical and so celebrated;
the acquiring the true pronunciation of the Latin language; a just
taste in the fine arts, more particularly those of painting,
sculpture, architecture, and music; a familiarity with those objects
and processes of agriculture, which experience has shewn best adapted
to a climate like ours; and lastly, the advantage of a fine climate
for health. It is probable, too, that by being boarded in a French
family, the habit of speaking that language may be obtained. I do
not count on any advantage to be derived in Geneva, from a familiar
acquaintance with the principles of that government. The late
revolution has rendered it a tyrannical aristocracy, more likely to
give ill, than good ideas to an American. I think the balance in
favor of Rome. Pisa is sometimes spoken of, as a place of education.
But it does not offer the first and third of the advantages of Rome.
But why send an American youth to Europe for education? What are the
objects of an useful American education? Classical knowledge, modern
languages, chiefly French, Spanish and Italian; Mathematics, Natural
philosophy, Natural history, Civil history, and Ethics. In Natural
philosophy, I mean to include Chemistry and Agriculture, and in
Natural history, to include Botany, as well as the other branches of
those departments. It is true that the habit of speaking the modern
languages, cannot be so well acquired in America; but every other
article can be as well acquired at William and Mary college, as at
any place in Europe. When college education is done with, and a
young man is to prepare himself for public life, he must cast his
eyes (for America) either on Law or Physic. For the former, where
can he apply so advantageously as to Mr. Wythe? For the latter, he
must come to Europe: the medical class of students, therefore, is the
only one which need come to Europe. Let us view the disadvantages of
sending a youth to Europe. To enumerate them all, would require a
volume. I will select a few. If he goes to England, he learns
drinking, horse racing and boxing. These are the peculiarities of
English education. The following circumstances are common to
education in that, and the other countries of Europe. He acquires a
fondness for European luxury and dissipation, and a contempt for the
simplicity of his own country; he is fascinated with the privileges
of the European aristocrats, and sees, with abhorrence, the lovely
equality which the poor enjoy with the rich, in his own country; he
contracts a partiality for aristocracy or monarchy; he forms foreign
friendships which will never be useful to him, and loses the season
of life for forming in his own country, those friendships, which, of
all others, are the most faithful and permanent; he is led by the
strongest of all the human passions, into a spirit for female
intrigue, destructive of his own and others' happiness, or a passion
for whores, destructive of his health, and, in both cases, learns to
consider fidelity to the marriage bed as an ungentlemanly practice,
and inconsistent with happiness; he recollects the voluptuary dress
and arts of the European women, and pities and despises the chaste
affections and simplicity of those of his own country; he retains,
through life, a fond recollection, and a hankering after those
places, which were the scenes of his first pleasures and of his first
connections; he returns to his own country, a foreigner, unacquainted
with the practices of domestic economy, necessary to preserve him
from ruin, speaking and writing his native tongue as a foreigner, and
therefore unqualified to obtain those distinctions, which eloquence
of the pen and tongue ensures in a free country; for I would observe
to you, that what is called style in writing or speaking, is formed
very early in life, while the imagination is warm, and impressions
are permament. I am of opinion, that there never was an instance of
a man's writing or speaking his native tongue with elegance, who
passed from fifteen to twenty years of age, out of the country where
it was spoken. Thus, no instance exists of a person's writing two
languages perfectly. That will always appear to be his native
language, which was most familiar to him in his youth. It appears to
me then, that an American coming to Europe for education, loses in
his knowledge, in his morals, in his health, in his habits, and in
his happiness. I had entertained only doubts on this head, before I
came to Europe: what I see and hear, since I came here, proves more
than I had even suspected. Cast your eye over America: who are the
men of most learning, of most eloquence, most beloved by their
countrymen, and most trusted and promoted by them? They are those
who have been educated among them, and whose manners, morals and
habits, are perfectly homogeneous with those of the country.
Did you expect by so short a question, to draw such a sermon on
yourself? I dare say you did not. But the consequences of foreign
education are alarming to me, as an American. I sin, therefore,
through zeal, whenever I enter on the subject. You are sufficiently
American to pardon me for it. Let me hear of your health, and be
assured of the esteem with which I am, Dear Sir,
your friend and servant,
PROPERTY AND NATURAL RIGHT
_To James Madison_
_Fontainebleau, Oct. 28, 1785_
DEAR SIR, -- Seven o'clock, and retired to my fireside, I have
determined to enter into conversation with you. This is a village of
about 15,000 inhabitants when the court is not here, and 20,000 when
they are, occupying a valley through which runs a brook and on each
side of it a ridge of small mountains, most of which are naked rock.
The King comes here, in the fall always, to hunt. His court attend
him, as do also the foreign diplomatic corps; but as this is not
indispensably required and my finances do not admit the expense of a
continued residence here, I propose to come occasionally to attend
the King's levees, returning again to Paris, distant forty miles.
This being the first trip, I set out yesterday morning to take a view
of the place. For this purpose I shaped my course towards the
highest of the mountains in sight, to the top of which was about a
league.
As soon as I had got clear of the town I fell in with a poor
woman walking at the same rate with myself and going the same course.
Wishing to know the condition of the laboring poor I entered into
conversation with her, which I began by enquiries for the path which
would lead me into the mountain: and thence proceeded to enquiries
into her vocation, condition and circumstances. She told me she was
a day laborer at 8 sous or 4d. sterling the day: that she had two
children to maintain, and to pay a rent of 30 livres for her house
(which would consume the hire of 75 days), that often she could no
employment and of course was without bread. As we had walked
together near a mile and she had so far served me as a guide, I gave
her, on parting, 24 sous. She burst into tears of a gratitude which
I could perceive was unfeigned because she was unable to utter a
word. She had probably never before received so great an aid. This
little _attendrissement_, with the solitude of my walk, led me into a
train of reflections on that unequal division of property which
occasions the numberless instances of wretchedness which I had
observed in this country and is to be observed all over Europe.
The property of this country is absolutely concentred in a very
few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year
downwards. These employ the flower of the country as servants, some
of them having as many as 200 domestics, not laboring. They employ
also a great number of manufacturers and tradesmen, and lastly the
class of laboring husbandmen. But after all there comes the most
numerous of all classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I
asked myself what could be the reason so many should be permitted to
beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very
considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are
undisturbed only for the sake of game. It should seem then that it
must be because of the enormous wealth of the proprietors which
places them above attention to the increase of their revenues by
permitting these lands to be labored. I am conscious that an equal
division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this
enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind,
legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,
only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the
natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of
every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and
sisters, or other relations in equal degree, is a politic measure and
a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the
inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain
point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical
progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country
uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of
property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The
earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If
for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we
must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded
from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor
the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our
country to say that every man who cannot find employment, but who can
find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a
moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible
means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of
land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
The next object which struck my attention in my walk was the
deer with which the wood abounded. They were of the kind called
"Cerfs," and not exactly of the same species with ours. They are
blackish indeed under the belly, and not white as ours, and they are
more of the chestnut red; but these are such small differences as
would be sure to happen in two races from the same stock breeding
separately a number of ages. Their hares are totally different from
the animals we call by that name; but their rabbit is almost exactly
like him. The only difference is in their manners; the land on which
I walked for some time being absolutely reduced to a honeycomb by
their burrowing. I think there is no instance of ours burrowing.
After descending the hill again I saw a man cutting fern. I went to
him under pretence of asking the shortest road to town, and
afterwards asked for what use he was cutting fern. He told me that
this part of the country furnished a great deal of fruit to Paris.
That when packed in straw it acquired an ill taste, but that dry fern
preserved it perfectly without communicating any taste at all.
I treasured this observation for the preservation of my apples
on my return to my own country. They have no apples here to compare
with our Redtown pippin. They have nothing which deserves the name
of a peach; there being not sun enough to ripen the plum-peach and
the best of their soft peaches being like our autumn peaches. Their
cherries and strawberries are fair, but I think lack flavor. Their
plums I think are better; so also their gooseberries, and the pears
infinitely beyond anything we possess. They have nothing better than
our sweet-water; but they have a succession of as good from early in
the summer till frost. I am to-morrow to get [to] M. Malsherbes (an
uncle of the Chevalier Luzerne's) about seven leagues from hence, who
is the most curious man in France as to his trees. He is making for
me a collection of the vines from which the Burgundy, Champagne,
Bordeaux, Frontignac, and other of the most valuable wines of this
country are made. Another gentleman is collecting for me the best
eating grapes, including what we call the raisin. I propose also to
endeavor to colonize their hare, rabbit, red and grey partridge,
pheasants of different kinds, and some other birds. But I find that
I am wandering beyond the limits of my walk and will therefore bid
you adieu. Yours affectionately.
"OUR CONFEDERACY . . . THE NEST"
_To Archibald Stuart_
_Paris, Jan. 25, 1786_
DEAR SIR, -- I have received your favor of the 17th of October,
which though you mention as the third you have written me, is the
first which has come to hand. I sincerely thank you for the
communications it contains. Nothing is so grateful to me at this
distance as details both great & small of what is passing in my own
country. Of the latter we receive little here, because they either
escape my correspondents or are thought unworthy notice. This
however is a very mistaken opinion, as every one may observe by
recollecting that when he has been long absent from his neighborhood
the small news of that is the most pleasing and occupies his first
attention either when he meets with a person from thence, or returns
thither himself. I shall hope therefore that the letter in which you
have been so good as to give me the minute occurrences in the
neighborhood of Monticello may yet come to hand. And I venture to
rely on the many proofs of friendship I have received from you, for a
continuance of your favors. This will be the most meritorious as I
have nothing to give you in exchange. The quiet of Europe at this
moment furnishes little which can attract your notice. Nor will that
quiet be soon disturbed, at least for the current year. Perhaps it
hangs on the life of the K. of Prussia, and that hangs by a very
slender thread. American reputation in Europe is not such as to be
flattering to its citizens. Two circumstances are particularly
objected to us, the nonpaiment of our debts, and the want of energy
in our government. These discourage a connection with us. I own it
to be my opinion that good will arise from the destruction of our
credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to
luxury, and the loss of those manners which alone can preserve
republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the
best way would be to cure it's ill effects by giving an instantaneous
recovery to the creditor; this would be reducing purchases on credit
to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a poison painted
on everything he wished but had not ready money to pay for. I fear
from an expression in your letter that the people of Kentucke think
of separating not only from Virginia (in which they are right) but
also from the confederacy. I own I should think this a most
calametous event, and such an one as every good citizen on both sides
should set himself against. Our present federal limits are not too
large for good government, nor will the increase of votes in Congress
produce any ill effect. On the contrary it will drown the little
divisions at present existing there. Our confederacy must be viewed
as the nest from which all America, North & South is to be peopled.
We should take care too, not to think it for the interest of that
great continent to press too soon on the Spaniards. Those countries
cannot be in better hands. My fear is that they are too feeble to
hold them till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it
from them piece by piece. The navigation of the Mississippi we must
have. This is all we are as yet ready to receive. I have made
acquaintance with a very sensible candid gentleman here who was in
South America during the revolt which took place there while our
revolution was working. He says that those disturbances (of which we
scarcely heard anything) cost on both sides an hundred thousand
lives. -- I have made a particular acquaintance here with Monsieur
de Buffon, and have a great desire to give him the best idea I can of
our elk. Perhaps your situation may enable you to aid me in this.
Were it possible, you could not oblige me more than by sending me the
horns, skeleton, & skin of an elk. The most desireable form of
receiving them would be to have the skin slit from the under paw
along the belly to the tail, & down the thighs to the knee, to take
the animal out, leaving the legs and hoofs, the bones of the head, &
the horns attached to the skin by sewing up the belly & shipping the
skin it would present the form of the animal. However as an
opportunity of doing this is scarcely expected I shall be glad to
receive them detached, packed in a box, & sent to Richmond to the
care of Doctor Currie. Every thing of this kind is precious here,
and to prevent my adding to your trouble I must close my letter with
assurances of the esteem & attachment with which I am Dr Sir Your
friend & servt.
P. S. I must add a prayer for some Peccan nuts, 100, if
possible, to be packed in a box of sand and sent me. They might come
either directly or via N. York.
A ROMAN TEMPLE FOR VIRGINA
_To William Buchanan and James Hay_
_Paris, January 26, 1786_
GENTLEMEN, -- I had the honor of writing to you, on the receipt
of your orders to procure draughts for the public buildings, and
again, on the 13th of August. In the execution of these orders, two
methods of proceeding presented themselves to my mind. The one was,
to leave to some architect to draw an external according to his
fancy, in which way, experience shews, that, about once in a thousand
times, a pleasing form is hit upon; the other was, to take some model
already devised, and approved by the general suffrage of the world.
I had no hesitation in deciding that the latter was best, nor after
the decision, was there any doubt what model to take. There is at
Nismes, in the south of France, a building called the Maison quarree,
erected in the time of the Caesars, and which is allowed, without
contradiction, to be the most perfect and precious remain of
antiquity in existence. Its superiority over any thing at Rome, in
Greece, at Balbec or Palmyra, is allowed on all hands; and this
single object has placed Nismes in the general tour of travellers.
Having not yet had leisure to visit it, I could only judge of it from
drawings, and from the relation of numbers who had been to see it. I
determined, therefore, to adopt this model, and to have all its
proportions justly observed. As it was impossible for a foreign
artist to know, what number and sizes of apartments would suit the
different corps of our government, nor how they should be connected
with one another, I undertook to form that arrangement, and this
being done, I committed them to an architect (Monsieur Clerissault)
who had studied this art twenty years in Rome, who had particularly
studied and measured the Maison quarree of Nismes, and had published
a book containing most excellent plans, descriptions, and
observations on it. He was too well acquainted with the merit of
that building, to find himself restrained by my injunctions not to
depart from his model. In one instance, only, he persuaded me to
admit of this. That was, to make the portico two columns deep only,
instead of three, as the original is. His reason was, that this
latter depth would too much darken the apartments. Economy might be
added, as a second reason. I consented to it, to satisfy him, and
the plans are so drawn. I knew that it would still be easy to
execute the building with a depth of three columns, and it is what I
would certainly recommend. We know that the Maison quarree has
pleased, universally, for near two thousand years. By leaving out a
column, the proportions will be changed, and perhaps the effect may
be injured more than is expected. What is good, is often spoiled by
trying to making it better.
The present is the first opportunity which has occurred of
sending the plans. You will, accordingly, receive herewith the
ground plan, the elevation of the front, and the elevation of the
side. The architect having been much busied, and knowing that this
was all which would be necessary in the beginning, has not yet
finished the sections of the building. They must go by some future
occasion, as well as the models of the front and side, which are
making in plaister of Paris. These were absolutely necessary for the
guide of workmen, not very expert in their art. It will add
considerably to the expense, and I would not have incurred it, but
that I was sensible of its necessity. The price of the model will be
fifteen guineas. I shall know in a few days, the cost of the
drawings, which probably will be the triple of the model: however,
this is but conjecture. I will make it as small as possible, pay it,
and render you an account in my next letter. You will find, on
examination, that the body of this building covers an area, but two
fifths of that which is proposed and begun; of course, it will take
but about one half the bricks; and, of course, this circumstance will
enlist all the workmen, and people of the art against the plan.
Again, the building begun, is to have four porticoes; this but one.
It is true that this will be deeper than those were probably
proposed, but even if it be made three columns deep, it will not take
half the number of columns. The beauty of this is insured by
experience, and by the suffrage of the whole world: the beauty of
that is problematical, as is every drawing, however well it looks on
paper, till it be actually executed: and though I suppose there is
more room in the plan begun, than in that now sent, yet there is
enough in this for all the three branches of government, and more
than enough is not wanted. This contains sixteen rooms; to wit, four
on the first floor, for the General Court, Delegates, lobby, and
conference. Eight on the second floor, for the Executive, the
Senate, and six rooms for committees and juries: and over four of
these smaller rooms of the second floor, are four mezzininos or
entresols, serving as offices for the clerks of the Executive, the
Senate, the Delegates, and the Court in actual session. It will be
an objection, that the work is begun on the other plan. But the
whole of this need not be taken to pieces, and of what shall be taken
to pieces, the bricks will do for inner work. Mortar never becomes
so hard and adhesive to the bricks, in a few months, but that it may
be easily chipped off. And upon the whole, the plan now sent will
save a great proportion of the expense.
Hitherto, I have spoken of the capitol only. The plans for the
prison, also, accompany this. They will explain themselves. I send,
also, the plan of the prison proposed at Lyons, which was sent me by
the architect, and to which we are indebted for the fundamental idea
of ours. You will see, that of a great thing a very small one is
made. Perhaps you may find it convenient to build, at first, only
two sides, forming an L; but of this, you are the best judges. It
has been suggested to me, that fine gravel, mixed in the mortar,
prevents the prisoners from cutting themselves out, as that will
destroy their tools. In my letter of August the 13th, I mentioned
that I could send workmen from hence. As I am in hopes of receiving
your orders precisely, in answer to that letter, I shall defer
actually engaging any, till I receive them. In like manner, I shall
defer having plans drawn for a Governor's house, &c., till further
orders; only assuring you, that the receiving and executing these
orders, will always give me a very great pleasure, and the more,
should I find that what I have done meets your approbation.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect
esteem, gentlemen,
your most obedient and
most humble servant,
THE NOTES, HOUDON, AND THE ENCYCLOPEDIE
_To James Madison_
_Paris, Feb. 8, 1786_
DEAR SIR, -- My last letters have been of the 1st & 20th of
Sep. and the 28th of Oct. Yours unacknowledged are of Aug. 20, Oct.
3, & Nov. 15. I take this the first safe opportunity of enclosing to
you the bills of lading for your books, & two others for your
namesake of Williamsburgh & for the attorney which I will pray you to
forward. I thank you for the communication of the remonstrance
against the assessment. Mazzei who is now in Holland promised me to
have it published in the Leyden gazette. It will do us great honour.
I wish it may be as much approved by our assembly as by the wisest
part of Europe. I have heard with great pleasure that our assembly
have come to the resolution of giving the regulation of their
commerce to the federal head. I will venture to assert that there is
not one of it's opposers who, placed on this ground, would not see
the wisdom of this measure. The politics of Europe render it
indispensably necessary that with respect to everything external we
be one nation only, firmly hooped together. Interior government is
what each state should keep to itself. If it could be seen in Europe
that all our states could be brought to concur in what the Virginia
assembly has done, it would produce a total revolution in their
opinion of us, and respect for us. And it should ever be held in
mind that insult & war are the consequences of a want of
respectability in the national character. As long as the states
exercise separately those acts of power which respect foreign
nations, so long will there continue to be irregularities committing
by some one or other of them which will constantly keep us on an ill
footing with foreign nations.
I thank you for your information as to my Notes. The copies I
have remaining shall be sent over to be given to some of my friends
and to select subjects in the college. I have been unfortunate here
with this trifle. I gave out a few copies only, & to confidential
persons, writing in every copy a restraint against it's publication.
Among others I gave a copy to a Mr. Williamos. He died. I
immediately took every precaution I could to recover this copy. But
by some means or other a bookseller had got hold of it. He employed
a hireling translator and was about publishing it in the most
injurious form possible. An Abbe Morellet, a man of letters here to
whom I had given a copy, got notice of this. He had translated some
passages for a particular purpose: and he compounded with the
bookseller to translate & give him the whole, on his declining the
first publication. I found it necessary to confirm this, and it will
be published in French, still mutilated however in it's freest parts.
I am now at a loss what to do as to England. Everything, good or
bad, is thought worth publishing there; and I apprehend a translation
back from the French, and a publication there. I rather believe it
will be most eligible to let the original come out in that country;
but am not yet decided.
I have purchased little for you in the book way, since I sent
the catalogue of my former purchases. I wish first to have your
answer to that, and your information what parts of those purchases
went out of your plan. You can easily say buy more of this kind,
less of that &c. My wish is to conform myself to yours. I can get
for you the original Paris edition in folio of the Encyclopedie for
620 livres, 35. vols.; a good edn in 39 vols, 4to, for 380#; and a
good one in 39 vols 8vo, for 280#. The new one will be superior in
far the greater number of articles: but not in all. And the
possession of the ancient one has moreover the advantage of supplying
present use. I have bought one for myself, but wait your orders as
to you. I remember your purchase of a watch in Philadelphia. If it
should not have proved good, you can probably sell her. In that case
I can get for you here, one made as perfect as human art can make it
for about 24 louis. I have had such a one made by the best & most
faithful hand in Paris. It has a second hand, but no repeating, no
day of the month, nor other useless thing to impede and injure the
movements which are necessary. For 12 louis more you can have in the
same cover, but on the back side & absolutely unconnected with the
movements of the watch, a pedometer which shall render you an exact
account of the distances you walk. Your pleasure hereon shall be
awaited.
Houdon is returned. He called on me the other day to
remonstrate against the inscription proposed for Genl W.'s statue.
He says it is too long to be put on the pedestal. I told him I was
not at liberty to permit any alteration, but I would represent his
objection to a friend who could judge of it's validity, and whether a
change could be authorized. This has been the subject of
conversations here, and various devices & inscriptions have been
suggested. The one which has appeared best to me may be translated
as follows: "Behold, Reader, the form of George Washington. For his
worth, ask History: that will tell it, when this stone shall have
yielded to the decays of time. His country erects this monument:
Houdon makes it." This for one side. On the 2d represent the
evacuation of Boston with the motto "Hostibus primum fugatis." On the
3d the capture of the Hessians with "Hostibus iterum devictis." On
the 4th the surrender of York, with "Hostibus ultimum debellatis."
This is seizing the three most brilliant actions of his military
life. By giving out here a wish of receiving mottos for this statue,
we might have thousands offered, of which still better might be
chosen. The artist made the same objection of length to the
inscription for the bust of the M. de la Fayette. An alteration of
that might come in time still, if an alteration was wished. However
I am not certain that it is desirable in either case. The state of
Georgia has given 20.000 acres of land to the Count d' Estaing. This
gift is considered here as very honourable to him, and it has
gratified him much. I am persuaded that a gift of lands by the state
of Virginia to the Marquis de la Fayette would give a good opinion
here of our character, and would reflect honour on the Marquis. Nor
am I sure that the day will not come when it might be an useful
asylum to him. The time of life at which he visited America was too
well adapted to receive good & lasting impressions to permit him ever
to accommodate himself to the principles of monarchical government;
and it will need all his own prudence & that of his friends to make
this country a safe residence for him. How glorious, how comfortable
in reflection will it be to have prepared a refuge for him in case of
a reverse. In the meantime he could settle it with tenants from the
freest part of this country, Bretagny. I have never suggested the
smallest idea of this kind to him: because the execution of it should
convey the first notice. If the state has not a right to give him
lands with their own officers, they could buy up at cheap prices the
shares of others. I am not certain however whether in the public or
private opinion, a similar gift to Count Rochambeau could be
dispensed with. If the state could give to both, it would be better:
but in any event, I think they should to the Marquis. C. Rochambeau
too has really deserved more attention than he has received. Why not
set up his bust, that of Gates, Greene, Franklin in your new capitol?
A propos of the Capitol. Do my dear friend exert yourself to get the
plan begun on set aside, & that adopted which was drawn here. It was
taken from a model which has been the admiration of 16. centuries,
which has been the object of as many pilgrimages as the tomb of
Mahomet: which will give unrivalled honour to our state, and furnish
a model whereon to form the taste of our young men. It will cost
much less too than the one begun, because it does not cover one half
the Area. Ask, if you please, a sight of my letter of Jan. 26 to
Messrs. Buchanan & Hay, which will spare me the repeating its
substance here.
Everything is quiet in Europe. I recollect but one new
invention in the arts which is worth mentioning. It is a mixture of
the arts of engraving & printing, rendering both cheaper. Write or
draw anything on a plate of brass with the ink of the inventor, and
in half an hour he gives you engraved copies of it so perfectly like
the original that they could not be suspected to be copies. His
types for printing a whole page are all in one solid piece. An
author therefore only prints a few copies of his work from time to
time as they are called for. This saves the loss of printing more
copies than may possibly be sold, and prevents an edition from being
ever exhausted.
I am with a lively esteem Dear Sir, your sincere friend &
servant.
P. S. Could you procure & send me an hundred or two nuts of the
peccan? they would enable me to oblige some characters here whom I
should be much gratified to oblige. They should come packed in sand.
The seeds of the sugar maple too would be a great present.
BRITISH ARTS AND BRITISH HATRED
_To John Page_
_Paris, May 4, 1786_
DEAR SIR, -- Your two favours of Mar 15 and Aug 23, 1785, by
Monsieur de la Croix came to hand on the 15th of November. His
return gives me an opportunity of sending you a copy of the nautical
almanacs for 1786, 7, 8, 9. There is no late and interesting
publication here, or I would send it by the same conveiance. With
these almanacs I pack a copy of some Notes I wrote for Monsr de
Marbois in the year 1781, of which I had a few printed here. They
were written in haste & for his private inspection. A few friends
having asked copies I found it cheaper to print than to write them.
One of these got into the hands of a bookseller who getting a bad
translation of them made, obliged me to consent that they should
appear on condition of their being translated by a better hand. I
apprehend therefore they will get further than I intended: tho' as
yet they are in few hands. They will offer nothing new to you, not
even as an oblation of my friendship for you which is as old almost
as we are ourselves. Mazzei brought me your favor of Apr 28. I
thank you much for your communications. Nothing can be more grateful
at such a distance. It is unfortunate that most people think the
occurrences passing daily under their eyes, are either known to all
the world, or not worth being known. They therefore do not give them
place in their letters. I hope you will be so good as to continue
your friendly information. The proceedings of our public bodies, the
progress of the public mind on interesting questions, the casualties
which happen among our private friends, and whatever is interesting
to yourself and family will always be anxiously received by me.
There is one circumstance in the work you were concerned in which has
not yet come to my knowledge, to wit how far Westward from Fort Pitt
does the Western boundary of Pennsylvania pass, and where does it
strike the Ohio? The proposition you mention from Mr. Anderson on
the purchase of tobacco, I would have made use of, but that I have
engaged the abuses of the tobacco trade on a more general scale. I
confess their redress does not appear with any certainty: but till I
see all hope of removing the evil by the roots, I cannot propose to
prune it's branches.
I returned but three or four days ago from a two months trip to
England. I traversed that country much, and own both town & country
fell short of my expectations. Comparing it with this, I found a
much greater proportion of barrens, a soil in other parts not
naturally so good as this, not better cultivated, but better manured,
& therefore more productive. This proceeds from the practice of long
leases there, and short ones here. The labouring people here are
poorer than in England. They pay about one half their produce in
rent, the English in general about a third. The gardening in that
country is the article in which it surpasses all the earth. I mean
their pleasure gardening. This indeed went far beyond my ideas. The
city of London, tho' handsomer than Paris, is not so handsome as
Philadelphia. Their architecture is in the most wretched stile I
ever saw, not meaning to except America where it is bad, nor even
Virginia where it is worse than in any other part of America, which I
have seen. The mechanical arts in London are carried to a wonderful
perfection. But of these I need not speak, because of them my
countrymen have unfortunately too many samples before their eyes. I
consider the extravagance which has seized them as a more baneful
evil than toryism was during the war. It is the more so as the
example is set by the best and most amiable characters among us.
Would that a missionary appear who would make frugality the basis of
his religious system, and go thro the land preaching it up as the
only road to salvation, I would join his school tho' not generally
disposed to seek my religion out of the dictates of my own reason &
feelings of my own heart. These things have been more deeply
impressed on my mind by what I have heard & seen in England. That
nation hates us, their ministers hate us, and their King more than
all other men. They have the impudence to avow this, tho' they
acknolege our trade important to them. But they say we cannot
prevent our countrymen from bringing that into their laps. A
conviction of this determines them to make no terms of commerce with
us. They say they will pocket our carrying trade as well as their
own. Our overtures of commercial arrangement have been treated with
a derision which shows their firm persuasion that we shall never
unite to suppress their commerce or even to impede it. I think their
hostility towards us is much more deeply rooted at present than
during the war. In the arts the most striking thing I saw there,
new, was the application of the principle of the steam-engine to
grist mills. I saw 8 pr. of stones which are worked by steam, and
they are to set up 30 pair in the same house. A hundred bushels of
coal a day are consumed at present. I do not know in what proportion
the consumption will be increased by the additional geer.
Be so good as to present my respects to Mrs. Page & your
family, to W. Lewis, F. Willis & their families and to accept
yourself assurances of the sincere regard with which I am Dr Sir your
affectionate friend & servt.
P. S. Mazzei is still here and will publish soon a book on the
subject of America.
WAR ON BARBARY
_To John Adams_
_Paris, July 11, 1786_
DEAR SIR -- Our instructions relative to the Barbary states
having required us to proceed by way of negotiation to obtain their
peace, it became our duty to do this to the best of our power.
Whatever might be our private opinions, they were to be suppressed,
and the line marked out to us, was to be followed. It has been so
honestly, and zealously. It was therefore never material for us to
consult together on the best plan of conduct towards these states. I
acknolege I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace
thro' the medium of war. Tho' it is a question with which we have
nothing to do, yet as you propose some discussion of it I shall
trouble you with my reasons. Of the 4. positions laid down in your
letter of the 3d. instant, I agree to the three first, which are in
substance that the good offices of our friends cannot procure us a
peace without paying it's price, that they cannot materially lessen
that price, and that paying it, we can have the peace in spight of
the intrigues of our enemies. As to the 4th. that the longer the
negotiation is delayed the larger will be the demand, this will
depend on the intermediate captures: if they are many and rich the
price may be raised; if few and poor it will be lessened. However if
it is decided that we shall buy a peace, I know no reason for
delaying the operation, but should rather think it ought to be
hastened. But I should prefer the obtaining it by war. 1. Justice
is in favor of this opinion. 2. Honor favors it. 3. It will procure
us respect in Europe, and respect is a safe-guard to interest. 4. It
will arm the federal head with the safest of all the instruments of
coercion over their delinquent members and prevent them from using
what would be less safe. I think that so far you go with me. But in
the next steps we shall differ. 5. I think it least expensive. 6.
Equally effectual. I ask a fleet of 150. guns, the one half of which
shall be in constant cruise. This fleet built, manned and victualled
for 6. months will cost 450,000 pound sterling. It's annual expence
is 300 pound sterl. a gun, including every thing: this will be 45,000
pound sterl. a year. I take British experience for the basis of my
calculations, tho' we know, from our own experience, that we can do,
in this way, for pounds lawful, what costs them pounds sterling.
Were we to charge all this to the Algerine war it would amount to
little more than we must pay if we buy peace. But as it is proper
and necessary that we should establish a small marine force (even
were we to buy a peace from the Algerines,) and as that force laid up
in our dockyards would cost us half as much annually as if kept in
order for service, we have a right to say that only 22,500 pound
sterl. per ann. should be charged to the Algerine war. 6. It will
be as effectual. To all the mismanagements of Spain and Portugal
urged to shew that war against those people is ineffectual, I urge a
single fact to prove the contrary where there is any management.
About 40. year ago, the Algerines having broke their treaty with
France, this court sent Monsr. de Massac with one large and two small
frigates, he blockaded the harbour of Algiers three months, and they
subscribed to the terms he dictated. If it be admitted however that
war, on the fairest prospects, is still exposed to incertainties, I
weigh against this the greater incertainty of the duration of a peace
bought with money, from such a people, from a Dey 80. years old, and
by a nation who, on the hypothesis of buying peace, is to have no
power on the sea to enforce an observance of it.
So far I have gone on the supposition that the whole weight of
this war would rest on us. But 1. Naples will join us. The
character of their naval minister (Acton), his known sentiments with
respect to the peace Spain is officiously trying to make for them,
and his dispositions against the Algerines give the greatest reason
to believe it. 2. Every principle of reason tells us Portugal will
join us. I state this as taking for granted, what all seem to
believe, that they will not be at peace with Algiers. I suppose then
that a Convention might be formed between Portugal, Naples and the
U.S. by which the burthen of the war might be quotaed on them
according to their respective wealth, and the term of it should be
when Algiers should subscribe to a peace with all three on equal
terms. This might be left open for other nations to accede to, and
many, if not most of the powers of Europe (except France, England,
Holland and Spain if her peace be made) would sooner or later enter
into the confederacy, for the sake of having their peace with the
Pyratical states guarantied by the whole. I suppose that in this
case our proportion of force would not be the half of what I first
calculated on.
These are the reasons which have influenced my judgment on this
question. I give them to you to shew you that I am imposed on by a
semblance of reason at least, and not with an expectation of their
changing your opinion. You have viewed the subject, I am sure in all
it's bearings. You have weighed both questions with all their
circumstances. You make the result different from what I do. The
same facts impress us differently. This is enough to make me suspect
an error in my process of reasoning tho' I am not able to detect it.
It is of no consequence; as I have nothing to say in the decision,
and am ready to proceed heartily on any other plan which may be
adopted, if my agency should be thought useful. With respect to the
dispositions of the states I am utterly uninformed. I cannot help
thinking however that on a view of all circumstances, they might be
united in either of the plans.
Having written this on the receipt of your letter, without
knowing of any opportunity of sending it, I know not when it will go:
I add nothing therefore on any other subject but assurances of the
sincere esteem and respect with which I am Dear Sir your friend and
servant,
"A CRUSADE AGAINST IGNORANCE"
_To George Wythe_
_Paris, August 13, 1786_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favors of Jan. 10 & Feb. 10, came to hand on
the 20th & 2d of May. I availed myself of the first opportunity
which occurred, by a gentleman going to England, of sending to Mr.
Joddrel a copy of the Notes on our country, with a line informing him
that it was you who had emboldened me to take that liberty. Madison,
no doubt, informed you of the reason why I had sent only a single
copy to Virginia. Being assured by him that they will not do the
harm I had apprehended, but on the contrary may do some good, I
propose to send thither the copies remaining on hand, which are fewer
than I had intended. But of the numerous corrections they need,
there are one or two so essential that I must have them made, by
printing a few new leaves & substituting them for the old. This will
be done while they are engraving a map which I have constructed of
the country from Albemarle sound to Lake Erie, & which will be
inserted in the book. A bad French translation which is getting out
here, will probably oblige me to publish the original more freely,
which it neither deserved nor was ever intended. Your wishes, which
are laws to me, will justify my destining a copy for you, otherwise I
should as soon have thought of sending you a hornbook; for there is
no truth there that which is not familiar to you, and it's errors I
should hardly have proposed to treat you with.
Immediately on the receipt of your letter, I wrote to a
correspondent at Florence to inquire after the family of Tagliaferro
as you desired. I received his answer two days ago, a copy of which
I now inclose. The original shall be sent by some other occasion. I
will have the copper-plate immediately engraved. This may be ready
within a few days, but the probability is that I shall be long
getting an opportunity of sending it to you, as these rarely occur.
You do not mention the size of the plate but, presuming it is
intended for labels for the inside of books, I shall have it made of
a proper size for that. I shall omit the word _agisos_, according to
the license you allow me, because I think the beauty of a motto is to
condense much matter in as few words as possible. The word omitted
will be supplied by every reader. The European papers have announced
that the assembly of Virginia were occupied on the revisal of their
code of laws. This, with some other similar intelligence, has
contributed much to convince the people of Europe, that what the
English papers are constantly publishing of our anarchy, is false; as
they are sensible that such a work is that of a people only who are
in perfect tranquillity. Our act for freedom of religion is
extremely applauded. The ambassadors & ministers of the several
nations of Europe resident at this court have asked of me copies of
it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in
several books now in the press; among others, in the new
Encyclopedie. I think it will produce considerable good even in
these countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty, & oppression
of body & mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of
the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped. If
the Almighty had begotten a thousand sons, instead of one, they would
not have sufficed for this task. If all the sovereigns of Europe
were to set themselves to work to emancipate the minds of their
subjects from their present ignorance & prejudices, & that as
zealously as they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would
not place them on that high ground on which our common people are now
setting out. Ours could not have been so fairly put into the hands
of their own common sense had they not been separated from their
parent stock & kept from contamination, either from them, or the
other people of the old world, by the intervention of so wide an
ocean. To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here.
I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for
the diffusion of knowlege among the people. No other sure foundation
can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If
anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators
of the public happiness send them here. It is the best school in the
universe to cure them of that folly. They will see here with their
own eyes that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy
against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of
their effect cannot be better proved than in this country
particularly, where notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the
finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the
most gay and amiable character of which the human form is
susceptible, where such a people I say, surrounded by so many
blessings from nature, are yet loaded with misery by kings, nobles
and priests, and by them alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade
against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the
common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can
protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid
for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be
paid to kings, priests & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave
the people in ignorance. The people of England, I think, are less
oppressed than here. But it needs but half an eye to see, when among
them, that the foundation is laid in their dispositions for the
establishment of a despotism. Nobility, wealth & pomp are the
objects of their adoration. They are by no means the free-minded
people we suppose them in America. Their learned men too are few in
number, and are less learned and infinitely less emancipated from
prejudice than those of this country. An event too seems to be
preparing, in the order of things, which will probably decide the
fate of that country. It is no longer doubtful that the harbour of
Cherburg will be complete, that it will be a most excellent one, &
capacious enough to hold the whole navy of France. Nothing has ever
been wanting to enable this country to invade that, but a naval force
conveniently stationed to protect the transports. This change of
situation must oblige the English to keep up a great standing army,
and there is no King, who, with sufficient force, is not always ready
to make himself absolute. My paper warns me it is time to recommend
myself to the friendly recollection of Mrs. Wythe, of Colo.
Tagliaferro & his family & particularly of Mr. R. T.; and to assure
you of the affectionate esteem with which I am Dear Sir your friend
and servt.
EDUACTION OF A FUTURE SON-IN-LAW
_To Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr._
_Paris, Aug. 27, 1786_
DEAR SIR, -- I am honoured with your favour of the 16th
instant, and desirous, without delay, of manifesting my wishes to be
useful to you I shall venture to you some thoughts on the course of
your studies, which must be submitted to the better choice with which
you are surrounded. A longer race through life may have entitled me
to seize some truths which have not yet been presented to your
observation & more intimate knowledge of the country in which you are
to live & of the circumstances in which you will be placed, may
enable me to point your attention to the branches of science which
will administer the most to your happiness there. The foundations
which you have laid in languages and mathematics are proper for every
superstructure. The former exercises our memory while that and no
other faculty is yet matured & prevents our acquiring habits of
idleness. The latter gives exercise to our reason, as soon as that
has acquired a certain degree of strength, and stores the mind with
truths which are useful in other branches of science. At this moment
then a second order of preparation is to commence. I shall propose
to you that it be extensive, comprehending Astronomy, Natural
Philosophy (or Physics), Natural History, Anatomy, Botany &
Chemistry. No inquisitive mind will be content to be ignorant of any
of these branches. But I would advise you to be contented with a
course of lectures in most of them, without attempting to make
yourself master of the whole. This is more than any genius joined to
any length of life is equal to. You will find among them some one
study to which your mind will more particularly attach itself. This
then I would pursue & propose to attain eminence in. Your own
country furnishes the most aliment for Natural History, Botany &
Physics & as you express a fondness for the former you might make it
your principal object, endeavoring however to make yourself more
acquainted with the two latter than with other branches likely to be
less useful. In fact you will find botany offering it's charms to
you at every step -- during summer & Physics in every season. All
these branches of science will be better attained by attending
courses of lectures in them. You are now in a place where the best
courses upon earth are within your reach and being delivered in your
native language -- you lose no part of their benefit. Such an
opportunity you will never again have. I would therefore strongly
press on you to fix no other limit to your stay in Edinborough than
your having got thro this whole course. The omission of any one part
of it will be an affliction & loss to you as long as you live.
Beside the comfort of knowledge, every science is auxiliary to every
other. While you are attending these courses you can proceed by
yourself in a regular series of historical reading. It would be a
waste of time to attend a professor of this. It is to be acquired
from books and if you pursue it by yourself you can accommodate it to
your other reading so as to fill up those chasms of time not
otherwise appropriated. There are portions of the day too when the
mind should be eased, particularly after dinner it should be applied
to lighter occupation: history is of this kind. It exercises
principally the memory. Reflection also indeed is necessary but not
generally in a laborious degree. To conduct yourself in this branch
of science you have only to consider what aeras of it merit a grasp &
what a particular attention, & in each aera also to distinguish
between the countries the knowledge of whose history will be useful &
those where it suffices only to be not altogether ignorant. Having
laid down your plan as to the branches of history you would pursue,
the order of time will be your sufficient guide. After what you have
read in antient history I should suppose Millot's digest would be
useful & sufficient. The histories of Greece and Rome are worthy a
good degree of attention, they should be read in the original
authors. The transition from antient to modern history will be best
effected by reading Gibbon's. Then a general history of the
principal states of Europe, but particular ones of England. Here too
the original writers are to be preferred. Kennet published a
considerable collection of these in 3 vols. folio, but there are some
others not in his collection well worth being read. After the
history of England that of America will claim your attention. Here
too original authors & not compilers are best. An author who writes
of his own times or of times near his own presents in his own ideas &
manner the best picture of the moment of which he writes. History
need not be hurried but may give way to the other sciences because
history can be pursued after you shall have left your present
situation as well as while you remain in it. When you shall have got
thro this second order of preparation the study of the law is to be
begun. This like history is to be acquired from books. All the aid
you will want will be a catalogue of the books to be read & the order
in which they are to be read. It being absolutely indifferent in
what place you carry on this reading I should propose your doing it
in France. The advantages of this will be that you will at the same
time acquire the habit of speaking French which is the object of a
year or two. You may be giving attention to such of the fine arts as
your turn may lead you to & you will be forming an acquaintance with
the individuals & characters of a nation with whom we must long
remain in the closest intimacy & to whom we are bound by the strong
ties of gratitude and policy. A nation in short of the most amiable
dispositions on earth, the whole mass of which is penetrated with an
affection for us. You might before you return to your own country
make a visit to Italy also.
I should have performed the office of but half a friend were I
to confine myself to the improvement of the mind only. Knowledge
indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession, but I do not scruple to
say that health is more so. It is of little consequence to store the
mind with science if the body be permitted to become debilitated. If
the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong -- the sovereign
invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all exercises walking is
best. A horse gives but a kind of half exercise, and a carriage is
no better than a cradle. No one knows, till he tries, how easily a
habit of walking is acquired. A person who never walked three miles
will in the course of a month become able to walk 15 or 20 without
fatigue. I have known some great walkers & had particular accounts
of many more: and I never knew or heard of one who was not healthy &
long lived. This species of exercise therefore is much to be
advised. Should you be disposed to try it, as your health has been
feeble, it will be necessary for you to begin with a little, & to
increase it by degrees. For the same reason you must probably at
first ascribe to it the hours most precious for study, I mean those
about the middle of the day. But when you shall find yourself strong
you may venture to take your walks in the evening after the digestion
of the dinner is pretty well over. This is making a compromise
between health & study. The latter would be too much interrupted
were you to take from it the early hours of the day and habit will
soon render the evening's exercise as salutary as that of the
morning. I speak this from my own experience having, from an
attachment to study, very early in life, made this arrangement of my
time, having ever observed it, & still observing it, & always with
perfect success. Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to
exercise, and the weather should be little regarded. A person not
sick will not be injured by getting wet. It is but taking a cold
bath which never gives a cold to any one. Brute animals are the most
healthy, & they are exposed to all weather and, of men, those are
healthiest who are the most exposed. The recipe of those two
descriptions of beings is simple diet, exercise and the open air, be
it's state what it will; and we may venture to say that this recipe
will give health & vigor to every other description. -- By this time
I am sure you will think I have sermonized enough. I have given you
indeed a lengthy lecture. I have been led through it by my zeal to
serve you; if in the whole you find one useful counsel, that will be
my reward, & a sufficient one. Few persons in your own country have
started from as advantageous ground as that whereon you will be
placed. Nature and fortune have been liberal to you. Every thing
honourable or profitable there is placed within your own reach, and
will depend on your own efforts. If these are exerted with
assiduity, and guided by unswerving honesty, your success is
infallible: and that it may be as great as you wish is the sincere
desire of Dear Sir, your most affectionate humble servant.
P.S. Be so good as to present me affectionately to your brother
& cousin.
ARCHAEOLOGY, LEDYARD, A NEW INVENTION
_To Ezra Stiles_
_Paris, Sep. 1, 1786_
SIR, -- I am honoured with your letter of May 8. That which
you mention to have written in the winter preceding never came to
hand. I return you my thanks for the communications relative to the
Western country. When we reflect how long we have inhabited those
parts of America which lie between the Alleghaney & the ocean, that
no monument has ever been found in them which indicated the use of
iron among its' aboriginal inhabitants, that they were as far
advanced in arts, at least, as the inhabitants on the other side the
Alleghaney, a good degree of infidelity may be excused as to the new
discoveries which suppose regular fortifications of brickwork to have
been in use among the Indians on the waters of the Ohio.
Intrenchments of earth they might indeed make: but brick is more
difficult. The art of making it may have preceded the use of iron,
but it would suppose a greater degree of industry than men in the
hunter state usually possess. I should like to know whether General
Parsons himself saw actual bricks among the remains of fortification.
I suppose the settlement of our continent is of the most remote
antiquity. The similitude between its' inhabitants & those of
Eastern parts of Asia renders it probable that ours are descended
from them or they from ours. The latter is my opinion, founded on
this single fact. Among the red inhabitants of Asia there are but a
few languages radically different, but among our Indians the number
of languages is infinite which are so radically different as to
exhibit at present no appearance of their having been derived from a
common source. The time necessary for the generation of so many
languages must be immense. A countryman of yours, a Mr. Lediard, who
was with Capt. Cook on his last voiage, proposes either to go to
Kamschatka, cross from thence to the Western side of America, and
penetrate through the Continent to our side of it, or to go to
Kentucke, & thence penetrate Westwardly to the South sea, the vent
from hence lately to London, where if he finds a passage to
Kamschatka or the Western coast of America he would avail himself of
it: otherwise he proposes to return to our side of America to attempt
that route. I think him well calculated for such an enterprise, &
wish he may undertake it. Another countryman of yours Mr. Trumbul
has paid us a visit here & brought with him two pictures which are
the admiration of the Connoisseurs. His natural talents for this art
seem almost unparalleled. I send you the 5th & 6th vols. of the
_Bibliotheque physico ecconomie_ erroneously lettered as the 7th &
8th, which are not yet come out. I inclose with them the article
"Etats Unis" of the new Encyclopedie. This article is recently
published, & a few copies have been printed separate. For this
twelvemonth past little new & excellent has appeared either in
literature or the arts. An Abbe Rochon has applied the metal called
platina to the telescope instead of the mixed metal of which the
specula were formerly composed. It is insusceptible of rust, as gold
is, and he thinks it's reflective power equal to that of the mixed
metal. He has observed a very curious effect of the natural
chrystals, & especially of those of Iceland; which is that lenses
made of them have two distinct focuses, and present you the object
distinctly at two different distances. This I have seen myself. A
new method of copying has been invented here. I called on the
inventor, & he presented me a plate of copper, a pen & ink. I wrote
a note on the plate, and in about three quarters of an hour he
brought me an hundred copies, as perfect as the imagination can
conceive. Had I written my name, he could have put it to so many
bonds, so that I should have acknoleged the Signature to be my own.
The copying of paintings in England is very conceivable. Any number
may be taken, which shall give you the true lineaments & colouring of
the original without injuring that. This is so like creation, that
had I not seen it, I should have doubted it. -- The death of the K.
of Prussia, which happened on the 17th inst. will probably employ the
pens, if not the swords of politicians. We had exchanged the
ratifications of our treaty with him. The articles of this which
were intended to prevent or miticate wars, by lessening their aliment
are so much applauded in Europe that I think the example will be
followed. I have the honour to be with very sincere esteem, Dear
Sir, your most obedt. humble servant.
"DIALOGUE BETWEEN MY HEAD & MY HEART"
_To Maria Cosway_
_Paris, October 12, 1786_
MY DEAR MADAM, -- Having performed the last sad office of
handing you into your carriage at the pavillon de St. Denis, and seen
the wheels get actually into motion, I turned on my heel & walked,
more dead than alive, to the opposite door, where my own was awaiting
me. Mr. Danquerville was missing. He was sought for, found, &
dragged down stairs. We were crammed into the carriage, like
recruits for the Bastille, & not having soul enough to give orders to
the coachman, he presumed Paris our destination, & drove off. After
a considerable interval, silence was broke with a _"Je suis vraiment
afflige du depart de ces bons gens."_ This was a signal for a mutual
confession of distress. We began immediately to talk of Mr. & Mrs.
Cosway, of their goodness, their talents, their amiability; & tho we
spoke of nothing else, we seemed hardly to have entered into matter
when the coachman announced the rue St. Denis, & that we were
opposite Mr. Danquerville's. He insisted on descending there &
traversing a short passage to his lodgings. I was carried home.
Seated by my fireside, solitary & sad, the following dialogue took
place between my Head & my Heart:
_Head._ Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.
_Heart._ I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings.
Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its
natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe
should leave me no more to feel or to fear.
_Head._ These are the eternal consequences of your warmth &
precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever
leading us. You confess your follies indeed; but still you hug &
cherish them; & no reformation can be hoped, where there is no
repentance.
_Heart._ Oh, my friend! this is no moment to upbraid my
foibles. I am rent into fragments by the force of my grief! If you
have any balm, pour it into my wounds; if none, do not harrow them by
new torments. Spare me in this awful moment! At any other I will
attend with patience to your admonitions.
_Head._ On the contrary I never found that the moment of
triumph with you was the moment of attention to my admonitions.
While suffering under your follies, you may perhaps be made sensible
of them, but, the paroxysm over, you fancy it can never return.
Harsh therefore as the medicine may be, it is my office to administer
it. You will be pleased to remember that when our friend Trumbull
used to be telling us of the merits & talents of these good people, I
never ceased whispering to you that we had no occasion for new
acquaintance; that the greater their merits & talents, the more
dangerous their friendship to our tranquillity, because the regret at
parting would be greater.
_Heart._ Accordingly, Sir, this acquaintance was not the
consequence of my doings. It was one of your projects which threw us
in the way of it. It was you, remember, & not I, who desired the
meeting at Legrand & Molinos. I never trouble myself with domes nor
arches. The Halle aux bleds might have rotted down before I should
have gone to see it. But you, forsooth, who are eternally getting us
to sleep with your diagrams & crotchets, must go & examine this
wonderful piece of architecture. And when you had seen it, oh! it
was the most superb thing on earth! What you had seen there was
worth all you had yet seen in Paris! I thought so too. But I meant
it of the lady & gentleman to whom we had been presented; & not of a
parcel of sticks & chips put together in pens. You then, Sir, & not
I, have been the cause of the present distress.
_Head._ It would have been happy for you if my diagrams &
crotchets had gotten you to sleep on that day, as you are pleased to
say they eternally do. My visit to Legrand & Molinos had public
utility for it's object. A market is to be built in Richmond. What
a commodious plan is that of Legrand & Molinos; especially if we put
on it the noble dome of the Halle aux bleds. If such a bridge as
they shewed us can be thrown across the Schuylkill at Philadelphia,
the floating bridges taken up & the navigation of that river opened,
what a copious resource will be added, of wood & provisions, to warm
& feed the poor of that city? While I was occupied with these
objects, you were dilating with your new acquaintances, & contriving
how to prevent a separation from them. Every soul of you had an
engagement for the day. Yet all these were to be sacrificed, that
you might dine together. Lying messengers were to be despatched into
every quarter of the city, with apologies for your breach of
engagement. You particularly had the effrontery to send word to the
Dutchess Danville that, on the moment we were setting out to dine
with her, despatches came to hand which required immediate attention.
You wanted me to invent a more ingenious excuse; but I knew you were
getting into a scrape, & I would have nothing to do with it. Well,
after dinner to St. Cloud, from St. Cloud to Ruggieri's, from
Ruggieri to Krumfoltz, & if the day had been as long as a Lapland
summer day, you would still have contrived means among you to have
filled it.
_Heart._ Oh! my dear friend, how you have revived me by
recalling to my mind the transactions of that day! How well I
remember them all, & that when I came home at night & looked back to
the morning, it seemed to have been a month agone. Go on then, like
a kind comforter & paint to me the day we went to St. Germains. How
beautiful was every object! the Port de Reuilly, the hills along the
Seine, the rainbows of the machine of Marly, the terrace of St.
Germains, the chateaux, the gardens, the statues of Marly, the
pavillon of Lucienne. Recollect too Madrid, Bagatelle, the King's
garden, the Dessert. How grand the idea excited by the remains of
such a column! The spiral staircase too was beautiful. Every moment
was filled with something agreeable. The wheels of time moved on
with a rapidity of which those of our carriage gave but a faint idea.
And yet in the evening when one took a retrospect of the day, what a
mass of happiness had we travelled over! Retrace all those scenes to
me, my good companion, & I will forgive the unkindness with which you
were chiding me. The day we went to St. Germains was a little too
warm, I think; was it not?
_Head._ Thou art the most incorrigible of all the beings that
ever sinned! I reminded you of the follies of the first day,
intending to deduce from thence some useful lessons for you, but
instead of listening to these, you kindle at the recollection, you
retrace the whole series with a fondness which shews you want nothing
but the opportunity to act it over again. I often told you during
its course that you were imprudently engaging your affections under
circumstances that must have cost you a great deal of pain: that the
persons indeed were of the greatest merit, possessing good sense,
good humour, honest hearts, honest manners, & eminence in a lovely
art; that the lady had moreover qualities & accomplishments,
belonging to her sex, which might form a chapter apart for her: such
as music, modesty, beauty, & that softness of disposition which is
the ornament of her sex & charm of ours, but that all these
considerations would increase the pang of separation: that their stay
here was to be short: that you rack our whole system when you are
parted from those you love, complaining that such a separation is
worse than death, inasmuch as this ends our sufferings, whereas that
only begins them: & that the separation would in this instance be the
more severe as you would probably never see them again.
_Heart._ But they told me they would come back again the next
year.
_Head._ But in the meantime see what you suffer: & their return
too depends on so many circumstances that if you had a grain of
prudence you would not count upon it. Upon the whole it is
improbable & therefore you should abandon the idea of ever seeing
them again.
_Heart._ May heaven abandon me if I do!
_Head._ Very well. Suppose then they come back. They are to
stay two months, & when these are expired, what is to follow?
Perhaps you flatter yourself they may come to America?
_Heart._ God only knows what is to happen. I see nothing
impossible in that supposition. And I see things wonderfully
contrived sometimes to make us happy. Where could they find such
objects as in America for the exercise of their enchanting art?
especially the lady, who paints landscapes so inimitably. She wants
only subjects worthy of immortality to render her pencil immortal.
The Falling Spring, the Cascade of Niagara, the Passage of the
Potowmac through the Blue Mountains, the Natural bridge. It is worth
a voyage across the Atlantic to see these objects; much more to
paint, and make them, & thereby ourselves, known to all ages. And
our own dear Monticello, where has nature spread so rich a mantle
under the eye? mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty
do we there ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the
workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder,
all fabricated at our feet! and the glorious sun when rising as if
out of a distant water, just gilding the tops of the mountains, &
giving life to all nature! I hope in God no circumstance may ever
make either seek an asylum from grief! With what sincere sympathy I
would open every cell of my composition to receive the effusion of
their woes! I would pour my tears into their wounds: & if a drop of
balm could be found on the top of the Cordilleras, or at the remotest
sources of the Missouri, I would go thither myself to seek & to bring
it. Deeply practised in the school of affliction, the human heart
knows no joy which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I have not
drunk! Fortune can present no grief of unknown form to me! Who then
can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the
same wound himself? But Heaven forbid they should ever know a
sorrow! Let us turn over another leaf, for this has distracted me.
_Head._ Well. Let us put this possibility to trial then on
another point. When you consider the character which is given of our
country by the lying newspapers of London, & their credulous copyers
in other countries; when you reflect that all Europe is made to
believe we are a lawless banditti, in a state of absolute anarchy,
cutting one another's throats, & plundering without distinction, how
can you expect that any reasonable creature would venture among us?
_Heart._ But you & I know that all this is false: that there is
not a country on earth where there is greater tranquillity, where the
laws are milder, or better obeyed: where every one is more attentive
to his own business, or meddles less with that of others: where
strangers are better received, more hospitably treated, & with a more
sacred respect.
_Head._ True, you & I know this, but your friends do not know
it.
_Heart._ But they are sensible people who think for themselves.
They will ask of impartial foreigners who have been among us, whether
they saw or heard on the spot any instances of anarchy. They will
judge too that a people occupied as we are in opening rivers, digging
navigable canals, making roads, building public schools, establishing
academies, erecting busts & statues to our great men, protecting
religious freedom, abolishing sanguinary punishments, reforming &
improving our laws in general, they will judge I say for themselves
whether these are not the occupations of a people at their ease,
whether this is not better evidence of our true state than a London
newspaper, hired to lie, & from which no truth can ever be extracted
but by reversing everything it says.
_Head._ I did not begin this lecture my friend with a view to
learn from you what America is doing. Let us return then to our
point. I wished to make you sensible how imprudent it is to place
your affections, without reserve, on objects you must so soon lose, &
whose loss when it comes must cost you such severe pangs. Remember
the last night. You knew your friends were to leave Paris to-day.
This was enough to throw you into agonies. All night you tossed us
from one side of the bed to the other. No sleep, no rest. The poor
crippled wrist too, never left one moment in the same position, now
up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be wondered at if it's
pains returned? The Surgeon then was to be called, & to be rated as
an ignoramus because he could not divine the cause of this
extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your
manners. This is not a world to live at random in as you do. To
avoid those eternal distresses, to which you are forever exposing us,
you must learn to look forward before you take a step which may
interest our peace. Everything in this world is a matter of
calculation. Advance then with caution, the balance in your hand.
Put into one scale the pleasures which any object may offer; but put
fairly into the other the pains which are to follow, & see which
preponderates. The making an acquaintance is not a matter of
indifference. When a new one is proposed to you, view it all round.
Consider what advantages it presents, & to what inconveniences it may
expose you. Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there
is no hook beneath it. The art of life is the art of avoiding pain:
& he is the best pilot who steers clearest of the rocks & shoals with
which he is beset. Pleasure is always before us; but misfortune is
at our side: while running after that, this arrests us. The most
effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within
ourselves, & to suffice for our own happiness. Those, which depend
on ourselves, are the only pleasures a wise man will count on: for
nothing is ours which another may deprive us of. Hence the
inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Even in our power,
always leading us to something new, never cloying, we ride serene &
sublime above the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating truth
& nature, matter & motion, the laws which bind up their existence, &
that eternal being who made & bound them up by those laws. Let this
be our employ. Leave the bustle & tumult of society to those who
have not talents to occupy themselves without them. Friendship is
but another name for an alliance with the follies & the misfortunes
of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then
as volunteers into those of another? Is there so little gall poured
into our cup that we must needs help to drink that of our neighbor?
A friend dies or leaves us: we feel as if a limb was cut off. He is
sick: we must watch over him, & participate of his pains. His
fortune is shipwrecked; ours must be laid under contribution. He
loses a child, a parent, or a partner: we must mourn the loss as if
it were our own.
_Heart._ And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears
with one whom the hand of heaven hath smitten! to watch over the bed
of sickness, & to beguile it's tedious & it's painful moments! to
share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none! This
world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten it's burthen we must
divide it with one another. But let us now try the virtues of your
mathematical balance, & as you have put into one scale the burthen of
friendship, let me put it's comforts into the other. When
languishing then under disease, how grateful is the solace of our
friends! how are we penetrated with their assiduities & attentions!
how much are we supported by their encouragements & kind offices!
When heaven has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is
it to have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, & into which we may
pour the torrent of our tears! Grief, with such a comfort, is almost
a luxury! In a life where we are perpetually exposed to want &
accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to insulate ourselves, to
retire from all aid, & to wrap ourselves in the mantle of
self-sufficiency! For assuredly nobody will care for him who cares
for nobody. But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in
the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things,
the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the
days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly.
How gay did the face of nature appear! Hills, valleys, chateaux,
gardens, rivers, every object wore it's liveliest hue! Whence did
they borrow it? From the presence of our charming companion. They
were pleasing, because she seemed pleased. Alone, the scene would
have been dull & insipid: the participation of it with her gave it
relish. Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek
unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated
philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed
in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly; & they
mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt
the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would
exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you
have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me then my
friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which could estimate
friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for you has
induced me to enter into this discussion, & to hear principles
uttered which I detest & abjure. Respect for myself now obliges me
to recall you into the proper limits of your office. When nature
assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided
empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of
morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to
be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least
resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours;
nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying
to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of
justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their
controul. To these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart.
Morals were too essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the
incertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation
therefore in sentiment, not in science. That she gave to all, as
necessary to all: this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I
know indeed that you pretend authority to the sovereign controul of
our conduct in all its parts: & a respect for your grave saws &
maxims, a desire to do what is right, has sometimes induced me to
conform to your counsels. A few facts however which I can readily
recall to your memory, will suffice to prove to you that nature has
not organized you for our moral direction. When the poor wearied
souldier whom we overtook at Chickahomony with his pack on his back,
begged us to let him get up behind our chariot, you began to
calculate that the road was full of souldiers, & that if all should
be taken up our horses would fail in their journey. We drove on
therefore. But soon becoming sensible you had made me do wrong, that
tho we cannot relieve all the distressed we should relieve as many as
we can, I turned about to take up the souldier; but he had entered a
bye path, & was no more to be found; & from that moment to this I
could never find him out to ask his forgiveness. Again, when the
poor woman came to ask a charity in Philadelphia, you whispered that
she looked like a drunkard, & that half a dollar was enough to give
her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions to give,
easily find reasons why they ought not to give. When I sought her
out afterwards, & did what I should have done at first, you know that
she employed the money immediately towards placing her child at
school. If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the
bayonet, had been governed by it's heads instead of it's hearts,
where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as
Haman's. You began to calculate & to compare wealth and numbers: we
threw up a few pulsations of our warmest blood; we supplied
enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to the
hazard when the hazard seemed against us, and we saved our country:
justifying at the same time the ways of Providence, whose precept is
to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him. In short, my
friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I
ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it.
I do forever then disclaim your interference in my province. Fill
papers as you please with triangles & squares: try how many ways you
can hang & combine them together. I shall never envy nor controul
your sublime delights. But leave me to decide when & where
friendships are to be contracted. You say I contract them at random.
So you said the woman at Philadelphia was a drunkard. I receive no
one into my esteem till I know they are worthy of it. Wealth, title,
office, are no recommendations to my friendship. On the contrary
great good qualities are requisite to make amends for their having
wealth, title, & office. You confess that in the present case I
could not have made a worthier choice. You only object that I was so
soon to lose them. We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can
we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without it's
thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; &
we must acquiesce. It is the condition annexed to all our pleasures,
not by us who receive, but by him who gives them. True, this
condition is pressing cruelly on me at this moment. I feel more fit
for death than life. But when I look back on the pleasures of which
it is the consequence, I am conscious they were worth the price I am
paying. Notwithstanding your endeavours too to damp my hopes, I
comfort myself with expectations of their promised return. Hope is
sweeter than despair, & they were too good to mean to deceive me. In
the summer, said the gentleman; but in the spring, said the lady: & I
should love her forever, were it only for that! Know then, my
friend, that I have taken these good people into my bosom; that I
have lodged them in the warmest cell I could find: that I love them,
& will continue to love them through life: that if fortune should
dispose them on one side the globe, & me on the other, my affections
shall pervade it's whole mass to reach them. Knowing then my
determination, attempt not to disturb it. If you can at any time
furnish matter for their amusement, it will be the office of a good
neighbor to do it. I will in like manner seize any occasion which
may offer to do the like good turn for you with Condorcet,
Rittenhouse, Madison, La Cretelle, or any other of those worthy sons
of science whom you so justly prize.
I thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the
issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my
night-cap. Methinks I hear you wish to heaven I had called a little
sooner, & so spared you the ennui of such a sermon. I did not
interrupt them sooner because I was in a mood for hearing sermons.
You too were the subject; & on such a thesis I never think the theme
long; not even if I am to write it, and that slowly & awkwardly, as
now, with the left hand. But that you may not be discouraged from a
correspondence which begins so formidably, I will promise you on my
honour that my future letters shall be of a reasonable length. I
will even agree to express but half my esteem for you, for fear of
cloying you with too full a dose. But, on your part, no curtailing.
If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to
me. Only let them be brimful of affection. I shall read them with
the dispositions with which Arlequin, in _Les deux billets_ spelt the
words "_je t'aime_," and wished that the whole alphabet had entered
into their composition.
We have had incessant rains since your departure. These make
me fear for your health, as well as that you had an uncomfortable
journey. The same cause has prevented me from being able to give you
any account of your friends here. This voyage to Fontainebleau will
probably send the Count de Moustier & the Marquise de Brehan to
America. Danquerville promised to visit me, but has not done it as
yet. De la Tude comes sometimes to take family soup with me, &
entertains me with anecdotes of his five & thirty years imprisonment.
How fertile is the mind of man which can make the Bastile & Dungeon
of Vincennes yield interesting anecdotes! You know this was for
making four verses on Mme de Pompadour. But I think you told me you
did not know the verses. They were these: _"Sans esprit, sans
sentiment, Sans etre belle, ni neuve, En France on peut avoir le
premier amant: Pompadour en est l' epreuve."_ I have read the memoir
of his three escapes. As to myself my health is good, except my
wrist which mends slowly, & my mind which mends not at all, but
broods constantly over your departure. The lateness of the season
obliges me to decline my journey into the south of France. Present
me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, & receive me into your
own recollection with a partiality & a warmth, proportioned, not to
my own poor merit, but to the sentiments of sincere affection &
esteem with which I have the honour to be, my dear Madam, your most
obedient humble servant.
HOMER, NEW JERSEY FARMERS, AND THE WHEEL
_To St. John de Crevecoeur_
_Paris, January 15, 1787_
DEAR SIR, -- I see by the Journal of this morning, that they
are robbing us of another of our inventions to give it to the
English. The writer, indeed, only admits them to have revived what
he thinks was known to the Greeks, that is, the making the
circumference of a wheel of one single piece. The farmers in New
Jersey were the first who practised it, and they practised it
commonly. Dr. Franklin, in one of his trips to London, mentioned
this practice to the man now in London, who has the patent for making
those wheels. The idea struck him. The Doctor promised to go to his
shop, and assist him in trying to make the wheel of one piece. The
Jersey farmers do it by cutting a young sapling, and bending it,
while green and juicy, into a circle; and leaving it so until it
becomes perfectly seasoned. But in London there are no saplings.
The difficulty was, then, to give to old wood the pliancy of young.
The Doctor and the workman labored together some weeks, and
succeeded; and the man obtained a patent for it, which has made his
fortune. I was in his shop in London, he told me the whole story
himself, and acknowledged, not only the origin of the idea, but how
much the assistance of Dr. Franklin had contributed to perform the
operation on dry wood. He spoke of him with love and gratitude. I
think I have had a similar account from Dr. Franklin, but cannot be
quite certain. I know, that being in Philadelphia when the first set
of patent wheels arrived from London, and were spoken of by the
gentleman (an Englishman) who brought them, as a wonderful discovery,
the idea of its being a new discovery was laughed at by the
Philadelphians, who, in their Sunday parties across the Delaware, had
seen every farmer's cart mounted on such wheels. The writer in the
paper, supposes the English workman got his idea from Homer. But it
is more likely the Jersey farmer got his idea from thence, because
ours are the only farmers who can read Homer; because, too, the
Jersey practice is precisely that stated by Homer: the English
practice very different. Homer's words are (comparing a young hero
killed by Ajax to a poplar felled by a workman) literally thus: `He
fell on the ground, like a poplar, which has grown smooth, in the
west part of a great meadow; with its branches shooting from its
summit. But the chariot maker, with his sharp axe, has felled it,
that he may bend a wheel for a beautiful chariot. It lies drying on
the banks of the river.' Observe the circumstances which coincide
with the Jersey practice. 1. It is a tree growing in a moist place,
full of juices and easily bent. 2. It is cut while green. 3. It is
bent into the circumference of a wheel. 4. It is left to dry in that
form. You, who write French well and readily, should write a line
for the Journal, to reclaim the honor of our farmers. Adieu. Yours
affectionately,
"THE PEOPLE ARE THE ONLY CENSORS . . ."
_To Edward Carrington_
_Paris, Jan. 16, 1787_
DEAR SIR, -- Uncertain whether you might be at New York at the
moment of Colo. Franks's arrival, I have inclosed my private letters
for Virginia under cover to our delegation in general, which
otherwise I would have taken the liberty to inclose particularly to
you, as best acquainted with the situation of the persons to whom
they are addressed. Should this find you at New York, I will still
ask your attention to them. The two large packages addressed to
Colo. N. Lewis contain seeds, not valuable enough to pay passage, but
which I would wish to be sent by the stage, or any similar quick
conveyance. The letters to Colo. Lewis & Mr. Eppes (who take care of
my affairs) are particularly interesting to me. The package for
Colo. Richd. Cary our judge of Admiralty near Hampton, contains seeds
& roots, not to be sent by Post. Whether they had better go by the
stage, or by water, you will be the best judge. I beg your pardon
for giving you this trouble. But my situation & your goodness will I
hope excuse it. In my letter to Mr. Jay, I have mentioned the
meeting of the Notables appointed for the 29th inst. It is now put
off to the 7th or 8th of next month. This event, which will hardly
excite any attention in America, is deemed here the most important
one which has taken place in their civil line during the present
century. Some promise their country great things from it, some
nothing. Our friend de La Fayette was placed on the list originally.
Afterwards his name disappeared; but finally was reinstated. This
shews that his character here is not considered as an indifferent
one; and that it excites agitation. His education in our school has
drawn on him a very jealous eye from a court whose principles are the
most absolute despotism. But I hope he has nearly passed his crisis.
The King, who is a good man, is favorably disposed towards him: & he
is supported by powerful family connections, & by the public good
will. He is the youngest man of the Notables except one whose office
placed him on the list.
The Count de Vergennes has within these ten days had a very
severe attack of what is deemed an unfixed gout. He has been well
enough however to do business to-day. But anxieties for him are not
yet quieted. He is a great & good minister, and an accident to him
might endanger the peace of Europe.
The tumults in America, I expected would have produced in
Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has
not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to
have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The
interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has
had a great effect on the opinion here. I am persuaded myself that
the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best
army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct
themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and
even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of
their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to
suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to
prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them
full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public
papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole
mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion
of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right;
and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government
without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not
hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every
man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them. I am
convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without
government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree
of happiness than those who live under the European governments.
Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains
morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter,
under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two
classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true
picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and
keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors,
but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become
inattentive to the public affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies,
judges & governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law
of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and
experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own
kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe,
and to the general prey of the rich on the poor. The want of news
has led me into disquisition instead of narration, forgetting you
have every day enough of that. I shall be happy to hear from you
sometimes, only observing that whatever passes thro' the post is
read, & that when you write what should be read by myself only, you
must be so good as to confide your letter to some passenger or
officer of the packet. I will ask your permission to write to you
sometimes, and to assure you of the esteem & respect with which I
have honour to be Dear Sir your most obedient & most humble servt.
REBELLION, SECESSION, AND DIPLOMACY
_To James Madison_
_Paris, Jan. 30, 1787_
DEAR SIR, -- My last to you was of the 16th of Dec, since which
I have received yours of Nov 25, & Dec 4, which afforded me, as your
letters always do, a treat on matters public, individual &
oeconomical. I am impatient to learn your sentiments on the late
troubles in the Eastern states. So far as I have yet seen, they do
not appear to threaten serious consequences. Those states have
suffered by the stoppage of the channels of their commerce, which
have not yet found other issues. This must render money scarce, and
make the people uneasy. This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely
unjustifiable; but I hope they will provoke no severities from their
governments. A consciousness of those in power that their
administration of the public affairs has been honest, may perhaps
produce too great a degree of indignation: and those characters
wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from these
instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature
has formed man insusceptible of any other government but that of
force, a conclusion not founded in truth, nor experience. Societies
exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without
government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the
will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in
a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under
governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in
most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of
existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of
wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the
1st condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent
with any great degree of population. The second state has a great
deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious
degree of liberty & happiness. It has it's evils too: the principal
of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this
against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. _Malo
periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem_. Even this evil is
productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and
nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a
little rebellion now and then is a good thing, & as necessary in the
political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions
indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the
people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should
render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of
rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine
necessary for the sound health of government. If these transactions
give me no uneasiness, I feel very differently at another piece of
intelligence, to wit, the possibility that the navigation of the
Mississippi may be abandoned to Spain. I never had any interest
Westward of the Alleghaney; & I never will have any. But I have had
great opportunities of knowing the character of the people who
inhabit that country. And I will venture to say that the act which
abandons the navigation of the Mississippi is an act of separation
between the Eastern & Western country. It is a relinquishment of
five parts out of eight of the territory of the United States, an
abandonment of the fairest subject for the paiment of our public
debts, & the chaining those debts on our own necks _in perpetuum_. I
have the utmost confidence in the honest intentions of those who
concur in this measure; but I lament their want of acquaintance with
the character & physical advantages of the people who, right or
wrong, will suppose their interests sacrificed on this occasion to
the contrary interests of that part of the confederacy in possession
of present power. If they declare themselves a separate people, we
are incapable of a single effort to retain them. Our citizens can
never be induced, either as militia or as souldiers, to go there to
cut the throats of their own brothers & sons, or rather to be
themselves the subjects instead of the perpetrators of the parricide.
Nor would that country requite the cost of being retained against the
will of it's inhabitants, could it be done. But it cannot be done.
They are able already to rescue the navigation of the Mississippi out
of the hands of Spain, & to add New Orleans to their own territory.
They will be joined by the inhabitants of Louisiana. This will bring
on a war between them & Spain; and that will produce the question
with us whether it will not be worth our while to become parties with
them in the war, in order to reunite them with us, & thus correct our
error? & were I to permit my forebodings to go one step further, I
should predict that the inhabitants of the U S would force their
rulers to take the affirmative of that question. I wish I may be
mistaken in all these opinions.
We have for some time expected that the Chevalier de la Luzerne
would obtain a promotion in the diplomatic line, by being appointed
to some of the courts where this country keeps an ambassador. But
none of the vacancies taking place which had been counted on, I think
the present disposition is to require his return to his station in
America. He told me himself lately, that he should return in the
spring. I have never pressed this matter on the court, tho' I knew
it to be desirable and desired on our part; because if the compulsion
on him to return had been the work of Congress, he would have
returned in such ill temper with them, as to disappoint them in the
good they expected from it. He would forever have laid at their door
his failure of promotion. I did not press it for another reason,
which is that I have great reason to believe that the character of
the Count de Moustier, who would go were the Chevalier to be
otherwise provided for, would give the most perfect satisfaction in
America.
As you are now returned into Congress it will become of
importance that you should form a just estimate of certain public
characters: on which therefore I will give you such notes as my
knolege of them has furnished me with. You will compare them with
the materials you are otherwise possessed of, and decide on a view of
the whole. You know the opinion I _formerly_ entertained of _my
friend Mr_. _Adams_. Yourself & the governor were the first who
_shook_ that opinion. I afterwards saw proofs which _convicted him_
of a degree of _vanity_, and of a _blindness_ to it, of which no germ
_had appeared_ in Congress. A 7-_month's_ intimacy with him _here_
and _as_ many _weeks_ in _London_ have given me opportunities of
studying him closely. _He is vain,_ _irritable and a bad calculator
of_ the force & probable effect of the motives which govern men.
This is _all_ the _ill_ which can possibly be _said of him_. He is
as disinterested as the being which made him: he is profound in his
views: and accurate in his judgment _except where knowledge of the
world_ is necessary to form a judgment. He is so amiable, that I
pronounce you will love him, if ever you become acquainted with him.
He would be, as he was, a great man in _Congress_. _Mr_.
_Carmichael_, is, I think, very little _known_ in _America_. I never
_saw him_, & while I was _in Congress I_ formed rather a
_disadvantageous idea_ of him. His letters, received then, showed
him _vain_, & more attentive to _ceremony & etiquette_ than we
suppose men _of sense_ should be. _I_ have now a constant
correspondence with him, and find _him_ a little _hypochondriac_ and
_discontented_. He possesses very _good understanding_, tho' not of
the _first order_. _I have_ had great opportunities of _searching
into_ his _character_, and have availed myself _of them_. Many
persons of different nations, _coming_ from _Madrid_ to _Paris_, all
speak of _him as_ in _high esteem_, & _I think_ it certain that he
has more of the _Count de Florida Blanca's friendship_, than any
_diplomatic_ character at _that court_. As long as this _minister_
is in _office_, _Carmichael_ can do _more than_ any other _person
who_ could be _sent there_. You will see _Franks_, _and_ doubtless
he will be _asking some appointment_. I wish there may be any one
for _which_ he is _fit_. He is _light, indiscreet, active, honest,
affectionate_. Tho' _Bingham_ is not in _diplomatic office_, yet as
he wishes to be so, I will mention such circumstances of _him_, _as
you might_ otherwise be _deceived in_. _He will_ make _you believe
he_ was on the most intimate footing with the first _characters in
Europe_, & versed in the _secrets_ of every _cabinet_. Not a word of
this _is true_. _He_ had a rage for being _presented_ to _great
men_, & had no _modesty_ in the methods by which he could if _he
attained acquaintance_. Afterwards it was with such 90 who were
susceptible of impression from the _beauty of his wife_. I must
_except_ the Marquis de Bonclearren who had been an _old
acquaintance_.
The _Marquis de La Fayette_ is a most valuable _auxiliary to
me_. His _zeal_ is unbounded, & his _weight_ with those in _power_,
_great_. His _education_ having been merely _military_, _commerce_
was an unknown field to him. But his good sense enabling him to
_comprehend_ perfectly whatever is _explained to him_, _his agency_
has been very _efficacious_. _He_ has a great deal of _sound
genius_, is well _remarked_ by the _King_, & rising in _popularity_.
_He_ has nothing against _him_, _but_ the _suspicion_ of _republican
principles_. I think he will one day _be of_ the _ministry_. His
foible is, a _canine appetite for popularity and fame_; but he will
get _above_ this. _The Count de Vergennes_ is _ill_. The
possibility of his _recovery_, renders it dangerous for _us to
express a doubt of it: but_ he is _in danger_. He is _a great
minister_ in _European affairs_, but has very _imperfect ideas_ of
_our institutions_, _and no confidence in_ them. His _devotion_ to
the principles of _pure despotism_, renders him _unaffectionate to
our governments_. But _his fear_ of _England makes him value us_ as
a _make weight_. He is _cool, reserved in political conversations,
but free and familiar_ on other _subjects_, and a very _attentive,
agreeable person_ to _do business with_. It is _impossible_ to have
a clearer, better _organized head_; but _age_ has _chilled his
heart_. Nothing should be spared, on our part, to attach this
country to us. It is the only one on which we can rely for support,
under every event. Its inhabitants love us more, I think, than they
do any other nation on earth. This is very much the effect of the
good dispositions with which the French officers returned. In a
former letter, I mentioned to you the dislocation of my wrist. I can
make not the least use of it, except for the single article of
writing, though it is going on five months since the accident
happened. I have great anxieties, lest I should never recover any
considerable use of it. I shall, by the advice of my surgeons, set
out in a fortnight for the waters of Aix, in Provence. I chose these
out of several they proposed to me, because if they fail to be
effectual, my journey will not be useless altogether. It will give
me an opportunity of examining the canal of Languedoc, and of
acquiring knowledge of that species of navigation, which may be
useful hereafter; but more immediately, it will enable me to make the
tour of the ports concerned in commerce with us, to examine, on the
spot, the defects of the late regulations respecting our commerce, to
learn the further improvements which may be made in it, and on my
return, to get this business finished. I shall be absent between two
and three months, unless anything happens to recall me here sooner,
which may always be effected in ten days, in whatever part of my
route I may be. In speaking _of characters_, I omitted _those of
Reyneval and Hennin_, the _two eyes_ of _Count de Vergennes_. The
_former_ is the most important _character_, _because possessing_ the
most of the _confidence_ of the _Count_. _He_ is rather _cunning_
than _wise_, his views of things being neither _great_ nor _liberal_.
_He governs_ himself by _principles_ which he has _learned_ by
_rote_, and is _fit only_ for the _details_ of _execution_. _His
heart_ is susceptible of little _passions_ but not of _good ones_.
_He_ is _brother_-_in_-_law_ to _M_. _Gerard_, from whom he received
_disadvantageous impressions_ of _us_, _which_ cannot be _effaced_.
_He_ has much _duplicity_. _Hennin_ is a _philosopher, sincere,
friendly, liberal, learned, beloved_ by everybody; the _other_ by
_nobody_. I _think_ it a great _misfortune_ that the _United States_
are in the _department_ of the _former_. As particulars of this kind
may be useful to you, in your present situation, I may hereafter
continue the chapter. I know it will be safely lodged in your
discretion.
Feb. 5. Since writing thus far, _Franks_ is _returned_ from
_England_. _I learn_ that _Mr_. _Adams_ desires to be _recalled_, &
that _Smith_ should be _appointed charge des affaires_ there. It is
not for me to decide whether any _diplomatic character_ should be
_kept_ at a _court_, which _keeps_ none with _us_. You can judge of
_Smith's_ abilities by _his letters_. They are not of the _first
order_, but they are _good_. For his _honesty_, he is like our
friend _Monroe_; turn his _soul_ wrong side outwards, and there is
not a speck on it. _He_ has one _foible_, an _excessive
inflammability_ of _temper_, but he feels it when it comes on, and
has _resolution enough_ to _suppress_ it, and to _remain silent_ till
it _passes_ over.
I send you by Colo. Franks, your pocket telescope, walking
stick & chemical box. The two former could not be combined together.
The latter could not be had in the form you referred to. Having a
great desire to have a portable copying machine, & being satisfied
from some experiments that the principle of the large machine might
be applied in a small one, I planned one when in England & had it
made. It answers perfectly. I have since set a workman to making
them here, & they are in such demand that he has his hands full.
Being assured that you will be pleased to have one, when you shall
have tried it's convenience, I send you one by Colo. Franks. The
machine costs 96 livres, the appendages 24 livres, and I send you
paper & ink for 12 livres; in all 132 livres. There is a printed
paper of directions; but you must expect to make many essays before
you succeed perfectly. A soft brush, like a shaving brush, is more
convenient than the sponge. You can get as much ink & paper as you
please from London. The paper costs a guinea a ream.
"THE EMPTY BUSTLE OF PARIS"
_To Anne Willing Bingham_
_Paris, February 7, 1787_
I know, Madam, that the twelve month is not yet expired; but it
will be, nearly, before this will have the honor of being put into
your hands. You are then engaged to tell me, truly and honestly,
whether you do not find the tranquil pleasures of America, preferable
to the empty bustle of Paris. For to what does that bustle tend? At
eleven o'clock, it is day, _chez madame_. The curtains are drawn.
Propped on bolsters and pillows, and her head scratched into a little
order, the bulletins of the sick are read, and the billets of the
well. She writes to some of her acquaintance, and receives the
visits of others. If the morning is not very thronged, she is able
to get out and hobble round the cage of the Palais royal; but she
must hobble quickly, for the _coeffeur's_ turn is come; and a
tremendous turn it is! Happy, if he does not make her arrive when
dinner is half over! The torpitude of digestion a little passed, she
flutters half an hour through the streets, by way of paying visits,
and then to the spectacles. These finished, another half hour is
devoted to dodging in and out of the doors of her very sincere
friends, and away to supper. After supper, cards; and after cards,
bed; to rise at noon the next day, and to tread, like a mill horse,
the same trodden circle over again. Thus the days of life are
consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment;
ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us;
eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us.
If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is
matter for the buz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the
next morning. In America, on the other hand, the society of your
husband, the fond cares for the children, the arrangements of the
house, the improvements of the grounds, fill every moment with a
healthy and an useful activity. Every exertion is encouraging,
because to present amusement, it joins the promise of some future
good. The intervals of leisure are filled by the society of real
friends, whose affections are not thinned to cob-web, by being spread
over a thousand objects. This is the picture, in the light it is
presented to my mind; now let me have it in yours. If we do not
concur this year, we shall the next; or if not then, in a year or two
more. You see I am determined not to suppose myself mistaken.
To let you see that Paris is not changed in its pursuits, since
it was honored with your presence, I send you its monthly history.
But this relating only to the embellishments of their persons, I must
add, that those of the city go on well also. A new bridge, for
example, is begun at the Place Louis Quinze; the old ones are
clearing of the rubbish which encumbered them in the form of houses;
new hospitals erecting; magnificent walls of inclosure, and Custom
houses at their entrances, &c. &c. &c. I know of no interesting
change among those whom you honored with your acquaintance, unless
Monsieur de Saint James was of that number. His bankruptcy, and
taking asylum in the Bastile, have furnished matter of aston-ishment.
His garden, at the Pont de Neuilly, where, on seventeen acres of
ground he had laid out fifty thousand louis, will probably sell for
somewhat less money. The workmen of Paris are making rapid strides
towards English perfection. Would you believe, that in the course of
the last two years, they have learned even to surpass their London
rivals in some articles? Commission me to have you a phaeton made,
and if it is not as much handsomer than a London one, as that is than
a Fiacre, send it back to me. Shall I fill the box with caps,
bonnets, &c.? Not of my own choosing, but -- I was going to say, of
Mademoiselle Bertin's, forgetting for the moment, that she too is
bankrupt. They shall be chosen then by whom you please; or, if you
are altogether nonplused by her eclipse, we will call an Assemblee
des Notables, to help you out of the difficulty, as is now the
fashion. In short, honor me with your commands of any kind, and they
shall be faithfully executed. The packets now established from Havre
to New York, furnish good opportunities of sending whatever you wish.
I shall end where I began, like a Paris day, reminding you of
your engagement to write me a letter of respectable length, an
engagement the more precious to me, as it has furnished me the
occasion, after presenting my respects to Mr. Bingham, of assuring
you of the sincerity of those senti-ments of esteem and respect, with
which I have the honor to be, Dear Madam, your most obedient and most
humble servant,
"A LITTLE REBELLION NOW AND THEN"
_To Abigail Adams_
_Paris, Feb. 22, 1787_
DEAR MADAM -- I am to acknolege the honor of your letter of
Jan. 29. and of the papers you were so good as to send me. They were
the latest I had seen or have yet seen. They left off too in a
critical moment; just at the point where the Malcontents make their
submission on condition of pardon, and before the answer of
government was known. I hope they pardoned them. The spirit of
resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I
wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when
wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a
little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.
It is wonderful that no letter or paper tells us who is president of
Congress, tho' there are letters in Paris to the beginning of
January. I suppose I shall hear when I come back from my journey,
which will be eight months after he will have been chosen. And yet
they complain of us for not giving them intelligence. Our Notables
assembled to-day, and I hope before the departure of Mr. Cairnes I
shall have heard something of their proceedings worth communicating
to Mr. Adams. The most remarkeable effect of this convention as yet
is the number of puns and bon mots it has generated. I think were
they all collected it would make a more voluminous work than the
Encyclopedie. This occasion, more than any thing I have seen,
convinces me that this nation is incapable of any serious effort but
under the word of command. The people at large view every object
only as it may furnish puns and bon mots; and I pronounce that a good
punster would disarm the whole nation were they ever so seriously
disposed to revolt. Indeed, Madam, they are gone. When a measure so
capable of doing good as the calling the Notables is treated with so
much ridicule, we may conclude the nation desperate, and in charity
pray that heaven may send them good kings. -- The bridge at the
place Louis XV. is begun. The hotel dieu is to be abandoned and new
ones to be built. The old houses on the old bridges are in a course
of demolition. This is all I know of Paris. We are about to lose
the Count d'Aranda, who has desired and obtained his recall. Fernand
Nunnez, before destined for London is to come here. The Abbes Arnoux
and Chalut are well. The Dutchess Danville somewhat recovered from
the loss of her daughter. Mrs. Barrett very homesick, and fancying
herself otherwise sick. They will probably remove to Honfleur. This
is all our news. I have only to add then that Mr. Cairnes has taken
charge of 15. aunes of black lace for you at 9 livres the aune,
purchased by Petit and therefore I hope better purchased than some
things have been for you; and that I am with sincere esteem Dear
Madam your affectionate humble servt.,
THE MAISON CARREE
_To Madame de Tesse_
_Nismes, March 20, 1787_
Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison quarree,
like a lover at his mistress. The stocking weavers and silk spinners
around it, consider me as a hypochondriac Englishman, about to write
with a pistol, the last chapter of his history. This is the second
time I have been in love since I left Paris. The first was with a
Diana at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye in Beaujolois, a delicious
morsel of sculpture, by M. A. Slodtz. This, you will say, was a
rule, to fall in love with a female beauty: but with a house! It is
out of all precedent. No, Madam, it is not without a precedent, in
my own history. While in Paris, I was violently smitten with the
Hotel de Salm, and used to go to the Thuileries almost daily, to look
at it. The _loueuse des chaises_, inattentive to my passion, never
had the complaisance to place a chair there, so that sitting on the
parapet, and twisting my neck round to see the object of my
admiration, I generally left it with a _torti_-_colli_.
From Lyons to Nismes I have been nourished with the remains of
Roman grandeur. They have always brought you to my mind, because I
know your affection for whatever is Roman and noble. At Vienne I
thought of you. But I am glad you were not there; for you would have
seen me more angry than, I hope, you will ever see me. The
Praetorian palace, as it is called, comparable, for its fine
proportions, to the Maison quarree, defaced by the barbarians who
have converted it to its present purpose, its beautiful fluted
Corinthian columns cut out, in part, to make space for Gothic
windows, and hewed down, in the residue, to the plane of the
building, was enough, you must admit, to disturb my composure. At
Orange too, I thought of you. I was sure you had seen with pleasure,
the sublime triumphal arch of Marius at the entrance of the city. I
went then to the Arenae. Would you believe, Madam, that in this
eighteenth century, in France, under the reign of Louis XVI. they are
at this momont pulling down the circular wall of this superb remain,
to pave a road? And that too from a hill which is itself an entire
mass of stone, just as fit, and more accessible? A former intendant,
a M. de Basville has rendered his memory dear to the traveller and
amateur, by the pains he took to preserve and restore these monuments
of antiquity. The present one (I do not know who he is) is
demolishing the object, to make a good road to it. I thought of you
again, and I was then in great good humor, at the Pont du Gard, a
sublime antiquity, and well preserved. But most of all here, where
Roman taste, genius and magnificence, excite ideas analogous to yours
at every step. I could no longer oppose the inclination to avail
myself of your permission to write to you, a permission given with
too much complaisance by you, and used by me, with too much
indiscretion. Madame de Tott did me the same honor. But she, being
only the descendant of some of those puny heroes who boiled their own
kettles before the walls of Troy, I shall write to her from a
Grecian, rather than a Roman canton: when I shall find myself, for
example among her Phocaean relations at Marseilles.
Loving, as you do madam, the precious remains of antiquity,
loving architecture, gardening, a warm sun and a clear sky, I wonder
you have never thought of moving Chaville to Nismes. This, as you
know, has not always been deemed impracticable; and therefore, the
next time a _Sur-intendant des batiments du roi_, after the example
of M. Colbert, sends persons to Nismes to move the Maison quarree to
Paris, that they may not come empty handed, desire them to bring
Chaville with them, to replace it. A propos of Paris. I have now
been three weeks from there, without knowing any thing of what has
passed. I suppose I shall meet it all at Aix, where I have directed
my letters to be lodged, _poste restante_. My journey has given me
leisure to reflect on this Assemblee des Notables. Under a good and
a young King, as the present, I think good may be made of it. I
would have the deputies then, by all means, so conduct themselves as
to encourage him to repeat the calls of this Assembly. Their first
step should be, to get themselves divided into two chambers instead
of seven; the Noblesse and the Commons separately. The second, to
persuade the King, instead of choosing the deputies of the Commons
himself, to summon those chosen by the people for the Provincial
administrations. The third, as the Noblesse is too numerous to be
all of the Assemblee, to obtain permission for that body to choose
its own deputies. Two Houses, so elected, would contain a mass of
wisdom which would make the people happy, and the King great; would
place him in history where no other act can possibly place him. They
would thus put themselves in the track of the best guide they can
follow, they would soon overtake it, become its guide in turn, and
lead to the wholesome modifications wanting in that model, and
necessary to constitute a rational government. Should they attempt
more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may
lose all, and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim.
These, Madam, are my opinions; but I wish to know yours, which, I am
sure, will be better.
From a correspondent at Nismes, you will not expect news. Were
I to attempt to give you news, I should tell you stories one thousand
years old. I should detail to you the intrigues of the courts of the
Caesars, how they affect us here, the oppressions of their praetors,
prefects, &c. I am immersed in antiquities from morning to night.
For me, the city of Rome is actually existing in all the splendor of
its empire. I am filled with alarms for the event of the irruptions
daily making on us, by the Goths, the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and
Vandals, lest they should re-conquer us to our original barbarism.
If I am sometimes induced to look forward to the eighteenth century,
it is only when recalled to it by the recollection of your goodness
and friendship, and by those sentiments of sincere esteem and
respect, with which I have the honor to be, Madam, your most obedient
and most humble servant,
THE REWARDS OF TRAVEL
_To Lafayette_
_Nice, April 11, 1787_
Your head, my dear friend, is full of Notable things; and being
better employed, therefore, I do not expect letters from you. I am
constantly roving about, to see what I have never seen before, and
shall never see again. In the great cities, I go to see what
travellers think alone worthy of being seen; but I make a job of it,
and generally gulp it all down in a day. On the other hand, I am
never satiated with rambling through the fields and farms, examining
the culture and cultivators, with a degree of curiosity which makes
some take me to be a fool, and others to be much wiser than I am. I
have been pleased to find among the people a less degree of physical
misery than I had expected. They are generally well clothed, and
have a plenty of food, not animal indeed, but vegetable, which is as
wholesome. Perhaps they are over worked, the excess of the rent
required by the landlord, obliging them to too many hours of labor in
order to produce that, and where-with to feed and clothe themselves.
The soil of Champagne and Burgundy I have found more universally good
than I had expected, and as I could not help making a comparison with
England, I found that comparison more unfavorable to the latter than
is generally admitted. The soil, the climate, and the productions
are superior to those of England, and the husbandry as good, except
in one point; that of manure. In England, long leases for twenty-one
years, or three lives, to wit, that of the farmer, his wife, and son,
renewed by the son as soon as he comes to the possession, for his own
life, his wife's and eldest child's, and so on, render the farms
there almost hereditary, make it worth the farmer's while to manure
the lands highly, and give the landlord an opportunity of
occasionally making his rent keep pace with the improved state of the
lands. Here the leases are either during pleasure, or for three,
six, or nine years, which does not give the farmer time to repay
himself for the expensive operation of well manuring, and therefore,
he manures ill, or not at all. I suppose, that could the practice of
leasing for three lives be introduced in the whole kingdom, it would,
within the term of your life, increase agricultural productions fifty
per cent; or were any one proprietor to do it with his own lands, it
would increase his rents fifty per cent, in the course of twenty-five
years. But I am told the laws do not permit it. The laws then, in
this particular, are unwise and unjust, and ought to give that
permission. In the southern provinces, where the soil is poor, the
climate hot and dry, and there are few animals, they would learn the
art, found so precious in England, of making vegetable manure, and
thus improving these provinces in the article in which nature has
been least kind to them. Indeed, these provinces afford a singular
spectacle. Calculating on the poverty of their soil, and their
climate by its latitude only, they should have been the poorest in
France. On the contrary, they are the richest, from one fortuitous
circumstance. Spurs or ramifications of high mountains, making down
from the Alps, and as it were, reticulating these provinces, give to
the vallies the protection of a particular inclosure to each, and the
benefit of a general stagnation of the northern winds produced by the
whole of them, and thus countervail the advantage of several degrees
of latitude. From the first olive fields of Pierrelatte, to the
orangeries of Hieres, has been continued rapture to me. I have often
wished for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a
pleasure you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the many
you have already made. It will be a great comfort to you, to know,
from your own inspection, the condition of all the provinces of your
own country, and it will be interesting to them at some future day,
to be known to you. This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life
in which you can acquire that knowledge. And to do it most
effectually, you must be absolutely incognito, you must ferret the
people out of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles,
eat their bread, loll on their beds under pretence of resting
yourself, but in fact to find if they are soft. You will feel a
sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer
one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the
softening of their beds, or the throwing a morsel of meat into their
kettle of vegetables.
You will not wonder at the subjects of my letter: they are the
only ones which have been presented to my mind for some time past;
and the waters must always be what are the fountains from which they
flow. According to this, indeed, I should have intermixed, from
beginning to end, warm expressions of friendship to you. But,
according to the ideas of our country, we do not permit ourselves to
speak even truths, when they may have the air of flattery. I content
myself, therefore, with saying once for all, that I love you, your
wife and children. Tell them so, and adieu.
Yours affectionately,
"THE GRAND RECIPE FOR FELICITY"
_To Martha Jefferson_
_May 21, 1787_
I write to you, my dear Patsy, from the Canal of Languedoc, on
which I am at present sailing, as I have been for a week past,
cloudless skies above, limpid waters below, and find on each hand a
row of nightingales in full chorus. This delightful bird had given
me a rich treat before at the fountain of Vaucluse. After visiting
the tomb of Laura at Avignon, I went to see this fountain, a noble
one of itself, and rendered for ever famous by the songs of Petrarch
who lived near it. I arrived there somewhat fatigued, and sat down
by the fountain to repose myself. It gushes, of the size of a river,
from a secluded valley of the mountain, the ruins of Petrarch's
chateau being perched on a rock 200 feet perpendicular above. To add
to the enchantment of the scene, every tree and bush was filled with
nightingales in full song. I think you told me you had not yet
noticed this bird. As you have trees in the garden of the convent,
there must be nightingales in them, and this is the season of their
song. Endeavor my dear, to make yourself acquainted with the music
of this bird, that when you return to your own country you may be
able to estimate it's merit in comparison with that of the mocking
bird. The latter has the advantage of singing thro' a great part of
the year, whereas the nightingale sings but about 5. or 6 weeks in
the spring, and a still shorter term and with a more feeble voice in
the fall. I expect to be at Paris about the middle of next month.
By that time we may begin to expect our dear Polly. It will be a
circumstance of inexpressible comfort to me to have you both with me
once more. The object most interesting to me for the residue of my
life, will be to see you both developing daily those principles of
virtue and goodness which will make you valuable to others and happy
in yourselves, and acquiring those talents and that degree of science
which will guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous
poison of life. A mind always employed is always happy. This is the
true secret, the grand recipe for felicity. The idle are the only
wretched. In a world which furnishes so many emploiments which are
useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever
know what ennui is, or if we are ever driven to the miserable
resource of gaming, which corrupts our dispositions, and teaches us a
habit of hostility against all mankind. We are now entering the port
of Toulouse, where I quit my bark; and of course must conclude my
letter. Be good and be industrious, and you will be what I shall
most love in the world. Adieu my dear child. Yours affectionately,
AFFAIRS OF DIPLOMACY
_To John Adams_
_Paris, July 1, 1787_
DEAR SIR -- I returned about three weeks ago from a very
useless voiage. Useless, I mean, as to the object which first
suggested it, that of trying the effect of the mineral waters of Aix
en Provence on my hand. I tried these because recommended among six
or eight others as equally beneficial, and because they would place
me at the beginning of a tour to the seaports of Marseilles,
Bourdeaux, Nantes and Lorient which I had long meditated, in hopes
that a knowlege of the places and persons concerned in our commerce
and the information to be got from them might enable me sometimes to
be useful. I had expected to satisfy myself at Marseilles of the
causes of the difference of quality between the rice of Carolina and
that of Piedmont which is brought in quantities to Marseilles. Not
being able to do it, I made an excursion of three weeks into the rice
country beyond the Alps, going through it from Vercelli to Pavia
about 60 miles. I found the difference to be, not in the management
as had been supposed both here and in Carolina, but in the species of
rice, and I hope to enable them in Carolina to begin the Cultivation
of the Piedmont rice and carry it on hand in hand with their own that
they may supply both qualities, which is absolutely necessary at this
market. I had before endeavored to lead the depot of rice from Cowes
to Honfleur and hope to get it received there on such terms as may
draw that branch of commerce from England to this country. It is an
object of 250,000 guineas a year. While passing thro' the towns of
Turin, Milan and Genoa, I satisfied myself of the practicability of
introducing our whale oil for their consumption and I suppose it
would be equally so in the other great cities of that country. I was
sorry that I was not authorized to set the matter on foot. The
merchants with whom I chose to ask conferences, met me freely, and
communicated fully, knowing I was in a public character. I could
however only prepare a disposition to meet our oil merchants. On the
article of tobacco I was more in possession of my ground, and put
matters into a train for inducing their government to draw their
tobaccos directly from the U.S. and not as heretofore from G.B. I am
now occupied with the new ministry here to put the concluding hand to
the new regulations for our commerce with this country, announced in
the letter of M. de Calonnes which I sent you last fall. I am in
hopes in addition to those, to obtain a suppression of the duties on
Tar, pitch, and turpentine, and an extension of the privileges of
American _whale_ oil, to their _fish_ oils in general. I find that
the quantity of Codfish oil brought to Lorient is considerable. This
being got off hand (which will be in a few days) the chicaneries and
vexations of the farmers on the article of tobacco, and their
elusions of the order of Bernis, call for the next attention. I have
reason to hope good dispositions in the new ministry towards our
commerce with this country. Besides endeavoring on all occasions to
multiply the points of contact and connection with this country,
which I consider as our surest main-stay under every event, I have
had it much at heart to remove from between us every subject of
misunderstanding or irritation. Our debts to the king, to the
officers, and the farmers are of this description. The having
complied with no part of our engagements in these draws on us a great
deal of censure, and occasioned a language in the Assemblees des
notables very likely to produce dissatisfaction between us. Dumas
being on the spot in Holland, I had asked of him some time ago, in
confidence, his opinion on the practicability of transferring these
debts from France to Holland, and communicated his answer to
Congress, pressing them to get you to go over to Holland and try to
effect this business. Your knowlege of the ground and former
successes occasioned me to take this liberty without consulting you,
because I was sure you would not weigh your personal trouble against
public good. I have had no answer from Congress, but hearing of your
journey to Holland have hoped that some money operation had led you
there. If it related to the debts of this country I would ask a
communication of what you think yourself at liberty to communicate,
as it might change the form of my answers to the eternal applications
I receive. The debt to the officers of France carries an interest of
about 2000 guineas, so we may suppose it's principal is between 30.
and 40,000. This makes more noise against [us] than all our other
debts put together.
I send you the arrets which begin the reformation here, and
some other publications respecting America: together with copies of
letters received from Obryon and Lambe. It is believed that a naval
armament has been ordered at Brest in correspondence with that of
England. We know certainly that orders are given to form a camp in
the neighborhood of Brabant, and that Count Rochambeau has the
command of it. It's amount I cannot assert. Report says 15,000 men.
This will derange the plans of oeconomy. I take the liberty of
putting under your cover a letter for Mrs. Kinloch of South Carolina,
with a packet, and will trouble you to enquire for her and have them
delivered. The packet is of great consequence, and therefore
referred to her care, as she will know the safe opportunities of
conveying it. Should you not be able to find her, and can forward
the packet to it's address by any very safe conveiance I will beg you
to do it. I have the honour to be with sentiments of the most
perfect friendship and esteem Dear Sir your most obedient and most
humble servant,
"A PEEP . . . INTO ELYSIUM"
_To Maria Cosway_
_Paris, July 1, 1787_
You conclude, Madam, from my long silence that I am gone to the
other world. Nothing else would have prevented my writing to you so
long. I have not thought of you the less, but I took a peep only
into Elysium. I entered it at one door, & came out at another,
having seen, as I past, only Turin, Milan, & Genoa. I calculated the
hours it would have taken to carry me on to Rome, but they were
exactly so many more than I had to spare. Was not this provoking?
In thirty hours from Milan I could have been at the espousals of the
Doge and the Adriatic, but I am born to lose every thing I love. Why
were you not with me? So many enchanting scenes which only wanted
your pencil to consecrate them to fame. Whenever you go to Italy you
must pass at the Col de Tende. You may go in your chariot in full
trot from Nice to Turin, as if there were no mountain. But have your
pallet & pencil ready: for you will be sure to stop in the passage,
at the chateau de Saorgio. Imagine to yourself, madam, a castle &
village hanging to a cloud in front, on one hand a mountain cloven
through to let pass a gurgling stream; on the other a river, over
which is thrown a magnificent bridge; the whole formed into a bason,
it's sides shagged with rocks, olive trees, vines, herds, &c. I
insist on your painting it. How do you do? How have you done? and
when are you coming here? If not at all, what did you ever come for?
Only to make people miserable at losing you. Consider that you are
but a day from Paris. If you come by the way of St. Omers, which is
but two posts further, you will see a new & beautiful country. Come
then, my dear Madam, and we will breakfast every day _a Angloise_,
hie away to the Desert, dine under the bowers of Marly, and forget
that we are ever to part again. I received, in the moment of my
departure your favor of Feb. 15. and long to receive another: but
lengthy, warm, & flowing from the heart, as do the sentiments of
friendship & esteem with which I have the honor to be, dear Madam,
your affectionate friend and servant.
"THE HOMAGE OF REASON"
_To Peter Carr_
_Paris, Aug. 10, 1787_
DEAR PETER, -- I have received your two letters of Decemb. 30
and April 18, and am very happy to find by them, as well as by
letters from Mr. Wythe, that you have been so fortunate as to attract
his notice & good will; I am sure you will find this to have been one
of the most fortunate events of your life, as I have ever been
sensible it was of mine. I inclose you a sketch of the sciences to
which I would wish you to apply in such order as Mr. Wythe shall
advise; I mention also the books in them worth your reading, which
submit to his correction. Many of these are among your father's
books, which you should have brought to you. As I do not recollect
those of them not in his library, you must write to me for them,
making out a catalogue of such as you think you shall have occasion
for in 18 months from the date of your letter, & consulting Mr. Wythe
on the subject. To this sketch I will add a few particular
observations.
1. Italian. I fear the learning this language will confound
your French and Spanish. Being all of them degenerated dialects of
the Latin, they are apt to mix in conversation. I have never seen a
person speaking the three languages who did not mix them. It is a
delightful language, but late events having rendered the Spanish more
useful, lay it aside to prosecute that.
2. Spanish. Bestow great attention on this, & endeavor to
acquire an accurate knowlege of it. Our future connections with
Spain & Spanish America will render that language a valuable
acquisition. The antient history of a great part of America, too, is
written in that language. I send you a dictionary.
3. Moral philosophy. I think it lost time to attend lectures in
this branch. He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler if he
had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one
man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have
become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality
therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a
sense of right & wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as
much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling;
it is the true foundation of morality, & not the {to kalon}, truth,
&c. as fanciful writers have imagined. The moral sense, or
conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given
to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of
members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be
strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.
This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of
reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a
less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a
ploughman & a professor. The former will decide it as well, & often
better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by
artificial rules. In this branch therefore read good books because
they will encourage as well as direct your feelings. The writings of
Sterne particularly form the best course of morality that ever was
written. Besides these read the books mentioned in the enclosed
paper; and above all things lose no occasion of exercising your
dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be
humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous &c. Consider
every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your
moral faculties, & increase your worth.
4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this
object. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of
novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject
rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the
consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake
off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are
servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her
tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the
existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of
the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will
naturally examine first the religion of your own country. Read the
bible then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are
within the ordinary course of nature you will believe on the
authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy &
Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor in one
scale, and their not being against the laws of nature does not weigh
against them. But those facts in the bible which contradict the laws
of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of
faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to
inspiration from god. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are
founded, and whether that evidence is so strong as that its falsehood
would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature in the
case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the
sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or
Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of
statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was
inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his
having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry,
because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer
enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body
revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should
not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees,
buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its
revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this
arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most
within the law of probabilities? You will next read the new
testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in
your eye the opposite pretensions 1. of those who say he was begotten
by god, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at
will, & ascended bodily into heaven: and 2. of those who say he was a
man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind,
who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them,
& was punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to
the Roman law which punished the first commission of that offence by
whipping, & the second by exile or death _in furca_. See this law in
the Digest Lib. 48. tit. 19. 28. 3. & Lipsius Lib. 2. de cruce. cap.
2. These questions are examined in the books I have mentioned under
the head of religion, & several others. They will assist you in your
inquiries, but keep your reason firmly on the watch in reading them
all. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of it's
consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will
find incitements to virtue in the comfort & pleasantness you feel in
it's exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If
you find reason to believe there is a god, a consciousness that you
are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast
additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a
happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that
Jesus was also a god, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid
and love. In fine, I repeat that you must lay aside all prejudice on
both sides, & neither believe nor reject anything because any other
persons, or description of persons have rejected or believed it.
Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are
answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision. I
forgot to observe when speaking of the new testament that you should
read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of
ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those
they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended
to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their
pretensions by your own reason, & not by the reason of those
ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some however still
extant, collected by Fabricius which I will endeavor to get & send
you.
5. Travelling. This makes men wiser, but less happy. When men
of sober age travel, they gather knolege which they may apply
usefully for their country, but they are subject ever after to
recollections mixed with regret, their affections are weakened by
being extended over more objects, & they learn new habits which
cannot be gratified when they return home. Young men who travel are
exposed to all these inconveniences in a higher degree, to others
still more serious, and do not acquire that wisdom for which a
previous foundation is requisite by repeated & just observations at
home. The glare of pomp & pleasure is analogous to the motion of
their blood, it absorbs all their affection & attention, they are
torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their
home as to a place of exile & condemnation. Their eyes are for ever
turned back to the object they have lost, & it's recollection poisons
the residue of their lives. Their first & most delicate passions are
hackneyed on unworthy objects here, & they carry home only the dregs,
insufficient to make themselves or anybody else happy. Add to this
that a habit of idleness, an inability to apply themselves to
business is acquired & renders them useless to themselves & their
country. These observations are founded in experience. There is no
place where your pursuit of knolege will be so little obstructed by
foreign objects as in your own country, nor any wherein the virtues
of the heart will be less exposed to be weakened. Be good, be
learned, & be industrious, & you will not want the aid of travelling
to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy
within yourself. I repeat my advice to take a great deal of
exercise, & on foot. Health is the first requisite after morality.
Write to me often & be assured of the interest I take in your
success, as well as of the warmth of those sentiments of attachment
with which I am, dear Peter, your affectionate friend.
P.S. Let me know your age in your next letter. Your cousins
here are well & desire to be remembered to you.
ENCLOSURE
Antient history. Herodot. Thucyd. Xenoph. hellen. Xenoph. Anab.
Q. Curt. Just.
Livy. Polybius. Sallust. Caesar. Suetonius. Tacitus. Aurel.
Victor. Herodian.
Gibbons' decline of the Roman empire. Milot histoire ancienne.
Mod. hist. English. Tacit. Germ. & Agricole -- Hume to the end of
H.VI. then Habington's E.IV. -- S't. Thomas Moor's E.5. &
R.3. -- L'd Bacon's H.7. -- L'd. Herbert of Cherbury's H.8. -- K.
Edward's journal (in Burnet) B'p. of Hereford's E.6. & Mary.--
Cambden's Eliz. -- Wilson's Jac.I. -- Ludlow (omit Clarendon as
too seducing for a young republican. By and by read him)
Burnet's Charles 2. Jac.2. W'm. & Mary & Anne -- L'd Orrery down to
George 1. & 2. -- Burke's G.3. -- Robertson's hist. of Scotland.
American. Robertson's America. -- Douglass's N. America --
Hutcheson's Massachusets. Smith's N. York. -- Smith's N. Jersey
-- Franklin's review of Pennsylvania. -- Smith's, Stith's,
Keith's, & Beverley's hist. of Virginia
Foreign. Mallet's North'n. Antiquities by Percy --
Puffendorf's hist'y.
of Europe & Martiniere's of Asia, Africa & America -- Milot
histoire Moderne. Voltaire histoire universelle -- Milot hist. de
France -- Mariana's hist. of Spain in Span. -- Robertson's Charles
V. -- Watson's Phil. II. & III. -- Grotii Belgica. Mosheim's
Ecclesiastical history.
Poetry Homer -- Milton -- Ossian -- Sophocles -- Aeschylus
-- Eurip. -- Metastasio -- Shakesp. -- Theocritus
-- Anacreon [ . . . ]
Mathematics Bezout & whatever else Mr. Madison recommends.
Astronomy Delalande &'c. as Mr. Madison shall recommend.
Natural Philosophy. Musschenbroeck.
Botany. Linnaei Philosophia Botanica -- Genera plantarum --
Species plantarum -- Gronorii flora [ . . . ]
Chemistry. Fourcroy.
Agriculture. Home's principles of Agriculture -- Tull &c.
Anatomy. Cheselden.
Morality. The Socratic dialogues -- Cicero's Philosophies -- Kaim's
principles of Nat'l. religion -- Helvetius de l'esprit et
de l'homme. Locke's Essay. -- Lucretius -- Traite de Morale
& du bonheur
Religion. Locke's Conduct of the mind. -- Middleton's works --
Bolingbroke's philosoph. works -- Hume's essays -- Voltaire's
works -- Beattie
Politics & Law. Whatever Mr. Wythe pleases, who will be so good
as to correct also all the preceding articles which are only
intended as a groundwork to be finished by his pencil.
REVOLT OF THE NOBLES
_To John Adams_
_Paris, Aug. 30, 1787_
DEAR SIR -- Since your favor of July 10. mine have been of July
17. 23 and 28. The last inclosed a bill of exchange from Mr. Grand
on Tessier for pound 46-17-10 sterl. to answer Genl. Sullivan's bill
for that sum. I hope it got safe to hand, tho' I have been anxious
about it as it went by post and my letters thro' that channel
sometimes miscarry.
From the separation of the Notables to the present moment has
been perhaps the most interesting interval ever known in this
country. The propositions of the Government, approved by the
Notables, were precious to the nation and have been in an honest
course of execution, some of them being carried into effect, and
others preparing. Above all the establishment of the Provincial
assemblies, some of which have begun their sessions, bid fair to be
the instrument for circumscribing the power of the crown and raising
the people into consideration. The election given to them is what
will do this. Tho' the minister who proposed these improvements
seems to have meant them as the price of the new supplies, the game
has been so played as to secure the improvements to the nation
without securing the price. The Notables spoke softly on the subject
of the additional supplies, but the parliament took them up roundly,
refused to register the edicts for the new taxes, till compelled in a
bed of justice and prefered themselves to be transferred to Troyes
rather than withdraw their opposition. It is urged principally
against the king, that his revenue is 130. millions more than that of
his predecessor was, and yet he demands 120. millions further. You
will see this well explained in the `Conference entre un ministre
d'etat et un Conseiller au parlement' which I send you with some
other small pamphlets. In the mean time all tongues in Paris (and in
France as it is said) have been let loose, and never was a license of
speaking against the government exercised in London more freely or
more universally. Caracatures, placards, bon mots, have been
indulged in by all ranks of people, and I know of no well attested
instance of a single punishment. For some time mobs of 10; 20;
30,000 people collected daily, surrounded the parliament house,
huzzaed the members, even entered the doors and examined into their
conduct, took the horses out of the carriages of those who did well,
and drew them home. The government thought it prudent to prevent
these, drew some regiments into the neighborhood, multiplied the
guards, had the streets constantly patrolled by strong parties,
suspended privileged places, forbad all clubs, etc. The mobs have
ceased: perhaps this may be partly owing to the absence of
parliament. The Count d'Artois, sent to hold a bed of justice in the
Cour des Aides, was hissed and hooted without reserve by the
populace; the carriage of Madame de (I forget the name) in the
queen's livery was stopped by the populace under a belief that it was
Madame de Polignac's whom they would have insulted, the queen going
to the theater at Versailles with Madame de Polignac was received
with a general hiss. The king, long in the habit of drowning his
cares in wine, plunges deeper and deeper; the queen cries but sins
on. The Count d'Artois is detested, and Monsieur [Louis, Comte de
Provence] the general favorite. The Archbishop of Thoulouse is made
Ministre principale, a virtuous, patriotic and able character. The
Marechal de Castries retired yesterday notwithstanding strong
sollicitations to remain in office. The Marechal de Segur retired at
the same time, prompted to it by the court. Their successors are not
yet known. M. de St. Prist goes Ambassador to Holland in the room of
Verac transferred to Switzerland, and the Count de Moustier goes to
America in the room of the Chevalier de la Luzerne who has a promise
of the first vacancy. These nominations are not yet made formally,
but they are decided on and the parties are ordered to prepare for
their destination. As it has been long since I have had a
confidential conveiance to you, I have brought together the principal
facts from the adjournment of the Notables to the present moment
which, as you will perceive from their nature, required a
confidential conveyance. I have done it the rather because, tho' you
will have heard many of them and seen them in the public papers, yet
floating in the mass of lies which constitute the atmospheres of
London and Paris, you may not have been sure of their truth: and I
have mentioned every truth of any consequence to enable you to stamp
as false the facts pretermitted. I think that in the course of three
months the royal authority has lost, and the rights of the nation
gained, as much ground, by a revolution of public opinion only, as
England gained in all her civil wars under the Stuarts. I rather
believe too they will retain the ground gained, because it is
defended by the young and the middle aged, in opposition to the old
only. The first party increases, and the latter diminishes daily
from the course of nature. You may suppose that under this
situation, war would be unwelcome to France. She will surely avoid
it if not forced by the courts of London and Berlin. If forced, it
is probable she will change the system of Europe totally by an
alliance with the two empires, to whom nothing would be more
desireable. In the event of such a coalition, not only Prussia but
the whole European world must receive from them their laws. But
France will probably endeavor to preserve the present system if it
can be done by sacrifising to a certain degree the pretensions of the
patriotic party in Holland. But of all these matters you can judge,
in your position, where less secrecy is observed, better than I can.
I have news from America as late as July 19. Nothing had then
transpired from the Federal convention. I am sorry they began their
deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the
tongues of their members. Nothing can justify this example but the
innocence of their intentions, and ignorance of the value of public
discussions. I have no doubt that all their other measures will be
good and wise. It is really an assembly of demigods. Genl.
Washington was of opinion they should not separate till October. I
have the honour to be with every sentiment of friendship and respect
Dear Sir Your most obedient and most humble servant,
A MOOSE FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE
_To Buffon_
_Paris, Octob. 1, 1787_
SIR, -- I had the honour of informing you some time ago that I
had written to some of my friends in America, desiring they would
send me such of the spoils of the Moose, Caribou, Elk & deer as might
throw light on that class of animals; but more particularly to send
me the complete skeleton, skin, & horns of the Moose, in such
condition as that the skin might be sewed up & stuffed on it's
arrival here. I am happy to be able to present to you at this moment
the bones & skin of a Moose, the horns of the Caribou, the elk, the
deer, the spiked horned buck, & the Roebuck of America. They all
come from New Hampshire & Massachusetts. I give you their popular
names, as it rests with yourself to decide their real names. The
skin of the Moose was drest with the hair on, but a great deal of it
has come off, and the rest is ready to drop off. The horns of the
elk are remarkably small. I have certainly seen of them which would
have weighed five or six times as much. This is the animal which we
call elk in the Southern parts of America, and of which I have given
some description in the Notes on Virginia, of which I had the honour
of presenting you a copy. I really doubt whether the flat-horned elk
exists in America; and I think this may be properly classed with the
elk, the principal difference being in the horns. I have seen the
Daim, the Cerf, the Chevreuil of Europe. But the animal we call Elk,
and which may be distinguished as the Round-horned elk, is very
different from them. I have never seen the Brand-hirtz or Cerf
d'Ardennes, nor the European elk. Could I get a sight of them I
think I should be able to say to which of them the American elk
resembles most, as I am tolerably well acquainted with that animal.
I must observe also that the horns of the Deer, which accompany these
spoils, are not of the fifth or sixth part of the weight of some that
I have seen. This individual has been of age, according to our
method of judging. I have taken measures particularly to be
furnished with large horns of our elk & our deer, & therefore beg of
you not to consider those now sent as furnishing a specimen of their
ordinary size. I really suspect you will find that the Moose, the
Round horned elk, & the American deer are species not existing in
Europe. The Moose is perhaps of a new class. I wish these spoils,
Sir, may have the merit of adding anything new to the treasures of
nature which have so fortunately come under your observation, & of
which she seems to have given you the key: they will in that case be
some gratification to you, which it will always be pleasing to me to
have procured, having the honor to be with sentiments of the most
perfect esteem & respect, Sir, your most obedient, & most humble
servant.
THE NEW CONSTITUTION
_To William S. Smith_
_Paris, Nov. 13, 1787_
DEAR SIR, -- I am now to acknoledge the receipt of your favors
of October the 4th, 8th, & 26th. In the last you apologise for your
letters of introduction to Americans coming here. It is so far from
needing apology on your part, that it calls for thanks on mine. I
endeavor to shew civilities to all the Americans who come here, &
will give me opportunities of doing it: and it is a matter of comfort
to know from a good quarter what they are, & how far I may go in my
attentions to them. Can you send me Woodmason's bills for the two
copying presses for the M. de la Fayette, & the M. de Chastellux?
The latter makes one article in a considerable account, of old
standing, and which I cannot present for want of this article. -- I
do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my
thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you
to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall
receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: &
very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately
read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder,
would have sufficed to set me against a chief magistrate eligible for
a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: & what we
have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever
excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the
effect of impudent & persevering lying. The British ministry have so
long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies
about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed
them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves
have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed
them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it
ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can
history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I
say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not
wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a
rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The
part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the
importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under
such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the
public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11. years. There
has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a
half for each state. What country before ever existed a century &
half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties
if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people
preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy
is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify
a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It
is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed
by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment
they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order. I hope in
God this article will be rectified before the new constitution is
accepted. -- You ask me if any thing transpires here on the subject
of S. America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible
materials there, and that they wait the torch only. But this country
probably will join the extinguishers. -- The want of facts worth
communicating to you has occasioned me to give a little loose to
dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot inform.
MORE ON THE CONSTITUTION
_To John Adams_
_Paris, Nov. 13, 1787_
DEAR SIR -- This will be delivered you by young Mr. Rutledge.
Your knowledge of his father will introduce him to your notice. He
merits it moreover on his own account.
I am now to acknolege your favors of Oct. 8 and 26. That of
August 25. was duly received, nor can I recollect by what accident I
was prevented from acknoleging it in mine of Sep. 28. It has been
the source of my subsistence hitherto, and must continue to be so
till I receive letters on the affairs of money from America. Van
Staphorsts & Willinks have answered my draughts. -- Your books for M.
de la Fayette are received here. I will notify it to him, who is at
present with his provincial assembly in Auvergne.
Little is said lately of the progress of the negociations
between the courts of Petersburg, Vienna, and Versailles. The
distance of the former and the cautious, unassuming character of it's
minister here is one cause of delays: a greater one is the greediness
and instable character of the emperor. Nor do I think that the
Principal here [Brienne] will be easily induced to lend himself to
any connection which shall threaten a war within a considerable
number of years. His own reign will be that of peace only, in all
probability; and were any accident to tumble him down, this country
would immediately gird on it's sword and buckler, and trust to
occurrences for supplies of money. The wound their honour has
sustained festers in their hearts, and it may be said with truth that
the Archbishop and a few priests, determined to support his measures
because proud to see their order come again into power, are the only
advocates for the line of conduct which has been pursued. It is said
and believed thro' Paris literally that the Count de Monmorin
`pleuroit comme un enfant ["wept like a child"]' when obliged to sign
the counter declaration. Considering the phrase as figurative, I
believe it expresses the distress of his heart. Indeed he has made
no secret of his individual opinion. In the mean time the Principal
goes on with a firm and patriotic spirit, in reforming the cruel
abuses of the government and preparing a new constitution which will
give to this people as much liberty as they are capable of managing.
This I think will be the glory of his administration, because, tho' a
good theorist in finance, he is thought to execute badly. They are
about to open a loan of 100. millions to supply present wants, and it
is said the preface of the Arret will contain a promise of the
Convocation of the States general during the ensuing year. 12. or 15.
provincial assemblies are already in action, and are going on well;
and I think that tho' the nation suffers in reputation, it will gain
infinitely in happiness under the present administration. I inclose
to Mr. Jay a pamphlet which I will beg of you to forward. I leave it
open for your perusal. When you shall have read it, be so good as to
stick a wafer in it. It is not yet published, nor will be for some
days. This copy has been ceded to me as a favor.
How do you like our new constitution? I confess there are
things in it which stagger all my dispositions to subscribe to what
such an assembly has proposed. The house of federal representatives
will not be adequate to the management of affairs either foreign or
federal. Their President seems a bad edition of a Polish king. He
may be reelected from 4. years to 4. years for life. Reason and
experience prove to us that a chief magistrate, so continuable, is an
officer for life. When one or two generations shall have proved that
this is an office for life, it becomes on every succession worthy of
intrigue, of bribery, of force, and even of foreign interference. It
will be of great consequence to France and England to have America
governed by a Galloman or Angloman. Once in office, and possessing
the military force of the union, without either the aid or check of a
council, he would not be easily dethroned, even if the people could
be induced to withdraw their votes from him. I wish that at the end
of the 4. years they had made him for ever ineligible a second time.
Indeed I think all the good of this new constitution might have been
couched in three or four new articles to be added to the good, old,
and venerable fabrick, which should have been preserved even as a
religious relique. -- Present me and my daughters affectionately to
Mrs. Adams. The younger one continues to speak of her warmly.
Accept yourself assurances of the sincere esteem and respect with
which I have the honour to be, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,
P. S. I am in negociation with de la Blancherie. You shall
hear from me when arranged.
OBJECTIONS TO THE CONSTITUTION
_To James Madison_
_Paris, Dec. 20, 1787_
DEAR SIR, -- My last to you was of Oct. 8 by the Count de
Moustier. Yours of July 18. Sep. 6. & Oct. 24. have been
successively received, yesterday, the day before & three or four days
before that. I have only had time to read the letters, the printed
papers communicated with them, however interesting, being obliged to
lie over till I finish my dispatches for the packet, which dispatches
must go from hence the day after tomorrow. I have much to thank you
for. First and most for the cyphered paragraph respecting myself.
These little informations are very material towards forming my own
decisions. I would be glad even to know when any individual member
thinks I have gone wrong in any instance. If I know myself it would
not excite ill blood in me, while it would assist to guide my
conduct, perhaps to justify it, and to keep me to my duty, alert. I
must thank you too for the information in Thos. Burke's case, tho'
you will have found by a subsequent letter that I have asked of you a
further investigation of that matter. It is to gratify the lady who
is at the head of the Convent wherein my daughters are, & who, by her
attachment & attention to them, lays me under great obligations. I
shall hope therefore still to receive from you the result of the
further enquiries my second letter had asked. -- The parcel of rice
which you informed me had miscarried accompanied my letter to the
Delegates of S. Carolina. Mr. Bourgoin was to be the bearer of both
& both were delivered together into the hands of his relation here
who introduced him to me, and who at a subsequent moment undertook to
convey them to Mr. Bourgoin. This person was an engraver
particularly recommended to D'r. Franklin & Mr. Hopkinson. Perhaps
he may have mislaid the little parcel of rice among his baggage. -- I
am much pleased that the sale of Western lands is so successful. I
hope they will absorb all the Certificates of our Domestic debt
speedily, in the first place, and that then offered for cash they
will do the same by our foreign one.
The season admitting only of operations in the Cabinet, and
these being in a great measure secret, I have little to fill a
letter. I will therefore make up the deficiency by adding a few
words on the Constitution proposed by our Convention. I like much
the general idea of framing a government which should go on of itself
peaceably, without needing continual recurrence to the state
legislatures. I like the organization of the government into
Legislative, Judiciary & Executive. I like the power given the
Legislature to levy taxes, and for that reason solely approve of the
greater house being chosen by the people directly. For tho' I think
a house chosen by them will be very illy qualified to legislate for
the Union, for foreign nations &c. yet this evil does not weigh
against the good of preserving inviolate the fundamental principle
that the people are not to be taxed but by representatives chosen
immediately by themselves. I am captivated by the compromise of the
opposite claims of the great & little states, of the latter to equal,
and the former to proportional influence. I am much pleased too with
the substitution of the method of voting by persons, instead of that
of voting by states: and I like the negative given to the Executive
with a third of either house, though I should have liked it better
had the Judiciary been associated for that purpose, or invested with
a similar and separate power. There are other good things of less
moment. I will now add what I do not like. First the omission of a
bill of rights providing clearly & without the aid of sophisms for
freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against
standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal &
unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in
all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land & not by the law
of nations. To say, as Mr. Wilson does that a bill of rights was not
necessary because all is reserved in the case of the general
government which is not given, while in the particular ones all is
given which is not reserved, might do for the audience to whom it was
addressed, but is surely a gratis dictum, opposed by strong
inferences from the body of the instrument, as well as from the
omission of the clause of our present confederation which had
declared that in express terms. It was a hard conclusion to say
because there has been no uniformity among the states as to the cases
triable by jury, because some have been so incautious as to abandon
this mode of trial, therefore the more prudent states shall be
reduced to the same level of calamity. It would have been much more
just & wise to have concluded the other way that as most of the
states had judiciously preserved this palladium, those who had
wandered should be brought back to it, and to have established
general right instead of general wrong. Let me add that a bill of
rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on
earth, general or particular, & what no just government should
refuse, or rest on inferences. The second feature I dislike, and
greatly dislike, is the abandonment in every instance of the
necessity of rotation in office, and most particularly in the case of
the President. Experience concurs with reason in concluding that the
first magistrate will always be re-elected if the Constitution
permits it. He is then an officer for life. This once observed, it
becomes of so much consequence to certain nations to have a friend or
a foe at the head of our affairs that they will interfere with money
& with arms. A Galloman or an Angloman will be supported by the
nation he befriends. If once elected, and at a second or third
election out voted by one or two votes, he will pretend false votes,
foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported
by the States voting for him, especially if they are the central ones
lying in a compact body themselves & separating their opponents: and
they will be aided by one nation of Europe, while the majority are
aided by another. The election of a President of America some years
hence will be much more interesting to certain nations of Europe than
ever the election of a king of Poland was. Reflect on all the
instances in history antient & modern, of elective monarchies, and
say if they do not give foundation for my fears. The Roman emperors,
the popes, while they were of any importance, the German emperors
till they became hereditary in practice, the kings of Poland, the
Deys of the Ottoman dependances. It may be said that if elections
are to be attended with these disorders, the seldomer they are
renewed the better. But experience shews that the only way to
prevent disorder is to render them uninteresting by frequent changes.
An incapacity to be elected a second time would have been the only
effectual preventative. The power of removing him every fourth year
by the vote of the people is a power which will not be exercised.
The king of Poland is removeable every day by the Diet, yet he is
never removed. -- Smaller objections are the Appeal in fact as well
as law, and the binding all persons Legislative Executive & Judiciary
by oath to maintain that constitution. I do not pretend to decide
what would be the best method of procuring the establishment of the
manifold good things in this constitution, and of getting rid of the
bad. Whether by adopting it in hopes of future amendment, or, after
it has been duly weighed & canvassed by the people, after seeing the
parts they generally dislike, & those they generally approve, to say
to them `We see now what you wish. Send together your deputies
again, let them frame a constitution for you omitting what you have
condemned, & establishing the powers you approve. Even these will be
a great addition to the energy of your government.' -- At all events
I hope you will not be discouraged from other trials, if the present
one should fail of its full effect. -- I have thus told you freely
what I like & dislike: merely as a matter of curiosity, for I know
your own judgment has been formed on all these points after having
heard everything which could be urged on them. I own I am not a
friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. The
late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it
should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in 13 states in the
course of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century & a half.
No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of
power in the hands of government prevent insurrections. France, with
all it's despotism, and two or three hundred thousand men always in
arms has had three insurrections in the three years I have been here
in every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in
Massachusetts & a great deal more blood was spilt. In Turkey, which
Montesquieu sup-poses more despotic, insurrections are the events of
every day. In England, where the hand of power is lighter than here,
but heavier than with us they happen every half dozen years. Compare
again the ferocious depredations of their insurgents with the order,
the moderation & the almost self extinguishment of ours. -- After
all, it is my principle that the will of the majority should always
prevail. If they approve the proposed Convention in all it's parts,
I shall concur in it chearfully, in hopes that they will amend it
whenever they shall find it work wrong. I think our governments will
remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly
agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands
in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in
large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.
Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be
attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the
most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty. I
have tired you by this time with my disquisitions & will therefore
only add assurances of the sincerity of those sentiments of esteem &
attachment with which I am Dear Sir your affectionate friend &
servant
P. S. The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I
think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there
shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill &
passing it: that it should then be offered to it's passage without
changing a word: and that if circum-stances should be thought to
require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses
instead of a bare majority.
A STRATEGY ON RATIFICATION
_To Alexander Donald_
_Paris, February 7, 1788_
DEAR SIR, -- I received duly your friendly letter of November
the 12th. By this time, you will have seen published by Congress,
the new regulations obtained from this court, in favor of our
commerce. You will observe, that the arrangement relative to tobacco
is a continuation of the order of Berni for five years, only leaving
the price to be settled between the buyer and seller. You will see
too, that all contracts for tobacco are forbidden, till it arrives in
France. Of course, your proposition for a contract is precluded. I
fear the prices here will be low, especially if the market be
crowded. You should be particularly attentive to the article, which
requires that the tobacco should come in French or American bottoms,
as this article will, in no instance, be departed from.
I wish with all my soul, that the nine first conventions may
accept the new constitution, because this will secure to us the good
it contains, which I think great and important. But I equally wish,
that the four latest conventions, which ever they be, may refuse to
accede to it, till a declaration of rights be annexed. This would
probably command the offer of such a declaration, and thus give to
the whole fabric, perhaps as much perfection as any one of that kind
ever had. By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall
stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of
commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no
suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are
fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should
decline. There is another strong feature in the new constitution,
which I as strongly dislike. That is, the perpetual reeligibility of
the President. Of this I expect no amendment at present, because I
do not see that any body has objected to it on your side the water.
But it will be productive of cruel distress to our country, even in
your day and mine. The importance to France and England, to have our
government in the hands of a friend or a foe, will occasion their
interference by money, and even by arms. Our President will be of
much more consequence to them than a King of Poland. We must take
care, however, that neither this, nor any other objection to the new
form, produces a schism in our Union. That would be an incurable
evil, because near friends falling out, never re-unite cordially;
whereas, all of us going together, we shall be sure to cure the evils
of our new constitution, before they do great harm. The box of books
I had taken the liberty to address to you, is but just gone from
Havre for New York. I do not see, at present, any symptoms strongly
indicating war. It is true, that the distrust existing between the
two courts of Versailles and London, is so great, that they can
scarcely do business together. However, the difficulty and doubt of
obtaining money make both afraid to enter into war. The little
preparations for war, which we see, are the effect of distrust,
rather then of a design to commence hostilities. And in such a state
of mind, you know, small things may produce a rupture: so that though
peace is rather probable, war is very possible.
Your letter has kindled all the fond recollections of antient
times; recollections much dearer to me than any thing I have known
since. There are minds which can be pleased by honors and
preferments; but I see nothing in them but envy and enmity. It is
only necessary to possess them, to know how little they contribute to
happiness, or rather how hostile they are to it. No attachments
soothe the mind so much as those contracted in early life; nor do I
recollect any societies which have given me more pleasure, than those
of which you have partaken with me. I had rather be shut up in a
very modest cottage, with my books, my family and a few old friends,
dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked,
than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can
give. I shall be glad to hear from you often. Give me the small
news as well as the great. Tell Dr. Currie, that I believe I am
indebted to him a letter, but that like the mass of our countrymen, I
am not, at this moment, able to pay all my debts; the post being to
depart in an hour, and the last stroke of a pen I am able to send by
it, being that which assures you of the sentiments of esteem and
attachment, with which I am, Dear Sir, your affectionate friend and
servant,
"A SON OF NATURE"
_To Maria Cosway_
_Paris, April 24, 1788_
I arrived here, my dear friend, the last night, and in a bushel
of letters presented me by way of reception, I saw that one was of
your handwriting. It is the only one I have yet opened, and I answer
it before I open another. I do not think I was in arrears in our
epistolary account when I left Paris. In affection I am sure you
were greatly my debtor. I often determined during my journey to
write to you: but sometimes the fatigue of exercise, and sometimes
fatigued attention hindered me.
At Dusseldorff I wished for you much. I surely never saw so
precious a collection of paintings. Above all things those of Van
der Werff affected me the most. His picture of Sarah delivering Agar
to Abraham is delicious. I would have agreed to have been Abraham
though the consequence could have been that I should have been dead
five or six thousand years. Carlo Dolce became also a violent
favorite. I am so little of a connoisseur that I preferred the works
of these two authors to the old faded red things of Rubens. I am but
a son of nature, loving what I see & feel, without being able to give
a reason, nor caring much whether there be one. At Heidelberg I
wished for you too. In fact I led you by the hand thro' the whole
garden.
I was struck with the resemblance of this scene to that of
Vaucluse as seen from what is called the chateau of Petrarch. Nature
has formed both on the same sketch, but she has filled up that of
Heidelberg with a bolder hand, the river is larger, the mountains
more majestic and better clothed. Art too has seconded her views.
The chateau of Petrarch is the ruin of a modest country house, that
of Heidelberg would stand well along side the pyramids of Egypt. It
is certainly the most magnificent ruin after those left us by the
antients.
At Strasbourg I sat down to write to you, but for my soul I
could think of nothing at Strasbourg but the promontory of noses, of
Diego, of Slawkenburgius his historiaga, & the procession of the
Strasburgers to meet the man with the nose. Had I written to you
from thence it would have been a continuation of Sterne upon noses, &
I knew that nature had not formed me for a Continuator of Sterne: so
let it alone till I came here and received your angry letter. It is
a proof of your esteem, but I love better to have soft testimonials
of it.
You must therefore now write me a letter teeming with
affection; such as I feel for you. So much I have no right to ask.
Being but just arrived I am not _au fait_ of the small news affecting
your acquaintances here. I know only that the princess Lubomirski is
still here & that she has taken the house that was M. de Simoulin's.
When you come again therefore you will be somewhat nearer to me, but
not near enough: and still surrounded by a numerous cortege, so that
I shall see you only by scraps as I did when you were here last. The
time before we were half days & whole days together, & I found this
too little. Adieu! God bless you!
Your's affectionately
"AMAZONS AND ANGELS"
_To Anne Willing Bingham_
_Paris, May 11, 1788_
DEAR MADAM, -- A gentleman going to Philadelphia furnishes me
the occasion of sending you some numbers of the Cabinet des Modes &
some new theatrical pieces. These last have had great success on the
stage, where they have excited perpetual applause. We have now need
of something to make us laugh, for the topics of the times are sad
and eventful. The gay and thoughtless Paris is now become a furnace
of Politics. All the world is now politically mad. Men, women,
children talk nothing else, & you know that naturally they talk much,
loud & warm. Society is spoilt by it, at least for those who, like
myself, are but lookers on. -- You too have had your political
fever. But our good ladies, I trust, have been too wise to wrinkle
their foreheads with politics. They are contented to soothe & calm
the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate.
They have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all other,
and the art to cultivate it beyond all others. There is no part of
the earth where so much of this is enjoyed as in America. You agree
with me in this; but you think that the pleasures of Paris more than
supply its wants; in other words that a Parisian is happier than an
American. You will change your opinion, my dear Madam, and come over
to mine in the end. Recollect the women of this capital, some on
foot, some on horses, & some in carriages hunting pleasure in the
streets, in routs & assemblies, and forgetting that they have left it
behind them in their nurseries; compare them with our own
countrywomen occupied in the tender and tranquil amusements of
domestic life, and confess that it is a comparison of Amazons and
Angels. -- You will have known from the public papers that Monsieur
de Buffon, the father, is dead & you have known long ago that the son
and his wife are separated. They are pursuing pleasure in opposite
directions. Madame de Rochambeau is well: so is Madame de la
Fayette. I recollect no other Nouvelles de societe interesting to
you. And as for political news of battles & sieges, Turks &
Russians, I will not detail them to you, because you would be less
handsome after reading them. I have only to add then, what I take a
pleasure in repeating, tho' it will be the thousandth time that I
have the honour to be with sentiments of very sincere respect &
attachment, dear Madam, your most obedient & most humble servant.
"THE CRUMBS OF SCIENCE"
_To the Rev. James Madison_
_Paris, July 19, 1788_
DEAR SIR, -- My last letter to you was of the 13th of August
last. As you seem willing to accept of the crumbs of science on
which we are subsisting here, it is with pleasure I continue to hand
them on to you, in proportion as they are dealt out. Herschel's
volcano in the moon you have doubtless heard of, and placed among the
other vagaries of a head, which seems not organised for sound
induction. The wildness of the theories hitherto proposed by him, on
his own discoveries, seems to authorise us to consider his merit as
that of a good optician only. You know also, that Doctor Ingenhouse
had discovered, as he supposed, from experiment, that vegetation
might be promoted by occasioning streams of the electrical fluid to
pass through a plant, and that other physicians had received and
confirmed this theory. He now, however, retracts it, and finds by
more decisive experiments, that the electrical fluid can neither
forward nor retard vegetation. Uncorrected still of the rage of
drawing general conclusions from partial and equivocal observations,
he hazards the opinion that _light_ promotes vegetation. I have
heretofore supposed from observation, that light affects the color of
living bodies, whether vegetable or animal; but that either the one
or the other receives _nutriment_ from that fluid, must be permitted
to be doubted of, till better confirmed by observation. It is always
better to have no ideas, than false ones; to believe nothing, than to
believe what is wrong. In my mind, theories are more easily
demolished than rebuilt.
An Abbe here, has shaken, if not destroyed, the theory of de
Dominis, Descartes and Newton, for explaining the phenomenon of the
rainbow. According to that theory, you know, a cone of rays issuing
from the sun, and falling on a cloud in the opposite part of the
heavens, is reflected back in the form of a smaller cone, the apex of
which is the eye of the observer: so that the eye of the observer
must be in the axis of both cones, and equally distant from every
part of the bow. But he observes, that he has repeatedly seen bows,
the one end of which has been very near to him, and the other at a
very great distance. I have often seen the same thing myself. I
recollect well to have seen the end of a rainbow between myself and a
house, or between myself and a bank, not twenty yards distant; and
this repeatedly. But I never saw, what he says he has seen,
different rainbows at the same time, intersecting each other. I
never saw coexistent bows, which were not concentric also. Again,
according to the theory, if the sun is in the horizon, the horizon
intercepts the lower half of the bow, if above the horizon, that
intercepts more than the half, in proportion. So that generally, the
bow is less than a semicircle, and never more. He says he has seen
it more than a semicircle. I have often seen the leg of the bow
below my level. My situation at Monticello admits this, because
there is a mountain there in the opposite direction of the
afternoon's sun, the valley between which and Monticello, is five
hundred feet deep. I have seen a leg of a rainbow plunge down on the
river running through the valley. But I do not recollect to have
remarked at any time, that the bow was more than half a circle. It
appears to me, that these facts demolish the Newtonian hypothesis,
but they do not support that erected in its stead by the Abbe. He
supposes a cloud between the sun and observer, and that through some
opening in that cloud, the rays pass, and form an iris on the
opposite part of the heavens, just as a ray passing through a hole in
the shutter of a darkened room, and falling on a prism there, forms
the prismatic colors on the opposite wall. According to this, we
might see bows of more than the half circle, as often as of less. A
thousand other objections occur to this hypothesis, which need not be
suggested to you. The result is, that we are wiser than we were, by
having an error the less in our catalogue; but the blank occasioned
by it, must remain for some happier hypothesist to fill up.
The dispute about the conversion and reconversion of water and
air, is still stoutly kept up. The contradictory experiments of
chemists, leave us at liberty to conclude what we please. My
conclusion is, that art has not yet invented sufficient aids, to
enable such subtle bodies to make a well defined impression on organs
as blunt as ours: that it is laudable to encourage investigation, but
to hold back conclusion. Speaking one day with Monsieur de Buffon,
on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider
chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on
a footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary,
among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries
for the utility and safety of the human race. It is yet, indeed, a
mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem
contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses;
and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably
an age too soon, to propose the establishment of a system. The
attempt, therefore, of Lavoisier to reform the chemical nomenclature,
is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation
of his terms, and his string of sulphates, sulfites and sulfures, may
have served no other end, than to have retarded the progress of the
science, by a jargon, from the confusion of which, time will be
requisite to extricate us. Accordingly, it is not likely to be
admitted generally.
You are acquainted with the properties of the composition of
nitre, salt of tartar and sulphur, called pulvis fulminans. Of this,
the explosion is produced by heat alone. Monsieur Bertholet, by
dissolving silver in the nitrous acid, precipitating it with lime
water, and drying the precipitate on ammoniac, has discovered a
powder which fulminates most powerfully, on coming into contact with
any substance whatever. Once made, it cannot be touched. It cannot
be put into a bottle, but must remain in the capsula, where dried.
The property of the spathic acid, to corrode flinty substances, has
been lately applied by a Mr. Puymaurin, to engrave on glass, as
artists engrave on copper, with aquafortis. M. de la Place has
discovered, that the secular acceleration and retardation of the
moon's motion, is occasioned by the action of the sun, in proportion
as his excentricity changes, or, in other words, as the orbit of the
earth increases or diminishes. So that this irregularity is now
perfectly calculable.
Having seen announced in a gazette, that some person had found
in a library of Sicily, an Arabic translation of Livy, which was
thought to be complete, I got the charge des affaires of Naples here,
to write to Naples to inquire into the fact. He obtained in answer,
that an Arabic translation was found, and that it would restore to us
seventeen of the books lost, to wit, from the sixtieth to the
seventy-seventh, inclusive: that it was in possession of an Abbe
Vella, who, as soon as he shall have finished a work he has on hand,
will give us an Italian, and perhaps a Latin translation of this
Livy. There are persons, however, who doubt the truth of this
discovery, founding their doubts on some personal cricumstances
relating to the person who says he has this translation. I find,
nevertheless, that the charge des affaires believes in the discovery,
which makes me hope it may be true.
A countryman of ours, a Mr. Ledyard of Connecticut, set out
from hence some time ago for St. Petersburg, to go thence to
Kamtschatka, thence to cross over to the western coast of America ,
and penetrate through the continent, to the other side of it. He had
got within a few days' journey of Kamtschatka, when he was arrested
by order of the Empress of Russia, sent back, and turned adrift in
Poland. He went to London; engaged under the auspices of a private
society, formed there for pushing discoveries into Africa; passed by
this place, which he left a few days ago for Marseilles, where he
will embark for Alexandria and Grand Cairo; thence explore the Nile
to its source; cross the head of the Niger, and descend that to its
mouth. He promises me, if he escapes through his journey, he will go
to Kentucky, and endeavor to penetrate westwardly to the South Sea.
The death of M. de Buffon you have heard long ago. I do not
know whether we shall have any thing posthumous of his. As to
political news, this country is making its way to a good
constitution. The only danger is, they may press so fast as to
produce an appeal to arms, which might have an unfavorable issue for
them. As yet, the appeal is not made. Perhaps the war which seems
to be spreading from nation to nation, may reach them: this would
insure the calling of the States General, and this, as is supposed,
the establishment of a constitution.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of sincere esteem and
respect, Dear Sir, your friend and servant,
"A MONOPOLY OF DESPOTISM"
_To St. John de Crevecoeur_
_Paris, August 9, 1788_
DEAR SIR, -- While our second revolution is just brought to a
happy end with you, yours here, is but cleverly under way. For some
days, I was really melancholy with the apprehension, that arms would
be appealed to, and the opposition crushed in its first efforts. But
things seem now to wear a better aspect. While the opposition keeps
at its highest wholesome point, government, unwilling to draw the
sword, is not forced to do it. The contest here is exactly what it
was in Holland: a contest between the monarchical and aristocratical
parts of the government, for a monopoly of despotism over the people.
The aristocracy in Holland, seeing that their common prey was likely
to escape out of their clutches, chose rather to retain its former
portion, and therefore coalesced with the single head. The people
remained victims. Here, I think, it will take a happier turn. The
parliamentary part of the aristocracy is alone firmly united. The
Noblesse and Clergy, but especially the former, are divided partly
between the parliamentary and the despotic party, and partly united
with the real patriots, who are endeavoring to gain for the nation
what they can, both from the parliamentary and the single despotism.
I think I am not mistaken in believing, that the King and some of his
ministers are well affected to this band; and surely, that they will
make great cessions to the people, rather than small ones to the
parliament. They are, accordingly, yielding daily to the national
reclamations, and will probably end, in according a well tempered
constitution. They promise the States General for the next year, and
I have good information that an _Arret_ will appear the day after
tomorrow, announcing them for May, 1789. How they will be composed,
and what they will do, cannot be foreseen. Their convocation,
however, will tranquillise the public mind, in a great degree, till
their meeting. There are, however, two intervening difficulties. 1.
Justice cannot till then continue completely suspended, as it now is.
The parliament will not resume their functions, but in their entire
body. The baillages are afraid to accept of them. What will be
done? 2. There are well founded fears of a bankruptcy before the
month of May. In the mean time, the war is spreading from nation to
nation. Sweden has commenced hostilities against Russia; Denmark is
shewing its teeth against Sweden; Prussia against Denmark; and
England too deeply engaged in playing the back game, to avoid coming
forward, and dragging this country and Spain in with her. But even
war will not prevent the assembly of the States General, because it
cannot be carried on without them. War, however, is not the most
favorable moment for divesting the monarchy of power. On the
contrary, it is the moment when the energy of a single hand, shews
itself in the most seducing form.
Your friend the Countess d'Houdetot has had a long illness at
Sanois. She was well enough the other day to come to Paris & was so
good as to call on me, as I did also on her, without finding each
other. The Dutchess Danville is in the country altogether. Your
sons are well. Their master speaks very highly of the genius &
application of Aly, and more favorably of the genius than application
of the younger. They are both fine lads, and will make you very
happy. I am not certain whether more exercise than the rules of the
school admit would not be good for Aly. I conferred the other day on
this subject with M. le Moine, who seems to be of that opinion, &
disposed to give him every possible indulgence.
A very considerable portion of this country, has been desolated
by a hail. I considered the newspaper accounts, of hailstones of ten
pounds weight, as exaggerations. But in a conversation with the Duke
de la Rochefoucaut, the other day, he assured me, that though he
could not say he had seen such himself, yet he considered the fact as
perfectly established. Great contributions, public and private, are
making for the sufferers. But they will be like the drop of water
from the finger of Lazarus. There is no remedy for the present evil,
nor way to prevent future ones, but to bring the people to such a
state of ease, as not to be ruined by the loss of a single crop.
This hail may be considered as the _coup de grace_ to an expiring
victim. In the arts, there is nothing new discovered since you left
us, which is worth communicating. Mr. Payne's iron bridge was
exhibited here, with great approbation. An idea has been encouraged,
of executing it in three arches, at the King's garden. But it will
probably not be done.
I am, with sentiments of perfect esteem and attachment, Dear
Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
COMMERCE, WAR, AND REVOLUTION
_To George Washington_
_Paris, Dec. 4, 1788_
SIR, -- Your favor of Aug. 31. came to hand yesterday; and a
confidential conveiance offering, by the way of London, I avail
myself of it to acknolege the receipt.
I have seen, with infinite pleasure, our new constitution
accepted by 11. states, not rejected by the 12th. and that the 13th.
happens to be a state of the least importance. It is true, that the
minorities in most of the accepting states have been very
respectable, so much so as to render it prudent, were it not
otherwise reasonable, to make some sacrifice to them. I am in hopes
that the annexation of the bill of rights to the constitution will
alone draw over so great a proportion of the minorities, as to leave
little danger in the opposition of the residue; and that this
annexation may be made by Congress and the assemblies, without
calling a convention which might endanger the most valuable parts of
the system. Calculation has convinced me that circumstances may
arise, and probably will arise, wherein all the resources of taxation
will be necessary for the safety of the state. For tho' I am
decidedly of opinion we should take no part in European quarrels, but
cultivate peace and commerce with all, yet who can avoid seeing the
source of war, in the tyranny of those nations who deprive us of the
natural right of trading with our neighbors? The products of the
U.S. will soon exceed the European demand: what is to be done with
the surplus, when there shall be one? It will be employed, without
question, to open by force a market for itself with those placed on
the same continent with us, and who wish nothing better. Other
causes too are obvious, which may involve us in war; and war requires
every resource of taxation & credit. The power of making war often
prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of
peace. If the new government wears the front which I hope it will, I
see no impossibility in the availing ourselves of the wars of others
to open the other parts of America to our commerce, as the price of
our neutrality.
The campaign between the Turks & two empires has been clearly
in favor of the former. The emperor is secretly trying to bring
about a peace. The alliance between England, Prussia and Holland,
(and some suspect Sweden also) renders their mediation decisive
whenever it is proposed. They seemed to interpose it so
magisterially between Denmark & Sweden, that the former submitted to
it's dictates, and there was all reason to believe that the war in
the North-Western parts of Europe would be quieted. All of a sudden
a new flame bursts out in Poland. The king and his party are devoted
to Russia. The opposition rely on the protection of Prussia. They
have lately become the majority in the confederated diet, and have
passed a vote for subjecting their army to a commission independent
of the king, and propose a perpetual diet in which case he will be a
perpetual cypher. Russia declares against such a change in their
constitution, and Prussia has put an army into readiness for marching
at a moment's warning on the frontiers of Poland. These events are
too recent to see as yet what turn they will take, or what effect
they will have on the peace of Europe. So is that also of the lunacy
of the king of England, which is a decided fact, notwithstanding all
the stuff the English papers publish about his fevers, his deliriums
&c. The truth is that the lunacy declared itself almost at once; and
with as few concomitant complaints as usually attend the first
development of that disorder. I suppose a regency will be
established, and if it consist of a plurality of members it will
probably be peaceable. In this event it will much favor the present
wishes of this country, which are so decidedly for peace, that they
refused to enter into the mediation between Sweden and Russia, lest
it should commit them. As soon as the convocation of the
States-general was announced, a tranquillity took place thro' the
whole kingdom. Happily no open rupture had taken place in any part
of it. The parliaments were re-instated in their functions at the
same time. This was all they desired, and they had called for the
States general only through fear that the crown could not otherwise
be forced to re-instate them. Their end obtained, they began to
foresee danger to themselves in the States general. They began to
lay the foundations for cavilling at the legality of that body, if
it's measures should be hostile to them. The court, to clear itself
of the dispute, convened the Notables who had acted with general
approbation on the former occasion, and referred to them the forms of
calling and organising the States-general. These Notables consist
principally of nobility & clergy, the few of the tiers etat among
them being either parliament-men, or other privileged persons. The
court wished that in the future States general the members of the
Tiersetat should equal those of both the other orders, and that they
should form but one house, all together, & vote by persons, not by
orders. But the Notables, in the true spirit of priests and nobles,
combining together against the people, have voted by 5 bureaux out of
6. that the people or tiers etat shall have no greater number of
deputies than each of the other orders separately, and that they
shall vote by orders: so that two orders concurring in a vote, the
third will be overruled, for it is not here as in England where each
of the three branches has a negative on the other two. If this
project of theirs succeeds, a combination between the two houses of
clergy & nobles, will render the representation of the Tiers etat
merely nugatory. The bureaux are to assemble together to consolidate
their separate votes; but I see no reasonable hope of their changing
this. Perhaps the king, knowing that he may count on the support of
the nation and attach it more closely to him, may take on himself to
disregard the opinion of the Notables in this instance, and may call
an equal representation of the people, in which precedents will
support him. In every event, I think the present disquiet will end
well. The nation has been awaked by our revolution, they feel their
strength, they are enlightened, their lights are spreading, and they
will not retrograde. The first states general may establish 3.
important points without opposition from the court. 1. their own
periodical convocation. 2. their exclusive right of taxation (which
has been confessed by the king.) 3. the right of registering laws and
of previously proposing amendments to them, as the parliaments have
by usurpation been in the habit of doing. The court will consent to
this from it's hatred to the parliaments, and from the desire of
having to do with one rather than many legislatures. If the states
are prudent they will not aim at more than this at first, lest they
should shock the dispositions of the court, and even alarm the public
mind, which must be left to open itself by degrees to successive
improvements. These will follow from the nature of things. How far
they can proceed, in the end, towards a thorough reformation of
abuse, cannot be foreseen. In my opinion a kind of influence, which
none of their plans of reform take into account, will elude them all;
I mean the influence of women in the government. The manners of the
nation allow them to visit, alone, all persons in office, to sollicit
the affairs of the husband, family, or friends, and their
sollicitations bid defiance to laws and regulations. This obstacle
may seem less to those who, like our countrymen, are in the habit of
considering Right, as a barrier against all sollicitation. Nor can
such an one, without the evidence of his own eyes, believe the
desperate state to which things are reduced in this country from the
omnipotence of an influence which, fortunately for the happiness of
the sex itself, does not endeavor to extend itself in our country
beyond the domestic line.
Your communications to the Count de Moustier, whatever they may
have been, cannot have done injury to my endeavors here to open the
W. Indies to us. On this head the ministers are invincibly mute,
tho' I have often tried to draw them into the subject. I have
therefore found it necessary to let it lie till war or other
circumstance may force it on. Whenever they are in war with England,
they must open the islands to us, and perhaps during that war they
may see some price which might make them agree to keep them always
open. In the meantime I have laid my shoulder to the opening the
markets of this country to our produce, and rendering it's
transportation a nursery for our seamen. A maritime force is the
only one by which we can act on Europe. Our navigation law (if it be
wise to have any) should be the reverse of that of England. Instead
of confining _importations_ to home-bottoms or those of the
_producing_ nations, I think we should confine _exportations_ to home
bottoms or to those of nations _having treaties with us_. Our
exportations are heavy, and would nourish a great force of our own,
or be a tempting price to the nation to whom we should offer a
participation of it in exchange for free access to all their
possessions. This is an object to which our government alone is
adequate in the gross, but I have ventured to pursue it, here, so far
as the consumption of productions by this country extends. Thus in
our arrangements relative to tobacco, none can be received here but
in French or American bottoms. This is emploiment for nearly 2000
seamen, and puts nearly that number of British out of employ. By the
_Arret_ of Dec, 1787, it was provided that our whale oils should not
be received here but in French or American bottoms, and by later
regulations all oils but those of France and America are excluded.
This will put 100 English whale vessels immediately out of employ,
and 150. ere long; and call so many of French & American into
service. We have had 6000 seamen formerly in this business, the
whole of whom we have been likely to lose. The consumption of rice
is growing fast in this country, and that of Carolina gaining ground
on every other kind. I am of opinion the whole of the Carolina rice
can be consumed here. It's transportation employs 2500 sailors,
almost all of them English at present; the rice being deposited at
Cowes & brought from thence here. It would be dangerous to confine
this transportation to French & American bottoms the ensuing year,
because they will be much engrossed by the transportation of wheat &
flour hither, and the crop of rice might lie on hand for want of
vessels; but I see no objections to the extensions of our principle
to this article also, beginning with the year 1790. However, before
there is a necessity of deciding on this I hope to be able to consult
our new government in person, as I have asked of Congress a leave of
absence for 6. months, that is to say from April to November next.
It is necessary for me to pay a short visit to my native country,
first to reconduct my family thither, and place them in the hands of
their friends, & secondly to place my private affairs under certain
arrangements. When I left my own house, I expected to be absent but
5 months, & I have been led by events to an absence of 5 years. I
shall hope therefore for the pleasure of personal conferences with
your Excellency on the subject of this letter and others interesting
to our country, of getting my own ideas set to rights by a
communication of yours, and of taking again the tone of sentiment of
my own country which we lose in some degree after a certain absence.
You know doubtless of the death of the Marquise de Chastellux. The
Marquis de La Fayette is out of favor with the court, but high in
favor with the nation. I once feared for his personal liberty, but I
hope he is on safe ground at present. On the subject of the whale
fishery I inclose you some observations I drew up for the ministry
here, in order to obtain a correction of their _Arret_ of Sepr last,
whereby they had involved our oils with the English in a general
exclusion from their ports. They will accordingly correct this, so
that our oils will participate with theirs in the monopoly of their
markets. There are several things incidentally introduced which do
not seem pertinent to the general question. They were rendered
necessary by particular circumstances the explanation of which would
add to a letter already too long. I will trespass no further then
than to assure you of the sentiments of sincere attachment and
respect with which I have the honor to be your Excellency's most
obedt. humble servant.
P.S. The observations inclosed, tho' printed, have been put
into confidential hands only.
CONVENING THE ESTATES GENERAL
_To Richard Price_
_Paris, January 8, 1789_
DEAR SIR, -- I was favored with your letter of October 26th,
and far from finding any of its subjects uninteresting as you
apprehend, they were to me, as everything which comes from you,
pleasing and instructive. I concur with you strictly in your opinion
of the comparative merits of atheism and 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 eleven States out
of thirteen 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 its
own legs, without leaning for support on the State legislatures. A
sense of necessity, and a submission to it, is to me a new and
consolatory proof that, whenever 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 and circumstances of the present struggle here. Having been
on the spot from its first origin, and watched its movements as an
uninterested spectator, with no other bias than a love of mankind, I
will give you my ideas of it. Though celebrated writers of this and
other countries had already sketched good principles on the subject
of government, yet the American war seems first to have awakened the
thinking part of this nation in general from the sleep of despotism
in which they were sunk. The officers too who had been to America,
were mostly young men, less shackled by habit and prejudice, and more
ready to assent to the dictates of common sense and common right.
They came back impressed with these. The press, notwithstanding its
shackles, began to disseminate them; conversation, too, assumed new
freedom; politics became the theme of all societies, male and female,
and a very extensive and zealous party was formed, which may be
called the Patriotic party, who, sensible of the abusive government
under which they lived, longed for occasions of reforming it. This
party comprehended all the honesty of the kingdom, sufficiently at
its leisure to think; the men of letters, the easy bourgeois, the
young nobility, partly from reflection, partly from mode; for those
sentiments became a matter of mode, and as such united most of the
young women to the party. Happily for the nation, it happened that,
at the same moment, the dissipations of the court had exhausted the
money and credit of the State, and M. de Calonnes found himself
obliged to appeal to the nation, and to develop to it the ruin of
their finances. He had no idea of supplying the deficit by
economies, he saw no means but new taxes. To tempt the nation to
consent to these some douceurs were necessary. The Notables were
called in 1787. The leading vices of the constitution and
administration were ably sketched out, good remedies proposed, and
under the splendor of the propositions, a demand for more money was
couched. The Notables concurred with the minister in the necessity
of reformation, adroitly avoided the demand of money, got him
displaced, and one of their leading men placed in his room. The
archbishop of Thoulouse, by the aid of the hopes formed of him, was
able to borrow some money, and he reformed considerably the expenses
of the court. Notwithstanding the prejudices since formed against
him, he appeared to me to pursue the reformation of the laws and
constitution as steadily as a man could do who had to drag the court
after him, and even to conceal from them the consequences of the
measures he was leading them into. In his time the criminal laws
were reformed, provincial assemblies and States established in most
of the provinces, the States General promised, and a solemn
acknowledgment made by the King that he could not impose a new tax
without the consent of the nation. It is true he was continually
goaded forward by the public clamors, excited by the writings and
workings of the Patriots, who were able to keep up the public
fermentation at the exact point which borders on resistance, without
entering on it. They had taken into their alliance the Parliaments
also, who were led, by very singular circumstances, to espouse, for
the first time, the rights of the nation. They had from old causes
had personal hostility against M. de Calonnes. They refused to
register his laws or his taxes, and went so far as to acknowledge
they had no power to do it. They persisted in this with his
successor, who therefore exiled them. Seeing that the nation did not
interest themselves much for their recall, they began to fear that
the new judicatures proposed in their place would be established and
that their own suppression would be perpetual. In short, they found
their own strength insufficient to oppose that of the King. They
therefore insisted that the States General should be called. Here
they became united with and supported by the Patriots, and their
joint influence was sufficient to produce the promise of that
assembly. I always suspected that the archbishops had no objections
to this force under which they laid him. But the Patriots and
Parliament insisted it was their efforts which extorted the promise
against his will. The re-establishment of the Parliament was the
effect of the same coalition between the Patriots and Parliament;
but, once re-established, the latter began to see danger in that very
power, the States General, which they had called for in a moment of
despair, but which they now foresaw might very possibly abridge their
powers. They began to prepare grounds for questioning their
legality, as a rod over the head of the States, and as a refuge if
they should really extend their reformations to them. Mr. Neckar
came in at this period and very dexterously disembarrassed the
administration of these disputes by calling the notables to advise
the form of calling and constituting the States. The court was well
disposed towards the people, not from principles of justice or love
to them; but they want money. No more can be had from the people.
They are squeezed to the last drop. The clergy and nobles, by their
privileges and influence, have kept their property in a great measure
untaxed hitherto. They then remain to be squeezed, and no agent is
powerful enough for this but the people. The court therefore must
ally itself with the people. But the Notables, consisting mostly of
privileged characters, had proposed a method of composing the States,
which would have rendered the voice of the people, or Tiers Etats, in
the States General, inefficient for the purpose of the court. It
concurred then with the Patriots in intriguing with the Parliament to
get them to pass a vote in favor of the rights of the people. This
vote, balancing that of the Notables, has placed the court at liberty
to follow its own views, and they have determined that the Tiers Etat
shall have in the States General as many votes as the clergy and
nobles put together. Still a great question remains to be decided,
that is, shall the States General vote by orders, or by persons?
precedents are both ways. The clergy will move heaven and earth to
obtain the suffrage by orders, because that parries the effect of all
hitherto done for the people. The people will probably send their
deputies expressly instructed to consent to no tax, to no adoption of
the public debts, unless the unprivileged part of the nation has a
voice equal to that of the privileged; that is to say, unless the
voice of the Tiers Etat be equalled to that of the clergy and nobles.
They will have the young noblesse in general on their side, and the
King and court. Against them will be the ancient nobles and the
clergy. So that I hope, upon the whole, that by the time they meet,
there will be a majority of the nobles themselves in favor of the
Tiers Etat. So far history. We are now to come to prophecy; for you
will ask, to what will all this lead? I answer, if the States
General do not stumble at the threshold on the question before
stated, and which must be decided before they can proceed to
business, then they will in their first session easily obtain, 1.
Their future periodical convocation of the States. 2. Their
exclusive right to raise and appropriate money which includes that of
establishing a civil list. 3. A participation in legislation;
probably at first, it will only be a transfer to them of the portion
of it now exercised by parliament, that is to say, a right to propose
amendments and a negative. But it must infallibly end in a right of
origination. 4. Perhaps they may make a declaration of rights. It
will be attempted at least. Two other objects will be attempted,
viz., a habeas corpus law and a free press. But probably they may
not obtain these in the first session, or with modifications only,
and the nation must be left to ripen itself more for their unlimited
adoption. Upon the whole, it has appeared to me that the basis of
the present struggle is an illumination of the public mind as to the
rights of the nation, aided by fortunate incidents; that they can
never retrograde, but from the natural progress of things, must press
forward to the establishment of a constitution which shall assure to
them a good degree of liberty. They flatter themselves they shall
form a better constitution than the English. I think it will be
better in some points -- worse in others. It will be better in the
article of representation, which will be more equal. It will be
worse, as their situation obliges them to keep up the dangerous
machine of a standing army. I doubt, too, whether they will obtain
the trial by jury, because they are not sensible of its value.
I am sure I have by this time heartily tired you with this long
epistle, and that you will be glad to see it brought to an end, with
assurances of the sentiments of esteem and respect with which I have
the honor to be, dear Sir, your most obedient, and most humble
servant.
BACON, LOCKE, AND NEWTON
_To John Trumbull_
_Paris, Feb. 15, 1789_
DEAR SIR, -- I have duly received your favor of the 5'th. inst.
With respect to the busts & pictures I will put off till my return
from America all of them except Bacon, Locke and Newton, whose
pictures I will trouble you to have copied for me: and as I consider
them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any
exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures
which have been raised in the Physical & Moral sciences, I would wish
to form them into a knot on the same canvas, that they may not be
confounded at all with the herd of other great men. To do this I
suppose we need only desire the copyist to draw the three busts in
three ovals all contained in a larger oval in some such form as this
each bust to be the size of life.
xxx. The large oval would I suppose be about between four &
five feet. Perhaps you can suggest a better way of accomplishing my
idea. In your hands be it, as well as the subaltern expences you
mention. I trouble you with a letter to Mrs. Church. We have no
important news here but of the revolution of Geneva which is not yet
sufficiently explained. But they have certainly reformed their
government. I am with great respect D'r. Sir Your affectionate
friend & humble serv't.
"NEITHER FEDERALIST NOR ANTIFEDERALIST"
_To Francis Hopkinson_
_Paris, Mar. 13, 1789_
DEAR SIR, -- Since my last, which was of Dec. 21. yours of Dec.
9. & 21. are received. Accept my thanks for the papers and pamphlets
which accompanied them, and mine & my daughter's for the book of
songs. I will not tell you how much they have pleased us, nor how
well the last of them merits praise for it's pathos, but relate a
fact only, which is that while my elder daughter was playing it on
the harpsichord, I happened to look towards the fire & saw the
younger one all in tears. I asked her if she was sick? She said
`no; but the tune was so mournful.' -- The Editor of the Encyclopedie
has published something as to an advanced price on his future
volumes, which I understand alarms the subscribers. It was in a
paper which I do not take & therefore I have not yet seen it, nor can
say what it is. -- I hope that by this time you have ceased to make
wry faces about your vinegar, and that you have received it safe &
good. You say that I have been dished up to you as an
antifederalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never
worthy enough of notice to merit citing; but since you ask it I will
tell it you. I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the
whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever
in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I
was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last
degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven
but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore I protest
to you I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much farther
from that of the Antifederalists. I approved, from the first moment,
of the great mass of what is in the new constitution, the
consolidation of the government, the organization into Executive
legislative & judiciary, the subdivision of the legislative, the
happy compromise of interests between the great & little states by
the different manner of voting in the different houses, the voting by
persons instead of states, the qualified negative on laws given to
the Executive which however I should have liked better if associated
with the judiciary also as in New York, and the power of taxation. I
thought at first that the latter might have been limited. A little
reflection soon convinced me it ought not to be. What I disapproved
from the first moment also was the want of a bill of rights to guard
liberty against the legislative as well as executive branches of the
government, that is to say to secure freedom in religion, freedom of
the press, freedom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful
imprisonment, freedom from a permanent military, and a trial by jury
in all cases determinable by the laws of the land. I disapproved
also the perpetual reeligibility of the President. To these points
of disapprobation I adhere. My first wish was that the 9. first
conventions might accept the constitution, as the means of securing
to us the great mass of good it contained, and that the 4. last might
reject it, as the means of obtaining amendments. But I was corrected
in this wish the moment I saw the much better plan of Massachusetts
and which had never occurred to me. With respect to the declaration
of rights I suppose the majority of the United states are of my
opinion: for I apprehend all the antifederalists, and a very
respectable proportion of the federalists think that such a
declaration should now be annexed. The enlightened part of Europe
have given us the greatest credit for inventing this instrument of
security for the rights of the people, and have been not a little
surprised to see us so soon give it up. With respect to the
re-eligibility of the president, I find myself differing from the
majority of my countrymen, for I think there are but three states out
of the 11. which have desired an alteration of this. And indeed,
since the thing is established, I would wish it not to be altered
during the life of our great leader, whose executive talents are
superior to those I believe of any man in the world, and who alone by
the authority of his name and the confidence reposed in his perfect
integrity, is fully qualified to put the new government so under way
as to secure it against the efforts of opposition. But having
derived from our error all the good there was in it I hope we shall
correct it the moment we can no longer have the same name at the
helm. These, my dear friend, are my sentiments, by which you will
see I was right in saying I am neither federalist nor antifederalist;
that I am of neither party, nor yet a trimmer between parties. These
my opinions I wrote within a few hours after I had read the
constitution, to one or two friends in America. I had not then read
one single word printed on the subject. I never had an opinion in
politics or religion which I was afraid to own. A costive reserve on
these subjects might have procured me more esteem from some people,
but less from myself. My great wish is to go on in a strict but
silent performance of my duty; to avoid attracting notice & to keep
my name out of newspapers, because I find the pain of a little
censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure
of much praise. The attaching circumstance of my present office is
that I can do it's duties unseen by those for whom they are done. --
You did not think, by so short a phrase in your letter, to have drawn
on yourself such an egotistical dissertation.
A BILL OF RIGHTS
_To James Madison_
_Paris, Mar 15, 1789_
DEAR SIR, -- I wrote you last on the 12th of Jan. since which I
have received yours of Octob 17, Dec 8 & 12. That of Oct. 17. came
to hand only Feb 23. How it happened to be four months on the way, I
cannot tell, as I never knew by what hand it came. Looking over my
letter of Jan 12th, I remark an error of the word "probable" instead
of "improbable," which doubtless however you had been able to
correct. Your thoughts on the subject of the Declaration of rights
in the letter of Oct 17. I have weighed with great satisfaction.
Some of them had not occurred to me before, but were acknoleged just
in the moment they were presented to my mind. In the arguments in
favor of a declaration of rights, you omit one which has great weight
with me, the legal check which it puts into the hands of the
judiciary. This is a body, which if rendered independent & kept
strictly to their own department merits great confidence for their
learning & integrity. In fact what degree of confidence would be too
much for a body composed of such men as Wythe, Blair & Pendleton? On
characters like these the _"civium ardor prava jubentium"_ would make
no impression. I am happy to find that on the whole you are a friend
to this amendment. The Declaration of rights is like all other human
blessings alloyed with some inconveniences, and not accomplishing
fully it's object. But the good in this instance vastly overweighs
the evil. I cannot refrain from making short answers to the
objections which your letter states to have been raised. 1. That the
rights in question are reserved by the manner in which the federal
powers are granted. Answer. A constitutive act may certainly be so
formed as to need no declaration of rights. The act itself has the
force of a declaration as far as it goes; and if it goes to all
material points nothing more is wanting. In the draught of a
constitution which I had once a thought of proposing in Virginia, &
printed afterwards, I endeavored to reach all the great objects of
public liberty, and did not mean to add a declaration of rights.
Probably the object was imperfectly executed; but the deficiencies
would have been supplied by others, in the course of discussion. But
in a constitutive act which leaves some precious articles unnoticed,
and raises implications against others, a declaration of rights
becomes necessary by way of supplement. This is the case of our new
federal constitution. This instrument forms us into one state as to
certain objects, and gives us a legislative & executive body for
these objects. It should therefore guard us against their abuses of
power within the field submitted to them. 2. A positive declaration
of some essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite
latitude. Answer. Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we
cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can. 3. The
limited powers of the federal government & jealousy of the
subordinate governments afford a security which exists in no other
instance. Answer. The first member of this seems resolvable into
the first objection before stated. The jealousy of the subordinate
governments is a precious reliance. But observe that those
governments are only agents. They must have principles furnished
them whereon to found their opposition. The declaration of rights
will be the text whereby they will try all the acts of the federal
government, In this view it is necessary to the federal government
also; as by the same text they may try the opposition of the
subordinate governments. 4. Experience proves the inefficacy of a
bill of rights. True. But tho it is not absolutely efficacious
under all circumstances, it is of great potency always, and rarely
inefficacious. A brace the more will often keep up the building
which would have fallen with that brace the less. There is a
remarkable difference between the characters of the Inconveniences
which attend a Declaration of rights, & those which attend the want
of it. The inconveniences of the Declaration are that it may cramp
government in it's useful exertions. But the evil of this is
short-lived, trivial & reparable. The inconveniences of the want of
a Declaration are permanent, afflicting & irreparable. They are in
constant progression from bad to worse. The executive in our
governments is not the sole, it is scarcely the principal object of
my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable
dread at present, and will be for long years. That of the executive
will come in it's turn, but it will be at a remote period. I know
there are some among us who would now establish a monarchy. But they
are inconsiderable in number and weight of character. The rising
race are all republicans. We were educated in royalism; no wonder if
some of us retain that idolatry still. Our young people are educated
in republicanism, an apostasy from that to royalism is unprecedented
& impossible. I am much pleased with the prospect that a declaration
of rights will be added; and hope it will be done in that way which
will not endanger the whole frame of the government, or any essential
part of it.
I have hitherto avoided public news in my letters to you,
because your situation insured you a communication of my letters to
Mr. Jay. This circumstance being changed, I shall in future indulge
myself in these details to you. There had been some slight hopes
that an accommodation might be affected between the Turks & two
empires but these hopes do not strengthen, and the season is
approaching which will put an end to them for another campaign at
least. The accident to the King of England has had great influence
on the affairs of Europe. His mediation joined with that of Prussia,
would certainly have kept Denmark quiet, and so have left the two
empires in the hands of the Turks & Swedes. But the inactivity to
which England is reduced, leaves Denmark more free, and she will
probably go on in opposition to Sweden. The K. of Prussia too had
advanced so far that he can scarcely retire. This is rendered the
more difficult by the troubles he has excited in Poland. He cannot
well abandon the party he had brought forward there so that it is
very possible he may be engaged in the ensuing campaign. France will
be quiet this year, because this year at least is necessary for
settling her future constitution. The States will meet the 27th of
April: and the public mind will I think by that time be ripe for a
just decision of the Question whether they shall vote by orders or
persons. I think there is a majority of the nobles already for the
latter. If so, their affairs cannot but go on well. Besides
settling for themselves a tolerably free constitution, perhaps as
free a one as the nation is yet prepared to bear, they will fund
their public debts. This will give them such a credit as will enable
them to borrow any money they may want, & of course to take the field
again when they think proper. And I believe they mean to take the
field as soon as they can. The pride of every individual in the
nation suffers under the ignominies they have lately been exposed to
and I think the states general will give money for a war to wipe off
the reproach. There have arisen new bickerings between this court &
the Hague, and the papers which have passed shew the most bitter
acrimony rankling at the heart of this ministry. They have recalled
their ambassador from the Hague without appointing a successor. They
have given a note to the Diet of Poland which shews a disapprobation
of their measures. The insanity of the King of England has been
fortunate for them as it gives them time to put their house in order.
The English papers tell you the King is well: and even the English
ministry say so. They will naturally set the best foot foremost: and
they guard his person so well that it is difficult for the public to
contradict them. The King is probably better, but not well by a
great deal. 1. He has been bled, and judicious physicians say that
in his exhausted state nothing could have induced a recurrence to
bleeding but symptoms of relapse. 2. The Prince of Wales tells the
Irish deputation he will give them a definitive answer in some days;
but if the king had been well he could have given it at once. 3.
They talk of passing a standing law for providing a regency in
similar cases. They apprehend then they are not yet clear of the
danger of wanting a regency. 4. They have carried the king to
church; but it was his private chapel. If he be well why do not they
shew him publicly to the nation, & raise them from that consternation
into which they have been thrown by the prospect of being delivered
over to the profligate hands of the prince of Wales. In short,
judging from little facts which are known in spite of their teeth the
King is better, but not well. Possibly he is getting well, but
still, time will be wanting to satisfy even the ministry that it is
not merely a lucid interval. Consequently they cannot interrupt
France this year in the settlement of her affairs, & after this year
it will be too late.
As you will be in a situation to know when the leave of absence
will be granted me which I have asked, will you be so good as to
communicate it by a line to Mr. Lewis & Mr. Eppes? I hope to see you
in the summer, and that if you are not otherwise engaged, you will
encamp with me at Monticello for awhile.
SCIENCE AND LIBERTY
_To Joseph Willard_
_Paris, March 24, 1789_
SIR, -- I have been lately honored with your letter of
September the 24th, 1788, accompanied by a diploma for a Doctorate of
Laws, which the University of Harvard has been pleased to confer on
me. Conscious how little I merit it, I am the more sensible of their
goodness and indulgence to a stranger, who has had no means of
serving or making himself known to them. I beg you to return them my
grateful thanks, and to assure them that this notice from so eminent
a seat of science, is very precious to me.
The most remarkable publications we have had in France, for a
year or two past, are the following. `Les voyages d'Anacharsis par
l'Abbe Barthelemi,' seven volumes, octavo. This is a very elegant
digest of whatever is known of the Greeks; useless, indeed, to him
who has read the original authors, but very proper for one who reads
modern languages only. The works of the King of Prussia. The Berlin
edition is in sixteen volumes, octavo. It is said to have been
gutted at Berlin; and here it has been still more mangled. There are
one or two other editions published abroad, which pretend to have
rectified the maltreatment both of Berlin and Paris. Some time will
be necessary to settle the public mind, as to the best edition.
Montignot has given us the original Greek, and a French
translation of the seventh book of Potolemy's great work, under the
title of `Etat des etoiles fixes au second siecle,' in quarto. He
has given the designation of the same stars by Flamstead and Beyer,
and their position in the year 1786. A very remarkable work is the
`Mechanique Analytique,' of Le Grange, in quarto. He is allowed to
be the greatest mathematician now living, and his personal worth is
equal to his science. The object of his work is to reduce all the
principles of mechanics to the single one of the equilibrium, and to
give a simple formula applicable to them all. The subject is treated
in the algebraic method, without diagrams to assist the conception.
My present occupations not permitting me to read any thing which
requires a long and undisturbed attention, I am not able to give you
the character of this work from my own examination. It has been
received with great approbation in Europe. In Italy, the works of
Spallanzani on digestion and generation, are valuable. Though,
perhaps, too minute, and therefore tedious, he has developed some
useful truths, and his book is well worth attention; it is in four
volumes, octavo. Clavigaro, an Italian also, who has resided
thirty-six years in Mexico, has given us a history of that country,
which certainly merits more respect than any other work on the same
subject. He corrects many errors of Dr. Robertson; and though sound
philosophy will disapprove many of his ideas, we must still consider
it as an useful work, and assuredly the best we possess on the same
subject. It is in four thin volumes, small quarto. De la Land has
not yet published a fifth volume.
The chemical dispute about the conversion and reconversion of
air and water, continues still undecided. Arguments and authorities
are so balanced, that we may still safely believe, as our fathers did
before us, that these principles are distinct. A schism of another
kind, has taken place among the chemists. A particular set of them
here, have undertaken to remodel all the terms of the science, and to
give to every substance a new name, the composition, and especially
the termination of which, shall define the relation in which it
stands to other substances of the same family. But the science seems
too much in its infancy as yet, for this reformation; because, in
fact, the reformation of this year must be reformed again the next
year, and so on, changing the names of substances as often as new
experiments develope properties in them undiscovered before. The new
nomenclature has, accordingly, been already proved to need numerous
and important reformations. Probably it will not prevail. It is
espoused by the minority only here, and by very few, indeed, of the
foreign chemists. It is particularly rejected in England.
In the arts, I think two of our countrymen have presented the
most important inventions. Mr. Paine, the author of Common Sense,
has invented an iron bridge, which promises to be cheaper by a great
deal than stone, and to admit of a much greater arch. He supposes it
may be ventured for an arch of five hundred feet. He has obtained a
patent for it in England, and is now executing the first experiment
with an arch of between ninety and one hundred feet. Mr. Rumsey has
also obtained a patent for his navigation by the force of steam, in
England, and is soliciting a similar one here. His principal merit
is in the improvement of the boiler, and, instead of the complicated
machinery of oars and paddles, proposed by others, the substitution
of so simple a thing as the reaction of a stream of water on his
vessel. He is building a sea vessel at this time in England, and she
will be ready for an experiment in May. He has suggested a great
number of mechanical improvements in a variety of branches; and upon
the whole, is the most original and the greatest mechanical genius I
have ever seen. The return of la Peyrouse (whenever that shall
happen) will probably add to our knowledge in Geography, Botany and
Natural History. What a field have we at our doors to signalise
ourselves in! The Botany of America is far from being exhausted, its
Mineralogy is untouched, and its Natural History or Zoology, totally
mistaken and misrepresented. As far as I have seen, there is not one
single species of terrestrial birds common to Europe and America, and
I question if there be a single species of quadrupeds. (Domestic
animals are to be excepted.) It is for such institutions as that over
which you preside so worthily, Sir, to do justice to our country, its
productions and its genius. It is the work to which the young men,
whom you are forming, should lay their hands. We have spent the
prime of our lives in procuring them the precious blessing of
liberty. Let them spend theirs in shewing that it is the great
parent of _science_ and of virtue; and that a nation will be great in
both, always in proportion as it is free. Nobody wishes more warmly
for the success of your good exhortations on this subject, than he
who has the honor to be, with sentiments of great esteem and respect,
Sir, your most obedient humble servant,
A REPORT FROM VERSAILLES
_To John Jay_
_Paris, May 9, 1789_
SIR, -- Since my letter of March the 1st, by the way of Havre,
and those of March the 12th and 15th, by the way of London, no
opportunity of writing has occurred, till the present to London.
There are no symptoms of accommodation between the Turks and
two empires, nor between Russia and Sweden. The Emperor was, on the
16th of the last month, expected to die, certainly; he was, however,
a little better when the last news came away, so that hopes were
entertained of him; but it is agreed that he cannot get the better of
his complaints ultimately, so that his life is not at all counted on.
The Danes profess, as yet, to do no more against Sweden than furnish
their stipulated aid. The agitation of Poland is still violent,
though somewhat moderated by the late change in the demeanor of the
King of Prussia. He is much less thrasonic than he was. This is
imputed to the turn which the English politics may be rationally
expected to take. It is very difficult to get at the true state of
the British King; but from the best information we can get, his
madness has gone off, but he is left in a state of imbecility and
melancholy. They are going to carry him to Hanover, to see whether
such a journey may relieve him. The Queen accompanies him. If
England should, by this accident, be reduced to inactivity, the
southern countries of Europe may escape the present war. Upon the
whole, the prospect for the present year, if no unforeseen accident
happens, is, certain peace for the powers not already engaged, a
probability that Denmark will not become a principal, and a mere
possibility that Sweden and Russia may be accommodated. The interior
disputes of Sweden are so exactly detailed in the Leyden gazette,
that I have nothing to add on that subject.
The revolution of this country has advanced thus far, without
encountering any thing which deserves to be called a difficulty.
There have been riots in a few instances, in three or four different
places, in which there may have been a dozen or twenty lives lost.
The exact truth is not to be got at. A few days ago, a much more
serious riot took place in this city, in which it became necessary
for the troops to engage in regular action with the mob, and probably
about one hundred of the latter were killed. Accounts vary from
twenty to two hundred. They were the most abandoned banditti of
Paris, and never was a riot more unprovoked and unpitied. They
began, under a pretence that a paper manufacturer had proposed in an
assembly, to reduce their wages to fifteen sous a day. They rifled
his house, destroyed every thing in his magazines and shops, and were
only stopped in their career of mischief, by the carnage above
mentioned. Neither this nor any other of the riots, have had a
professed connection with the great national reformation going on.
They are such as have happened every year since I have been here, and
as will continue to be produced by common incidents. The States
General were opened on the 4th instant, by a speech from the throne,
one by the Garde des Sceaux, and one from Mr. Neckar. I hope they
will be printed in time to send you herewith: lest they should not, I
will observe, that that of Mr. Neckar stated the real and ordinary
deficit to be fifty-six millions, and that he shewed that this could
be made up without a new tax, by economies and bonifications which he
specified. Several articles of the latter are liable to the
objection, that they are proposed on branches of the revenue, of
which the nation has demanded a suppression. He tripped too lightly
over the great articles of constitutional reformation, these being
not as clearly enounced in this discourse as they were in his
`Rapport au roy,' which I sent you some time ago. On the whole, his
discourse has not satisfied the patriotic party. It is now, for the
first time, that their revolution is likely to receive a serious
check, and begins to wear a fearful appearance. The progress of
light and liberality in the order of the Noblesse, has equalled
expectation in Paris only, and its vicinities. The great mass of
deputies of that order, which come from the country, shew that the
habits of tyranny over the people, are deeply rooted in them. They
will consent, indeed, to equal taxation; but five-sixths of that
chamber are thought to be, decidedly, for voting by orders; so that,
had this great preliminary question rested on this body, which formed
heretofore the sole hope, that hope would have been completely
disappointed. Some aid, however, comes in from a quarter whence none
was expected. It was imagined the ecclesiastical elections would
have been generally in favor of the higher clergy; on the contrary,
the lower clergy have obtained five-sixths of these deputations.
These are the sons of peasants, who have done all the drudgery of the
service, for ten, twenty and thirty guineas a year, and whose
oppressions and penury, contrasted with the pride and luxury of the
higher clergy, have rendered them perfectly disposed to humble the
latter. They have done it, in many instances, with a boldness they
were thought insusceptible of. Great hopes have been formed, that
these would concur with the Tiers Etat, in voting by persons. In
fact, about half of them seem as yet so disposed; but the bishops are
intriguing, and drawing them over with the address which has ever
marked ecclesiastical intrigue. The deputies of the Tiers Etat seem,
almost to a man, inflexibly determined against the vote by orders.
This is the state of parties, as well as can be judged from
conversation only, during the fortnight they have been now together.
But as no business has been yet begun, no votes as yet taken, this
calculation cannot be considered as sure. A middle proposition is
talked of, to form the two privileged orders into one chamber. It is
thought more possible to bring them into it, than the Tiers Etat.
Another proposition is, to distinguish questions, referring those of
certain descriptions to a vote by persons, others to a vote by
orders. This seems to admit of endless altercation, and the Tiers
Etat manifest no respect for that, or any other modification
whatever. Were this single question accommodated, I am of opinion,
there would not occur the least difficulty in the great and essential
points of constitutional reformation. But on this preliminary
question the parties are so irreconcilable, that it is impossible to
foresee what issue it will have. The Tiers Etat, as constituting the
nation, may propose to do the business of the nation, either with or
without the minorities in the Houses of Clergy and Nobles, which side
with them. In that case, if the King should agree to it, the
majorities in those two Houses would secede, and might resist the tax
gatherers. This would bring on a civil war. On the other hand, the
privileged orders, offering to submit to equal taxation, may propose
to the King to continue the government in its former train, resuming
to himself the power of taxation. Here, the tax gatherers might be
resisted by the people. In fine, it is but too possible, that
between parties so animated, the King may incline the balance as he
pleases. Happy that he is an honest, unambitious man, who desires
neither money nor power for himself; and that his most operative
minister, though he has appeared to trim a little, is still, in the
main, a friend to public liberty.
I mentioned to you in a former letter, the construction which
our bankers at Amsterdam had put on the resolution of Congress,
appropriating the last Dutch loan, by which the money for our
captives would not be furnished till the end of the year 1790.
Orders from the board of treasury, have now settled this question.
The interest of the next month is to be first paid, and after that,
the money for the captives and foreign officers is to be furnished,
before any other payment of interest. This insures it when the next
February interest becomes payable. My representations to them, on
account of the contracts I had entered into for making the medals,
have produced from them the money for that object, which is lodged in
the hands of Mr. Grand.
Mr. Neckar, in his discourse, proposes among his bonifications
of revenue, the suppression of our two free ports of Bayonne and
L'Orient, which he says, occasion a loss of six hundred thousand
livres annually, to the crown, by contraband. (The speech being not
yet printed, I state this only as it struck my ear when he delivered
it. If I have mistaken it, I beg you to receive this as my apology,
and to consider what follows, as written on that idea only.) I have
never been able to see that these free ports were worth one copper to
us. To Bayonne our trade never went, and it is leaving L'Orient.
Besides, the right of entrepot is a perfect substitute for the right
of free port. The latter is a little less troublesome only, to the
merchants and captains. I should think, therefore, that a thing so
useless to us and prejudicial to them might be relinquished by us, on
the common principles of friendship. I know the merchants of these
ports will make a clamour, because the franchise covers their
contraband with all the world. Has Monsieur de Moustier said any
thing to you on this subject? It has never been mentioned to me. If
not mentioned in either way, it is rather an indecent proceeding,
considering that this right of free port is founded in treaty. I
shall ask of M. de Montmorin, on the first occasion, whether he has
communicated this to you through his minister; and if he has not, I
will endeavor to notice the infraction to him in such manner, as
neither to reclaim nor abandon the right of free port, but leave our
government free to do either.
The gazettes of France and Leyden, as usual, will accompany
this. I am in hourly expectation of receiving from you my leave of
absence, and keep my affairs so arranged, that I can leave Paris
within eight days after receiving the permission. I have the honor
to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir,
your most obedient and most humble servant,
A CHARTER FOR FRANCE
_To Rabout de St. Etienne, with Draft of a Charter of Rights_
_Paris, June 3, 1789_
SIR, -- After you quitted us yesterday evening, we continued
our conversation (Monsr. de la Fayette, Mr. Short & myself) on the
subject of the difficulties which environ you. The desirable object
being to secure the good which the King has offered & to avoid the
ill which seems to threaten, an idea was suggested, which appearing
to make an impression on Monsr. de la Fayette, I was encouraged to
pursue it on my return to Paris, to put it into form, & now to send
it to you & him. It is this, that the King, in a _seance royale_
should come forward with a Charter of Rights in his hand, to be
signed by himself & by every member of the three orders. This
charter to contain the five great points which the Resultat of
December offered on the part of the King, the abolition of pecuniary
privileges offered by the privileged orders, & the adoption of the
National debt and a grant of the sum of money asked from the nation.
This last will be a cheap price for the preceding articles, and let
the same act declare your immediate separation till the next
anniversary meeting. You will carry back to your constituents more
good than ever was effected before without violence, and you will
stop exactly at the point where violence would otherwise begin. Time
will be gained, the public mind will continue to ripen & to be
informed, a basis of support may be prepared with the people
themselves, and expedients occur for gaining still something further
at your next meeting, & for stopping again at the point of force. I
have ventured to send to yourself & Monsieur de la Fayette a sketch
of my ideas of what this act might contain without endangering any
dispute. But it is offered merely as a canvas for you to work on, if
it be fit to work on at all. I know too little of the subject, & you
know too much of it to justify me in offering anything but a hint. I
have done it too in a hurry: insomuch that since committing it to
writing it occurs to me that the 5'th. article may give alarm, that
it is in a good degree included in the 4'th., and is therefore
useless. But after all what excuse can I make, Sir, for this
presumption. I have none but an unmeasureable love for your nation
and a painful anxiety lest Despotism, after an unaccepted offer to
bind it's own hands, should seize you again with tenfold fury.
Permit me to add to these very sincere assurances of the sentiments
of esteem & respect with which I have the honor to be, Sir, Your most
obed't. & most humble serv't.
_A Charter of Rights, solemnly established by the King and
Nation._
1. The States General shall assemble, uncalled, on the first
day of November, annually, and shall remain together so long as they
shall see cause. They shall regulate their own elections and
proceedings, and until they shall ordain otherwise, their elections
shall be in the forms observed in the present year, and shall be
triennial.
2. The States General alone shall levy money on the nation, and
shall appropriate it.
3. Laws shall be made by the States General only, with the
consent of the King.
4. No person shall be restrained of his liberty, but by regular
process from a court of justice, authorized by a general law.
(Except that a Noble may be imprisoned by order of a court of
justice, on the prayer of twelve of his nearest relations.) On
complaint of an unlawful imprisonment, to any judge whatever, he
shall have the prisoner immediately brought before him, and shall
discharge him, if his imprisonment be unlawful. The officer in whose
custody the prisoner is, shall obey the orders of the judge; and both
judge and officer shall be responsible, civilly and criminally, for a
failure of duty herein.
5. The military shall be subordinate to the civil authority.
6. Printers shall be liable to legal prosecution for printing
and publishing false facts, injurious to the party prosecuting; but
they shall be under no other restraint.
7. All pecuniary privileges and exemptions, enjoyed by any
description of persons, are abolished.
8. All debts already contracted by the King, are hereby made
the debts of the nation; and the faith thereof is pledged for their
payment in due time.
9. Eighty millions of livres are now granted to the King, to be
raised by loan, and reimbursed by the nation; and the taxes
heretofore paid, shall continue to be paid to the end of the present
year, and no longer.
10. The States General shall now separate, and meet again on
the 1st day of November next.
Done, on behalf of the whole nation, by the King and their
representatives in the States General, at Versailles, this -- day of
June, 1789.
Signed by the King, and by every member individually, and in
his presence.
"THE FIRST CHAPTER . . . OF EUROPEAN LIBERTY"
_To Diodati_
_a Paris, ce 3'me. Aout 1789_
Je viens de recevoir, mon chere Monsieur, l'honneur de votre
lettre du 24. Juillet. La peine avec laquelle je m'exprime en
Fransois feroit que ma reponse seroit bien courte s'il ne m'etoit pas
permis de repondre que dans cette langue. Mais je ssais qu'avec
quelque connoissance de la langue Angloise vous meme, vous aurez une
aide tres suffisante dans Madame la comtesse que j'ose prier
d'ajouter a ses amities multipliees devers moi celle de devenir
l'interprete de ce que vais ecrire en ma propre langue, et qu'elle
embellira en la rendant en Fransois.
I presume that your correspondents here have given you a
history of all the events which have happened. The Leyden gazette,
tho' it contains several inconsiderable errors, gives on the whole a
just enough idea. It is impossible to conceive a greater
fermentation than has worked in Paris, nor do I believe that so great
a fermentation ever produced so little injury in any other place. I
have been thro' it daily, have observed the mobs with my own eyes in
order to be satisfied of their objects, and declare to you that I saw
so plainly the legitimacy of them, that I have slept in my house as
quietly thro' the whole as I ever did in the most peaceable moments.
So strongly fortified was the despotism of this government by long
possession, by the respect & the fears of the people, by possessing
the public force, by the imposing authority of forms and of faste,
that had it held itself on the defensive only, the national assembly
with all their good sense, would probably have only obtained a
considerable improvement of the government, not a total revision of
it. But, ill informed of the spirit of their nation, the despots
around the throne had recourse to violent measures, the forerunners
of force. In this they have been completely overthrown, & the nation
has made a total resumption of rights, which they had certainly never
before ventured even to think of. The National assembly have now as
clean a canvas to work on here as we had in America. Such has been
the firmness and wisdom of their proceedings in moments of adversity
as well as prosperity, that I have the highest confidence that they
will use their power justly. As far as I can collect from
conversation with their members, the constitution they will propose
will resemble that of England in it's outlines, but not in it's
defects. They will certainly leave the king possessed completely of
the Executive powers, & particularly of the public force. Their
legislature will consist of one order only, & not of two as in
England: the representation will be equal & not abominably partial as
that of England: it will be guarded against corruption, instead of
having a majority sold to the king, & rendering his will absolute:
whether it will be in one chamber, or broke into two cannot be
foreseen. They will meet at certain epochs & sit as long as they
please, instead of meeting only when, & sitting only as long as the
king pleases as in England. There is a difference of opinion whether
the king shall have an absolute, or only a qualified Negative on
their acts. The parliaments will probably be suppressed; & juries
provided in criminal cases perhaps even in civil ones. This is what
appears probable at present. The Assembly is this day discussing the
question whether they will have a declaration of rights. Paris has
been led by events to assume the government of itself. It has
hitherto worn too much the appearance of conformity to continue thus
independently of the will of the nation. Reflection will probably
make them sensible that the security of all depends on the dependance
of all on the national legislature. I have so much confidence on the
good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I
am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her
force; and I will agree to be stoned as a false prophet if all does
not end well in this country. Nor will it end with this country.
Hers is but the first chapter of the history of European liberty.
The capture of the Baron Besenval is very embarrassing for the
States general. They are principled against retrospective laws, &
will make it one of the corner stones of their new building. But it
is very doubtful whether the antient laws will condemn him, and
whether the people will permit him to be acquitted. The Duke de la
Vauguyon also & his son are taken at Havre. -- In drawing the
parallel between what England is, & what France is to be I forgot to
observe that the latter will have a real constitution, which cannot
be changed by the ordinary legislature; whereas England has no
constitution at all: that is to say there is not one principle of
their government which the parliament does not alter at pleasure.
The omnipotence of parliament is an established principle with them.
-- Postponing my departure to America till the end of September I
shall hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at Paris before I go, &
of renewing in person to yourself & Madame la Comtesse assurances of
those sentiments of respect & attachment with which I have the honor
to be Dear Sir your most obedient humble serv't.
P. S. It is rumored & beleived in Paris that the English have
fomented with money the tumults of this place, & that they are arming
to attack France. I have never seen any reason to believe either of
these rumors.
"THE EARTH BELONGS TO THE LIVING"
_To James Madison_
_Paris, September 6, 1789_
DEAR SIR, -- I sit down to write to you without knowing by what
occasion I shall send my letter. I do it because a subject comes
into my head which I would wish to develope a little more than is
practicable in the hurry of the moment of making up general
despatches.
The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind
another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side
of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only
to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles
of every government. The course of reflection in which we are
immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented
this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be
transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground
which I suppose to be self evident, "_that the earth belongs in
usufruct to the living_;" that the dead have neither powers nor
rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be
his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. If the
society has formed no rules for the appropriation of its lands in
severalty, it will be taken by the first occupants. These will
generally be the wife and children of the decedent. If they have
formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to the wife
and children, or to some one of them, or to the legatee of the
deceased. So they may give it to his creditor. But the child, the
legatee or creditor takes it, not by any natural right, but by a law
of the society of which they are members, and to which they are
subject. Then no man can by _natural right_ oblige the lands he
occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the
paiment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during
his own life, eat up the usufruct of the lands for several
generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead, and
not to the living, which would be reverse of our principle. What is
true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all
collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the
sum of the rights of individuals. To keep our ideas clear when
applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of
men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day,
and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the
moment of attaining their mature age all together. Let the ripe age
be supposed of 21. years, and their period of life 34. years more,
that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to
persons who have already attained 21. years of age. Each successive
generation would, in this way, come on and go off the stage at a
fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say the earth belongs to
each of these generations during it's course, fully, and in their own
right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts and
incumbrances of the 1st., the 3d. of the 2d. and so on. For if the
1st. could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the
dead and not the living generation. Then no generation can contract
debts greater than may be paid during the course of it's own
existence. At 21. years of age they may bind themselves and their
lands for 34. years to come: at 22. for 33: at 23 for 32. and at 54
for one year only; because these are the terms of life which remain
to them at those respective epochs. But a material difference must
be noted between the succession of an individual and that of a whole
generation. Individuals are parts only of a society, subject to the
laws of a whole. These laws may appropriate the portion of land
occupied by a decedent to his creditor rather than to any other, or
to his child, on condition he satisfies his creditor. But when a
whole generation, that is, the whole society dies, as in the case we
have supposed, and another generation or society succeeds, this forms
a whole, and there is no superior who can give their territory to a
third society, who may have lent money to their predecessors beyond
their faculty of paying.
What is true of a generation all arriving to self-government on
the same day, and dying all on the same day, is true of those on a
constant course of decay and renewal, with this only difference. A
generation coming in and going out entire, as in the first case,
would have a right in the 1st year of their self dominion to contract
a debt for 33. years, in the 10th. for 24. in the 20th. for 14. in
the 30th. for 4. whereas generations changing daily, by daily deaths
and births, have one constant term beginning at the date of their
contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that
date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from
the tables of mortality, corrected by the circumstances of climate,
occupation &c. peculiar to the country of the contractors. Take, for
instance, the table of M. de Buffon wherein he states that 23,994
deaths, and the ages at which they happened. Suppose a society in
which 23,994 persons are born every year and live to the ages stated
in this table. The conditions of that society will be as follows.
1st. it will consist constantly of 617,703 persons of all ages. 2dly.
of those living at any one instant of time, one half will be dead in
24. years 8. months. 3dly. 10,675 will arrive every year at the age
of 21. years complete. 4thly. it will constantly have 348,417 persons
of all ages above 21. years. 5ly. and the half of those of 21. years
and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18.
years 8. months, or say 19. years as the nearest integral number.
Then 19. years is the term beyond which neither the representatives
of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly
extend a debt.
To render this conclusion palpable by example, suppose that
Louis XIV. and XV. had contracted debts in the name of the French
nation to the amount of 10.000 milliards of livres and that the whole
had been contracted in Genoa. The interest of this sum would be 500
milliards, which is said to be the whole rent-roll, or nett proceeds
of the territory of France. Must the present generation of men have
retired from the territory in which nature produced them, and ceded
it to the Genoese creditors? No. They have the same rights over the
soil on which they were produced, as the preceding generations had.
They derive these rights not from their predecessors, but from
nature. They then and their soil are by nature clear of the debts of
their predecessors. Again suppose Louis XV. and his contemporary
generation had said to the money lenders of Genoa, give us money that
we may eat, drink, and be merry in our day; and on condition you will
demand no interest till the end of 19. years, you shall then forever
after receive an annual interest of (*) 12.'5 per cent. The money is
lent on these conditions, is divided among the living, eaten, drank,
and squandered. Would the present generation be obliged to apply the
produce of the earth and of their labour to replace their
dissipations? Not at all.
(*) 100 pound at a compound interest of 6 per cent makes at the
end of 19 years an aggregate of principal and interest of pound
252.14 the interest of which is a pound 12 degrees degrees. 12".
7'd. which is nearly 12". p'r. cent on the first capital of pound
100.
I suppose that the received opinion, that the public debts of
one generation devolve on the next, has been suggested by our seeing
habitually in private life that he who succeeds to lands is required
to pay the debts of his ancestor or testator, without considering
that this requisition is municipal only, not moral, flowing from the
will of the society which has found it convenient to appropriate the
lands become vacant by the death of their occupant on the condition
of a paiment of his debts; but that between society and society, or
generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire
but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the
law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation
to another."
The interest of the national debt of France being in fact but a
two thousandth part of it's rent-roll, the paiment of it is
practicable enough; and so becomes a question merely of honor or
expediency. But with respect to future debts; would it not be wise
and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are
forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can
validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age,
or within the term of 19. years? And that all future contracts shall
be deemed void as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of 19. years
from their date? This would put the lenders, and the borrowers also,
on their guard. By reducing too the faculty of borrowing within its
natural limits, it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too free
a course has been procured by the inattention of money lenders to
this law of nature, that succeeding generations are not responsible
for the preceding.
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a
perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs
always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what
proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are
masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as
they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of
government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors
extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will
gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be
itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law,
naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer,
it is an act of force and not of right.
It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in
fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the
constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19. years only. In
the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an
equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might
be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived
that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and
without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot
assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious.
Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition.
Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts
them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests
of their constituents; and other impediments arise so as to prove to
every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more
manageable than one which needs a repeal.
This principle that the earth belongs to the living and not to
the dead is of very extensive application and consequences in every
country, and most especially in France. It enters into the
resolution of the questions Whether the nation may change the descent
of lands holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation
of lands given antiently to the church, to hospitals, colleges,
orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity? whether they may
abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the
whole catalogue ecclesiastical and feudal? it goes to hereditary
offices, authorities and jurisdictions; to hereditary orders,
distinctions and appellations; to perpetual monopolies in commerce,
the arts or sciences; with a long train of _et ceteras_: and it
renders the question of reimbursement a question of generosity and
not of right. In all these cases the legislature of the day could
authorize such appropriations and establishments for their own time,
but no longer; and the present holders, even where they or their
ancestors have purchased, are in the case of _bona fide_ purchasers
of what the seller had no right to convey.
Turn this subject in your mind, my Dear Sir, and particularly
as to the power of contracting debts, and develope it with that
perspicuity and cogent logic which is so peculiarly yours. Your
station in the councils of our country gives you an opportunity of
producing it to public consideration, of forcing it into discussion.
At first blush it may be rallied as a theoretical speculation; but
examination will prove it to be solid and salutary. It would furnish
matter for a fine preamble to our first law for appropriating the
public revenue; and it will exclude, at the threshold of our new
government the contagious and ruinous errors of this quarter of the
globe, which have armed despots with means not sanctioned by nature
for binding in chains their fellow-men. We have already given, in
example one effectual check to the Dog of war, by transferring the
power of letting him loose from the executive to the Legislative
body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay. I should
be pleased to see this second obstacle held out by us also in the
first instance. No nation can make a declaration against the
validity of long-contracted debts so disinterestedly as we, since we
do not owe a shilling which may not be paid with ease principal and
interest, within the time of our own lives. Establish the principle
also in the new law to be passed for protecting copy rights and new
inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19. instead of 14.
years _[a line entirely faded]_ an instance the more of our taking
reason for our guide instead of English precedents, the habit of
which fetters us, with all the political herecies of a nation,
equally remarkable for it's encitement from some errors, as long
slumbering under others. I write you no news, because when an
occasion occurs I shall write a separate letter for that.
ADIEU TO FRANCE
_To Madame d'Enville_
_New York, April 2, 1790_
I had hoped, Madame la Duchesse, to have again had the honor of
paying my respects to you in Paris, but the wish of our government
that I should take a share in its administration, has become a law to
me. Could I have persuaded myself that public offices were made for
private convenience, I should undoubtedly have preferred a
continuance in that which placed me nearer to you; but believing on
the contrary that a good citizen should take his stand where the
public authority marshals him, I have acquiesced. Among the
circumstances which reconcile me to my new position the most powerful
is the opportunities it will give me of cementing the friendship
between our two nations. Be assured that to do this is the first
wish of my heart. I have but one system of ethics for men & for
nations -- to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements and
under all circumstances, to be open & generous, promotes in the long
run even the interests of both; and I am sure it promotes their
happiness. The change in your government will approximate us to one
another. You have had some checks, some horrors since I left you;
but the way to heaven, you know, has always been said to be strewed
with thorns. Why your nation have had fewer than any other on earth,
I do not know, unless it be that it is the best on earth. If I
assure you, Madam, moreover, that I consider yourself personally as
with the foremost of your nation in every virtue, it is not flattery,
my heart knows not that, it is a homage to sacred truth, it is a
tribute I pay with cordiality to a character in which I saw but one
error; it was that of treating me with a degree of favor I did not
merit. Be assured I shall ever retain a lively sense of all your
goodness to me, which was a circumstance of principal happiness to me
during my stay in Paris. I hope that by this time you have seen that
my prognostications of a successful issue to your revolution have
been verified. I feared for you during a short interval; but after
the declaration of the army, tho' there might be episodes of
distress, the denoument was out of doubt. Heaven send that the
glorious example of your country may be but the beginning of the
history of European liberty, and that you may live many years in
health & happiness to see at length that heaven did not make man in
it's wrath. Accept the homage of those sentiments of sincere and
respectfull esteem with which I have the honor to be, Madame la
Duchesse, your most affectionate & obedient humble servant.
READING THE LAW
_To John Garland Jefferson_
_New York, June 11, 1790_
DEAR SIR, -- Your uncle mr Garland informs me, that, your
education being finished, you are desirous of obtaining some
clerkship or something else under government whereby you may turn
your talents to some account for yourself and he had supposed it
might be in my power to provide you with some such office. His
commendations of you are such as to induce me to wish sincerely to be
of service to you. But there is not, and has not been, a single
vacant office at my disposal. Nor would I, as your friend, ever
think of putting you into the petty clerkships in the several
offices, where you would have to drudge through life for a miserable
pittance, without a hope of bettering your situation. But he tells
me you are also disposed to the study of the law. This therefore
brings it more within my power to serve you. It will be necessary
for you in that case to go and live somewhere in my neighborhood in
Albemarle. The inclosed letter to Colo. Lewis near Charlottesville
will show you what I have supposed could be best done for you there.
It is a general practice to study the law in the office of some
lawyer. This indeed gives to the student the advantage of his
instruction. But I have ever seen that the services expected in
return have been more than the instructions have been worth. All
that is necessary for a student is access to a library, and
directions in what order the books are to be read. This I will take
the liberty of suggesting to you, observing previously that as other
branches of science, and especially history, are necessary to form a
lawyer, these must be carried on together. I will arrange the books
to be read into three columns, and propose that you should read those
in the first column till 12. oclock every day: those in the 2d. from
12. to 2. those in the 3d. after candlelight, leaving all the
afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as
reading: I will rather say more necessary, because health is worth
more than learning.
1st.
Coke on Littleton
Coke's 2d. 3d. & 4th.
institutes.
Coke's reports.
Vaughan's do
Salkeld's
Ld. Raymond's
Strange's.
Burrows's
Kaim's Principles of equity.
Vernon's reports.
Peere Williams.
Precedents in Chancery.
Tracy Atheyns.
Verey.
Hawkin's Pleas of the crown.
Blackstone.
Virginia laws.
2d.
Dalrymple's feudal system.
Hale's history of the Com. law.
Gilbert on Devises
Uses.
Tenures.
Rents.
Distresses.
Ejectments.
Executions.
Evidence.
Sayer's law of costs.
Lambard's circonantia.
Bacon. voce Pleas & Pleadings.
Cunningham's law of bills.
Molloy de jure maritimo.
Locke on government.
Montesquieu's Spirit of law.
Smith's wealth of nations.
Beccaria.
Kaim's moral essays.
Vattel's law of nations.
3d.
Mallet's North antiquit'.
History of England in 3. vols folio compiled by Kennet.
Ludlow's memoirs
Burnet's history.
Ld. Orrery's history.
Burke's George III.
Robertson's hist. of Scotl'd
Robertson's hist. of America.
Other American histories.
Voltaire's historical works.
Should there be any little intervals in the day not otherwise
occupied fill them up by reading Lowthe's grammar, Blair's lectures
on rhetoric, Mason on poetic & prosaic numbers, Bolingbroke's works
for the sake of the stile, which is declamatory & elegant, the
English poets for the sake of the style also.
As mr Peter Carr in Goochland is engaged in a course of law
reading, and has my books for that purpose, it will be necessary for
you to go to mrs Carr's, and to receive such as he shall be then done
with, and settle with him a plan of receiving from him regular the
before mentioned books as fast as he shall get through them. The
losses I have sustained by lending my books will be my apology to you
for asking your particular attention to the replacing them in the
presses as fast as you finish them, and not to lend them to any body
else, nor suffer anybody to have a book out of the Study under cover
of your name. You will find, when you get there, that I have had
reason to ask this exactness.
I would have you determine beforehand to make yourself a
thorough lawyer, & not be contented with a mere smattering. It is
superiority of knowledge which can alone lift you above the heads of
your competitors, and ensure you success. I think therefore you must
calculate on devoting between two & three years to this course of
reading, before you think of commencing practice. Whenever that
begins, there is an end of reading.
I shall be glad to hear from you from time to time, and shall
hope to see you in the fall in Albemarle, to which place I propose a
visit in that season. In the mean time wishing you all the industry
of patient perseverance which this course of reading will require I
am with great esteem Dear Sir Your most obedient friend & servant.
WHIPPOORWILLS AND STRAWBERRIES
_To Mary Jefferson_
_New York, June 13, 1790_
MY DEAR MARIA -- I have recieved your letter of May 23. which
was in answer to mine of May 2. but I wrote you also on the 23d. of
May, so that you still owe me an answer to that, which I hope is now
on the road. In matters of correspondence as well as of money you
must never be in debt. I am much pleased with the account you give
me of your occupations, and the making the pudding is as good an
article of them as any. When I come to Virginia I shall insist on
eating a pudding of your own making, as well as on trying other
specimens of your skill. You must make the most of your time while
you are with so good an aunt who can learn you every thing. We had
not peas nor strawberries here till the 8th. day of this month. On
the same day I heard the first Whip-poor-will whistle. Swallows and
martins appeared here on the 21st. of April. When did they appear
with you? And when had you peas, strawberries, and whip-poor-wills
in Virginia? Take notice hereafter whether the whip-poor-wills
always come with the strawberries and peas. Send me a copy of the
maxims I gave you, also a list of the books I promised you. I have
had a long touch of my periodical headach, but a very moderate one.
It has not quite left me yet. Adieu, my dear, love your uncle, aunt
and cousins, and me more than all. Your's affectionately,
RICE FROM TIMOR AND AFRICA
_To Samuel Vaughan, Jr._
_Philadelphia, Nov. 27, 1790_
DEAR SIR -- I feel myself much indebted to Mr. Vaughan your
father for the opportunity he has furnished me of a direct
correspondence with you, and also to yourself for the seeds of the
Mountain rice you have been so good as to send me. I had before
received from your brother in London some of the same parcel brought
by Capt. Bligh; but it was so late in the spring of the present year
that tho the plants came up and grew luxuriantly, they did not
produce seed. Your present will enable me to enlarge the experiment
I propose for the next year, and for which I had still reserved a few
seeds of the former parcel. About two months ago I was fortunate
enough to recieve a cask of mountain rice from the coast of Africa.
This has enabled me to engage so many persons in the experiment as to
be tolerably sure it will be fairly made by some of them. It will
furnish also a comparison with that from Timor. I have the success
of this species of rice at heart, because it will not only enable
other states to cultivate rice which have not lands susceptible of
inundation but because also if the rice be as good as is said, it may
take place of the wet rice in the Southern states, & by superseding
the necessity of overflowing their lands, save them from the
pestilential & mortal fevers brought on by that operation.
We have lately had introduced a plant of the Melon species
which, from it's external resemblance to the pumpkin, we have called
a pumpkin, distinguishing it specifically as the _potatoe-pumpkin_,
on account of the extreme resemblance of it's taste to that of the
sweet-potatoe. It is as yet but little known, is well esteemed at
our table, and particularly valued by our negroe's. Coming much
earlier than the real potatoe, we are so much the sooner furnished
with a substitute for that root. I know not from whence it came; so
that perhaps it may be originally from your islands. In that case
you will only have the trouble of throwing away the few seeds I
enclose you herewith. On the other hand, if unknown with you, I
think it will probably succeed in the islands, and may add to the
catalogue of plants which will do as substitutes for bread. I have
always thought that if in the experiments to introduce or to
communicate new plants, one species in an hundred is found useful &
succeeds, the ninety nine found otherwise are more than paid for. My
present situation & occupations are not friendly to agricultural
experiments, however strongly I am led to them by inclination. I
will ask permission to address myself to you for such seeds as might
be worth trying from your quarter, freely offering you reciprocal
services in the same or any other line in which you will be so good
as to command them. I have the honor to be with great respect &
esteem, Sir Your most obedt. & most humble servt,
"A SCOLDING LETTER"
_To Martha Jefferson Randolph_
_Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1790_
MY DEAR DAUGHTER -- This is a scolding letter for you all. I
have not recieved a scrip of a pen from home since I left it which is
now eleven weeks. I think it so easy for you to write me one letter
every week, which will be but once in three weeks for each of you,
when I write one every week who have not one moment's repose from
business from the first to the last moment of the week. Perhaps you
think you have nothing to say to me. It is a great deal to say you
are all well, or that one has a cold, another a fever &c., besides
that there is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me,
nor any thing that moves, from yourself down to Bergere or Grizzle.
Write then my dear daughter punctually on your day, and Mr. Randolph
and Polly on theirs. I suspect you may have news to tell me of
yourself of the most tender interest to me. Why silent then?
I am still without a house, and consequently without a place to
open my furniture. This has prevented my sending you what I was to
send for Monticello. In the mean time the river is frozen up so as
that no vessel can get out, nor probably will these two months: so
that you will be much longer without them than I had hoped. I know
how inconvenient this will be and am distressed at it; but there is
no help. I send a pamphlet for Mr. Randolph. My best affections to
him, Polly and yourself. Adieu my dear,
A HERETICAL SECT
_To George Mason_
_Philadelphia, Feb. 4, 1791_
DEAR SIR, -- I am to make you my acknowledgments for your favor
of Jan. 10, & the information from France which it contained. It
confirmed what I had heard more loosely before, and accounts still
more recent are to the same effect. I look with great anxiety for
the firm establishment of the new government in France, being
perfectly convinced that if it takes place there, it will spread
sooner or later all over Europe. On the contrary a check there would
retard the revival of liberty in other countries. I consider the
establishment and success of their government as necessary to stay up
our own, and to prevent it from falling back to that kind of Half-way
house, the English constitution. It cannot be denied that we have
among us a sect who believe that to contain whatever is perfect in
human institutions; that the members of this sect have, many of them,
names & offices which stand high in the estimation of our countrymen.
I still rely that the great mass of our community is untainted with
these heresies, as is it's head. On this I build my hope that we
have not laboured in vain, and that our experiment will still prove
that men can be governed by reason. You have excited my curiosity in
saying "there is a particular circumstance, little attended to, which
is continually sapping the republicanism of the United States." What
is it? What is said in our country of the fiscal arrangements now
going on? I really fear their effect when I consider the present
temper of the Southern states. Whether these measures be right or
wrong abstractedly, more attention should be paid to the general
opinion. However, all will pass -- the excise will pass -- the bank
will pass. The only corrective of what is corrupt in our present
form of government will be the augmentation of the numbers in the
lower house, so as to get a more agricultural representation, which
may put that interest above that of the stock-jobbers.
I had no occasion to sound Mr. Madison on your fears expressed
in your letter. I knew before, as possessing his sentiments fully on
that subject, that his value for you was undiminished. I have always
heard him say that though you and he appeared to differ in your
systems, yet you were in truth nearer together than most persons who
were classed under the same appellation. You may quiet yourself in
the assurance of possessing his complete esteem. I have been
endeavoring to obtain some little distinction for our useful
customers, the French. But there is a particular interest opposed to
it, which I fear will prove too strong. We shall soon see. I will
send you a copy of a report I have given in, as soon as it is
printed. I know there is one part of it contrary to your sentiments;
yet I am not sure you will not become sensible that a change should
be slowly preparing. Certainly, whenever I pass your road, I shall
do myself the pleasure of turning into it. Our last year's
experiment, however, is much in favor of that by Newgate.
MONUMENTS OF THE PAST
_To Ebenezer Hazard_
_Philadelphia, February 18, 1791_
SIR, -- I return you the two volumes of records, with thanks
for the opportunity of looking into them. They are curious monuments
of the infancy of our country. I learn with great satisfaction that
you are about committing to the press the valuable historical and
State papers you have been so long collecting. Time and accident are
committing daily havoc on the originals deposited in our public
offices. The late war has done the work of centuries in this
business. The last cannot be recovered, but let us save what
remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye
and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a
multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of
accident. This being the tendency of your undertaking, be assured
there is no one who wishes it more success than, Sir, your most
obedient and most humble servant.
MEMORIES OF FRANKLIN
_To the Rev. William Smith_
_Philadelphia, Feb. 19, 1791_
DEAR SIR, -- I feel both the wish & the duty to communicate, in
compliance with your request, whatever, within my knowledge, might
render justice to the memory of our great countryman, D'r Franklin,
in whom Philosophy has to deplore one of it's principal luminaries
extinguished. But my opportunities of knowing the interesting facts
of his life have not been equal to my desire of making them known. I
could indeed relate a number of those bon mots, with which he used to
charm every society, as having heard many of them. But these are not
your object. Particulars of greater dignity happened not to occur
during his stay of nine months, after my arrival in France.
A little before that, Argand had invented his celebrated lamp,
in which the flame is spread into a hollow cylinder, & thus brought
into contact with the air within as well as without. Doct'r Franklin
had been on the point of the same discovery. The idea had occurred
to him; but he had tried a bull-rush as a wick, which did not
succeed. His occupations did not permit him to repeat & extend his
trials to the introduction of a larger column of air than could pass
through the stem of a bull-rush.
The animal magnetism too of the maniac Mesmer, had just
received its death wound from his hand in conjunction with his
brethren of the learned committee appointed to unveil that compound
of fraud & folly. But, after this, nothing very interesting was
before the public, either in philosophy or politics, during his stay;
& he was principally occupied in winding up his affairs there.
I can only therefore testify in general that there appeared to
me more respect & veneration attached to the character of Doctor
Franklin in France, than to that of any other person in the same
country, foreign or native. I had opportunities of knowing
particularly how far these sentiments were felt by the foreign
ambassadors & ministers at the court of Versailles. The fable of his
capture by the Algerines, propagated by the English newspapers,
excited no uneasiness; as it was seen at once to be a dish cooked up
to the palate of their readers. But nothing could exceed the anxiety
of his diplomatic brethren, on a subsequent report of his death,
which, tho' premature, bore some marks of authenticity.
I found the ministers of France equally impressed with the
talents & integrity of Doct'r Franklin. The C't de Vergennes
particularly gave me repeated and unequivocal demonstrations of his
entire confidence in him.
When he left Passy, it seemed as if the village had lost its
patriarch. On taking leave of the court, which he did by letter, the
King ordered him to be handsomely complimented, & furnished him with
a litter & mules of his own, the only kind of conveyance the state of
his health could bear.
No greater proof of his estimation in France can be given than
the late letters of condolence on his death, from the National
Assembly of that country, & the Community of Paris, to the President
of the United States, & to Congress, and their public mourning on
that event. It is, I believe, the first instance of that homage
having been paid by a public body of one nation to a private citizen
of another.
His death was an affliction which was to happen to us at some
time or other. We have reason to be thankful he was so long spared;
that the most useful life should be the longest also; that it was
protracted so far beyond the ordinary span allotted to man, as to
avail us of his wisdom in the establishment of our own freedom, & to
bless him with a view of its dawn in the east, where they seemed,
till now, to have learned everything, but how to be free.
The succession to D'r Franklin, at the court of France, was an
excellent school of humility. On being presented to any one as the
minister of America, the commonplace question used in such cases was
_"c'est vous, Monsieur, qui remplace le Docteur Franklin?"_ "it is
you, Sir, who replace Doctor Franklin?" I generally answered, "no one
can replace him, Sir: I am only his successor."
These small offerings to the memory of our great & dear friend,
whom time will be making greater while it is spunging us from it's
records, must be accepted by you, Sir, in that spirit of love &
veneration for him, in which they are made; and not according to
their insignificance in the eyes of a world, who did not want this
mite to fill up the measure of his worth.
CAPITOL ON THE POTOMAC
_To Major L'Enfant_
_Philadelphia, April 10, 1791_
SIR, -- I am favored with your letter of the 4th instant, and
in compliance with your request, I have examined my papers, and found
the plans of Frankfort-on-the-Mayne, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strasburg,
Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and
Milan, which I send in a roll by the post. They are on large and
accurate scales, having been procured by me while in those respective
cities myself. As they are connected with the notes I made in my
travels, and often necessary to explain them to myself, I will beg
your care of them, and to return them when no longer useful to you,
leaving you absolutely free to keep them as long as useful. I am
happy that the President has left the planning of the town in such
good hands, and have no doubt it will be done to general
satisfaction. Considering that the grounds to be reserved for the
public are to be paid for by the acre, I think very liberal
reservations should be made for them; and if this be about the Tyber
and on the back of the town, it will be of no injury to the commerce
of the place, which will undoubtedly establish itself on the deep
waters towards the eastern branch and mouth of Rock Creek; the water
about the mouth of the Tyber not being of any depth. Those connected
with the government will prefer fixing themselves near the public
grounds in the centre, which will also be convenient to be resorted
to as walks from the lower and upper town. Having communicated to
the President, before he went away, such general ideas on the subject
of the town as occurred to me, I make no doubt that, in explaining
himself to you on the subject, he has interwoven with his own ideas,
such of mine as he approved. For fear of repeating therefore what he
did not approve, and having more confidence in the unbiassed state of
his mind, than in my own, I avoided interfering with what he may have
expressed to you. Whenever it is proposed to prepare plans for the
Capitol, I should prefer the adoption of some one of the models of
antiquity, which have had the approbation of thousands of years; and
for the President's house, I should prefer the celebrated fronts of
modern buildings, which have already received the approbation of all
good judges. Such are the Galerie du Louire, the Gardes meubles, and
two fronts of the Hotel de Salm. But of this it is yet time enough
to consider. In the meantime I am, with great esteem, Sir, your most
obedient humble servant.
A NOTE ON INDIAN POLICY
_To Charles Carroll_
_Philadelphia, April 15, 1791_
DEAR SIR, -- I received last night your favor of the 10th, with
Mr. Brown's receipt, and thank you for the trouble you have been so
kind as to take in this business.
Our news from the westward is disagreeable. Constant murders
committing by the Indians, and their combination threatens to be more
and more extensive. I hope we shall give them a thorough drubbing
this summer, and then change our tomahawk into a golden chain of
friendship. The most economical as well as most humane conduct
towards them is to bribe them into peace, and to retain them in peace
by eternal bribes. The expedition this year would have served for
presents on the most liberal scale for one hundred years; nor shall
we otherwise ever get rid of any army, or of our debt. The least rag
of Indian depredation will be an excuse to raise troops for those who
love to have troops, and for those who think that a public debt is a
good thing. Adieu, my dear Sir. Yours affectionately.
BURKE, PAINE, AND MR. ADAMS
_To the President of the United States_
(GEORGE WASHINGTON)
_Philadelphia, May 8, 1791_
SIR, -- The last week does not furnish one single public event
worthy communicating to you: so that I have only to say "all is
well." Paine's answer to Burke's pamphlet begins to produce some
squibs in our public papers. In Fenno's paper they are Burkites, in
the others, Painites. One of Fenno's was evidently from the author
of the discourses on Davila. I am afraid the indiscretion of a
printer has committed me with my friend Mr. Adams, for whom, as one
of the most honest & disinterested men alive, I have a cordial
esteem, increased by long habits of concurrence in opinion in the
days of his republicanism; and even since his apostacy to hereditary
monarchy & nobility, tho' we differ, we differ as friends should do.
Beckley had the only copy of Paine's pamphlet, & lent it to me,
desiring when I should have read it, that I would send it to a Mr. J.
B. Smith, who had asked it for his brother to reprint it. Being an
utter stranger to J. B. Smith, both by sight & character I wrote a
note to explain to him why I (a stranger to him) sent him a pamphlet,
to wit, that Mr. Beckley had desired it; & to take off a little of
the dryness of the note, I added that I was glad to find it was to be
reprinted, that something would at length be publicly said against
the political heresies which had lately sprung up among us, & that I
did not doubt our citizens would rally again round the standard of
common sense. That I had in my view the Discourses on Davila, which
have filled Fenno's papers, for a twelvemonth, without contradiction,
is certain, but nothing was ever further from my thoughts than to
become myself the contradictor before the public. To my great
astonishment however, when the pamphlet came out, the printer had
prefixed my note to it, without having given me the most distant hint
of it. Mr. Adams will unquestionably take to himself the charge of
political heresy, as conscious of his own views of drawing the
present government to the form of the English constitution, and, I
fear will consider me as meaning to injure him in the public eye. I
learn that some Anglo men have censured it in another point of view,
as a sanction of Paine's principles tends to give offence to the
British government. Their real fear however is that this popular &
republican pamphlet, taking wonderfully, is likely at a single stroke
to wipe out all the unconstitutional doctrines which their
bell-weather Davila has been preaching for a twelvemonth. I
certainly never made a secret of my being anti-monarchical, &
anti-aristocratical; but I am sincerely mortified to be thus brought
forward on the public stage, where to remain, to advance or to
retire, will be equally against my love of silence & quiet, & my
abhorrence of dispute. -- I do not know whether you recollect that
the records of Virginia were destroyed by the British in the year
1781. Particularly the transactions of the revolution before that
time. I am collecting here all the letters I wrote to Congress while
I was in the administration there, and this being done I shall then
extend my views to the transactions of my predecessors, in order to
replace the whole in the public offices in Virginia. I think that
during my administration, say between June 1. 1779. & June 1. 1781.
I had the honor of writing frequent letters to you on public affairs,
which perhaps may be among your papers at Mount Vernon. Would it be
consistent with any general resolution you have formed as to your
papers, to let my letters of the above period come here to be copied,
in order to make them a part of the records I am endeavoring to
restore for the state? or would their selection be too troublesome?
if not, I would beg the loan of them, under an assurance that they
shall be taken the utmost care of, & safely returned to their present
deposit.
The quiet & regular movements of our political affairs leaves
nothing to add but constant prayers for your health & welfare and
assurances of the sincere respect & attachment of Sir Your most
obedient, & most humble servt.
A NORTHERN TOUR
_To Thomas Mann Randolph_
_Bennington, in Vermont, June 5, 1791_
DEAR SIR, -- Mr. Madison & myself are so far on the tour we had
projected. We have visited in the course of it the principal scenes
of Genl. Burgoyne's misfortunes to wit the grounds at Stillwater
where the action of that name was fought, & particularly the
breastworks which cost so much blood to both parties, the encampments
at Saratoga & ground where the British piled their arms, the field of
the battle of Bennington about 9 miles from this place. We have also
visited Forts Wm. Henry & George, Ticonderoga, Crown point, &c. which
have been scenes of blood from a very early part of our history. We
were more pleased however with the botanical objects which
continually presented themselves. Those either unknown or rare in
Virgna were the Sugar maple in vast abundance, the Silver fir, White
pine, Pitch pine, Spruce pine, a shrub with decumbent stems which
they call Juniper, an azalea very different from the nudiflora, with
very large clusters of flowers, more thickly set on the branches, of
a deeper red, & high pink-fragrance. It is the richest shrub I have
seen. The honeysuckle of the gardens growing wild on the banks' of
L. George, the paper-birch, an Aspen with a velvet leaf, a
shrub-willow with downy catkins, a wild gooseberry, the wild cherry
with single fruit (not the bunch cherry) strawberries in abundance.
From the Highlands to the lakes it is a limestone country. It is in
vast quantities on the Eastern sides of the lakes, but none on the
Western sides. The Sandy hill falls & Wing's falls, two very
remarkable cataracts of the Hudson of about 35 f. or 40 f. each
between F. Edward & F. George are of limestone, in horizontal strata.
Those of the Cohoes, on the W. side of the Hudson, & of 70 f. height,
we thought not of limestone. We have met with a small red squirrel
of the color of our fox-squirrel, with a black stripe on each side,
weighing about 6 oz. generally, and in such abundance on L. Champlain
particularly as that twenty odd were killed at the house we lodged in
opposite Crown point the morning we arrived there, without going 10
yards from the door. We killed 3 crossing the lakes, one of them
just as he was getting ashore where it was 3 miles wide, & where with
the high wind then blowing he must have made it 5 or 6 miles.
I think I asked the favr. of you to send for Anthony in the
season for inoculn, as well as to do what is necessary in the
orchard, as to pursue the object of inoculating all the Spontaneous
cherry trees in the fields with good fruit.
We have now got over about 400 miles of our tour and have still
about 450 more to go over. Arriving here on the Saturday evening,
and the laws of the state not permitting us to travel on the Sunday,
has given me time to write to you from hence. I expect to be at
Philadelphia by the 20th or 21st. I am, with great & sincere esteem
Dear Sir yours affectionately.
BREACH OF A FRIENDSHIP
_To John Adams_
_Philadelphia, July 17, 1791_
DEAR SIR -- I have a dozen times taken up my pen to write to
you and as often laid it down again, suspended between opposing
considerations. I determine however to write from a conviction that
truth, between candid minds, can never do harm.
The first of Paine's pamphlets on the Rights of man, which came
to hand here, belonged to Mr. Beckley. He lent it to Mr. Madison
who lent it to me; and while I was reading it Mr. Beckley called on
me for it, and, as I had not finished it, he desired me, as soon as I
should have done so, to send it to Mr. Jonathan B. Smith, whose
brother meant to reprint it. I finished reading it, and, as I had no
acquaintance with Mr. Jonathan B. Smith, propriety required that I
should explain to him why I, a stranger to him, sent him the
pamphlet. I accordingly wrote a note of compliment informing him
that I did it at the desire of Mr. Beckley, and, to take off a little
of the dryness of the note, I added that I was glad it was to be
reprinted here, and that something was to be publicly said against
the political heresies which had sprung up among us etc. I thought
so little of this note that I did not even keep a copy of it: nor
ever heard a tittle more of it till, the week following, I was
thunderstruck with seeing it come out at the head of the pamphlet. I
hoped however it would not attract notice. But I found on my return
from a journey of a month that a writer came forward under the
signature of Publicola, attacking not only the author and principles
of the pamphlet, but myself as it's sponsor, by name. Soon after
came hosts of other writers defending the pamphlet and attacking you
by name as the writer of Publicola. Thus were our names thrown on
the public stage as public antagonists. That you and I differ in our
ideas of the best form of government is well known to us both: but we
have differed as friends should do, respecting the purity of each
other's motives, and confining our difference of opinion to private
conversation. And I can declare with truth in the presence of the
almighty that nothing was further from my intention or expectation
than to have had either my own or your name brought before the public
on this occasion. The friendship and confidence which has so long
existed between us required this explanation from me, and I know you
too well to fear any misconstruction of the motives of it. Some
people here who would wish me to be, or to be thought, guilty of
improprieties, have suggested that I was Agricola, that I was Brutus
etc. etc. I never did in my life, either by myself or by any other,
have a sentence of mine inserted in a newspaper without putting my
name to it; and I believe I never shall.
While the empress is refusing peace under a mediation unless
Oczakow and it's territory be ceded to her, she is offering peace on
the perfect statu quo to the Porte, if they will conclude it without
a mediation. France has struck a severe blow at our navigation by a
difference of duty on tob[acc]o carried in our and their ships, and
by taking from foreign built ships the capability of naturalization.
She has placed our whale oil on rather a better footing than ever by
consolidating the duties into a single one of 6. livres. They
amounted before to some sous over that sum. I am told (I know not
how truly) that England has prohibited our spermaceti oil altogether,
and will prohibit our wheat till the price there is 52/ the quarter,
which it almost never is. We expect hourly to hear the true event of
Genl. Scott's expedition. Reports give favorable hopes of it. Be so
good as to present my respectful compliments to Mrs. Adams and to
accept assurances of the sentiments of sincere esteem and respect
with which I am Dear Sir Your friend and servant.
HOPE FOR "OUR BLACK BRETHREN"
_To Benjamin Banneker_
_Philadelphia, Aug. 30, 1791_
SIR, -- I thank you sincerely for your letter of the 19th
instant and for the Almanac it contained. No body wishes more than I
do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our
black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men,
and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the
degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. I
can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good
system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind
to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present
existence, and other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will
admit. I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur
de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and
member of the Philanthropic society, because I considered it as a
document to which your whole colour had a right for their
justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them.
I am with great esteem, Sir Your most obed't humble serv't.
STRENGTHENING THE STATE GOVERNMENTS
_To Archibald Stuart_
_Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1791_
DEAR SIR, -- I received duly your favor of Octob 22. and should
have answered it by the gentleman who delivered it, but that he left
town before I knew of it.
That it is really important to provide a constitution for our
state cannot be doubted: as little can it be doubted that the
ordinance called by that name has important defects. But before we
attempt it, we should endeavor to be as certain as is practicable
that in the attempt we should not make bad worse. I have understood
that Mr. Henry has always been opposed to this undertaking: and I
confess that I consider his talents and influence such as that, were
it decided that we should call a Convention for the purpose of
amending, I should fear he might induce that convention either to fix
the thing as at present, or change it for the worse. Would it not
therefore be well that means should be adopted for coming at his
ideas of the changes he would agree to, & for communicating to him
those which we should propose? Perhaps he might find ours not so
distant from his but that some mutual sacrifices might bring them
together.
I shall hazard my own ideas to you as hastily as my business
obliges me. I wish to preserve the line drawn by the federal
constitution between the general & particular governments as it
stands at present, and to take every prudent means of preventing
either from stepping over it. Tho' the experiment has not yet had a
long enough course to shew us from which quarter encroachments are
most to be feared, yet it is easy to foresee from the nature of
things that the encroachments of the state governments will tend to
an excess of liberty which will correct itself (as in the late
instance) while those of the general government will tend to
monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of
working its own cure, as all experience shews. I would rather be
exposed to the inconve-niencies attending too much liberty than those
attending too small a degree of it. Then it is important to
strengthen the state governments: and as this cannot be done by any
change in the federal constitution, (for the preservation of that is
all we need contend for,) it must be done by the states themselves,
erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be
surmounted either by themselves or by the general government. The
only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will
lose ground in every contest. To obtain a wise & an able government,
I consider the following changes as important. Render the
legislature a desirable station by lessening the number of
representatives (say to 100) and lengthening somewhat their term, and
proportion them equally among the electors: adopt also a better mode
of appointing Senators. Render the Executive a more desirable post
to men of abilities by making it more independant of the legislature.
To wit, let him be chosen by other electors, for a longer time, and
ineligible for ever after. Responsibility is a tremendous engine in
a free government. Let him feel the whole weight of it then by
taking away the shelter of his executive council. Experience both
ways has already established the superiority of this measure. Render
the Judiciary respectable by every possible means, to wit, firm
tenure in office, competent salaries, and reduction of their numbers.
Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country; & by
taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their
hands tied by the unable. This branch of the government will have
the weight of the conflict on their hands, because they will be the
last appeal of reason. -- These are my general ideas of amendments;
but, preserving the ends, I should be flexible & conciliatory as to
the means. You ask whether Mr. Madison and myself could attend on a
convention which should be called? Mr. Madison's engagements as a
member of Congress will probably be from October to March or April in
every year. Mine are constant while I hold my office, and my
attendance would be very unimportant. Were it otherwise, my office
should not stand in the way of it. I am with great & sincere esteem,
Dr Sir, your friend & servt.
"A STEPPING STONE TO MONARCHY"
_To the President of the United States_
(GEORGE WASHINGTON)
_Philadelphia, May 23, 1792_
DEAR SIR, -- I have determined to make the subject of a letter,
what for some time past, has been a subject of inquietude to my mind
without having found a good occasion of disburthening itself to you
in conversation, during the busy scenes which occupied you here.
Perhaps too you may be able, in your present situation, or on the
road, to give it more time & reflection than you could do here at any
moment.
When you first mentioned to me your purpose of retiring from
the government, tho' I felt all the magnitude of the event, I was in
a considerable degree silent. I knew that, to such a mind as yours,
persuasion was idle & impertinent: that before forming your decision,
you had weighed all the reasons for & against the measure, had made
up your mind on full view of them, & that there could be little hope
of changing the result. Pursuing my reflections too I knew we were
some day to try to walk alone; and if the essay should be made while
you should be alive & looking on, we should derive confidence from
that circumstance, & resource if it failed. The public mind too was
calm & confident, and therefore in a favorable state for making the
experiment. Had no change of circumstances intervened, I should not,
with any hope of success, have now ventured to propose to you a
change of purpose. But the public mind is no longer confident and
serene; and that from causes in which you are in no ways personally
mixed. Tho these causes have been hackneyed in the public papers in
detail, it may not be amiss, in order to calculate the effect they
are capable of producing, to take a view of them in the mass, giving
to each the form, real or imaginary, under which they have been
presented.
It has been urged then that a public debt, greater than we can
possibly pay before other causes of adding new debt to it will occur,
has been artificially created, by adding together the whole amount of
the debtor & creditor sides of accounts, instead of taking only their
balances, which could have been paid off in a short time: That this
accumulation of debt has taken for ever out of our power those easy
sources of revenue, which, applied to the ordinary necessities and
exigencies of government, would have answered them habitually, and
covered us from habitual murmurings against taxes & tax-gatherers,
reserving extraordinary calls, for those extraordinary occasions
which would animate the people to meet them: That though the calls
for money have been no greater than we must generally expect, for the
same or equivalent exigencies, yet we are already obliged to strain
the impost till it produces clamour, and will produce evasion, & war
on our own citizens to collect it: and even to resort to an _Excise_
law, of odious character with the people, partial in it's operation,
unproductive unless enforced by arbitrary & vexatious means, and
committing the authority of the government in parts where resistance
is most probable, & coercion least practicable. They cite
propositions in Congress and suspect other projects on foot still to
increase the mass of debt. They say that by borrowing at 2/3 of the
interest, we might have paid off the principal in 2/3 of the time:
but that from this we are precluded by it's being made irredeemable
but in small portions & long terms: That this irredeemable quality
was given it for the avowed purpose of inviting it's transfer to
foreign countries. They predict that this transfer of the principal,
when compleated, will occasion an exportation of 3. millions of
dollars annually for the interest, a drain of coin, of which as there
has been no example, no calculation can be made of it's consequences:
That the banishment of our coin will be compleated by the creation of
10. millions of paper money, in the form of bank bills, now issuing
into circulation. They think the 10. or 12. percent annual profit
paid to the lenders of this paper medium taken out of the pockets of
the people, who would have had without interest the coin it is
banishing: That all the capital employed in paper speculation is
barren & useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no
accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce & agriculture
where it would have produced addition to the common mass: That it
nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of
industry & morality: That it has furnished effectual means of
corrupting such a portion of the legislature, as turns the balance
between the honest voters which ever way it is directed: That this
corrupt squadron, deciding the voice of the legislature, have
manifested their dispositions to get rid of the limitations imposed
by the constitution on the general legislature, limitations, on the
faith of which, the states acceded to that instrument: That the
ultimate object of all this is to prepare the way for a change, from
the present republican form of government, to that of a monarchy, of
which the English constitution is to be the model. That this was
contemplated in the Convention is no secret, because it's partisans
have made none of it. To effect it then was impracticable, but they
are still eager after their object, and are predisposing every thing
for it's ultimate attainment. So many of them have got into the
legislature, that, aided by the corrupt squadron of paper dealers,
who are at their devotion, they make a majority in both houses. The
republican party, who wish to preserve the government in it's present
form, are fewer in number. They are fewer even when joined by the
two, three, or half dozen anti-federalists, who, tho they dare not
avow it, are still opposed to any general government: but being less
so to a republican than a monarchical one, they naturally join those
whom they think pursuing the lesser evil.
Of all the mischiefs objected to the system of measures before
mentioned, none is so afflicting, and fatal to every honest hope, as
the corruption of the legislature. As it was the earliest of these
measures, it became the instrument for producing the rest, & will be
the instrument for producing in future a king, lords & commons, or
whatever else those who direct it may chuse. Withdrawn such a
distance from the eye of their constituents, and these so dispersed
as to be inaccessible to public information, & particularly to that
of the conduct of their own representatives, they will form the most
corrupt government on earth, if the means of their corruption be not
prevented. The only hope of safety hangs now on the numerous
representation which is to come forward the ensuing year. Some of
the new members will probably be either in principle or interest,
with the present majority, but it is expected that the great mass
will form an accession to the republican party. They will not be
able to undo all which the two preceding legislatures, & especially
the first, have done. Public faith & right will oppose this. But
some parts of the system may be rightfully reformed; a liberation
from the rest unremittingly pursued as fast as right will permit, &
the door shut in future against similar commitments of the nation.
Should the next legislature take this course, it will draw upon them
the whole monarchical & paper interest. But the latter I think will
not go all lengths with the former, because creditors will never, of
their own accord, fly off entirely from their debtors. Therefore
this is the alternative least likely to produce convulsion. But
should the majority of the new members be still in the same
principles with the present, & shew that we have nothing to expect
but a continuance of the same practices, it is not easy to conjecture
what would be the result, nor what means would be resorted to for
correction of the evil. True wisdom would direct that they should be
temperate & peaceable, but the division of sentiment & interest
happens unfortunately to be so geographical, that no mortal can say
that what is most wise & temperate would prevail against what is most
easy & obvious. I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil
than the breaking of the union into two or more parts. Yet when we
review the mass which opposed the original coalescence, when we
consider that it lay chiefly in the Southern quarter, that the
legislature have availed themselves of no occasion of allaying it,
but on the contrary whenever Northern & Southern prejudices have come
into conflict, the latter have been sacrificed & the former soothed;
that the owners of the debt are in the Southern & the holders of it
in the Northern division; that the Anti-federal champions are now
strengthened in argument by the fulfilment of their predictions; that
this has been brought about by the Monarchical federalists
themselves, who, having been for the new government merely as a
stepping stone to monarchy, have themselves adopted the very
constructions of the constitution, of which, when advocating it's
acceptance before the tribunal of the people, they declared it
insusceptible; that the republican federalists, who espoused the same
government for it's intrinsic merits, are disarmed of their weapons,
that which they denied as prophecy being now become true history: who
can be sure that these things may not proselyte the small number
which was wanting to place the majority on the other side? And this
is the event at which I tremble, & to prevent which I consider your
continuance at the head of affairs as of the last importance. The
confidence of the whole union is centred in you. Your being at the
helm, will be more than an answer to every argument which can be used
to alarm & lead the people in any quarter into violence or secession.
North & South will hang together, if they have you to hang on; and,
if the first correction of a numerous representation should fail in
it's effect, your presence will give time for trying others not
inconsistent with the union & peace of the states.
I am perfectly aware of the oppression under which your present
office lays your mind, & of the ardor with which you pant for
retirement to domestic life. But there is sometimes an eminence of
character on which society have such peculiar claims as to controul
the predelection of the individual for a particular walk of
happiness, & restrain him to that alone arising from the present &
future benedictions of mankind. This seems to be your condition, &
the law imposed on you by providence in forming your character, &
fashioning the events on which it was to operate; and it is to
motives like these, & not to personal anxieties of mine or others who
have no right to call on you for sacrifices, that I appeal from your
former determination & urge a revisal of it, on the ground of change
in the aspect of things. Should an honest majority result from the
new & enlarged representation; should those acquiesce whose
principles or interest they may controul, your wishes for retirement
would be gratified with less danger, as soon as that shall be
manifest, without awaiting the completion of the second period of
four years. One or two sessions will determine the crisis; and I
cannot but hope that you can resolve to add one or two more to the
many years you have already sacrificed to the good of mankind.
The fear of suspicion that any selfish motive of continuance in
office may enter into this sollicitation on my part obliges me to
declare that no such motive exists. It is a thing of mere
indifference to the public whether I retain or relinquish my purpose
of closing my tour with the first periodical renovation of the
government. I know my own measure too well to suppose that my
services contribute any thing to the public confidence, or the public
utility. Multitudes can fill the office in which you have been
pleased to place me, as much to their advantage & satisfaction. I
therefore have no motive to consult but my own inclination, which is
bent irresistibly on the tranquil enjoyment of my family, my farm, &
my books. I should repose among them it is true, in far greater
security, if I were to know that you remained at the watch, and I
hope it will be so. To the inducements urged from a view of our
domestic affairs, I will add a bare mention, of what indeed need only
be mentioned, that weighty motives for your continuance are to be
found in our foreign affairs. I think it probable that both the
Spanish & English negotiations, if not completed before your purpose
is known, will be suspended from the moment it is known; & that the
latter nation will then use double diligence in fomenting the Indian
war. -- With my wishes for the future, I shall at the same time
express my gratitude for the past, at least my portion in it; & beg
permission to follow you whether in public or private life with those
sentiments of sincere attachment & respect, with which I am
unalterably, Dear Sir, Your affectionate friend & humble servant.
"THE MONSTER ARISTOCRACY"
_To Lafayette_
_Philadelphia, June 16, 1792_
Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army,
establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy.
May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel thro' which it
may pour it's favors. While you are exterminating the monster
aristocracy, & pulling out the teeth & fangs of it's associate
monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has
shewn itself among us, who declare they espoused our new
constitution, not as a good & sufficient thing itself, but only as a
step to an English constitution, the only thing good & sufficient in
itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers
without followers, and that our people are firm & constant in their
republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the
Eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords & commons
come. They get some important associates from New York, and are
puffed off by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed
of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too
many of these stock jobbers & king-jobbers have come into our
legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock
jobbers & king-jobbers. However the voice of the people is beginning
to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the
ensuing election. -- The machinations of our old enemies are such as
to keep us still at bay with our Indian neighbors. -- What are you
doing for your colonies? They will be lost if not more effectually
succoured. Indeed no future efforts you can make will ever be able
to reduce the blacks. All that can be done in my opinion will be to
compound with them as has been done formerly in Jamaica. We have
been less zealous in aiding them, lest your government should feel
any jealousy on our account. But in truth we as sincerely wish their
restoration, and their connection with you, as you do yourselves. We
are satisfied that neither your justice nor their distresses will
ever again permit their being forced to seek at dear & distant
markets those first necessaries of life which they may have at
cheaper markets placed by nature at their door, & formed by her for
their support. -- What is become of Mde de Tessy and Mde de Tott? I
have not heard of them since they went to Switzerland. I think they
would have done better to have come & reposed under the Poplars of
Virginia. Pour into their bosoms the warmest effusions of my
friendship & tell them they will be warm and constant unto death.
Accept of them also for Mde de la Fayette & your dear children -- but
I am forgetting that you are in the field of war, & they I hope in
those of peace. Adieu my dear friend! God bless you all. Yours
affectionately.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN
_To Thomas Paine_
_Philadelphia, June 19, 1792_
DEAR SIR, -- I received with great pleasure the present of your
pamphlets, as well for the thing itself as that it was a testimony of
your recollection. Would you believe it possible that in this
country there should be high & important characters who need your
lessons in republicanism, & who do not heed them? It is but too true
that we have a sect preaching up & pouting after an English
constitution of king, lords, & commons, & whose heads are itching for
crowns, coronets & mitres. But our people, my good friend, are firm
and unanimous in their principles of republicanism & there is no
better proof of it than that they love what you write and read it
with delight. The printers season every newspaper with extracts from
your last, as they did before from your first part of the Rights of
Man. They have both served here to separate the wheat from the
chaff, and to prove that tho' the latter appears on the surface, it
is on the surface only. The bulk below is sound & pure. Go on then
in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword:
shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind
than on the body of man, and be assured that it has not a more
sincere votary nor you a more ardent well-wisher than Yrs. &c.
THE CONFLICT WITH HAMILTON
_To the President of the United States_
(GEORGE WASHINGTON)
_Monticello, Sep. 9, 1792_
DEAR SIR, -- I received on the 2d inst the letter of Aug 23,
which you did me the honor to write me; but the immediate return of
our post, contrary to his custom, prevented my answer by that
occasion. The proceedings of Spain mentioned in your letter are
really of a complexion to excite uneasiness, & a suspicion that their
friendly overtures about the Missisipi have been merely to lull us
while they should be strengthening their holds on that river. Mr.
Carmichael's silence has been long my astonishment: and however it
might have justified something very different from a new appointment,
yet the public interest certainly called for his junction with Mr.
Short as it is impossible but that his knolege of the ground of
negotiation of persons & characters, must be useful & even necessary
to the success of the mission. That Spain & Gr Britain may
understand one another on our frontiers is very possible; for however
opposite their interests or disposition may be in the affairs of
Europe, yet while these do not call them into opposite action, they
may concur as against us. I consider their keeping an agent in the
Indian country as a circumstance which requires serious interference
on our part; and I submit to your decision whether it does not
furnish a proper occasion to us to send an additional instruction to
Messrs. Carmichael & Short to insist on a mutual & formal
stipulation to forbear employing agents or pensioning any persons
within each other's limits: and if this be refused, to propose the
contrary stipulation, to wit, that each party may freely keep agents
within the Indian territories of the other, in which case we might
soon sicken them of the license.
I now take the liberty of proceeding to that part of your
letter wherein you notice the internal dissentions which have taken
place within our government, & their disagreeable effect on it's
movements. That such dissentions have taken place is certain, & even
among those who are nearest to you in the administration. To no one
have they given deeper concern than myself: to no one equal
mortification at being myself a part of them. Tho' I take to myself
no more than my share of the general observations of your letter, yet
I am so desirous ever that you should know the whole truth, & believe
no more than the truth, that I am glad to seize every occasion of
developing to you whatever I do or think relative to the government;
& shall therefore ask permission to be more lengthy now than the
occasion particularly calls for, or could otherwise perhaps justify.
When I embarked in the government, it was with a determination
to intermeddle not at all with the legislature, & as little as
possible with my co-departments. The first and only instance of
variance from the former part of my resolution, I was duped into by
the Secretary of the Treasury and made a tool for forwarding his
schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the
errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest
regret. It has ever been my purpose to explain this to you, when,
from being actors on the scene, we shall have become uninterested
spectators only. The second part of my resolution has been
religiously observed with the war department; & as to that of the
Treasury, has never been farther swerved from than by the mere
enunciation of my sentiments in conversation, and chiefly among those
who, expressing the same sentiments, drew mine from me. If it has
been supposed that I have ever intrigued among the members of the
legislatures to defeat the plans of the Secretary of the Treasury, it
is contrary to all truth. As I never had the desire to influence the
members, so neither had I any other means than my friendships, which
I valued too highly to risk by usurpations on their freedom of
judgment, & the conscientious pursuit of their own sense of duty.
That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the
system of the Secretary of the treasury, I acknolege & avow: and this
was not merely a speculative difference. His system flowed from
principles adverse to liberty, & was calculated to undermine and
demolish the republic, by creating an influence of his department
over the members of the legislature. I saw this influence actually
produced, & it's first fruits to be the establishment of the great
outlines of his project by the votes of the very persons who, having
swallowed his bait were laying themselves out to profit by his plans:
& that had these persons withdrawn, as those interested in a question
ever should, the vote of the disinterested majority was clearly the
reverse of what they made it. These were no longer the votes then of
the representatives of the people, but of deserters from the rights &
interests of the people: & it was impossible to consider their
decisions, which had nothing in view but to enrich themselves, as the
measures of the fair majority, which ought always to be respected.
-- If what was actually doing begat uneasiness in those who wished
for virtuous government, what was further proposed was not less
threatening to the friends of the Constitution. For, in a Report on
the subject of manufactures (still to be acted on) it was expressly
assumed that the general government has a right to exercise all
powers which may be for the _general welfare_, that is to say, all
the legitimate powers of government: since no government has a
legitimate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed.
There was indeed a sham-limitation of the universality of this power
_to cases where money is to be employed_. But about what is it that
money cannot be employed? Thus the object of these plans taken
together is to draw all the powers of government into the hands of
the general legislature, to establish means for corrupting a
sufficient corps in that legislature to divide the honest votes &
preponderate, by their own, the scale which suited, & to have that
corps under the command of the Secretary of the Treasury for the
purpose of subverting step by step the principles of the
constitution, which he has so often declared to be a thing of nothing
which must be changed. Such views might have justified something
more than mere expressions of dissent, beyond which, nevertheless, I
never went. -- Has abstinence from the department committed to me
been equally observed by him? To say nothing of other interferences
equally known, in the case of the two nations with which we have the
most intimate connections, France & England, my system was to give
some satisfactory distinctions to the former, of little cost to us,
in return for the solid advantages yielded us by them; & to have met
the English with some restrictions which might induce them to abate
their severities against our commerce. I have always supposed this
coincided with your sentiments. Yet the Secretary of the treasury,
by his cabals with members of the legislature, & by high-toned
declamation on other occasions, has forced down his own system, which
was exactly the reverse. He undertook, of his own authority, the
conferences with the ministers of those two nations, & was, on every
consultation, provided with some report of a conversation with the
one or the other of them, adapted to his views. These views, thus
made to prevail, their execution fell of course to me; & I can safely
appeal to you, who have seen all my letters & proceedings, whether I
have not carried them into execution as sincerely as if they had been
my own, tho' I ever considered them as inconsistent with the honor &
interest of our country. That they have been inconsistent with our
interest is but too fatally proved by the stab to our navigation
given by the French. -- So that if the question be By whose fault is
it that Colo Hamilton & myself have not drawn together? the answer
will depend on that to two other questions; whose principles of
administration best justify, by their purity, conscientious
adherence? and which of us has, notwithstanding, stepped farthest
into the controul of the department of the other?
To this justification of opinions, expressed in the way of
conversation, against the views of Colo Hamilton, I beg leave to add
some notice of his late charges against me in Fenno's gazette; for
neither the stile, matter, nor venom of the pieces alluded to can
leave a doubt of their author. Spelling my name & character at full
length to the public, while he conceals his own under the signature
of "an American" he charges me 1. With having written letters from
Europe to my friends to oppose the present constitution while
depending. 2. With a desire of not paying the public debt. 3. With
setting up a paper to decry & slander the government. 1. The first
charge is most false. No man in the U.S. I suppose, approved of
every title in the constitution: no one, I believe approved more of
it than I did: and more of it was certainly disproved by my accuser
than by me, and of it's parts most vitally republican. Of this the
few letters I wrote on the subject (not half a dozen I believe) will
be a proof: & for my own satisfaction & justification, I must tax you
with the reading of them when I return to where they are. You will
there see that my objection to the constitution was that it wanted a
bill of rights securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press,
freedom from standing armies, trial by jury, & a constant Habeas
corpus act. Colo Hamilton's was that it wanted a king and house of
lords. The sense of America has approved my objection & added the
bill of rights, not the king and lords. I also thought a longer term
of service, insusceptible of renewal, would have made a President
more independant. My country has thought otherwise, & I have
acquiesced implicitly. He wishes the general government should have
power to make laws binding the states in all cases whatsoever. Our
country has thought otherwise: has he acquiesced? Notwithstanding my
wish for a bill of rights, my letters strongly urged the adoption of
the constitution, by nine states at least, to secure the good it
contained. I at first thought that the best method of securing the
bill of rights would be for four states to hold off till such a bill
should be agreed to. But the moment I saw Mr. Hancock's proposition
to pass the constitution as it stood, and give perpetual instructions
to the representatives of every state to insist on a bill of rights,
I acknoleged the superiority of his plan, & advocated universal
adoption. 2. The second charge is equally untrue. My whole
correspondence while in France, & every word, letter, & act on the
subject since my return, prove that no man is more ardently intent to
see the public debt soon & sacredly paid off than I am. This exactly
marks the difference between Colo Hamilton's views & mine, that I
would wish the debt paid to morrow; he wishes it never to be paid,
but always to be a thing where with to corrupt & manage the
legislature. 3. I have never enquired what number of sons, relations
& friends of Senators, representatives, printers or other useful
partisans Colo Hamilton has provided for among the hundred clerks of
his department, the thousand excisemen, custom-house officers, loan
officers &c. &c. &c. appointed by him, or at his nod, and spread over
the Union; nor could ever have imagined that the man who has the
shuffling of millions backwards & forwards from paper into money &
money into paper, from Europe to America, & America to Europe, the
dealing out of Treasury-secrets among his friends in what time &
measure he pleases, and who never slips an occasion of making friends
with his means, that such an one I say would have brought forward a
charge against me for having appointed the poet Freneau translating
clerk to my office, with a salary of 250. dollars a year. That fact
stands thus. While the government was at New York I was applied to
on behalf of Freneau to know if there was any place within my
department to which he could be appointed. I answered there were but
four clerkships, all of which I found full, and continued without any
change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. Pintard the translating
clerk, did not chuse to remove with us. His office then became
vacant. I was again applied to there for Freneau, & had no
hesitation to promise the clerkship for him. I cannot recollect
whether it was at the same time, or afterwards, that I was told he
had a thought of setting up a newspaper there. But whether then, or
afterwards, I considered it as a circumstance of some value, as it
might enable me to do, what I had long wished to have done, that is,
to have the material parts of the Leyden gazette brought under your
eye & that of the public, in order to possess yourself & them of a
juster view of the affairs of Europe than could be obtained from any
other public source. This I had ineffectually attempted through the
press of Mr. Fenno while in New York, selecting & translating
passages myself at first then having it done by Mr. Pintard the
translating clerk, but they found their way too slowly into Mr.
Fenno's papers. Mr. Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his
being a daily paper, did not circulate sufficiently in the other
states. He even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of
recapitulation from his daily paper, in hopes that that might go into
the other states, but in this too we failed. Freneau, as translating
clerk, & the printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate thro'
the states (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard & Fenno)
revived my hopes that the thing could at length be effected. On the
establishment of his paper therefore, I furnished him with the Leyden
gazettes, with an expression of my wish that he could always
translate & publish the material intelligence they contained; & have
continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I
received them. But as to any other direction or indication of my
wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of intelligence he
should give, what essays encourage, I can protest in the presence of
heaven, that I never did by myself or any other, directly or
indirectly, say a syllable, nor attempt any kind of influence. I can
further protest, in the same awful presence, that I never did by
myself or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate or
procure any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted _in his, or any
other gazette_, to which my name was not affixed or that of my
office. -- I surely need not except here a thing so foreign to the
present subject as a little paragraph about our Algerine captives,
which I put once into Fenno's paper. -- Freneau's proposition to
publish a paper, having been about the time that the writings of
Publicola, & the discourses on Davila had a good deal excited the
public attention, I took for granted from Freneau's character, which
had been marked as that of a good whig, that he would give free place
to pieces written against the aristocratical & monarchical principles
these papers had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is
likely enough I may have expressed it in conversation with others;
tho' I do not recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not,
because I had still seen him but once, & that was at a public table,
at breakfast, at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed thro' New York the
last year. And I can safely declare that my expectations looked only
to the chastisement of the aristocratical & monarchical writers, &
not to any criticisms on the proceedings of government: Colo Hamilton
can see no motive for any appointment but that of making a convenient
partizan. But you Sir, who have received from me recommendations of
a Rittenhouse, Barlow, Paine, will believe that talents & science are
sufficient motives with me in appointments to which they are fitted:
& that Freneau, as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye
to be a translating clerk, & make good title to the little aids I
could give him as the editor of a gazette, by procuring subscriptions
to his paper, as I did some, before it appeared, & as I have with
pleasure done for the labours of other men of genius. I hold it to
be one of the distinguishing excellencies of elective over hereditary
succesions, that the talents, which nature has provided in sufficient
proportion, should be selected by the society for the government of
their affairs, rather than that this should be transmitted through
the loins of knaves & fools passing from the debauches of the table
to those of the bed. Colo Hamilton, alias "Plain facts," says that
Freneau's salary began before he resided in Philadelphia. I do not
know what quibble he may have in reserve on the word "residence." He
may mean to include under that idea the removal of his family; for I
believe he removed, himself, before his family did, to Philadelphia.
But no act of mine gave commencement to his salary before he so far
took up his abode in Philadelphia as to be sufficiently in readiness
for the duties of the office. As to the merits or demerits of his
paper, they certainly concern me not. He & Fenno are rivals for the
public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by censure,
& I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as servile, as
the other severe. But is not the dignity, & even decency of
government committed, when one of it's principal ministers enlists
himself as an anonymous writer or paragraphist for either the one or
the other of them? -- No government ought to be without censors: &
where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not
fear the fair operation of attack & defence. Nature has given to man
no other means of sifting out the truth either in religion, law, or
politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know,
nor notice, it's sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified &
criminal to pamper the former & persecute the latter. -- So much for
the past. A word now of the future.
When I came into this office, it was with a resolution to
retire from it as soon as I could with decency. It pretty early
appeared to me that the proper moment would be the first of those
epochs at which the constitution seems to have contemplated a
periodical change or renewal of the public servants. In this I was
confirmed by your resolution respecting the same period; from which
however I am happy in hoping you have departed. I look to that
period with the longing of a wave-worn mariner, who has at length the
land in view, & shall count the days & hours which still lie between
me & it. In the meanwhile my main object will be to wind up the
business of my office avoiding as much as possible all new
enterprize. With the affairs of the legislature, as I never did
intermeddle, so I certainly shall not now begin. I am more desirous
to predispose everything for the repose to which I am withdrawing,
than expose it to be disturbed by newspaper contests. If these
however cannot be avoided altogether, yet a regard for your quiet
will be a sufficient motive for my deferring it till I become merely
a private citizen, when the propriety or impropriety of what I may
say or do may fall on myself alone. I may then too avoid the charge
of misapplying that time which now belonging to those who employ me,
should be wholly devoted to their service. If my own justification,
or the interests of the republic shall require it, I reserve to
myself the right of then appealing to my country, subscribing my name
to whatever I write, & using with freedom & truth the facts & names
necessary to place the cause in it's just form before that tribunal.
To a thorough disregard of the honors & emoluments of office I join
as great a value for the esteem of my countrymen, & conscious of
having merited it by an integrity which cannot be reproached, & by an
enthusiastic devotion to their rights & liberty, I will not suffer my
retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from
the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of
machinations against the liberty of the country which has not only
received and given him bread, but heaped it's honors on his head. --
Still however I repeat the hope that it will not be necessary to make
such an appeal. Though little known to the people of America, I
believe that, as far as I am known, it is not as an enemy to the
republic, nor an intriguer against it, nor a waster of it's revenue,
nor prostitutor of it to the purposes of corruption, as the American
represents me; and I confide that yourself are satisfied that, as to
dissensions in the newspapers, not a syllable of them has ever
proceeded from me; & that no cabals or intrigues of mine have
produced those in the legislature, & I hope I may promise, both to
you & myself, that none will receive aliment from me during the short
space I have to remain in office, which will find ample employment in
closing the present business of the department. -- Observing that
letters written at Mount Vernon on the Monday, & arriving at Richmond
on the Wednesday, reach me on Saturday, I have now the honor to
mention that the 22d instant will be the last of our post-days that I
shall be here, & consequently that no letter from you after the 17th,
will find me here. Soon after that I shall have the honor of
receiving at Mount Vernon your orders for Philadelphia, & of there
also delivering you the little matter which occurs to me as proper
for the opening of Congress, exclusive of what has been recommended
in former speeches, & not yet acted on. In the meantime & ever I am
with great and sincere affection & respect, dear Sir, your most
obedient and most humble servant.
"THE WILL OF THE NATION"
_To the U.S. Minister to France_
(Gouverneur Morris)
_Philadelphia, Dec. 30, 1792_
DEAR SIR -- My last to you was of Mar. 7. since which I have
received your Nos. 8. and 9. I am apprehensive that your situation
must have been difficult during the transition from the late form of
government to the re-establishment of some other legitimate
authority, and that you may have been at a loss to determine with
whom business might be done. Nevertheless when principles are well
understood their application is less embarrassing. We surely cannot
deny to any nation that right whereon our own government is founded,
that every one may govern itself under whatever forms it pleases, and
change these forms at it's own will, and that it may transact it's
business with foreign nations through whatever organ it thinks
proper, whether King, convention, assembly, committee, President, or
whatever else it may chuse. The will of the nation is the only thing
essential to be regarded. On the dissolution of the late
constitution in France, by removing so integral a part of it as the
King, the National Assembly, to whom a part only of the public
authority had been delegated, sensible of the incompetence of their
powers to transact the affairs of the nation legitimately, incited
their fellow citizens to appoint a national convention during this
defective state of the national authority. Duty to our constituents
required that we should suspend paiment of the monies yet unpaid of
our debt to that country, because there was no person or persons
substantially authorized by the nation of France to receive the
monies and give us a good acquittal. On this ground my last letter
desired you to suspend paiments till further orders, with an
assurance, if necessary, that the suspension should not be continued
a moment longer than should be necessary for us to see the
re-establishment of some person or body of persons with authority to
receive and give us a good acquittal. Since that we learn that a
Convention is assembled, invested with full powers by the nation to
transact it's affairs. Tho' we know that from the public papers
only, instead of waiting for a formal annunciation of it, we hasten
to act upon it by authorizing you, if the fact be true, to consider
the suspension of paiment, directed in my last letter, as now taken
off, and to proceed as if it had never been imposed; considering the
Convention, or the government they shall have established as the
lawful representatives of the Nation and authorized to act for them.
Neither the honor nor inclination of our country would justify our
withholding our paiment under a scrupulous attention to forms. On
the contrary they lent us that money when we were under their
circumstances, and it seems providential that we can not only repay
them the same sum, but under the same circumstances. Indeed, we wish
to omit no opportunity of convincing them how cordially we desire the
closest union with them: Mutual good offices, mutual affection and
similar principles of government seem to have destined the two people
for the most intimate communion, and even for a complete exchange of
citizenship among the individuals composing them.
During the fluctuating state of the Assignats of France, I must
ask the favor of you to inform me in every letter of the rate of
exchange between them & coin, this being necessary for the regulation
of our custom houses. We are continuing our supplies to the island
of St. Domingo at the request of the Minister of France here. We
would wish however to receive a more formal sanction from the
government of France than has yet been given. Indeed, we know of
none but a vote of the late National Assembly for 4 millions of
livres of our debt, sent to the government of St. Domingo,
communicated by them to the Minister here, & by him to us. And this
was in terms not properly applicable to the form of our advances. We
wish therefore for a full sanction of the past & a complete
expression of the desires of their government as to future supplies
to their colonies. Besides what we have furnished publicly,
individual merchants of the U.S. have carried considerable supplies
to the island of St. Domingo, which have been sometimes purchased,
sometimes taken by force, and bills given by the administration of
the colony on the minister here, which have been protested for want
of funds. We have no doubt that justice will be done to these
PAEAN TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
_To William Short_
_Philadelphia, Jan. 3, 1793_
DEAR SIR, -- My last private letter to you was of Oct. 16.
since which I have received your No. 103, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112,
113 & 114 and yesterday your private one of Sep 15, came to hand.
The tone of your letters had for some time given me pain, on account
of the extreme warmth with which they censured the proceedings of the
Jacobins of France. I considered that sect as the same with the
Republican patriots, & the Feuillants as the Monarchical patriots,
well known in the early part of the revolution, & but little distant
in their views, both having in object the establishment of a free
constitution, & differing only on the question whether their chief
Executive should be hereditary or not. The Jacobins (as since
called) yielded to the Feuillants & tried the experiment of retaining
their hereditary Executive. The experiment failed completely, and
would have brought on the reestablishment of despotism had it been
pursued. The Jacobins saw this, and that the expunging that officer
was of absolute necessity. And the Nation was with them in opinion,
for however they might have been formerly for the constitution framed
by the first assembly, they were come over from their hope in it, and
were now generally Jacobins. In the struggle which was necessary,
many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them
some innocent. These I deplore as much as any body, & shall deplore
some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should
have done had they fallen in battle. It was necessary to use the arm
of the people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but
blind to a certain degree. A few of their cordial friends met at
their hands the fate of enemies. But time and truth will rescue &
embalm their memories, while their posterity will be enjoying that
very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer up
their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the
issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little
innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some
of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed,
I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam &
an Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than as
it now is. I have expressed to you my sentiments, because they are
really those of 99. in an hundred of our citizens. The universal
feasts, and rejoicings which have lately been had on account of the
successes of the French shewed the genuine effusions of their hearts.
You have been wounded by the sufferings of your friends, and have by
this circumstance been hurried into a temper of mind which would be
extremely disrelished if known to your countrymen. The _reserve of
the President of the United States_ had never permitted me to
discover the light in which he viewed it, and as I was more anxious
that you should satisfy him than me, I had still avoided explanations
with you on the subject. But your 113. induced him to break silence
and to notice the extreme acrimony of your expressions. He added
that he had been informed the sentiments you expressed _in your
conversations_ were equally offensive to our allies, & that you
should consider yourself as the representative of your country and
that what you say might be imputed to your constituents. He desired
me therefore to write to you on this subject. He added that he
considered _France as the sheet anchor of this country and its
friendship as a first object._ There are in the U.S. some characters
of opposite principles; some of them are high in office, others
possessing great wealth, and all of them hostile to France and fondly
looking to England as the staff of their hope. These I named to you
on a former occasion. Their prospects have certainly not brightened.
Excepting them, this country is entirely republican, friends to the
constitution, anxious to preserve it and to have it administered
according to it's own republican principles. The little party above
mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping stone to monarchy, and
have endeavored to approximate it to that in it's administration in
order to render it's final transition more easy. The successes of
republicanism in France have given the coup de grace to their
prospects, and I hope to their projects. -- I have developed to you
faithfully the sentiments of your country, that you may govern
yourself accordingly. I know your republicanism to be pure, and that
it is no decay of that which has embittered you against it's votaries
in France, but too great a sensibility at the partial evil which it's
object has been accomplished there. I have written to you in the
stile to which I have been always accustomed with you, and which
perhaps it is time I should lay aside. But while old men are
sensible enough of their own advance in years, they do not
sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seen young. In
writing too the last private letter which will probably be written
under present circumstances, in contemplating that your
correspondence will shortly be turned over to I know not whom, but
certainly to some one not in the habit of considering your interests
with the same fostering anxieties I do, I have presented things
without reserve, satisfied you will ascribe what I have said to it's
true motive, use it for your own best interest, and in that fulfil
completely what I had in view.
With respect to the subject of your letter of Sep. 15. you will
be sensible that many considerations would prevent my undertaking the
reformation of a system with which I am so soon to take leave. It is
but common decency to leave to my successor the moulding of his own
business. -- Not knowing how otherwise to convey this letter to you
with certainty, I shall appeal to the friendship and honour of the
Spanish commissioners here, to give it the protection of their cover,
as a letter of private nature altogether. We have no remarkable
event here lately, but the death of Dr. Lee; nor have I anything new
to communicate to you of your friends or affairs. I am with
unalterable affection & wishes for your prosperity, my dear Sir, you
sincere friend and servant.
PEACEABLE COERCION
_To James Madison_
_March 24, 1793_
The idea seems to gain credit that the naval powers combined
against France will prohibit supplies even of provisions to that
country. Should this be formally notified I should suppose Congress
would be called, because it is a justifiable cause of war, & as the
Executive cannot decide the question of war on the affirmative side,
neither ought it to do so on the negative side, by preventing the
competent body from deliberating on the question. But I should hope
that war would not be their choice. I think it will furnish us a
happy opportunity of setting another example to the world, by shewing
that nations may be brought to do justice by appeals to their
interests as well as by appeals to arms. I should hope that Congress
instead of a denunciation of war, would instantly exclude from our
ports all the manufactures, produce, vessels & subjects of the
nations committing this aggression, during the continuance of the
aggression & till full satisfaction made for it. This would work
well in many ways, safely in all, & introduce between nations another
umpire than arms. It would relieve us too from the risks & the
horrors of cutting throats. The death of the king of France has not
produced as open condemnations from the Monocrats as I expected. I
dined the other day in a company where the subject was discussed. I
will name the company in the order in which they manifested their
partialities; beginning with the warmest Jacobinism & proceeding by
shades to the most heart felt aristocracy. Smith (N.Y.) Coxe.
Stewart. T. Shippen. Bingham. Peters. Breck. Meredith. Wolcott. It
is certain that the ladies of this city, of the first circle are all
open-mouthed against the murderers of a sovereign, and they generally
speak those sentiments which the more cautious husband smothers. I
believe it is pretty certain that Smith (S.C.) and Miss A. are not to
come together. Ternant has at length openly hoisted the flag of
monarchy by going into deep mourning for his prince. I suspect he
thinks a cessation of his visits to me a necessary accompaniment to
this pious duty. A connection between him & Hamilton seems to be
springing up. On observing that Duer was secretary to the old board
of treasury, I suspect him to have been the person who suggested to
Hamilton the letter of mine to that board which he so tortured in his
Catullus. Dunlap has refused to print the piece which we had heard
of before your departure, and it has been several days in Bache's
hands, without any notice of it. The President will leave this about
the 27th inst., & return about the 20th of April. Adieu.
THE GALLANT GENET
_To James Madison_
_Phila, May 19, 1793_
I wrote you last on the 13'th.. Since that I have received
yours of the 8'th.. I have scribbled on a separate paper some
general notes on the plan of a house you enclosed. I have done more.
I have endeavored to throw the same area, the same extent of walls,
the same number of rooms, &of the same size, into another form so as
to offer a choiceto the builder. Indeed I varied my plan by shewing
that itwould be with alcove bed rooms, to which I am much attached.
I dare say you will have judged from the pusillanimity of the
proclamation, from whose pen it came. A fear lest any affection
should be discovered is distinguishable enough. This base fear will
produce the very evil they wish to avoid. For our constituents
seeing that the government does not express their mind, perhaps
rather leans the other way, are coming forward to express it
themselves. It was suspected that there was not a clear mind in the
P.'s counsellors to receive Genet. The citizens however determined
to receive him. Arrangements were taken for meeting him at Gray's
ferry in a great body. He escaped that by arriving in town with the
letters which brought information that he was on the road. The
merchants _i.e._ Fitzsimmons & co. were to present an address to _the
P._ on the neutrality proclaimed. It contained much wisdom but no
affection. You will see it in the papers inclosed. The citizens
determined to address _Genet._ Rittenhouse, Hutcheson, Dallas,
Sargeant &c. were at the head of it. Tho a select body of only 30.
was appointed to present it, yet a vast concourse of people attended
them. I have not seen it; but it is understood to be the counter
address. -- Ternant's hopes of employment in the French army turn out
to be without grounds. He is told by the minister of war expressly
that the places of Marechal de camp are all full. He thinks it more
prudent therefore to remain in America. He delivered yesterday his
letters of recall, & Mr. Genet presented his of credence. It is
impossible for anything to be more affectionate, more magnanimous
than the purport of his mission. `We know that under present
circumstances we have a right to call upon you for the guarantee of
our islands. But we do not desire it. We wish you to do nothing but
what is for your own good, and we will do all in our power to promote
it. Cherish your own peace & prosperity. You have expressed a
willingness to enter into a more liberal treaty of commerce with us;
I bring full powers (& he produced them) to form such a treaty, and a
preliminary decree of the National convention to lay open our country
& it's colonies to you for every purpose of utility, without your
participating the burthens of maintaining & defending them. We see
in you the only person on earth who can love us sincerely & merit to
be so loved.' In short he offers everything & asks nothing. Yet I
know the offers will be opposed, & suspect they will not be accepted.
In short, my dear Sir, it is impossible for you to conceive what is
passing in our conclave: and it is evident that one or two at least,
under pretence of avoiding war on the one side have no great
antipathy to run foul of it on the other, and to make a part in the
confederacy of princes against human liberty. -- The people in the
Western parts of this state have been to the excise officer &
threatened to burn his house &c. They were blacked & otherwise
disguised so as to be unknown. He has resigned, and H. says there
is no possibility of getting the law executed there, & that probably
the evil will spread. A proclamation is to be issued, and another
instance of my being forced to appear to approve what I have
condemned uniformly from it's first conception.
I expect every day to receive from Mr. Pinckney the model of
the Scotch threshing machine. It was to have come in a ship which
arrived 3. weeks ago, but the workman had not quite finished it. Mr.
P. writes me word that the machine from which my model is taken
threshes 8. quarters (64. bushels) of oats _an hour_, with 4. horses
& 4. men. I hope to get it in time to have one erected at Monticello
to clean out the present crop. -- I inclose you the pamphlet you
desired. Adieu.
THE DEBT OF SERVICE
_To James Madison_
_June 9, 1793_
I have to acknolege the receipt of your two favors of May 27 &
29, since the date of my last which was of the 2 inst. In that of
the 27th you say `you must not make your final exit from public life
till it will be marked with justifying circumstances which all good
citizens will respect, & to which your friends can appeal.' -- To my
fellow-citizens the debt of service has been fully & faithfully paid.
I acknolege that such a debt exists, that a tour of duty, in whatever
line he can be most useful to his country, is due from every
individual. It is not easy perhaps to say of what length exactly
this tour should be, but we may safely say of what length it should
not be. Not of our whole life, for instance, for that would be to be
born a slave -- not even of a very large portion of it. I have now
been in the public service four & twenty years; one half of which has
been spent in total occupation with their affairs, & absence from my
own. I have served my tour then. No positive engagement, by word or
deed, binds me to their further service. No commitment of their
interests in any enterprise by me requires that I should see them
through it. -- I am pledged by no act which gives any tribunal a call
upon me before I withdraw. Even my enemies do not pretend this. I
stand clear then of public right on all points. -- My friends I have
not committed. No circumstances have attended my passage from office
to office, which could lead them, & others through them, into
deception as to the time I might remain; & particularly they & all
have known with what reluctance I engaged & have continued in the
present one, & of my uniform determination to retire from it at an
early day. -- If the public then has no claim on me, & my friends
nothing to justify; the decision will rest on my own feelings alone.
There has been a time when these were very different from what they
are now: when perhaps the esteem of the world was of higher value in
my eye than everything in it. But age, experience & reflection,
preserving to that only it's due value, have set a higher on
tranquility. The motion of my blood no longer keeps time with the
tumult of the world. It leads me to seek for happiness in the lap
and love of my family, in the society of my neighbors & my books, in
the wholesome occupations of my farm & my affairs, in an interest or
affection in every bud that opens, in every breath that blows around
me, in an entire freedom of rest or motion, of thought or
incogitancy, owing account to myself alone of my hours & actions.
What must be the principle of that calculation which should balance
against these the circumstances of my present existence! worn down
with labours from morning to night, & day to day; knowing them as
fruitless to others as they are vexatious to myself, committed singly
in desperate & eternal contest against a host who are systematically
undermining the public liberty & prosperity, even the rare hours of
relaxation sacrificed to the society of persons in the same
intentions, of whose hatred I am conscious even in those moments of
conviviality when the heart wishes most to open itself to the
effusions of friendship & confidence, cut off from my family &
friends, my affairs abandoned to chaos & derangement, in short giving
everything I love, in exchange for everything I hate, and all this
without a single gratification in possession or prospect, in present
enjoyment or future wish. -- Indeed my dear friend, duty being out of
the question, inclination cuts off all argument, & so never let there
be more between you & me, on this subject.
I inclose you some papers which have passed on the subject of a
new loan. You will see by them that the paper-Coryphaeus is either
undaunted, or desperate. I believe that the statement inclosed has
secured a decision against his proposition. -- I dined yesterday in a
company where Morris & Bingham were, & happened to sit between them.
In the course of a conversation after dinner Morris made one of his
warm declarations that after the expiration of his present Senatorial
term nothing on earth should ever engage him to serve again in any
public capacity. He did this with such solemnity as renders it
impossible he should not be in earnest. -- The President is not well.
Little lingering fevers have been hanging about him for a week or ten
days, and have affected his looks most remarkably. He is also
extremely affected by the attacks made & kept up on him in the public
papers. I think he feels those things more than any person I ever
yet met with. I am sincerely sorry to see them. I remember an
observation of yours, made when I first went to New York, that the
satellites & sycophants which surrounded him had wound up the
ceremonials of the government to a pitch of stateliness which nothing
but his personal character could have supported, & which no character
after him could ever maintain. It appears now that even his will be
insufficient to justify them in the appeal of the times to common
sense as the arbiter of everything. Naked he would have been
sanctimoniously reverenced, but inveloped in the rags of royalty,
they can hardly be torn off without laceration. It is the more
unfortunate that this attack is planted on popular ground, on the
love of the people to France & it's cause, which is universal. --
Genet mentions freely enough in conversation that France does not
wish to involve us in the war by our guarantee. The information from
St. Domingo & Martinique is that those two islands are disposed &
able to resist any attack which Great Britain can make on them by
land. A blockade would be dangerous, could it be maintained in that
climate for any length of time. I delivered to Genet your letter to
Roland. As the latter is out of office, he will direct it to the
Minister of the Interior. I found every syllable of it strictly
proper. Your ploughs shall be duly attended to. Have you ever taken
notice of Tull's horse-houghing plough? I am persuaded that that,
where you wish your work to be very exact, & our great plough where a
less degree will suffice, leave us nothing to wish for from other
countries as to ploughs, under our circumstances. -- I have not yet
received my threshing machine. I fear the late long & heavy rains
must have extended to us, & affected our wheat. Adieu. Yours
affectionately.
"MY FAMILY, MY FARM, AND MY BOOKS"
_To Mrs. Church_
_Germantown, Nov. 27th, 1793_
I have received, my good friend, your kind letter of August
19th, with the extract from that of Lafayette, for whom my heart has
been constantly bleeding. The influence of the United States has
been put into action, as far as it could be either with decency or
effect. But I fear that distance and difference of principle give
little hold to General Washington on the jailers of Lafayette.
However, his friends may be assured that our zeal has not been
inactive. Your letter gives me the first information that our dear
friend Madame de Corny has been, as to her fortune among the victims
of the times. Sad times, indeed! and much lamented victim! I know
no country where the remains of a fortune could place her so much at
her ease as this, and where public esteem is so attached to worth,
regardless of wealth; but our manners, and the state of our society
here, are so different from those to which her habits have been
formed, that she would lose more perhaps in that scale. And Madame
Cosway in a convent! I knew that to much goodness of heart she
joined enthusiasm and religion; but I thought that very enthusiasm
would have prevented her from shutting up her adoration of the God of
the universe within the walls of a cloister; that she would rather
have sought the _mountain-top._ How happy should I be that it were
_mine_ that you, she, and Madame de Corny would seek. You say,
indeed, that you are coming to America, but I know that means New
York. In the meantime I am going to Virginia. I have at length
become able to fix that to the beginning of the new year. I am then
to be liberated from the hated occupations of politics, and to remain
in the bosom of my family, my farm, and my books. I have my house to
build, my fields to farm, and to watch for the happiness of those who
labor for mine. I have one daughter married to a man of science,
sense, virtue, and competence; in whom indeed I have nothing more to
wish. They live with me. If the other shall be as fortunate, in due
process of time I shall imagine myself as blessed as the most blessed
of the patriarchs. Nothing could then withdraw my thoughts a moment
from home but the recollection of my friends abroad. I often put the
question, whether yourself and Kitty will ever come to see your
friends at Monticello? but it is my affection and not my experience
of things which has leave to answer, and I am determined to believe
the answer, because in that belief I find I sleep sounder, and wake
more cheerful. _En attendant_, God bless you.
Accept the homage of my sincere and constant affection.
"LUCERNE AND POTATOES"
_To Tench Coxe_
_Monticello, May 1, 1794_
DEAR SIR, -- Your several favors of Feb. 22, 27, & March 16.
which had been accumulating in Richmond during the prevalence of the
small pox in that place, were lately brought to me, on the permission
given the post to resume his communication. I am particularly to
thank you for your favor in forwarding the Bee. Your letters give a
comfortable view of French affairs, and later events seem to confirm
it. Over the foreign powers I am convinced they will triumph
completely, & I cannot but hope that that triumph, & the consequent
disgrace of the invading tyrants, is destined, in the order of
events, to kindle the wrath of the people of Europe against those who
have dared to embroil them in such wickedness, and to bring at
length, kings, nobles, & priests to the scaffolds which they have
been so long deluging with human blood. I am still warm whenever I
think of these scoundrels, tho I do it as seldom as I can, preferring
infinitely to contemplate the tranquil growth of my lucerne &
potatoes. I have so completely withdrawn myself from these
spectacles of usurpation & misrule, that I do not take a single
newspaper, nor read one a month; & I feel myself infinitely the
happier for it. We are alarmed here with the apprehensions of war;
and sincerely anxious that it may be avoided; but not at the expense
either of our faith or honor. It seems much the general opinion
here, that the latter has been too much wounded not to require
reparation, & to seek it even in war, if that be necessary. As to
myself, I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world
still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of
punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the
punisher as to the sufferer. I love, therefore, mr. Clarke's
proposition of cutting off all communication with the nation which
has conducted itself so atrociously. This, you will say, may bring
on war. If it does, we will meet it like men; but it may not bring
on war, & then the experiment will have been a happy one. I believe
this war would be vastly more unanimously approved than any one we
ever were engaged in; because the aggressions have been so wanton &
bare-faced, and so unquestionably against our desire. -- I am sorry
mr. Cooper & Priestly did not take a more general survey of our
country before they fixed themselves. I think they might have
promoted their own advantage by it, and have aided the introduction
of our improvement where it is more wanting. The prospect of wheat
for the ensuing year is a bad one. This is all the sort of news you
can expect from me. From you I shall be glad to hear all sort of
news, & particularly any improvements in the arts applicable to
husbandry or household manufacture.
WHISKEY REBELS AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES
_To James Madison_
_Monticello, Dec. 28, 1794_
DEAR SIR, -- I have kept mr. Jay's letter a post or two, with
an intention of considering attentively the observation it contains;
but I have really now so little stomach for anything of that kind,
that I have not resolution enough even to endeavor to understand the
observations. I therefore return the letter, not to delay your
answer to it, and beg you in answering for yourself to assure him of
my respects and thankful acceptance of Chalmers' Treaties, which I do
not possess, and if you possess yourself of the scope of his
reasoning, make any answer to it you please for me. If it had been
on the rotation of my crops, I would have answered myself, lengthily
perhaps, but certainly _con gusto._
The denunciation of the democratic societies is one of the
extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the
fraction of monocrats. It is wonderful indeed, that the President
should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on
the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing &
publishing. It must be a matter of rare curiosity to get at the
modifications of these rights proposed by them, and to see what line
their ingenuity would draw between democratical societies, whose
avowed object is the nourishment of the republican principles of our
constitution, and the society of the Cincinnati, _a self-created_
one, carving out for itself hereditary distinctions, lowering over
our Constitution eternally, meeting together in all parts of the
Union, periodically, with closed doors, accumulating a capital in
their separate treasury, corresponding secretly & regularly, & of
which society the very persons denouncing the democrats are
themselves the fathers, founders, & high officers. Their sight must
be perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns & coronets, not to
see the extravagance of the proposition to suppress the friends of
general freedom, while those who wish to confine that freedom to the
few, are permitted to go on in their principles & practices. I here
put out of sight the persons whose misbehavior has been taken
advantage of to slander the friends of popular rights; and I am happy
to observe, that as far as the circle of my observation & information
extends, everybody has lost sight of them, and views the abstract
attempt on their natural & constitutional rights in all it's
nakedness. I have never heard, or heard of, a single expression or
opinion which did not condemn it as an inexcusable aggression. And
with respect to the transactions against the excise law, it appears
to me that you are all swept away in the torrent of governmental
opinions, or that we do not know what these transactions have been.
We know of none which, according to the definitions of the law, have
been anything more than riotous. There was indeed a meeting to
consult about a separation. But to consult on a question does not
amount to a determination of that question in the affirmative, still
less to the acting on such a determination; but we shall see, I
suppose, what the court lawyers, & courtly judges, & would-be
ambassadors will make of it. The excise law is an infernal one. The
first error was to admit it by the Constitution; the 2d., to act on
that admission; the 3d & last will be, to make it the instrument of
dismembering the Union, & setting us all afloat to chuse which part
of it we will adhere to. The information of our militia, returned
from the Westward, is uniform, that tho the people there let them
pass quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear;
that 1000 men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand
places of the Alleganey; that their detestation of the excise law is
universal, and has now associated to it a detestation of the
government; & that separation which perhaps was a very distant &
problematical event, is now near, & certain, & determined in the mind
of every man. I expected to have seen some justification of arming
one part of the society against another; of declaring a civil war the
moment before the meeting of that body which has the sole right of
declaring war; of being so patient of the kicks & scoffs of our
enemies, & rising at a feather against our friends; of adding a
million to the public debt & deriding us with recommendations to pay
it if we can &c., &c. But the part of the speech which was to be
taken as a justification of the armament, reminded me of parson
Saunders' demonstration why minus into minus make plus. After a
parcel of shreds of stuff from Aesop's fables, and Tom Thumb, he
jumps all at once into his Ergo, minus multiplied into minus make
plus. Just so the 15,000 men enter after the fables, in the speech.
-- However, the time is coming when we shall fetch up the leeway of
our vessel. The changes in your house, I see, are going on for the
better, and even the Augean herd over your heads are slowly purging
off their impurities. Hold on then, my dear friend, that we may not
shipwreck in the meanwhile. I do not see, in the minds of those with
whom I converse, a greater affliction than the fear of your
retirement; but this must not be, unless to a more splendid & a more
efficacious post. There I should rejoice to see you; I hope I may
say, I shall rejoice to see you. I have long had much in my mind to
say to you on that subject. But double delicacies have kept me
silent. I ought perhaps to say, while I would not give up my own
retirement for the empire of the universe, how I can justify wishing
one whose happinesss I have so much at heart as yours, to take the
front of the battle which is fighting for my security. This would be
easy enough to be done, but not at the heel of a lengthy epistle.
Let us quit this, and turn to the fine weather we are basking
in. We have had one of our tropical winters. Once only a snow of 3.
inches deep, which went off the next day, and never as much ice as
would have cooled a bottle of wine. And we have now but a month to
go through of winter weather. For February always gives us a good
sample of the spring of which it is the harbinger. I recollect no
small news interesting to you. You will have heard, I suppose, that
Wilson Nicholas has bought Carr's Carrsgrove and Harvey's barracks.
I rejoice in the prosperity of a virtuous man, and hope his
prosperity will not taint his virtue. Present me respectfully to
Mrs. Madison, and pray her to keep you where you are for her own
satisfaction and the public good; and accept the cordial affections
of all. Adieu.
FARMING
_To John Taylor_
_Monticello, Dec. 29, 1794_
DEAR SIR, -- I have long owed you a letter, for which my
conscience would not have let me rest in quiet but on the
consideration that the paiment would not be worth your acceptance.
The debt is not merely for a letter the common traffic of every day,
but for valuable ideas, which instructed me, which I have adopted, &
am acting on them. I am sensible of the truth of your observations
that the atmosphere is the great storehouse of matter for recruiting
our lands, that tho' efficacious, it is slow in it's operation, and
we must therefore give them time instead of the loads of quicker
manure given in other countries, that for this purpose we must avail
ourselves of the great quantities of land we possess in proportion to
our labour, and that while putting them to nurse with the atmosphere,
we must protect them from the bite & tread of animals, which are
nearly a counterpoise for the benefits of the atmosphere. As good
things, as well as evil, go in a train, this relieves us from the
labor & expence of crossfences, now very sensibly felt on account of
the scarcity & distance of timber. I am accordingly now engaged in
applying my cross fences to the repair of the outer ones and
substituting rows of peach trees to preserve the boundaries of the
fields. And though I observe your strictures on rotations of crops,
yet it appears that in this I differ from you only in words. You
keep half your lands in culture, the other half at nurse; so I
propose to do. Your scheme indeed requires only four years & mine
six; but the proportion of labour & rest is the same. My years of
rest, however, are employed, two of them in producing clover, yours
in volunteer herbage. But I still understand it to be your opinion
that clover is best where lands will produce them. Indeed I think
that the important improvement for which the world is indebted to
Young is the substitution of clover crops instead of unproductive
fallows; & the demonstration that lands are more enriched by clover
than by volunteer herbage or fallows; and the clover crops are highly
valuable. That our red lands which are still in tolerable heart will
produce fine clover I know from the experience of the last year; and
indeed that of my neighbors had established the fact. And from
observations on accidental plants in the feilds which have been
considerably harrassed with corn, I believe that even these will
produce clover fit for soiling of animals green. I think, therefore,
I can count on the success of that improver. My third year of rest
will be devoted to cowpenning, & to a trial of the buckwheat
dressing. A further progress in surveying my open arable lands has
shewn me that I can have 7 fields in each of my farms where I
expected only six; consequently that I can add more to the portion of
rest & ameliorating crops. I have doubted on a question on which I
am sure you can advise me well, whether I had better give this newly
acquired year as an addition to the continuance of my clover, or
throw it with some improving crop between two of my crops of grain,
as for instance between my corn & rye. I strongly incline to the
latter, because I am not satisfied that one cleansing crop in seven
years will be sufficient; and indeed I think it important to separate
my exhausting crops by alternations of amelioraters. With this view
I think to try an experiment of what Judge Parker informs me he
practises. That is, to turn in my wheat stubble the instant the
grain is off, and sow turneps to be fed out by the sheep. But
whether this will answer in our fields which are harrassed, I do not
know. We have been in the habit of sowing only our freshest lands in
turneps, hence a presumption that wearied lands will not bring them.
But Young's making turneps to be fed on by sheep the basis of his
improvement of poor lands, affords evidence that tho they may not
bring great crops, they will bring them in a sufficient degree to
improve the lands. I will try that experiment, however, this year,
as well as the one of buckwheat. I have also attended to another
improver mentioned by you, the winter-vetch, & have taken measures to
get the seed of it from England, as also of the Siberian vetch which
Millar greatly commends, & being a biennial might perhaps take the
place of clover in lands which do not suit that. The winter vetch I
suspect may be advantageously thrown in between crops, as it gives a
choice to use it as green feed in the spring if fodder be run short,
or to turn it in as a green-dressing. My rotation, with these
amendments, is as follows: --
1. Wheat, followed the same year by turneps, to be fed on by
the sheep.
2. Corn & potatoes mixed, & in autumn the vetch to be used as
fodder in the spring if wanted, or to be turned in as a dressing.
3. Peas or potatoes, or both according to the quality of the
field.
4. Rye and clover sown on it in the spring. Wheat may be
substituted here for rye, when it shall be found that the 2'd., 3'd.,
5'th., & 6'th. fields will subsist the farm.
5. Clover.
6. Clover, & in autumn turn it in & sow the vetch.
7. Turn in the vetch in the spring, then sow buckwheat & turn
that in, having hurdled off the poorest spots for cow-penning. In
autumn sow wheat to begin the circle again.
I am for throwing the whole force of my husbandry on the
wheat-field, because it is the only one which is to go to market to
produce money. Perhaps the clover may bring in something in the form
of stock. The other feilds are merely for the consumption of the
farm. Melilot, mentioned by you, I never heard of. The horse bean I
tried this last year. It turned out nothing. The President has
tried it without success. An old English farmer of the name of
Spuryear, settled in Delaware, has tried it there with good success;
but he told me it would not do without being well shaded, and I think
he planted it among his corn for that reason. But he acknoleged our
pea was as good an ameliorater & a more valuable pulse, as being food
for man as well as horse. The succory is what Young calls Chicoria
Intubus. He sent some seed to the President, who gave me some, & I
gave it to my neighbors to keep up till I should come home. One of
them has cultivated it with great success, is very fond of it, and
gave me some seed which I sowed last spring. Tho' the summer was
favorable it came on slowly at first, but by autumn became large &
strong. It did not seed that year, but will the next, & you shall be
furnished with seed. I suspect it requires rich ground, & then
produces a heavy crop for green feed for horses & cattle. I had poor
success with my potatoes last year, not having made more than 60 or
70 bushels to the acre. But my neighbors having made good crops, I
am not disheartened. The first step towards the recovery of our
lands is to find substitutes for corn & bacon. I count on potatoes,
clover, & sheep. The two former to feed every animal on the farm
except my negroes, & the latter to feed them, diversified with
rations of salted fish & molasses, both of them wholesome, agreeable,
& cheap articles of food.
For pasture I rely on the forests by day, & soiling in the
evening. Why could we not have a moveable airy cow house, to be set
up in the middle of the feild which is to be dunged, & soil our
cattle in that thro' the summer as well as winter, keeping them
constantly up & well littered? This, with me, would be in the clover
feild of the 1'st. year, because during the 2'd. year it would be
rotting, and would be spread on it in fallow the beginning of the
3'd., but such an effort would be far above the present tyro state of
my farming. The grosser barbarisms in culture which I have to
encounter, are more than enough for all my attentions at present.
The dung-yard must be my last effort but one. The last would be
irrigation. It might be thought at first view, that the
interposition of these ameliorations or dressings between my crops
will be too laborious, but observe that the turneps & two dressings
of vetch do not cost a single ploughing. The turning in the
wheat-stubble for the turneps is the fallow for the corn of the
succeeding year. The 1'st. sowing of vetches is on the corn (as is
now practised for wheat), and the turning it in is the
flush-ploughing for the crop of potatoes & peas. The 2'd. sowing of
the vetch is on the wheat fallow, & the turning it in is the
ploughing necessary for sowing the buckwheat. These three
ameliorations, then, will cost but a harrowing each. On the subject
of the drilled husbandry, I think experience has established it's
preference for some plants, as the turnep, pea, bean, cabbage, corn,
&c., and that of the broadcast for other plants as all the bread
grains & grasses, except perhaps lucerne & S't. foin in soils &
climates very productive of weeds. In dry soils & climates the
broadcast is better for lucerne & S't. foin, as all the south of
France can testify.
I have imagined and executed a mould-board which may be
mathematically demonstrated to be perfect, as far as perfection
depends on mathematical principles, and one great circumstance in
it's favor is that it may be made by the most bungling carpenter, &
cannot possibly vary a hair's breadth in it's form, but by gross
negligence. You have seen the musical instrument called a sticcado.
Suppose all it's sticks of equal length, hold the fore-end
horizontally on the floor to receive the turf which presents itself
horizontally, and with the right hand twist the hind-end to the
perpendicular, or rather as much beyond the perpendicular as will be
necessary to cast over the turf completely. This gives an idea (tho
not absolutely exact) of my mould-board. It is on the principle of
two wedges combined at right angles, the first in the direct line of
the furrow to raise the turf gradually, the other across the furrow
to turn it over gradually. For both these purposes the wedge is the
instrument of the least resistance. I will make a model of the
mould-board & lodge it with Col'o. Harvie in Richmond for you. This
brings me to my thanks for the drill plough lodged with him for me,
which I now expect every hour to receive, and the price of which I
have deposited in his hands to be called for when you please. A good
instrument of this kind is almost the greatest desideratum in
husbandry. I am anxious to conjecture beforehand what may be
expected from the sowing turneps in jaded ground, how much from the
acre, & how large they will be? Will your experience enable you to
give me a probable conjecture? Also what is the produce of potatoes,
& what of peas in the same kind of ground? It must now have been
several pages since you began to cry out `mercy.' In mercy then I
will here finish with my affectionate remembrance to my old friend.
Mr. Pendleton, & respects to your fireside, & to yourself assurances
of the sincere esteem of, dear Sir,
Your friend & serv't,
THE GENEVA ACADEMY
_To Fransois D'Ivernois_
_Monticello, in Virginia, Feb. 6, 1795_
DEAR SIR, -- Your several favors on the affairs of Geneva found
me here, in the month of December last. It is now more than a year
that I have withdrawn myself from public affairs, which I never liked
in my life, but was drawn into by emergencies which threatened our
country with slavery, but ended in establishing it free. I have
returned, with infinite appetite, to the enjoyment of my farm, my
family & my books, and had determined to meddle in nothing beyond
their limits. Your proposition, however, for transplanting the
college of Geneva to my own country, was too analogous to all my
attachments to science, & freedom, the first-born daughter of
science, not to excite a lively interest in my mind, and the essays
which were necessary to try it's practicability. This depended
altogether on the opinions & dispositions of our State legislature,
which was then in session. I immediately communicated your papers to
a member of the legislature, whose abilities & zeal pointed him out
as proper for it, urging him to sound as many of the leading members
of the legislature as he could, & if he found their opinions
favorable, to bring forward the proposition; but if he should find it
desperate, not to hazard it; because I thought it best not to commit
the honor either of our State or of your college, by an useless act
of eclat. It was not till within these three days that I have had an
interview with him, and an account of his proceedings. He
communicated the papers to a great number of the members, and
discussed them maturely, but privately, with them. They were
generally well-disposed to the proposition, and some of them warmly;
however, there was no difference of opinion in the conclusion, that
it could not be effected. The reasons which they thought would with
certainty prevail against it, were 1. that our youth, not
familiarized but with their mother tongue, were not prepared to
receive instructions in any other; 2d. that the expence of the
institution would excite uneasiness in their constituents, & endanger
it's permanence; & 3. that it's extent was disproportioned to the
narrow state of the population with us. Whatever might be urged on
these several subjects, yet as the decision rested with others, there
remained to us only to regret that circumstances were such, or were
thought to be such, as to disappoint your & our wishes. I should
have seen with peculiar satisfaction the establishment of such a mass
of science in my country, and should probably have been tempted to
approach myself to it, by procuring a residence in it's neighborhood,
at those seasons of the year at least when the operations of
agriculture are less active and interesting. I sincerely lament the
circumstances which have suggested this emigration. I had hoped that
Geneva was familiarized to such a degree of liberty, that they might
without difficulty or danger fill up the measure to its maximum; a
term, which, though in the insulated man, bounded only by his natural
powers, must, in society, be so far restricted as to protect himself
against the evil passions of his associates, & consequently, them
against him. I suspect that the doctrine, that small States alone
are fitted to be republics, will be exploded by experience, with some
other brilliant fallacies accredited by Montesquieu & other political
writers. Perhaps it will be found, that to obtain a just republic
(and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at
all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach
it's greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may
be found in it's councils free from particular interests, and giving,
therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice. The
smaller the societies, the more violent & more convulsive their
schisms. We have chanced to live in an age which will probably be
distinguished in history, for it's experiments in government on a
larger scale than has yet taken place. But we shall not live to see
the result. The grosser absurdities, such as hereditary
magistracies, we shall see exploded in our day, long experience
having already pronounced condemnation against them. But what is to
be the substitute? This our children or grand children will answer.
We may be satisfied with the certain knowledge that none can ever be
tried, so stupid, so unrighteous, so oppressive, so destructive of
every end for which honest men enter into government, as that which
their forefathers had established, & their fathers alone venture to
tumble headlong from the stations they have so long abused. It is
unfortunate, that the efforts of mankind to recover the freedom of
which they have been so long deprived, will be accompanied with
violence, with errors, & even with crimes. But while we weep over
the means, we must pray for the end. -- But I have been insensibly
led by the general complexion of the times, from the particular case
of Geneva, to those to which it bears no similitude. Of that we hope
good things. Its inhabitants must be too much enlightened, too well
experienced in the blessings of freedom and undisturbed industry, to
tolerate long a contrary state of things. I shall be happy to hear
that their government perfects itself, and leaves room for the
honest, the industrious & wise; in which case, your own talents, &
those of the persons for whom you have interested yourself, will, I
am sure, find welcome & distinction. My good wishes will always
attend you, as a consequence of the esteem & regard with which I am,
Dear Sir, your most obedient & most humble servant.
ABJURING THE PRESIDENCY
_To James Madison_
_Monticello, Apr. 27, 1795_
DEAR SIR, -- Your letter of Mar 23. came to hand the 7th of
April, and notwithstanding the urgent reasons for answering a part of
it immediately, yet as it mentioned that you would leave Philadelphia
within a few days, I feared that the answer might pass you on the
road. A letter from Philadelphia by the last post having announced
to me your leaving that place the day preceding it's date, I am in
hopes this will find you in Orange. In mine, to which yours of Mar
23. was an answer, I expressed my hope of the only change of position
I ever wished to see you make, and I expressed it with entire
sincerity, because there is not another person in the U S. who being
placed at the helm of our affairs, my mind would be so completely at
rest for the fortune of our political bark. The wish too was pure, &
unmixed with anything respecting myself personally. For as to
myself, the subject had been thoroughly weighed & decided on, & my
retirement from office had been meant from all office high or low,
without exception. I can say, too, with truth, that the subject had
not been presented to my mind by any vanity of my own. I know myself
& my fellow citizens too well to have ever thought of it. But the
idea was forced upon me by continual insinuations in the public
papers, while I was in office. As all these came from a hostile
quarter, I knew that their object was to poison the public mind as to
my motives, when they were not able to charge me with facts. But the
idea being once presented to me, my own quiet required that I should
face it & examine it. I did so thoroughly, & had no difficulty to
see that every reason which had determined me to retire from the
office I then held, operated more strongly against that which was
insinuated to be my object. I decided then on those general grounds
which could alone be present to my mind at the time, that is to say,
reputation, tranquillity, labor; for as to public duty, it could not
be a topic of consideration in my case. If these general
considerations were sufficient to ground a firm resolution never to
permit myself to think of the office, or to be thought of for it, the
special ones which have supervened on my retirement, still more
insuperably bar the door to it. My health is entirely broken down
within the last eight months; my age requires that I should place my
affairs in a clear state; these are sound if taken care of, but
capable of considerable dangers if longer neglected; and above all
things, the delights I feel in the society of my family, and the
agricultural pursuits in which I am so eagerly engaged. The little
spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since
evaporated, and I set still less store by a posthumous than present
name. In stating to you the heads of reasons which have produced my
determination, I do not mean an opening for future discussion, or
that I may be reasoned out of it. The question is forever closed
with me; my sole object is to avail myself of the first opening ever
given me from a friendly quarter (and I could not with decency do it
before), of preventing any division or loss of votes, which might be
fatal to the Republican interest. If that has any chance of
prevailing, it must be by avoiding the loss of a single vote, and by
concentrating all its strength on one object. Who this should be, is
a question I can more freely discuss with anybody than yourself. In
this I painfully feel the loss of Monroe. Had he been here, I should
have been at no loss for a channel through which to make myself
understood; if I have been misunderstood by anybody through the
instrumentality of mr. Fenno & his abettors. -- I long to see you. I
am proceeding in my agricultural plans with a slow but sure step. To
get under full way will require 4. or 5. years. But patience &
perseverance will accomplish it. My little essay in red clover, the
last year, has had the most encouraging success. I sowed then about
40. acres. I have sowed this year about 120. which the rain now
falling comes very opportunely on. From 160. to 200. acres, will
be my yearly sowing. The seed-box described in the agricultural
transactions of New York, reduces the expense of seeding from 6/ to
2/3 the acre, and does the business better than is possible to be
done by the human hand. May we hope a visit from you? If we may,
let it be after the middle of May, by which time I hope to be
returned from Bedford. I had had a proposition to meet mr. Henry
there this month, to confer on the subject of a convention, to the
calling of which he is now become a convert. The session of our
district court furnished me a just excuse for the time; but the
impropriety of my entering into consultation on a measure in which I
would take no part, is a permanent one.
Present my most respectful compliments to mrs. Madison, & be
assured of the warm attachment of, Dear Sir, yours affectionately.
A NAIL-MAKER
_To Jean Nicolas Demeunier_
_Monticello, Virginia, Apr. 29, 1795_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of Mar. 30. from Philadelphia came to
my hands a few days ago. That which you mention to have written from
London has never been received; nor had I been able to discover what
has been your fortune during the troubles of France after the death
of the King. Being thoroughly persuaded that under all circumstances
your conduct had been entirely innocent & friendly to the freedom of
your country, I had hopes that you had not been obliged to quit your
own country. Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment &
enjoiment by all mankind of as much liberty, as each may exercise
without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have
lamented that in France the endeavours to obtain this should have
been attended with the effusion of so much blood. I was intimate
with the leading characters of the year 1789. So I was with those of
the Brissotine party who succeeded them: & have always been persuaded
that their views were upright. Those who have followed have been
less known to me: but I have been willing to hope that they also
meant the establishment of a free government in their country,
excepting perhaps the party which has lately been suppressed. The
government of those now at the head of affairs appears to hold out
many indications of good sense, moderation & virtue; & I cannot but
presume from their character as well as your own that you would find
a perfect safety in the bosom of your own country. I think it
fortunate for the United States to have become the asylum for so many
virtuous patriots of different denominations: but their
circumstances, with which you were so well acquainted before, enabled
them to be but a bare asylum, & to offer nothing for them but an
entire freedom to use their own means & faculties as they please.
There is no such thing in this country as what would be called wealth
in Europe. The richest are but a little at ease, & obliged to pay
the most rigorous attention to their affairs to keep them together.
I do not mean to speak here of the Beaujons of America. For we have
some of these tho' happily they are but ephemeral. Our public
oeconomy also is such as to offer drudgery and subsistence only to
those entrusted with its administration, a wise & necessary
precaution against the degeneracy of the public servants. In our
private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment
is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker. On returning home
after an absence of ten years, I found my farms so much deranged that
I saw evidently they would be a burden to me instead of a support
till I could regenerate them; & consequently that it was necessary
for me to find some other resource in the meantime. I thought for
awhile of taking up the manufacture of pot-ash, which requires but
small advances of money. I concluded at length however to begin a
manufacture of nails, which needs little or no capital, & I now
employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age, overlooking
all the details of their business myself & drawing from it a profit
on which I can get along till I can put my farms into a course of
yielding profit. My new trade of nail-making is to me in this
country what an additional title of nobility or the ensigns of a new
order are in Europe. In the commercial line, the grocers business is
that which requires the least capital in this country. The grocer
generally obtains a credit of three months, & sells for ready money
so as to be able to make his paiments & obtain a new supply. But I
think I have observed that your countrymen who have been obliged to
work out their own fortunes here, have succeeded best with a small
farm. Labour indeed is dear here, but rents are low & on the whole a
reasonable profit & comfortable subsistence results. It is at the
same time the most tranquil, healthy, & independent. And since you
have been pleased to ask my opinion as to the best way of employing
yourself till you can draw funds from France or return there
yourself, I do presume that this is the business which would yield
the most happiness & contentment to one of your philosophic turn.
But at the distance I am from New York, where you seem disposed to
fix yourself, & little acquainted with the circumstances of that
place I am much less qualified than disposed to suggest to you
emploiments analogous to your turn of mind & at the same time to the
circumstances of your present situation. Be assured that it will
always give me lively pleasure to learn that your pursuits, whatever
they may be may lead you to contentment & success, being with very
sincere esteem & respect, dear sir, your most obedient servant.
ROGUES AND A TREATY
_To Mann Page_
_Monticello, Aug. 30, 1795_
It was not in my power to attend at Fredericksburg according to
the kind invitation in your letter, and in that of mr. Ogilvie. The
heat of the weather, the business of the farm, to which I have made
myself necessary, forbade it; and to give one round reason for all,
_mature sanus_, I have laid up my Rosinante in his stall, before his
unfitness for the road shall expose him faultering to the world. But
why did not I answer you in time? Because, in truth, I am
encouraging myself to grow lazy, and I was sure you would ascribe the
delay to anything sooner than a want of affection or respect to you,
for this was not among the possible causes. In truth, if anything
could ever induce me to sleep another night out of my own house, it
would have been your friendly invitation and my sollicitude for the
subject of it, the education of our youth. I do most anxiously wish
to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees
of genius, and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to
read & understand what is going on in the world, and to keep their
part of it going on right: for nothing can keep it right but their
own vigilant & distrustful superintendence. I do not believe with
the Rochefoucaults & Montaignes, that fourteen out of fifteen men are
rogues: I believe a great abatement from that proportion may be made
in favor of general honesty. But I have always found that rogues
would be uppermost, and I do not know that the proportion is too
strong for the higher orders, and for those who, rising above the
swinish multitude, always contrive to nestle themselves into the
places of power & profit. These rogues set out with stealing the
people's good opinion, and then steal from them the right of
withdrawing it, by contriving laws and associations against the power
of the people themselves. Our part of the country is in considerable
fermentation, on what they suspect to be a recent roguery of this
kind. They say that while all hands were below deck mending sails,
splicing ropes, and every one at his own business, & the captain in
his cabbin attending to his log book & chart, a rogue of a pilot has
run them into an enemy's port. But metaphor apart, there is much
dissatisfaction with mr. Jay & his treaty. For my part, I consider
myself now but as a passenger, leaving the world, & it's government
to those who are likely to live longer in it. That you may be among
the longest of these, is my sincere prayer. After begging you to be
the bearer of my compliments & apologies to mr. Ogilvie, I bid you
an affectionate farewell, always wishing to hear from you.
THE LAWS OF VIRGINIA
_To George Wythe_
_Monticello, January 16, 1796_
In my letter which accompanied the box containing my collection
of Printed laws, I promised to send you by post a statement of the
contents of the box. On taking up the subject I found it better to
take a more general view of the whole of the laws I possess, as well
Manuscript as printed, as also of those which I do not possess, and
suppose to be no longer extant. This general view you will have in
the enclosed paper, whereof the articles stated to be printed
constitute the contents of the box I sent you. Those in MS. were not
sent, because not supposed to have been within your view, and because
some of them will not bear removal, being so rotten, that in turning
over a leaf it sometimes falls into powder. These I preserve by
wrapping & sewing them up in oiled cloth, so that neither air nor
moisture can have access to them. Very early in the course of my
researches into the laws of Virginia, I observed that many of them
were already lost, and many more on the point of being lost, as
existing only in single copies in the hands of careful or curious
individuals, on whose death they would probably be used for waste
paper. I set myself therefore to work, to collect all which were
then existing, in order that when the day should come in which the
public should advert to the magnitude of their loss in these precious
monuments of our property, and our history, a part of their regret
might be spared by information that a portion has been saved from the
wreck, which is worthy of their attention & preservation. In
searching after these remains, I spared neither time, trouble, nor
expense; and am of opinion that scarcely any law escaped me, which
was in being as late as the year 1778 in the middle or Southern parts
of the State. In the Northern parts, perhaps something might still
be found. In the clerk's office in the antient counties, some of
these MS. copies of the laws may possibly still exist, which used to
be furnished at the public expense to every county, before the use of
the press was introduced; and in the same places, and in the hands of
antient magistrates or of their families, some of the fugitive sheets
of the laws of separate sessions, which have been usually distributed
since the practice commenced of printing them. But recurring to what
we actually possess, the question is, what means will be the most
effectual for preserving these remains from future loss? All the
care I can take of them, will not preserve them from the worm, from
the natural decay of the paper, from the accidents of fire, or those
of removal when it is necessary for any public purposes, as in the
case of those now sent you. Our experience has proved to us that a
single copy, or a few, deposited in MS. in the public offices, cannot
be relied on for any great length of time. The ravages of fire and
of ferocious enemies have had but too much part in producing the very
loss we are now deploring. How many of the precious works of
antiquity were lost while they were preserved only in manuscript?
Has there ever been one lost since the art of printing has rendered
it practicable to multiply & disperse copies? This leads us then to
the only means of preserving those remains of our laws now under
consideration, that is, a multiplication of printed copies. I think
therefore that there should be printed at public expense, an edition
of all the laws ever passed by our legislatures which can now be
found; that a copy should be deposited in every public library in
America, in the principal public offices within the State, and some
perhaps in the most distinguished public libraries of Europe, and
that the rest should be sold to individuals, towards reimbursing the
expences of the edition. Nor do I think that this would be a
voluminous work. The MSS. would probably furnish matter for one
printed volume in folio, would comprehend all the laws from 1624 to
1701, which period includes Purvis. My collection of Fugitive sheets
forms, as we know, two volumes, and comprehends all the extant laws
from 1734 to 1783; and the laws which can be gleaned up from the
Revisals to supply the chasm between 1701 & 1734, with those from
1783 to the close of the present century, (by which term the work
might be compleated,) would not be more than the matter of another
volume. So that four volumes in folio, would give every law ever
passed which is now extant; whereas those who wish to possess as many
of them as can be procured, must now buy the six folio volumes of
Revisals, to wit, Purvis & those of 1732, 1748, 1768, 1783, & 1794,
and in all of them possess not one half of what they wish. What
would be the expence of the edition I cannot say, nor how much would
be reimbursed by the sales; but I am sure it would be moderate,
compared with the rates which the public have hitherto paid for
printing their laws, provided a sufficient latitude be given as to
printers & places. The first step would be to make out a single copy
for the MSS., which would employ a clerk about a year or something
more, to which expence about a fourth should be added for the
collation of the MSS., which would employ 3. persons at a time about
half a day, or a day in every week. As I have already spent more
time in making myself acquainted with the contents & arrangement of
these MSS. than any other person probably ever will, & their
condition does not admit their removal to a distance, I will
chearfully undertake the direction & superintendence of this work, if
it can be done in the neighboring towns of Charlottesville or Milton,
farther than which I could not undertake to go from home. For the
residue of the work, my printed volumes might be delivered to the
Printer.
I have troubled you with these details, because you are in the
place where they may be used for the public service, if they admit of
such use, & because the order of assembly, which you mention, shews
they are sensible of the necessity of preserving such of these laws
as relate to our landed property; and a little further consideration
will perhaps convince them that it is better to do the whole work
once for all, than to be recurring to it by piece-meal, as particular
parts of it shall be required, & that too perhaps when the materials
shall be lost. You are the best judge of the weight of these
observations, & of the mode of giving them any effect they may merit.
Adieu affectionately.
"AN AGE OF EXPERIMENTS"
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Feb. 28, 1796_
I am to thank you, my dear Sir, for forwarding Mr. D'Ivernois'
book on the French revolution. I recieve every thing with respect
which comes from him. But it is on politics, a subject I never
loved, and now hate. I will not promise therefore to read it
thoroughly. I fear the oligarchical executive of the French will not
do. We have always seen a small council get into cabals and
quarrels, the more bitter and relentless the fewer they are. We saw
this in our committee of the states; and that they were, from their
bad passions, incapable of doing the business of their country. I
think that for the prompt, clear and consistent action so necessary
in an Executive, unity of person is necessary as with us. I am aware
of the objection to this, that the office becoming more important may
bring on serious discord in elections. In our country I think it
will be long first; not within our day; and we may safely trust to
the wisdom of our successors the remedies of the evil to arise in
theirs. Both experiments however are now fairly committed, and the
result will be seen. Never was a finer canvas presented to work on
than our countrymen. All of them engaged in agriculture or the
pursuits of honest industry, independant in their circumstances,
enlightened as to their rights, and firm in their habits of order and
obedience to the laws. This I hope will be the age of experiments in
government, and that their basis will be founded on principles of
honesty, not of mere force. We have seen no instance of this since
the days of the Roman republic, nor do we read of any before that.
Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern
government, unless the Dutch perhaps be excepted, and I am not well
enough informed to except them absolutely. If ever the morals of a
people could be made the basis of their own government, it is our
case; and he who could propose to govern such a people by the
corruption of their legislature, before he could have one night of
quiet sleep, must convince himself that the human soul as well as
body is mortal. I am glad to see that whatever grounds of
apprehension may have appeared of a wish to govern us otherwise than
on principles of reason and honesty, we are getting the better of
them. I am sure, from the honesty of your heart, you join me in
detestation of the corruption of the English government, and that no
man on earth is more incapable than yourself of seeing that copied
among us, willingly. I have been among those who have feared the
design to introduce it here, and it has been a strong reason with me
for wishing there was an ocean of fire between that island and us.
But away politics.
I owe a letter to the Auditor [Richard Harrison] on the subject
of my accounts while a foreign minister, and he informs me yours hang
on the same difficulties with mine. Before the present government
there was a usage either practised on or understood which regulated
our charges. This government has directed the future by a law. But
this is not retrospective, and I cannot conceive why the treasury
cannot settle accounts under the old Congress on the principles that
body acted on. I shall very shortly write to Mr. Harrison on this
subject, and if we cannot have it settled otherwise I suppose we must
apply to the legislature. In this I will act in concert with you if
you approve of it. Present my very affectionate respects to Mrs.
Adams, and be assured that no one more cordially esteems your virtues
than Dear Sir Your sincere friend and servt.
"THE BOISTEROUS SEA OF LIBERTY"
_To Philip Mazzei_
_Monticello, Apr. 24, 1796_
MY DEAR FRIEND, -- Your letter of Oct. 26. 1795. is just
received and gives me the first information that the bills forwarded
for you to V. S. & H. of Amsterdam on V. Anderson for pound 39-17-10
1/2 & on George Barclay for pound 70-8-6 both of London have been
protested. I immediately write to the drawers to secure the money if
still unpaid. I wonder I have never had a letter from our friends of
Amsterdam on that subject as well as acknoleging the subsequent
remittances. Of these I have apprised you by triplicates, but for
fear of miscarriage will just mention that on Sep. 8. I forwarded
them Hodgden's bill on Robinson Saunderson & Rumney of Whitehaven for
pound 300. and Jan. 31. that of the same on the same for pound
137-16-6 both received from mr. Blair for your stock sold out. I
have now the pleasure to inform you that Dohrman has settled his
account with you, has allowed the New York damage of 20. per cent
for the protest, & the New York interest of 7. per cent. and after
deducting the partial payments for which he held receipts the balance
was three thousand & eighty-seven dollars which sum he has paid into
mr. Madison's hands & as he (mr. Madison) is now in Philadelphia, I
have desired him to invest the money in good bills on Amsterdam &
remit them to the V. Staphorsts & H. whom I consider as possessing
your confidence as they do mine beyond any house in London. The
pyracies of that nation lately extended from the sea to the debts due
from them to other nations renders theirs an unsafe medium to do
business through. I hope these remittances will place you at your
ease & I will endeavor to execute your wishes as to the settlement of
the other small matters you mention: tho' from them I expect little.
E. R. is bankrupt, or tantamount to it. Our friend M. P. is
embarrassed, having lately sold the fine lands he lives on, & being
superlatively just & honorable I expect we may get whatever may be in
his hands. Lomax is under greater difficulties with less means, so
that I apprehend you have little more to expect from this country
except the balance which will remain for Colle after deducting the
little matter due to me, & what will be recovered by Anthony. This
will be decided this summer.
I have written to you by triplicates with every remittance I
sent to the V. S. & H. & always recapitulated in each letter the
objects of the preceding ones. I enclosed in two of them some seeds
of the squash as you desired. Send me in return some seeds of the
winter vetch, I mean that kind which is sewn in autumn & stands thro
the cold of winter, furnishing a crop of green fodder in March. Put
a few seeds in every letter you may write to me. In England only the
spring vetch can be had. Pray fail not in this. I have it greatly
at heart.
The aspect of our politics has wonderfully changed since you
left us. In place of that noble love of liberty, & republican
government which carried us triumphantly thro' the war, an Anglican
monarchical, & aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed
object is to draw over us the substance, as they have already done
the forms, of the British government. The main body of our citizens,
however, remain true to their republican principles; the whole landed
interest is republican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against
us are the Executive, the Judiciary, two out of three branches of the
legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be
officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the
boisterous sea of liberty, British merchants & Americans trading on
British capitals, speculators & holders in the banks & public funds,
a contrivance invented for the purposes of corruption, & for
assimilating us in all things to the rotten as well as the sound
parts of the British model. It would give you a fever were I to name
to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who
were Samsons in the field & Solomons in the council, but who have had
their heads shorn by the harlot England. In short, we are likely to
preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors &
perils. But we shall preserve them; and our mass of weight & wealth
on the good side is so great, as to leave no danger that force will
ever be attempted against us. We have only to awake and snap the
Lilliputian cords with which they have been entangling us during the
first sleep which succeeded our labors. I will forward the
testimonial of the death of mrs. Mazzei, which I can do the more
incontrovertibly as she is buried in my grave yard, and I pass her
grave daily. The formalities of the proof you require, will occasion
delay. John Page & his son Mann are well. The father remarried to a
lady from N. York. Beverley Randolph e la sua consorte living &
well. Their only child married to the 2d of T. M. Randolph. The
eldest son you know married my eldest daughter, is an able learned &
worthy character, but kept down by ill health. They have two
children & still live with me. My younger daughter well. Colo.
Innis is well, & a true republican still as are all those before
named. Colo. Monroe is our M. P. at Paris a most worthy patriot &
honest man. These are the persons you inquire after. I begin to
feel the effects of age. My health has suddenly broke down, with
symptoms which give me to believe I shall not have much to encounter
of the _tedium vitae_. While it remains, however, my heart will be
warm in it's friendships, and among these, will always foster the
affection with which I am, dear Sir, your friend and servant.
AN ENTENTE WITH ADAMS
_To James Madison, with Enclosure_
_Jan. 1, 1797_
Yours of Dec. 19. has come safely. The event of the election
has never been a matter of doubt in my mind. I knew that the Eastern
states were disciplined in the schools of their town meetings to
sacrifice differences of opinion to the great object of operating in
phalanx, & that the more free & moral agency practiced in the other
states would always make up the supplement of their weight. Indeed
the vote comes much nearer an equality than I had expected. I know
the difficulty of obtaining belief to one's declarations of a
disinclination to honors, & that it is greatest with those who still
remain in the world. But no arguments were wanting to reconcile me
to a relinquishment of the first office or acquiescence under the
second. As to the first it was impossible that a more solid
unwillingness settled on full calculation, could have existed in any
man's mind, short of the degree of absolute refusal. The only view
on which I would have gone into it for awhile was to put our vessel
on her republican tack before she should be thrown too much to
leeward of her true principles. As to the second, it is the only
office in the world about which I am unable to decide in my own mind
whether I had rather have it or not have it. Pride does not enter
into the estimate; for I think with the Romans that the general of
today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary. I can particularly
have no feelings which would revolt at a secondary position to mr.
Adams. I am his junior in life, was his junior in Congress, his
junior in the diplomatic line, his junior lately in the civil
government. Before the receipt of your letter I had written the
enclosed one to him. I had intended it some time, but had deferred
it from time to time under the discouragement of a despair of making
him believe I could be sincere in it. The papers by the last post
not rendering it necessary to change anything in the letter I enclose
it open for your perusal, not only that you may possess the actual
state of dispositions between us, but that if anything should render
the delivery of it ineligible in your opinion, you may return it to
me. If mr. Adams can be induced to administer the government on it's
true principles, & to relinquish his bias to an English constitution,
it is to be considered whether it would not be on the whole for the
public good to come to a good understanding with him as to his future
elections. He is perhaps the only sure barrier against Hamilton's
getting in.
Since my last I have received a packet of books & pamphlets,
the choiceness of which testifies that they come from you. The
incidents of Hamilton's insurrection is a curious work indeed. The
hero of it exhibits himself in all the attitudes of a dexterous
balance master.
The Political progress is a work of value & of a singular
complexion. The eye of the author seems to be a natural achromatic,
which divests every object of the glare of colour. The preceding
work under the same title had the same merit. One is disgusted
indeed with the ulcerated state which it presents of the human mind:
but to cure an ulcer we must go to its bottom: & no writer has ever
done this more radically than this one. The reflections into which
he leads one are not flattering to our species. In truth I do not
recollect in all the animal kingdom a single species but man which is
eternally & systematically engaged in the destruction of its own
species. What is called civilization seems to have no other effect
on him than to teach him to pursue the principle of bellum omnium in
omnia on a larger scale, & in place of the little contests of tribe
against tribe, to engage all the quarters of the earth in the same
work of destruction. When we add to this that as to the other
species of animals, the lions & tigers are mere lambs compared with
man as a destroyer, we must conclude that it is in man alone that
nature has been able to find a sufficient barrier against the too
great multiplication of other animals & of man himself, an
equilibriating power against the fecundity of generation. My
situation points my views chiefly to his wars in the physical world:
yours perhaps exhibit him as equally warring in the moral one. We
both, I believe, join in wishing to see him softened. Adieu.
ENCLOSURE TO JOHN ADAMS
_Monticello, Dec. 28, 1796_
DEAR SIR -- The public and the public papers have been much
occupied lately in placing us in a point of opposition to each other.
I trust with confidence that less of it has been felt by ourselves
personally. In the retired canton where I am, I learn little of what
is passing: pamphlets I see never; papers but a few; and the fewer
the happier. Our latest intelligence from Philadelphia at present is
of the 16th. inst. but tho' at that date your election to the first
magistracy seems not to have been known as a fact, yet with me it has
never been doubted. I knew it impossible you should lose a vote
North of the Delaware, and even if that of Pensylvania should be
against you in the mass, yet that you would get enough South of that
to place your succession out of danger. I have never one single
moment expected a different issue: and tho' I know I shall not be
believed, yet it is not the less true that I have never wished it.
My neighbors, as my compurgators, could aver that fact, because they
see my occupations and my attachment to them. Indeed it is possible
that you may be cheated of your succession by a trick worthy the
subtlety of your arch-friend [Alexander Hamilton] of New York, who
has been able to make of your real friends tools to defeat their and
your just wishes. Most probably he will be disappointed as to you;
and my inclinations place me out of his reach. I leave to others the
sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound
sleep and a warm birth below, with the society of neighbors, friends
and fellow laborers of the earth, than of spies and sycophants. No
one then will congratulate you with purer disinterestedness than
myself. The share indeed which I may have had in the late vote, I
shall still value highly, as an evidence of the share I have in the
esteem of my fellow citizens. But while, in this point of view, a
few votes less would be little sensible, the difference in the effect
of a few more would be very sensible and oppressive to me. I have no
ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office. Since
the day too on which you signed the treaty of Paris our horizon was
never so overcast. I devoutly wish you may be able to shun for us
this war by which our agriculture, commerce and credit will be
destroyed. If you are, the glory will be all your own; and that your
administration may be filled with glory and happiness to yourself and
advantage to us is the sincere wish of one who tho', in the course of
our voyage thro' life, various little incidents have happened or been
contrived to separate us, retains still for you the solid esteem of
the moments when we were working for our independance, and sentiments
of respect and affectionate attachment.
"PERFECTLY NEUTRAL AND INDEPENDENT"
_To Elbridge Gerry_
_Philadelphia, May 13, 1797_
MY DEAR FRIEND, -- Your favor of the 4th instt came to hand
yesterday. That of the 4th of Apr, with the one for Monroe, has
never been received. The first, of Mar 27, did not reach me till Apr
21, when I was within a few days of setting out for this place, & I
put off acknoleging it till I should come here. I entirely commend
your dispositions towards mr. Adams; knowing his worth as intimately
and esteeming it as much as any one, and acknoleging the preference
of his claims, if any I could have had, to the high office conferred
on him. But in truth, I had neither claims nor wishes on the
subject, tho I know it will be difficult to obtain belief of this.
When I retired from this place & the office of Secy of state, it was
in the firmest contemplation of never more returning here. There had
indeed been suggestions in the public papers, that I was looking
towards a succession to the President's chair, but feeling a
consciousness of their falsehood, and observing that the suggestions
came from hostile quarters, I considered them as intended merely to
excite public odium against me. I never in my life exchanged a word
with any person, on the subject, till I found my name brought forward
generally, in competition with that of mr. Adams. Those with whom I
then communicated, could say, if it were necessary, whether I met the
call with desire, or even with a ready acquiescence, and whether from
the moment of my first acquiescence, I did not devoutly pray that the
very thing might happen which has happened. The second office of
this government is honorable & easy, the first is but a splendid
misery.
You express apprehensions that stratagems will be used, to
produce a misunderstanding between the President and myself. Tho not
a word having this tendency has ever been hazarded to me by any one,
yet I consider as a certainty that nothing will be left untried to
alienate him from me. These machinations will proceed from the
Hamiltons by whom he is surrounded, and who are only a little less
hostile to him than to me. It cannot but damp the pleasure of
cordiality, when we suspect that it is suspected. I cannot help
fearing, that it is impossible for mr. Adams to believe that the
state of my mind is what it really is; that he may think I view him
as an obstacle in my way. I have no supernatural power to impress
truth on the mind of another, nor he any to discover that the
estimate which he may form, on a just view of the human mind as
generally constituted, may not be just in its application to a
special constitution. This may be a source of private uneasiness to
us; I honestly confess that it is so to me at this time. But neither
of us are capable of letting it have effect on our public duties.
Those who may endeavor to separate us, are probably excited by the
fear that I might have influence on the executive councils; but when
they shall know that I consider my office as constitutionally
confined to legislative functions, and that I could not take any part
whatever in executive consultations, even were it proposed, their
fears may perhaps subside, & their object be found not worth a
machination.
I do sincerely wish with you, that we could take our stand on a
ground perfectly neutral & independent towards all nations. It has
been my constant object thro public life; and with respect to the
English & French, particularly, I have too often expressed to the
former my wishes, & made to them propositions verbally & in writing,
officially & privately, to official & private characters, for them to
doubt of my views, if they would be content with equality. Of this
they are in possession of several written & formal proofs, in my own
hand writing. But they have wished a monopoly of commerce &
influence with us; and they have in fact obtained it. When we take
notice that theirs is the workshop to which we go for all we want;
that with them centre either immediately or ultimately all the labors
of our hands and lands; that to them belongs either openly or
secretly the great mass of our navigation; that even the factorage of
their affairs here, is kept to themselves by factitious citizenships;
that these foreign & false citizens now constitute the great body of
what are called our merchants, fill our sea ports, are planted in
every little town & district of the interior country, sway everything
in the former places by their own votes, & those of their dependants,
in the latter, by their insinuations & the influence of their
ledgers; that they are advancing fast to a monopoly of our banks &
public funds, and thereby placing our public finances under their
control; that they have in their alliance the most influential
characters in & out of office; when they have shewn that by all these
bearings on the different branches of the government, they can force
it to proceed in whatever direction they dictate, and bend the
interests of this country entirely to the will of another; when all
this, I say, is attended to, it is impossible for us to say we stand
on independent ground, impossible for a free mind not to see & to
groan under the bondage in which it is bound. If anything after this
could excite surprise, it would be that they have been able so far to
throw dust in the eyes of our own citizens, as to fix on those who
wish merely to recover self-government the charge of subserving one
foreign influence, because they resist submission to another. But
they possess our printing presses, a powerful engine in their
government of us. At this very moment, they would have drawn us into
a war on the side of England, had it not been for the failure of her
bank. Such was their open & loud cry, & that of their gazettes till
this event. After plunging us in all the broils of the European
nations, there would remain but one act to close our tragedy, that
is, to break up our Union; and even this they have ventured seriously
& solemnly to propose & maintain by arguments in a Connecticut paper.
I have been happy, however, in believing, from the stifling of this
effort, that that dose was found too strong, & excited as much
repugnance there as it did horror in other parts of our country, &
that whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we
shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, & that
alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an
arena of gladiators. Much as I abhor war, and view it as the
greatest scourge of mankind, and anxiously as I wish to keep out of
the broils of Europe, I would yet go with my brethren into these,
rather than separate from them. But I hope we may still keep clear
of them, notwithstanding our present thraldom, & that time may be
given us to reflect on the awful crisis we have passed through, and
to find some means of shielding ourselves in future from foreign
influence, political, commercial, or in whatever other form it may be
attempted. I can scarcely withhold myself from joining in the wish
of Silas Deane, that there were an ocean of fire between us & the old
world.
A perfect confidence that you are as much attached to peace &
union as myself, that you equally prize independence of all nations,
and the blessings of self-government, has induced me freely to
unbosom myself to you, and let you see the light in which I have
viewed what has been passing among us from the beginning of the war.
And I shall be happy, at all times, in an intercommunication of
sentiments with you, believing that the dispositions of the different
parts of our country have been considerably misrepresented &
misunderstood in each part, as to the other, and that nothing but
good can result from an exchange of information & opinions between
those whose circumstances & morals admit no doubt of the integrity of
their views.
I remain, with constant and sincere esteem, Dear Sir, your
affectionate friend and servant.
PEACE AND COMMERCE
_To Thomas Pinckney_
_Philadelphia, May 29, 1797_
DEAR SIR, -- I received from you, before you left England, a
letter enclosing one from the Prince of Parma. As I learnt soon
after that you were shortly to return to America, I concluded to join
my acknolegments of it to my congratulations on your arrival; & both
have been delayed by a blameable spirit of procrastination, forever
suggesting to our indolence that we need not do to-day what may be
done to-morrow. Accept these now in all the sincerity of my heart.
It is but lately I have answered the Prince's letter. It required
some time to establish arrangements which might effect his purpose, &
I wished also to forward a particular article or two of curiosity.
You have found on your return a higher style of political difference
than you had left here. I fear this is inseparable from the
different constitutions of the human mind, & that degree of freedom
which permits unrestrained expression. Political dissension is
doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism, but still it is
a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as
of the philosopher, to exclude it's influence, if possible, from
social life. The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason
to subdivide them by artificial lines. But whether we shall ever be
able so far to perfect the principles of society, as that political
opinions shall, in it's intercourse, be as inoffensive as those of
philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may well be doubted. Foreign
influence is the present & just object of public hue and cry, & -- ,
as often happens, the most guilty are foremost & loudest in the cry.
If those who are truly independent, can so trim our vessels as to
beat through the waves now agitating us, they will merit a glory the
greater as it seems less possible. When I contemplate the spirit
which is driving us on here, & that beyond the water which will view
us as but a mouthful the more, I have little hope of peace. I
anticipate the burning of our sea ports, havoc of our frontiers,
household insurgency, with a long train of et ceteras, which is
enough for a man to have met once in his life. The exchange, which
is to give us new neighbors in Louisiana (probably the present French
armies when disbanded) has opened us to combinations of enemies on
that side where we are most vulnerable. War is not the best engine
for us to resort to, nature has given us one _in our commerce_,
which, if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging
the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice. If the
commercial regulations had been adopted which our legislature were at
one time proposing, we should at this moment have been standing on
such an eminence of safety & respect as ages can never recover. But
having wandered from that, our object should now be to get back, with
as little loss as possible, & when peace shall be restored to the
world, endeavor so to form our _commercial_ regulations as that
justice from other nations shall be their mechanical result. I am
happy to assure you that the conduct of Gen'l. Pinckney has met
universal approbation. It was marked with that coolness, dignity, &
good sense which we expected from him. I am told that the French
government had taken up an unhappy idea, that Monroe was recalled for
the candor of his conduct in what related to the British treaty, &
Gen'l. Pinckney was sent as having other dispositions towards them.
I learn further, that some of their well-informed citizens here are
setting them right as to Genl. Pinckney's dispositions, so well
known to have been just towards them; & I sincerely hope, not only
that he may be employed as envoy extraordinary to them, but that
their minds will be better prepared to receive him. I candidly
acknolege, however, that I do not think the speech & addresses of
Congress as conciliatory as the preceding irritations on both sides
would have rendered wise. I shall be happy to hear from you at all
times, to make myself useful to you whenever opportunity offers, and
to give every proof of the sincerity of the sentiments of esteem &
respect with which I am, Dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble
servant.
DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS
_To Martha Jefferson Randolph_
_Philadelphia, June 8, 1797_
MY DEAR MARTHA -- Yours of May 20 came to hand the 1st. inst. I
imagine you recieved mine of May 18. about six days after the date of
yours. It was written the first post day after my arrival here. The
commission you inclosed for Maria is executed, and the things are in
the care of Mr. Boyce of Richmond, who is returning from hence with
some goods of his own, and will deliver them to Mr. Johnston. I
recieve with inexpressible pleasure the information your letter
contained. After your own happy establishment, which has given me an
inestimable friend to whom I can leave the care of every thing I
love, the only anxiety I had remaining was to see Maria also so
asociated as to ensure her happiness. She could not have been more
so to my wishes, if I had had the whole earth free to have chosen a
partner for her. I now see our fireside formed into a groupe, no one
member of which has a fibre in their composition which can ever
produce any jarring or jealousies among us. No irregular passions,
no dangerous bias, which may render problematical the future fortunes
and happiness of our descendants. We are quieted as to their
condition for at least one generation more. In order to keep us all
together, instead of a present provision in Bedford, as in your case,
I think to open and resettle the plantation of Pantops for them.
When I look to the ineffable pleasures of my family society, I become
more and more disgusted with the jealousies, the hatred, and the
rancorous and malignant passions of this scene, and lament my having
ever again been drawn into public view. Tranquility is now my
object. I have seen enough of political honors to know that they are
but splendid torments: and however one might be disposed to render
services on which any of their fellow citizens should set a value;
yet when as many would deprecate them as a public calamity, one may
well entertain a modest doubt of their real importance, and feel the
impulse of duty to be very weak. The real difficulty is that being
once delivered into the hands of others, whose feelings are friendly
to the individual and warm to the public cause, how to withdraw from
them without leaving a dissatisfaction in their mind, and an
impression of pusillanimity with the public.
Congress, in all probability will rise on Saturday the 17th.
inst. the day after you will recieve this. I shall leave
Philadelphia Monday the 19th. pass a day at Georgetown and a day at
Fredericksburg, at which place I wish my _chair_ and horses to be
Sunday evening the 25th. Of course they must set out Saturday
morning the 24th. This gives me the chance of another post, as you
will, the evening before that, recieve by the post a letter of a week
later date than this, so that if any thing should happen within a
week to delay the rising of Congress, I may still notify it and
change the time of the departure of my horses. Jupiter must pursue
the rout by Noel's to which he will come the first day, and by Chew's
to Fredericksburg the next. I fix his rout because were any accident
to get me along earlier, or him later, we might meet on the road.
Not yet informed that Mr. Randolph is returned I have thought it
safest to commit this article to my letter to you. The news of the
day I shall write to him. My warmest love to yourself and Maria.
Adieu affectionately.
PATIENCE AND THE REIGN OF WITCHES
_To John Taylor_
_Philadelphia, June 4, 1798_
I now inclose you Mr. Martin's patent. A patent had actually
been made out on the first description, and how to get this
suppressed and another made for a second invention, without a second
fee, was the difficulty. I practised a little art in a case where
honesty was really on our side, & nothing against us but the rigorous
letter of the law, and having obtained the 1st specification and got
the 2d put in its place, a second patent has been formed, which I now
inclose with the first specification.
I promised you, long ago, a description of a mould board. I
now send it; it is a press copy & therefore dim. It will be less so
by putting a sheet of white paper behind the one you are reading. I
would recommend to you first to have a model made of about 3 i. to
the foot, or 1/4 the real dimensions, and to have two blocks, the
1'st of which, after taking out the pyramidal piece & sawing it
crosswise above & below, should be preserved in that form to instruct
workmen in making the large & real one. The 2'd block may be carried
through all the operations, so as to present the form of the mould
board complete. If I had an opportunity of sending you a model I
would do it. It has been greatly approved here, as it has been
before by some very good judges at my house, where I have used it for
5 years with entire approbation.
Mr. New shewed me your letter on the subject of the patent,
which gave me an opportunity of observing what you said as to the
effect with you of public proceedings, and that it was not unusual
now to estimate the separate mass of Virginia and N. Carolina with a
view to their separate existence. It is true that we are compleatly
under the saddle of Massachusets & Connecticut, and that they ride us
very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our
strength and substance. Their natural friends, the three other
eastern States, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have
the art to divide certain other parts of the Union so as to make use
of them to govern the whole. This is not new. It is the old
practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in
order, and those who have once got an ascendency and possessed
themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and
offices, have immense means for retaining their advantages. But our
present situation is not a natural one. The body of our countrymen
is substantially republican through every part of the Union. It was
the irresistable influence & popularity of Gen'1 Washington, played
off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to
anti-republican hands, or turned the republican members, chosen by
the people, into anti-republicans. He delivered it over to his
successor in this state, and very untoward events, since improved
with great artifice, have produced on the public mind the impression
we see; but still, I repeat it, this is not the natural state. Time
alone would bring round an order of things more correspondent to the
sentiments of our constituents; but are there not events impending
which will do it within a few months? The invasion of England, the
public and authentic avowal of sentiments hostile to the leading
principles of our Constitution, the prospect of a war in which we
shall stand alone, land-tax, stamp-tax, increase of public debt, &c.
Be this as it may, in every free & deliberating society there must,
from the nature of man, be opposite parties & violent dissensions &
discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the
other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this party division is
necessary to induce each to watch & delate to the people the
proceedings of the other. But if on a temporary superiority of the
one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no
federal government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of the
present rule of Massachusets & Connecticut we break the Union, will
the evil stop there? Suppose the N. England States alone cut off,
will our natures be changed? are we not men still to the south of
that, & with all the passions of men? Immediately we shall see a
Pennsylvania & a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy,
and the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit.
What a game, too, will the one party have in their hands by eternally
threatening the other that unless they do so & so, they will join
their Northern neighbors. If we reduce our Union to Virginia & N.
Carolina, immediately the conflict will be established between the
representatives of these two States, and they will end by breaking
into their simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of
men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet
existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town
meeting or a vestry, seeing that we must have somebody to quarrel
with, I had rather keep our New England associates for that purpose
than to see our bickerings transferred to others. They are
circumscribed within such narrow limits, & their population so full,
that their numbers will ever be the minority, and they are marked,
like the Jews, with such a peculiarity of character as to constitute
from that circumstance the natural division of our parties. A little
patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore
their government to it's true principles. It is true that in the
mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the
horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt. But who
can say what would be the evils of a scission, and when & where they
would end? Better keep together as we are, hawl off from Europe as
soon as we can, & from all attachments to any portions of it. And if
we feel their power just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be
the happiest situation in which we can exist. If the game runs
sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, &
then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the _principles_ we
have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake. Better
luck, therefore, to us all; and health, happiness, & friendly
salutations to yourself. Adieu.
P. S. It is hardly necessary to caution you to let nothing of
mine get before the public. A single sentence, got hold of by the
Porcupines, will suffice to abuse & persecute me in their papers for
months.
WILD HORSES
_To Philip Nolan_
_Philadelphia, June 24, 1798_
SIR, -- It is sometime since I have understood that there are
large herds of horses in a wild state, in the country west of the
Mississippi, and have been desirous of obtaining details of their
history in that State. Mr. Brown, Senator from Kentucky, informs me
it would be in your power to give interesting information on this
subject, and encourages me to ask it. The circumstances of the old
world have, beyond the records of history, been such as admitted not
that animal to exist in a state of nature. The condition of America
is rapidly advancing to the same. The present then is probably the
only moment in the age of the world, and the herds above mentioned
the only subjects, of which we can avail ourselves to obtain what has
never yet been recorded, and never can be again in all probability.
I will add that your information is the sole reliance, as far as I
can at present see, for obtaining this desideratum. You will render
to natural history a very acceptable service, therefore, if you will
enable our Philosophical society to add so interesting a chapter to
the history of this animal. I need not specify to you the particular
facts asked for; as your knowledge of the animal in his domesticated,
as well as his wild state, will naturally have led your attention to
those particulars in the manners, habits, and laws of his existence,
which are peculiar to his wild state. I wish you not to be anxious
about the form of your information, the exactness of the substance
alone is material; and if, after giving in a first letter all the
facts you at present possess, you would be so good, on subsequent
occasions, as to furnish such others in addition, as you may acquire
from time to time, your communications will always be thankfully
received, if addressed to me at Monticello; and put into any post
office in Kentucky or Tennessee, they will reach me speedily and
safely, and will be considered as obligations on, sir, your most
obedient, humble servant.
SUFFERANCE OF CALUMNY
_To Samuel Smith_
_Monticello, Aug. 22, 1798_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of Aug 4 came to hand by our last post,
together with the "extract of a letter from a gentleman of
Philadelphia, dated July 10," cut from a newspaper stating some facts
which respect me. I shall notice these facts. The writer says that
"the day after the last despatches were communicated to Congress,
Bache, Leib, &c., and a Dr. Reynolds were _closeted_ with me." If the
receipt of visits in my public room, the door continuing free to
every one who should call at the same time, may be called
_closeting_, then it is true that I was _closeted_ with every person
who visited me; in no other sense is it true as to any person. I
sometimes received visits from Mr. Bache & Dr. Leib. I received them
always with pleasure, because they are men of abilities, and of
principles the most friendly to liberty & our present form of
government. Mr. Bache has another claim on my respect, as being the
grandson of Dr. Franklin, the greatest man & ornament of the age and
country in which he lived. Whether I was visited by Mr. Bache or Dr.
Leib the day after the communication referred to, I do not remember.
I know that all my motions at Philadelphia, here, and everywhere, are
watched & recorded. Some of these spies, therefore, may remember
better than I do, the dates of these visits. If they say these two
gentlemen visited me on the day after the communications, as their
trade proves their accuracy, I shall not contradict them, tho' I
affirm that I do not recollect it. However, as to Dr. Reynolds I can
be more particular, because I never saw him but once, which was on an
introductory visit he was so kind as to pay me. This, I well
remember, was before the communication alluded to, & that during the
short conversation I had with him, not one word was said on the
subject of any of the communications. Not that I should not have
spoken freely on their subject to Dr. Reynolds, as I should also have
done to the letter writer, or to any other person who should have
introduced the subject. I know my own principles to be pure, &
therefore am not ashamed of them. On the contrary, I wish them
known, & therefore willingly express them to every one. They are the
same I have acted on from the year 1775 to this day, and are the
same, I am sure, with those of the great body of the American people.
I only wish the real principles of those who censure mine were also
known. But warring against those of the people, the delusion of the
people is necessary to the dominant party. I see the extent to which
that delusion has been already carried, and I see there is no length
to which it may not be pushed by a party in possession of the
revenues & the legal authorities of the U S, for a short time indeed,
but yet long enough to admit much particular mischief. There is no
event, therefore, however atrocious, which may not be expected. I
have contemplated every event which the Maratists of the day can
perpetrate, and am prepared to meet every one in such a way, as shall
not be derogatory either to the public liberty or my own personal
honor. The letter writer says, I am "for peace; but it is only with
France." He has told half the truth. He would have told the whole,
if he had added England. I am for peace with both countries. I know
that both of them have given, & are daily giving, sufficient cause of
war; that in defiance of the laws of nations, they are every day
trampling on the rights of all the neutral powers, whenever they can
thereby do the least injury, either to the other. But, as I view a
peace between France & England the ensuing winter to be certain, I
have thought it would have been better for us to continue to bear
from France through the present summer, what we have been bearing
both from her & England these four years, and still continue to bear
from England, and to have required indemnification in the hour of
peace, when I verily believe it would have been yielded by both.
This seems to be the plan of the other neutral nations; and whether
this, or the commencing war on one of them, as we have done, would
have been wisest, time & events must decide. But I am quite at a
loss on what ground the letter writer can question the opinion, that
France had no intention of making war on us, & was willing to treat
with Mr. Gerry, when we have this from Taleyrand's letter, and from
the written and verbal information of our envoys. It is true then,
that, as with England, we might of right have chosen either peace or
war, & have chosen peace, and prudently in my opinion, so with
France, we might also of right have chosen either peace or war, & we
have chosen war. Whether the choice may be a popular one in the
other States, I know not. Here it certainly is not; & I have no
doubt the whole American people will rally ere long to the same
sentiment, & rejudge those who, at present, think they have all
judgment in their own hands.
These observations will show you, how far the imputations in
the paragraph sent me approach the truth. Yet they are not intended
for a newspaper. At a very early period of my life, I determined
never to put a sentence into any newspaper. I have religiously
adhered to the resolution through my life, and have great reason to
be contented with it. Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of
the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time, & that of 20.
aids could effect. For while I should be answering one, twenty new
ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust to the
justice of my countrymen, that they would judge me by what they _see_
of my conduct on the stage where they have placed me, & what they
know of me _before_ the epoch since which a particular party has
supposed it might answer some view of theirs to vilify me in the
public eye. Some, I know, will not reflect how apocryphal is the
testimony of enemies so palpably betraying the views with which they
give it. But this is an injury to which duty requires every one to
submit whom the public think proper to call inn to it's councils. I
thank you, my dear Sir, for the interest you have taken for me on
this occasion. Though I have made up my mind not to suffer calumny
to disturb my tranquillity, yet I retain all my sensibilities for the
approbation of the good & just. That is, indeed, the chief
consolations for the hatred of so many, who, without the least
personal knowledge, & on the sacred evidence of Porcupine & Fenno
alone, cover me with their implacable hatred. The only return I will
ever make them, will be to do them all the good I can, in spite of
their teeth.
I have the pleasure to inform you that all your friends in this
quarter are well, and to assure you of the sentiments of sincere
esteem & respect with which I am, dear Sir, your friend and servant.
A PROFESSION OF POLITICAL FAITH
_To Elbridge Gerry_
_Philadelphia, Jan. 26, 1799_
MY DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of Nov. 12 was safely delivered to
me by mr. Binney, but not till Dec. 28, as I arrived here only three
days before that date. It was received with great satisfaction. Our
very long intimacy as fellow-laborers in the same cause, the recent
expressions of mutual confidence which had preceded your mission, the
interesting course which that had taken, & particularly & personally
as it regarded yourself, made me anxious to hear from you on your
return. I was the more so too, as I had myself during the whole of
your absence, as well as since your return, been a constant butt for
every shaft of calumny which malice & falsehood could form, & the
presses, public speakers, or private letters disseminate. One of
these, too, was of a nature to touch yourself; as if, wanting
confidence in your efforts, I had been capable of usurping powers
committed to you, & authorizing negociations private & collateral to
yours. The real truth is, that though Dr Logan, the pretended
missionary, about 4. or 5. days before he sailed for Hamburgh, told
me he was going there, & thence to Paris, & asked & received from me
a certificate of his citizenship, character, & circumstances of life,
merely as a protection, should he be molested on his journey, in the
present turbulent & suspicious state of Europe, yet I had been led to
consider his object as relative to his private affairs; and tho',
from an intimacy of some standing, he knew well my wishes for peace
and my political sentiments in general, he nevertheless received then
no particular declaration of them, no authority to communicate them
to any mortal, nor to speak to any one in my name, or in anybody's
name, on that, or on any other subject whatever; nor did I write by
him a scrip of a pen to any person whatever. This he has himself
honestly & publicly declared since his return; & from his well-known
character & every other circumstance, every candid man must perceive
that his enterprise was dictated by his own enthusiasm, without
consultation or communication with any one; that he acted in Paris on
his own ground, & made his own way. Yet to give some color to his
proceedings, which might implicate the republicans in general, &
myself particularly, they have not been ashamed to bring forward a
suppositious paper, drawn by one of their own party in the name of
Logan, and falsely pretended to have been presented by him to the
government of France; counting that the bare mention of my name
therein, would connect that in the eye of the public with this
transaction. In confutation of these and all future calumnies, by
way of anticipation, I shall make to you a profession of my political
faith; in confidence that you will consider every future imputation
on me of a contrary complexion, as bearing on its front the mark of
falsehood & calumny.
I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preservation
of our present federal constitution, according to the true sense in
which it was adopted by the States, that in which it was advocated by
it's friends, & not that which it's enemies apprehended, who
therefore became it's enemies; and I am opposed to the monarchising
it's features by the forms of it's administration, with a view to
conciliate a first transition to a President & Senate for life, &
from that to a hereditary tenure of these offices, & thus to worm out
the elective principle. I am for preserving to the States the powers
not yielded by them to the Union, & to the legislature of the Union
it's constitutional share in the division of powers; and I am not for
transferring all the powers of the States to the general government,
& all those of that government to the Executive branch. I am for a
government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible
savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt;
and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make
partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the
principle of it's being a public blessing. I am for relying, for
internal defence, on our militia solely, till actual invasion, and
for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors
from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing
army in time of peace, which may overawe the public sentiment; nor
for a navy, which, by it's own expenses and the eternal wars in which
it will implicate us, will grind us with public burthens, & sink us
under them. I am for free commerce with all nations; political
connection with none; & little or no diplomatic establishment. And I
am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of
Europe; entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance,
or joining in the confederacy of kings to war against the principles
of liberty. I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to
bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another: for freedom
of the press, & against all violations of the constitution to silence
by force & not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or
unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. And I
am for encouraging the progress of science in all it's branches; and
not for raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy;
for awing the human mind by stories of raw-head & bloody bones to a
distrust of its own vision, & to repose implicitly on that of others;
to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement; to
believe that government, religion, morality, & every other science
were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest ignorance, and
that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than what was
established by our forefathers. To these I will add, that I was a
sincere well-wisher to the success of the French revolution, and
still wish it may end in the establishment of a free & well-ordered
republic; but I have not been insensible under the atrocious
depredations they have committed on our commerce. The first object
of my heart is my own country. In that is embarked my family, my
fortune, & my own existence. I have not one farthing of interest,
nor one fibre of attachment out of it, nor a single motive of
preference of any one nation to another, but in proportion as they
are more or less friendly to us. But though deeply feeling the
injuries of France, I did not think war the surest means of
redressing them. I did believe, that a mission sincerely disposed to
preserve peace, would obtain for us a peaceable & honorable
settlement & retribution; and I appeal to you to say, whether this
might not have been obtained, if either of your colleagues had been
of the same sentiment with yourself.
These, my friend, are my principles; they are unquestionably
the principles of the great body of our fellow citizens, and I know
there is not one of them which is not yours also. In truth, we never
differed but on one ground, the funding system; and as, from the
moment of it's being adopted by the constituted authorities, I became
religiously principled in the sacred discharge of it to the uttermost
farthing, we are united now even on that single ground of difference.
I turn now to your inquiries. The enclosed paper will answer
one of them. But you also ask for such political information as may
be possessed by me, & interesting to yourself in regard to your
embassy. As a proof of my entire confidence in you, I shall give it
fully & candidly. When Pinckney, Marshall, and Dana, were nominated
to settle our differences with France, it was suspected by many, from
what was understood of their dispositions, that their mission would
not result in a settlement of differences, but would produce
circumstances tending to widen the breach, and to provoke our
citizens to consent to a war with that nation, & union with England.
Dana's resignation & your appointment gave the first gleam of hope of
a peaceable issue to the mission. For it was believed that you were
sincerely disposed to accommodation; & it was not long after your
arrival there, before symptoms were observed of that difference of
views which had been suspected to exist. In the meantime, however,
the aspect of our government towards the French republic had become
so ardent, that the people of America generally took the alarm. To
the southward, their apprehensions were early excited. In the
Eastern States also, they at length began to break out. Meetings
were held in many of your towns, & addresses to the government agreed
on in opposition to war. The example was spreading like a wildfire.
Other meetings were called in other places, & a general concurrence
of sentiment against the apparent inclinations of the government was
imminent; when, most critically for the government, the despatches of
Octr 22, prepared by your colleague Marshall, with a view to their
being made public, dropped into their laps. It was truly a God-send
to them, & they made the most of it. Many thousands of copies were
printed & dispersed gratis, at the public expence; & the zealots for
war co-operated so heartily, that there were instances of single
individuals who printed & dispersed 10. or 12,000 copies at their own
expence. The odiousness of the corruption supposed in those papers
excited a general & high indignation among the people. Unexperienced
in such maneuvres, they did not permit themselves even to suspect
that the turpitude of private swindlers might mingle itself
unobserved, & give it's own hue to the communications of the French
government, of whose participation there was neither proof nor
probability. It served, however, for a time, the purpose intended.
The people, in many places, gave a loose to the expressions of their
warm indignation, & of their honest preference of war to dishonor.
The fever was long & successfully kept up, and in the meantime, war
measures as ardently crowded. Still, however, as it was known that
your colleagues were coming away, and yourself to stay, though
disclaiming a separate power to conclude a treaty, it was hoped by
the lovers of peace, that a project of treaty would have been
prepared, ad referendum, on principles which would have satisfied our
citizens, & overawed any bias of the government towards a different
policy. But the expedition of the Sophia, and, as was supposed, the
suggestions of the person charged with your despatches, & his
probable misrepresentations of the real wishes of the American
people, prevented these hopes. They had then only to look forward to
your return for such information, either through the Executive, or
from yourself, as might present to our view the other side of the
medal. The despatches of Oct 22, 97, had presented one face. That
information, to a certain degree, is now received, & the public will
see from your correspondence with Taleyrand, that France, as you
testify, "was sincere and anxious to obtain a reconciliation, not
wishing us to break the British treaty, but only to give her
equivalent stipulations; and in general was disposed to a liberal
treaty." And they will judge whether mr. Pickering's report shews an
inflexible determination to believe no declarations the French
government can make, nor any opinion which you, judging on the spot &
from actual view, can give of their sincerity, and to meet their
designs of peace with operations of war. The alien & sedition acts
have already operated in the South as powerful sedatives of the X. Y.
Z. inflammation. In your quarter, where violations of principle are
either less regarded or more concealed, the direct tax is likely to
have the same effect, & to excite inquiries into the object of the
enormous expences & taxes we are bringing on. And your information
supervening, that we might have a liberal accommodation if we would,
there can be little doubt of the reproduction of that general
movement, by the despatches of Oct. 22. And tho' small checks &
stops, like Logan's pretended embassy, may be thrown in the way from
time to time, & may a little retard it's motion, yet the tide is
already turned, and will sweep before it all the feeble obstacles of
art. The unquestionable republicanism of the American mind will
break through the mist under which it has been clouded, and will
oblige it's agents to reform the principles & practices of their
administration.
You suppose that you have been abused by both parties. As far
as has come to my knowledge, you are misinformed. I have never seen
or heard a sentence of blame uttered against you by the republicans;
unless we were so to construe their wishes that you had more boldly
co-operated in a project of a treaty, and would more explicitly
state, whether there was in your colleages that flexibility, which
persons earnest after peace would have practised? Whether, on the
contrary, their demeanor was not cold, reserved, and distant, at
least, if not backward? And whether, if they had yielded to those
informal conferences which Taleyrand seems to have courted, the
liberal accommodation you suppose might not have been effected, even
with their agency? Your fellow-citizens think they have a right to
full information, in a case of such great concern to them. It is
their sweat which is to earn all the expences of the war, and their
blood which is to flow in expiation of the causes of it. It may be
in your power to save them from these miseries by full communications
and unrestrained details, postponing motives of delicacy to those of
duty. It rests for you to come forward independently; to take your
stand on the high ground of your own character; to disregard calumny,
and to be borne above it on the shoulders of your grateful fellow
citizens; or to sink into the humble oblivion, to which the
Federalists (self-called) have secretly condemned you; and even to be
happy if they will indulge you with oblivion, while they have beamed
on your colleagues meridian splendor. Pardon me, my dear Sir, if my
expressions are strong. My feelings are so much more so, that it is
with difficulty I reduce them even to the tone I use. If you doubt
the dispositions towards you, look into the papers, on both sides,
for the toasts which were given throughout the States on the 4th of
July. You will there see whose hearts were with you, and whose were
ulcerated against you. Indeed, as soon as it was known that you had
consented to stay in Paris, there was no measure observed in the
execrations of the war party. They openly wished you might be
guillotined, or sent to Cayenne, or anything else. And these
expressions were finally stifled from a principle of policy only, &
to prevent you from being urged to a justification of yourself. From
this principle alone proceed the silence and cold respect they
observe towards you. Still, they cannot prevent at times the flames
bursting from under the embers, as mr. Pickering's letters, report, &
conversations testify, as well as the indecent expressions respecting
you, indulged by some of them in the debate on these despatches.
These sufficiently show that you are never more to be honored or
trusted by them, and that they await to crush you for ever, only till
they can do it without danger to themselves.
When I sat down to answer your letter, but two courses
presented themselves, either to say nothing or everything; for half
confidences are not in my character. I could not hesitate which was
due to you. I have unbosomed myself fully; & it will certainly be
highly gratifying if I receive like confidence from you. For even if
we differ in principle more than I believe we do, you & I know too
well the texture of the human mind, & the slipperiness of human
reason, to consider differences of opinion otherwise than differences
of form or feature. Integrity of views more than their soundness, is
the basis of esteem. I shall follow your direction in conveying this
by a private hand; tho' I know not as yet when one worthy of
confidence will occur. And my trust in you leaves me without a fear
that this letter, meant as a confidential communication of my
impressions, will ever go out of your hand, or be suffered in anywise
to commit my name. Indeed, besides the accidents which might happen
to it even under your care, considering the accident of death to
which you are liable, I think it safest to pray you, after reading it
as often as you please, to destroy at least the 2d & 3d leaves. The
1st contains principles only, which I fear not to avow; but the 2d &
3d contain facts stated for your information, and which, though
sacredly conformable to my firm belief, yet would be galling to some,
& expose me to illiberal attacks. I therefore repeat my prayer to
burn the 2d & 3d leaves. And did we ever expect to see the day,
when, breathing nothing but sentiments of love to our country & it's
freedom & happiness, our correspondence must be as secret as if we
were hatching it's destruction! Adieu, my friend, and accept my
sincere & affectionate salutations. I need not add my signature.
"THE SPIRIT OF 1776"
_To Thomas Lomax_
_Monticello, Mar. 12, 1799_
DEAR SIR, -- Your welcome favor of last month came to my hands
in Philadelphia. So long a time has elapsed since we have been
separated by events, that it was like a letter from the dead, and
recalled to my memory very dear recollections. My subsequent journey
through life has offered nothing which, in comparison with those, is
not cheerless & dreary. It is a rich comfort sometimes to look back
on them.
I take the liberty of enclosing a letter to mr. Baylor, open,
because I solicit your perusal of it. It will, at the same time,
furnish the apology for my not answering you from Philadelphia. You
ask for any communication I may be able to make, which may administer
comfort to you. I can give that which is solid. The spirit of 1776
is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American
people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have
been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the
dupes of artful man;oeuvres, & made for a moment to be willing
instruments in forging chains for themselves. But time & truth have
dissipated the delusion, & opened their eyes. They see now that
France has sincerely wished peace, & their seducers have wished war,
as well for the loaves & fishes which arise out of war expences, as
for the chance of changing the constitution, while the people should
have time to contemplate nothing but the levies of men and money.
Pennsylvania, Jersey & N York are coming majestically round to the
true principles. In Pensylva, 13. out of 22. counties had already
petitioned on the alien & sedition laws. Jersey & N Y had begun the
same movement, and tho' the rising of Congress stops that channel for
the expression of their sentiment, the sentiment is going on rapidly,
& before their next meeting those three States will be solidly
embodied in sentiment with the six Southern & Western ones. The
atrocious proceedings of France towards this country, had well nigh
destroyed its liberties. The Anglomen and monocrats had so artfully
confounded the cause of France with that of freedom, that both went
down in the same scale. I sincerely join you in abjuring all
political connection with every foreign power; and tho I cordially
wish well to the progress of liberty in all nations, and would
forever give it the weight of our countenance, yet they are not to be
touched without contamination from their other bad principles.
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Accept assurances of the constant & unaltered affection of,
dear Sir, your sincere friend and servant.
FREEDOM OF MIND
_To William Green Munford_
_Monticello, June 18, 1799_
DEAR SIR -- I have to acknolege the reciept of your favor of
May 14 in which you mention that you have finished the 6. first books
of Euclid, plane trigonometry, surveying & algebra and ask whether I
think a further pursuit of that branch of science would be useful to
you. There are some propositions in the latter books of Euclid, &
some of Archimedes, which are useful, & I have no doubt you have been
made acquainted with them. Trigonometry, so far as this, is most
valuable to every man. There is scarcely a day in which he will not
resort to it for some of the purposes of common life. The science of
calculation also is indispensible as far as the extraction of the
square & cube roots; algebra as far as the quadratic equation & the
use of logarithms are often of value in ordinary cases: but all
beyond these is but a luxury; a delicious luxury indeed; but not to
be indulged in by one who is to have a profession to follow for his
subsistence. In this light I view the conic sections, curves of the
higher orders, perhaps even spherical trigonometry, algebraical
operations beyond the 2d dimension, and fluxions. There are other
branches of science however worth the attention of every man.
Astronomy, botany, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural history,
anatomy. Not indeed to be a proficient in them; but to possess their
general principles & outlines, so as that we may be able to amuse and
inform ourselves further in any of them as we proceed through life &
have occasion for them. Some knowledge of them is necessary for our
character as well as comfort. The general elements of astronomy & of
natural philosophy are best acquired at an academy where we can have
the benefit of the instruments & apparatus usually provided there:
but the others may well be acquired from books alone as far as our
purposes require. I have indulged myself in these observations to
you, because the evidence cannot be unuseful to you of a person who
has often had occasion to consider which of his acquisitions in
science have been really useful to him in life, and which of them
have been merely a matter of luxury.
I am among those who think well of the human character
generally. I consider man as formed for society, and endowed by
nature with those dispositions which fit him for society. I believe
also, with Condorcet, as mentioned in your letter, that his mind is
perfectible to a degree of which we cannot as yet form any
conception. It is impossible for a man who takes a survey of what is
already known, not to see what an immensity in every branch of
science yet remains to be discovered, & that too of articles to which
our faculties seem adequate. In geometry & calculation we know a
great deal. Yet there are some desiderata. In anatomy great
progress has been made; but much is still to be acquired. In natural
history we possess knowlege; but we want a great deal. In chemistry
we are not yet sure of the first elements. Our natural philosophy is
in a very infantine state; perhaps for great advances in it, a
further progress in chemistry is necessary. Surgery is well
advanced; but prodigiously short of what may be. The state of
medecine is worse than that of total ignorance. Could we divest
ourselves of every thing we suppose we know in it, we should start
from a higher ground & with fairer prospects. From Hippocrates to
Brown we have had nothing but a succession of hypothetical systems
each having it's day of vogue, like the fashions & fancies of caps &
gowns, & yielding in turn to the next caprice. Yet the human frame,
which is to be the subject of suffering & torture under these learned
modes, does not change. We have a few medecines, as the bark, opium,
mercury, which in a few well defined diseases are of unquestionable
virtue: but the residuary list of the materia medica, long as it is,
contains but the charlataneries of the art; and of the diseases of
doubtful form, physicians have ever had a false knowlege, worse than
ignorance. Yet surely the list of unequivocal diseases & remedies is
capable of enlargement; and it is still more certain that in the
other branches of science, great fields are yet to be explored to
which our faculties are equal, & that to an extent of which we cannot
fix the limits. I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the
idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances. This is
precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are
inculcating, & their friends here re-echoing; & applying especially
to religion & politics; `that it is not probable that any thing
better will be discovered than what was known to our fathers.' We are
to look backwards then & not forwards for the improvement of science,
& to find it amidst feudal barbarisms and the fires of Spital-fields.
But thank heaven the American mind is already too much opened, to
listen to these impostures; and while the art of printing is left to
us, science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real
knowlege can never be lost. To preserve the freedom of the human
mind then & freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to
devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, &
speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
The generation which is going off the stage has deserved well of
mankind for the struggles it has made, & for having arrested that
course of despotism which had overwhelmed the world for thousands &
thousands of years. If there seems to be danger that the ground they
have gained will be lost again, that danger comes from the generation
your cotemporary. But that the enthusiasm which characterises youth
should lift its parricide hands against freedom & science, would be
such a monstrous phaenomenon as I cannot place among possible things
in this age & this country. Your college at least has shewn itself
incapable of it; and if the youth of any other place have seemed to
rally under other banners it has been from delusions which they will
soon dissipate. I shall be happy to hear from you from time to time,
& of your progress in study, and to be useful to you in whatever is
in my power; being with sincere esteem Dear Sir your friend & servt
COMMON LAW AND THE WILL OF THE NATION
_To Edmund Randolph_
_Monticello, Aug. 18, 1799_
DEAR SIR, -- I received only two days ago your favor of the
12th, and as it was on the eve of the return of our post, it was not
possible to make so prompt a despatch of the answer. Of all the
doctrines which have ever been broached by the federal government,
the novel one, of the common law being in force & cognizable as an
existing law in their courts, is to me the most formidable. All
their other assumptions of un-given powers have been in the detail.
The bank law, the treaty doctrine, the sedition act, alien act, the
undertaking to change the state laws of evidence in the state courts
by certain parts of the stamp act, &c., &c., have been solitary,
unconsequential, timid things, in comparison with the audacious,
barefaced and sweeping pretension to a system of law for theU S,
without the adoption of their legislature, and so infinitively beyond
their power to adopt. If this assumption be yielded to, the state
courts may be shut up, as there will then be nothing to hinder
citizens of the same state suing each other in the federal courts in
every case, as on a bond for instance, because the common law obliges
payment of it, & the common law they say is their law. I am happy
you have taken up the subject; & I have carefully perused &
considered the notes you enclosed, and find but a single paragraph
which I do not approve. It is that wherein (page 2.) you say, that
laws being emanations from the legislative department, &, when once
enacted, continuing in force from a presumption that their will so
continues, that that presumption fails & the laws of course fall, on
the destruction of that legislative department. I do not think this
is the true bottom on which laws & the administering them rest. The
whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary and
executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise
these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce
them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to
judge & to execute it. It is the will of the nation which makes the
law obligatory; it is their will which creates or annihilates the
organ which is to declare & announce it. They may do it by a single
person, as an Emperor of Russia, (constituting his declarations
evidence of their will,) or by a few persons, as the Aristocracy of
Venice, or by a complication of councils, as in our former regal
government, or our present republican one. The law being law because
it is the will of the nation, is not changed by their changing the
organ through which they chuse to announce their future will; no more
than the acts I have done by one attorney lose their obligation by my
changing or discontinuing that attorney. This doctrine has been, in
a certain degree sanctioned by the federal executive. For it is
precisely that on which the continuance of obligation from our treaty
with France was established, and the doctrine was particularly
developed in a letter to Gouverneur Morris, written with the
approbation of President Washington and his cabinet. Mercer once
prevailed on the Virginia Assembly to declare a different doctrine in
some resolutions. These met universal disapprobation in this, as
well as the other States, and if I mistake not, a subsequent Assembly
did something to do away the authority of their former unguarded
resolutions. In this case, as in all others, the true principle will
be quite as effectual to establish the just deductions, for before
the revolution, the nation of Virginia had, by the organs they then
thought proper to constitute, established a system of laws, which
they divided into three denominations of 1, common law; 2, statute
law; 3, Chancery: or if you please, into two only, of 1, common law;
2, Chancery. When, by the declaration of Independence, they chose to
abolish their former organs of declaring their will, the acts of will
already formally & constitutionally declared, remained untouched.
For the nation was not dissolved, was not annihilated; it's will,
therefore, remained in full vigor; and on the establishing the new
organs, first of a convention, & afterwards a more complicated
legislature, the old acts of national will continued in force, until
the nation should, by its new organs, declare it's will changed. The
common law, therefore, which was not in force when we landed here,
nor till we had formed ourselves into a nation, and had manifested by
the organs we constituted that the common law was to be our law,
continued to be our law, because the nation continued in being, &
because though it changed the organs for the future declarations of
its will, yet it did not change its former declarations that the
common law was it's law. Apply these principles to the present case.
Before the revolution there existed no such nation as the U S; they
then first associated as a nation, but for special purposes only.
They had all their laws to make, as Virginia had on her first
establishment as a nation. But they did not, as Virginia had done,
proceed to adopt a whole system of laws ready made to their hand. As
their association as a nation was only for special purposes, to wit,
for the management of their concerns with one another & with foreign
nations, and the states composing the association chose to give it
powers for those purposes & no others, they could not adopt any
general system, because it would have embraced objects on which this
association had no right to form or declare a will. It was not the
organ for declaring a national will in these cases. In the cases
confided to them, they were free to declare the will of the nation,
the law; but till it was declared there could be no law. So that the
common law did not become, ipso facto, law on the new association; it
could only become so by a positive adoption, & so far only as they
were authorized to adopt.
I think it will be of great importance, when you come to the
proper part, to portray at full length the consequences of this new
doctrine, that the common law is the law of theU S, & that their
courts have, of course, jurisdiction co-extensive with that law, that
is to say, general over all cases & persons. But, great heavens!
Who could have conceived in 1789 that within ten years we should have
to combat such windmills. Adieu. Yours affectionately.
IDEAS FOR A UNIVERSITY
_To Dr. Joseph Priestley_
_Philadelphia, Jan. 18, 1800_
DEAR SIR, -- I have to thank you for the pamphlets you were so
kind as to send me. You will know what I thought of them by my
having before sent a dozen sets to Virginia to distribute among my
friends. Yet I thank you not the less for these, which I value the
more as they came from yourself. The stock of them which Campbell
had was, I believe, exhausted the first or second day of advertising
them. The Papers of political arithmetic, both in your & Mr.
Cooper's pamphlets, are the most precious gifts that can be made to
us; for we are running navigation mad, & commerce mad, & navy mad,
which is worst of all. How desirable is it that you could pursue
that subject for us. From the Porcupines of our country you will
receive no thanks; but the great mass of our nation will edify &
thank you. How deeply have I been chagrined & mortified at the
persecutions which fanaticism & monarchy have excited against you,
even here! At first I believed it was merely a continuance of the
English persecution. But I observe that on the demise of Porcupine &
division of his inheritance between Fenno & Brown, the latter (tho'
succeeding only to the _federal_ portion of Porcupinism, not the
_Anglican_, which is Fenno's part) serves up for the palate of his
sect, dishes of abuse against you as high seasoned as Porcupine's
were. You have sinned against church & king, & can therefore never
be forgiven. How sincerely have I regretted that your friend, before
he fixed his choice of a position, did not visit the vallies on each
side of the blue ridge in Virginia, as Mr. Madison & myself so much
wished. You would have found there equal soil, the finest climate &
most healthy one on the earth, the homage of universal reverence &
love, & the power of the country spread over you as a shield. But
since you would not make it your country by adoption, you must now do
it by your good offices. I have one to propose to you which will
produce their good, & gratitude to you for ages, and in the way to
which you have devoted a long life, that of spreading light among
men.
We have in that state a college (Wm. & Mary) just well enough
endowed to draw out the miserable existence to which a miserable
constitution has doomed it. It is moreover eccentric in it's
position, exposed to bilious diseases as all the lower country is, &
therefore abandoned by the public care, as that part of the country
itself is in a considerable degree by it's inhabitants. We wish to
establish in the upper & healthier country, & more centrally for the
state, an University on a plan so broad & liberal & _modern_, as to
be worth patronizing with the public support, and be a temptation to
the youth of other states to come and drink of the cup of knowledge &
fraternize with us. The first step is to obtain a good plan; that
is, a judicious selection of the sciences, & a practicable grouping
of some of them together, & ramifying of others, so as to adapt the
professorships to our uses & our means. In an institution meant
chiefly for use, some branches of science, formerly esteemed, may be
now omitted; so may others now valued in Europe, but useless to us
for ages to come. As an example of the former, the oriental
learning, and of the latter, almost the whole of the institution
proposed to Congress by the Secretary of war's report of the 5th
inst. Now there is no one to whom this subject is so familiar as
yourself. There is no one in the world who, equally with yourself,
unites this full possession of the subject with such a knowledge of
the state of our existence, as enables you to fit the garment to him
who is to _pay_ for it & to _wear_ it. To you therefore we address
our solicitations, and to lessen to you as much as possible the
ambiguities of our object, I will venture even to sketch the sciences
which seem useful & practicable for us, as they occur to me while
holding my pen. Botany, Chemistry, Zoology, Anatomy, Surgery,
Medicine, Natl Philosophy, Agriculture, Mathematics, Astronomy,
Geology, Geography, Politics, Commerce, History, Ethics, Law, Arts,
Finearts. This list is imperfect because I make it hastily, and
because I am unequal to the subject. It is evident that some of
these articles are too much for one professor & must therefore be
ramified; others may be ascribed in groups to a single professor.
This is the difficult part of the work, & requires a head perfectly
knowing the extent of each branch, & the limits within which it may
be circumscribed, so as to bring the whole within the powers of the
fewest professors possible, & consequently within the degree of
expence practicable for us. We should propose that the professors
follow no other calling, so that their whole time may be given to
their academical functions; and we should propose to draw from Europe
the first characters in science, by considerable temptations, which
would not need to be repeated after the first set should have
prepared fit successors & given reputation to the institution. From
some splendid characters I have received offers most perfectly
reasonable & practicable.
I do not propose to give you all this trouble merely of my own
head, that would be arrogance. It has been the subject of
consultation among the ablest and highest characters of our State,
who only wait for a plan to make a joint & I hope successful effort
to get the thing carried into effect. They will receive your ideas
with the greatest deference & thankfulness. We shall be here
certainly for two months to come; but should you not have leisure to
think of it before Congress adjourns, it will come safely to me
afterwards by post, the nearest post office being Milton.
Will not the arrival of Dupont tempt you to make a visit to
this quarter? I have no doubt the alarmists are already whetting
their shafts for him also, but their glass is nearly run out, and the
day I believe is approaching when we shall be as free to pursue what
is true wisdom as the effects of their follies will permit; for some
of them we shall be forced to wade through because we are emerged in
them.
Wishing you that pure happiness which your pursuits and
circumstances offer, and which I am sure you are too wise to suffer a
diminution of by the pigmy assaults made on you, and with every
sentiment of affectionate esteem & respect, I am, dear Sir, your most
humble, and most obedient servant.
"A SUBLIME LUXURY"
_To Dr. Joseph Priestley_
_Philadelphia, Jan. 27, 1800_
DEAR SIR, -- In my letter of the 18th, I omitted to say any
thing of the languages as part of our proposed university. It was
not that I think, as some do, that they are useless. I am of a very
different opinion. I do not think them essential to the obtaining
eminent degrees of science; but I think them very useful towards it.
I suppose there is a portion of life during which our faculties are
ripe enough for this, & for nothing more useful. I think the Greeks
& Romans have left us the present models which exist of fine
composition, whether we examine them as works of reason, or of style
& fancy; and to them we probably owe these characteristics of modern
composition. I know of no composition of any other antient people,
which merits the least regard as a model for it's matter or style.
To all this I add, that to read the Latin & Greek authors in their
original, is a sublime luxury; and I deem luxury in science to be at
least as justifiable as in architecture, painting, gardening, or the
other arts. I enjoy Homer in his own language infinitely beyond
Pope's translation of him, & both beyond the dull narrative of the
same events by Dares Phrygius; & it is an innocent enjoyment. I
thank on my knees, him who directed my early education, for having
put into my possession this rich source of delight; and I would not
exchange it for anything which I could then have acquired, & have not
since acquired. With this regard for those languages, you will
acquit me of meaning to omit them. About 20. years ago, I drew a
bill for our legislature, which proposed to lay off every county into
hundreds or townships of 5. or 6. miles square, in the centre of each
of which was to be a free English school; the whole state was further
laid off into 10. districts, in each of which was to be a college for
teaching the languages, geography, surveying, and other useful things
of that grade; and then a single University for the sciences. It was
received with enthusiasm; but as I had proposed that Wm & Mary, under
an improved form, should be the University, & that was at that time
pretty highly Episcopal, the dissenters after a while began to
apprehend some secret design of a preference to that sect and nothing
could then be done. About 3. years ago they enacted that part of my
bill which related to English schools, except that instead of
obliging, they left it optional in the court of every county to carry
it into execution or not. I think it probable the part of the plan
for the middle grade of education, may also be brought forward in due
time. In the meanwhile, we are not without a sufficient number of
good country schools, where the languages, geography, & the first
elements of Mathematics, are taught. Having omitted this information
in my former letter, I thought it necessary now to supply it, that
you might know on what base your superstructure was to be reared. I
have a letter from M. Dupont, since his arrival at N. York, dated the
20th, in which he says he will be in Philadelphia within about a
fortnight from that time; but only on a visit. How much would it
delight me if a visit from you at the same time, were to shew us two
such illustrious foreigners embracing each other in my country, as
the asylum for whatever is great & good. Pardon, I pray you, the
temporary delirium which has been excited here, but which is fast
passing away. The Gothic idea that we are to look backwards instead
of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to
the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government,
in religion & in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion &
government, by whom it has been recommended, & whose purposes it
would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure;
and the moment of their showing it is fast ripening; and the signs of
it will be their respect for you, & growing detestation of those who
have dishonored our country by endeavors to disturb our tranquility
in it. No one has felt this with more sensibility than, my dear Sir,
your respectful & affectionate friend & servant.
THE 18TH BRUMAIRE
_To John Breckinridge_
_Philadelphia, Jan. 29, 1800_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 13th has been duly received, as
had been that containing the resolutions of your legislature on the
subject of the former resolutions. I was glad to see the subject
taken up, and done with so much temper, firmness and propriety. From
the reason of the thing I cannot but hope that the Western country
will be laid off into a separate Judiciary district. From what I
recollect of the dispositions on the same subject at the last
session, I should expect that the partiality to a general & uniform
system would yield to geographical & physical impracticabilities. I
was once a great advocate for introducing into chancery viva voce
testimony, & trial by jury. I am still so as to the latter, but have
retired from the former opinion on the information received from both
your state & ours, that it worked inconveniently. I introduced it
into the Virginia law, but did not return to the bar, so as to see
how it answered. But I do not understand how the viva voce
examination comes to be practiced in the Federal court with you, &
not in your own courts; the Federal courts being decided by law to
proceed & decide by the laws of the states.
A great revolution has taken place at Paris. The people of
that country having never been in the habit of self-government, are
not yet in the habit of acknoleging that fundamental law of nature,
by which alone self government can be exercised by a society, I mean
the _lex majoris partis_. Of the sacredness of this law, our
countrymen are impressed from their cradle, so that with them it is
almost innate. This single circumstance may possibly decide the fate
of the two nations. One party appears to have been prevalent in the
Directory & council of 500. the other in the council of antients.
Sieyes & Ducos, the minority in the Directory, not being able to
carry their points there seem to have gained over Buonaparte, &
associating themselves with the majority of the Council of antients,
have expelled (*) 120. odd members the most obnoxious of the minority
of the Elders, & of the majority of the council of 500. so as to give
themselves a majority in the latter council also. They have
established Buonaparte, Sieyes & Ducos into an executive, or rather
Dictatorial consulate, given them a committee of between 20. & 30.
from each council, & have adjourned to the 20th of Feb. Thus the
Constitution of the 3d year which was getting consistency & firmness
from time is demolished in an instant, and nothing is said about a
new one. How the nation will bear it is yet unknown. Had the
Consuls been put to death in the first tumult & before the nation had
time to take sides, the Directory & councils might have reestablished
themselves on the spot. But that not being done, perhaps it is now
to be wished that Buonaparte may be spared, as, according to his
protestations, he is for liberty, equality & representative
government, and he is more able to keep the nation together, & to
ride out the storm than any other. Perhaps it may end in their
establishing a single representative & that in his person. I hope it
will not be for life, for fear of the influence of the example on our
countrymen. It is very material for the latter to be made sensible
that their own character & situation are materially different from
the French; & that whatever may be the fate of republicanism there,
we are able to preserve it inviolate here: we are sensible of the
duty & expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the
majority and can wait with patience till they get right if they
happen to be at any time wrong. Our vessel is moored at such a
distance, that should theirs blow up, ours is still safe, if we will
but think so.
(*) 60. were expelled from the 500, so as to change the
majority there to the other side. It seems doubtful whether any were
expelled from the Antients. The majority there was already with the
Consular party.
I had recommended the enclosed letter to the care of the
postmaster at Louisville; but have been advised it is better to get a
friend to forward it by some of the boats. I will ask that favor of
you. It is the duplicate of one with the same address which I
inclosed last week to mr. Innes & should therefore go by a different
conveyance. I am with great esteem dear sir your friend & servant.
ILLUMINATISM
_To Bishop James Madison_
_Philadelphia, Jan. 31, 1800_
DEAR SIR, -- I have received your favor of the 17th, &
communicated it to Mr. Smith. I lately forwarded your letter from
Dr. Priestley, endorsed `with a book'; I struck those words through
with my pen, because no book had then come. It is now received, &
shall be forwarded to Richmond by the first opportunity: but such
opportunities are difficult to find; gentlemen going in the stage not
liking to take charge of a packet which is to be attended to every
time the stage is changed. The best chance will be by some captain
of a vessel going round to Richmond. I shall address it to the care
of Mr. George Jefferson there.
I have lately by accident got a sight of a single volume (the
3d.) of the Abbe Barruel's `Antisocial conspiracy,' which gives me
the first idea I have ever had of what is meant by the Illuminatism
against which `illuminate Morse' as he is now called, & his
ecclesiastical & monarchical associates have been making such a hue
and cry. Barruel's own parts of the book are perfectly the ravings
of a Bedlamite. But he quotes largely from Wishaupt whom he
considers as the founder of what he calls the order. As you may not
have had an opportunity of forming a judgment of this cry of `mad
dog' which has been raised against his doctrines, I will give you the
idea I have formed from only an hour's reading of Barruel's
quotations from him, which you may be sure are not the most
favorable. Wishaupt seems to be an enthusiastic Philanthropist. He
is among those (as you know the excellent Price and Priestley also
are) who believe in the indefinite perfectibility of man. He thinks
he may in time be rendered so perfect that he will be able to govern
himself in every circumstance so as to injure none, to do all the
good he can, to leave government no occasion to exercise their powers
over him, & of course to render political government useless. This
you know is Godwin's doctrine, and this is what Robinson, Barruel &
Morse had called a conspiracy against all government. Wishaupt
believes that to promote this perfection of the human character was
the object of Jesus Christ. That his intention was simply to
reinstate natural religion, & by diffusing the light of his morality,
to teach us to govern ourselves. His precepts are the love of god &
love of our neighbor. And by teaching innocence of conduct, he
expected to place men in their natural state of liberty & equality.
He says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our
grand master, Jesus of Nazareth. He believes the Free masons were
originally possessed of the true principles & objects of
Christianity, & have still preserved some of them by tradition, but
much disfigured. The means he proposes to effect this improvement of
human nature are `to enlighten men, to correct their morals & inspire
them with benevolence. Secure of our success, sais he, we abstain
from violent commotions. To have foreseen the happiness of posterity
& to have prepared it by irreproachable means, suffices for our
felicity. The tranquility of our consciences is not troubled by the
reproach of aiming at the ruin or overthrow of states or thrones.' As
Wishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot & priests, he knew that
caution was necessary even in spreading information, & the principles
of pure morality. He proposed therefore to lead the Free masons to
adopt this object & to make the objects of their institution the
diffusion of science & virtue. He proposed to initiate new members
into his body by gradations proportioned to his fears of the
thunderbolts of tyranny. This has given an air of mystery to his
views, was the foundation of his banishment, the subversion of the
masonic order, & is the colour for the ravings against him of
Robinson, Barruel & Morse, whose real fears are that the craft would
be endangered by the spreading of information, reason, & natural
morality among men. This subject being new to me, I have imagined
that if it be so to you also, you may receive the same satisfaction
in seeing, which I have had in forming the analysis of it: & I
believe you will think with me that if Wishaupt had written here,
where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavors to render men wise &
virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that
purpose. As Godwin, if he had written in Germany, might probably
also have thought secrecy & mysticism prudent. I will say nothing to
you on the late revolution of France, which is painfully interesting.
Perhaps when we know more of the circumstances which gave rise to it,
& the direction it will take, Buonaparte, its chief organ, may stand
in a better light than at present. I am with great esteem, dear sir,
your affectionate friend.
"A FEW PLAIN DUTIES"
_To Gideon Granger_
_Monticello, Aug. 13, 1800_
DEAR SIR, -- I received with great pleasure your favor of June
4, and am much comforted by the appearance of a change of opinion in
your state; for tho' we may obtain, & I believe shall obtain, a
majority in the legislature of the United States, attached to the
preservation of the Federal constitution according to it's obvious
principles, & those on which it was known to be received; attached
equally to the preservation to the states of those rights
unquestionably remaining with them; friends to the freedom of
religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury & to economical
government; opposed to standing armies, paper systems, war, & all
connection, other than commerce, with any foreign nation; in short, a
majority firm in all those principles which we have espoused and the
federalists have opposed uniformly; still, should the whole body of
New England continue in opposition to these principles of government,
either knowingly or through delusion, our government will be a very
uneasy one. It can never be harmonious & solid, while so respectable
a portion of it's citizens support principles which go directly to a
change of the federal constitution, to sink the state governments,
consolidate them into one, and to monarchize that. Our country is
too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government.
Public servants at such a distance, & from under the eye of their
constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to
administer & overlook all the details necessary for the good
government of the citizens, and the same circumstance, by rendering
detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public
agents to corruption, plunder & waste. And I do verily believe, that
if the principle were to prevail, of a common law being in force in
the U S, (which principle possesses the general government at once of
all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single
consolidated government,) it would become the most corrupt government
on the earth. You have seen the practises by which the public
servants have been able to cover their conduct, or, where that could
not be done, delusions by which they have varnished it for the eye of
their constituents. What an augmentation of the field for jobbing,
speculating, plundering, office-building & office-hunting would be
produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of
the general government. The true theory of our constitution is
surely the wisest & best, that the states are independent as to
everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting
foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign
concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all
other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage
the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and
our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization,
& a very unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few
servants. But I repeat, that this simple & economical mode of
government can never be secured, if the New England States continue
to support the contrary system. I rejoice, therefore, in every
appearance of their returning to those principles which I had always
imagined to be almost innate in them. In this State, a few persons
were deluded by the X. Y. Z. duperies. You saw the effect of it in
our last Congressional representatives, chosen under their influence.
This experiment on their credulity is now seen into, and our next
representation will be as republican as it has heretofore been. On
the whole, we hope, that by a part of the Union having held on to the
principles of the constitution, time has been given to the states to
recover from the temporary frenzy into which they had been decoyed,
to rally round the constitution, & to rescue it from the destruction
with which it had been threatened even at their own hands. I see
copied from the American Magazine two numbers of a paper signed Don
Quixotte, most excellently adapted to introduce the real truth to the
minds even of the most prejudiced.
I would, with great pleasure, have written the letter you
desired in behalf of your friend, but there are existing
circumstances which render a letter from me to that magistrate as
improper as it would be unavailing. I shall be happy, on some more
fortunate occasion, to prove to you my desire of serving your wishes.
I sometime ago received a letter from a Mr. M'Gregory of Derby,
in your State; it is written with such a degree of good sense &
appearance of candor, as entitles it to an answer. Yet the writer
being entirely unknown to me, and the stratagems of the times very
multifarious, I have thought it best to avail myself of your
friendship, & enclose the answer to you. You will see it's nature.
If you find from the character of the person to whom it is addressed,
that no improper use would probably be made of it, be so good as to
seal & send it. Otherwise suppress it.
How will the vote of your State and R I be as to A. and P.?
I am, with great and sincere esteem, dear Sir, your friend and
servant.
"I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD . . . "
_To Dr. Benjamin Rush_
_Monticello, Sep. 23, 1800_
DEAR SIR, -- I have to acknolege the receipt of your favor of
Aug. 22, and to congratulate you on the healthiness of your city.
Still Baltimore, Norfolk & Providence admonish us that we are not
clear of our new scourge. When great evils happen, I am in the habit
of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to
us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as
that most evils are the means of producing some good. The yellow
fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation, & I
view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the
liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts, but
the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the
others, with more health, virtue & freedom, would be my choice.
I agree with you entirely, in condemning the mania of giving
names to objects of any kind after persons still living. Death alone
can seal the title of any man to this honor, by putting it out of his
power to forfeit it. There is one other mode of recording merit,
which I have often thought might be introduced, so as to gratify the
living by praising the dead. In giving, for instance, a commission
of chief justice to Bushrod Washington, it should be in consideration
of his integrity, and science in the laws, and of the services
rendered to our country by his illustrious relation, &c. A
commission to a descendant of Dr. Franklin, besides being in
consideration of the proper qualifications of the person, should add
that of the great services rendered by his illustrious ancestor, Bn
Fr, by the advancement of science, by inventions useful to man, &c.
I am not sure that we ought to change all our names. And during the
regal government, sometimes, indeed, they were given through
adulation; but often also as the reward of the merit of the times,
sometimes for services rendered the colony. Perhaps, too, a name
when given, should be deemed a sacred property.
I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not
forgotten. On the contrary, it is because I have reflected on it,
that I find much more time necessary for it than I can at present
dispose of. I have a view of the subject which ought to displease
neither the rational Christian nor Deists, and would reconcile many
to a character they have too hastily rejected. I do not know that it
would reconcile the _genus irritabile vatum_ who are all in arms
against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be
softened. The delusion into which the X. Y. Z. plot shewed it
possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the
prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which,
while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom
of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of
obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro'
the U. S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one,
every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians
& Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country
threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of
power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes.
And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god,
eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their
opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets
against me, forging conversations for me with Mazzei, Bishop Madison,
&c., which are absolute falsehoods without a circumstance of truth to
rest on; falsehoods, too, of which I acquit Mazzei & Bishop Madison,
for they are men of truth.
But enough of this: it is more than I have before committed to
paper on the subject of all the lies that has been preached and
printed against me. I have not seen the work of Sonnoni which you
mention, but I have seen another work on Africa, (Parke's,) which I
fear will throw cold water on the hopes of the friends of freedom.
You will hear an account of an attempt at insurrection in this state.
I am looking with anxiety to see what will be it's effect on our
state. We are truly to be pitied. I fear we have little chance to
see you at the Federal city or in Virginia, and as little at
Philadelphia. It would be a great treat to receive you here. But
nothing but sickness could effect that; so I do not wish it. For I
wish you health and happiness, and think of you with affection.
Adieu.
"PHILOSOPHICAL VEDETTE" AT A DISTANCE
_To William Dunbar_
_Washington, Jan. 12, 1801_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of July 14, with the papers
accompanying it, came safely to hand about the last of October. That
containing remarks on the line of demarcation I perused according to
your permission, and with great satisfaction, and then enclosed to a
friend in Philadelphia, to be forwarded to it's address. The papers
addressed to me, I took the liberty of communicating to the
Philosophical society. That on the language by signs is quite new.
Soon after receiving your meteorological diary, I received one of
Quebec; and was struck with the comparison between - 32 & + 19 3/4
the lowest depression of the thermometer at Quebec & the Natchez. I
have often wondered that any human being should live in a cold
country who can find room in a warm one. I have no doubt but that
cold is the source of more sufferance to all animal nature than
hunger, thirst, sickness, & all the other pains of life & of death
itself put together. I live in a temperate climate, and under
circumstances which do not expose me often to cold. Yet when I
recollect on one hand all the sufferings I have had from cold, & on
the other all my other pains, the former preponderate greatly. What
then must be the sum of that evil if we take in the vast proportion
of men who are obliged to be out in all weather, by land & by sea,
all the families of beasts, birds, reptiles, & even the vegetable
kingdom! for that too has life, and where there is life there may be
sensation. I remark a rainbow of a great portion of the circle
observed by you when on the line of demarcation. I live in a
situation which has given me an opportunity of seeing more than the
semicircle often. I am on a hill 500 f. perpendicularly high. On
the east side it breaks down abruptly to the base, where a river
passes through. A rainbow, therefore, about sunset, plunges one of
it's legs down to the river, 500 f. below the level of the eye on the
top of the hill. I have twice seen bows formed by the moon. They
were of the color of the common circle round the moon, and were very
near, being within a few paces of me in both instances. I thank you
for the little vocabularies of Bedais, Jankawis and Teghas. I have
it much at heart to make as extensive a collection as possible of the
Indian tongues. I have at present about 30. tolerably full, among
which the number radically different, is truly wonderful. It is
curious to consider how such handfuls of men came by different
languages, & how they have preserved them so distinct. I at first
thought of reducing them all to one orthography, but I soon become
sensible that this would occasion two sources of error instead of
one. I therefore think it best to keep them in the form of
orthography in which they were taken, only noting whether that were
English, French, German, or what. I have never been a very punctual
correspondent, and it is possible that new duties may make me less
so. I hope I shall not on that account lose the benefit of your
communications. Philosophical vedette at the distance of one
thousand miles, and on the verge of the terra incognita of our
continent, is precious to us here. I pray you to accept assurances
of my high consideration & esteem, and friendly salutations.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1800
_To John Dickinson_
_Washington, Mar. 6, 1801_
DEAR SIR, -- No pleasure can exceed that which I received from
reading your letter of the 21st ult. It was like the joy we expect
in the mansions of the blessed, when received with the embraces of
our fathers, we shall be welcomed with their blessing as having done
our part not unworthily of them. The storm through which we have
passed, has been tremendous indeed. The tough sides of our Argosie
have been thoroughly tried. Her strength has stood the waves into
which she was steered, with a view to sink her. We shall put her on
her republican tack, & she will now show by the beauty of her motion
the skill of her builders. Figure apart, our fellow citizens have
been led hood-winked from their principles, by a most extraordinary
combination of circumstances. But the band is removed, and they now
see for themselves. I hope to see shortly a perfect consolidation,
to effect which, nothing shall be spared on my part, short of the
abandonment of the principles of our revolution. A just and solid
republican government maintained here, will be a standing monument &
example for the aim & imitation of the people of other countries; and
I join with you in the hope and belief that they will see, from our
example, that a free government is of all others the most energetic;
that the inquiry which has been excited among the mass of mankind by
our revolution & it's consequences, will ameliorate the condition of
man over a great portion of the globe. What a satisfaction have we
in the contemplation of the benevolent effects of our efforts,
compared with those of the leaders on the other side, who have
discountenanced all advances in science as dangerous innovations,
have endeavored to render philosophy and republicanism terms of
reproach, to persuade us that man cannot be governed but by the rod,
&c. I shall have the happiness of living & dying in the contrary
hope. Accept assurances of my constant & sincere respect and
attachment, and my affectionate salutations.
SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
_To Dr. Joseph Priestley_
_Washington, Mar. 21, 1801_
DEAR SIR, -- I learnt some time ago that you were in
Philadelphia, but that it was only for a fortnight; & supposed you
were gone. It was not till yesterday I received information that you
were still there, had been very ill, but were on the recovery. I
sincerely rejoice that you are so. Yours is one of the few lives
precious to mankind, & for the continuance of which every thinking
man is solicitous. Bigots may be an exception. What an effort, my
dear Sir, of bigotry in Politics & Religion have we gone through!
The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to
bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put everything into
the hands of power & priestcraft. All advances in science were
proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage
education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were
to look backwards, not forwards, for improvement; the President
himself declaring, in one of his answers to addresses, that we were
never to expect to go beyond them in real science. This was the real
ground of all the attacks on you. Those who live by mystery &
_charlatanerie_, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying
the Christian philosophy, -- the most sublime & benevolent, but most
perverted system that ever shone on man, -- endeavored to crush your
well-earnt & well-deserved fame. But it was the Lilliputians upon
Gulliver. Our countrymen have recovered from the alarm into which
art & industry had thrown them; science & honesty are replaced on
their high ground; and you, my dear Sir, as their great apostle, are
on it's pinnacle. It is with heartfelt satisfaction that, in the
first moments of my public action, I can hail you with welcome to our
land, tender to you the homage of it's respect & esteem, cover you
under the protection of those laws which were made for the wise and
good like you, and disdain the legitimacy of that libel on
legislation, which under the form of a law, was for some time placed
among them.
As the storm is now subsiding, and the horizon becoming serene,
it is pleasant to consider the phenomenon with attention. We can no
longer say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole
chapter in the history of man is new. The great extent of our
Republic is new. Its sparse habitation is new. The mighty wave of
public opinion which has rolled over it is new. But the most
pleasing novelty is, it's so quickly subsiding over such an extent of
surface to it's true level again. The order & good sense displayed
in this recovery from delusion, and in the momentous crisis which
lately arose, really bespeak a strength of character in our nation
which augurs well for the duration of our Republic; & I am much
better satisfied now of it's stability than I was before it was
tried. I have been, above all things, solaced by the prospect which
opened on us, in the event of a non-election of a President; in which
case, the federal government would have been in the situation of a
clock or watch run down. There was no idea of force, nor of any
occasion for it. A convention, invited by the Republican members of
Congress, with the virtual President & Vice President, would have
been on the ground in 8. weeks, would have repaired the Constitution
where it was defective, & wound it up again. This peaceable &
legitimate resource, to which we are in the habit of implicit
obedience, superseding all appeal to force, and being always within
our reach, shows a precious principle of self-preservation in our
composition, till a change of circumstances shall take place, which
is not within prospect at any definite period.
But I have got into a long disquisition on politics, when I
only meant to express my sympathy in the state of your health, and to
tender you all the affections of public & private hospitality. I
should be very happy indeed to see you here. I leave this about the
30th inst., to return about the twenty-fifth of April. If you do not
leave Philadelphia before that, a little excursion hither would help
your health. I should be much gratified with the possession of a
guest I so much esteem, and should claim a right to lodge you, should
you make such an excursion.
WISDOM AND PATRIOTISM
_To Moses Robinson_
_Washington, March 23, 1801_
DEAR SIR, -- I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of
the 3rd instant, and to thank you for the friendly expressions it
contains. I entertain real hope that the whole body of your fellow
citizens (many of whom had been carried away by the X. Y. Z.
business) will shortly be consolidated in the same sentiments. When
they examine the real principles of both parties, I think they will
find little to differ about. I know, indeed, that there are some of
their leaders who have so committed themselves, that pride, if no
other passion, will prevent their coalescing. We must be easy with
them. The eastern States will be the last to come over, on account
of the dominion of the clergy, who had got a smell of union between
Church and State, and began to indulge reveries which can never be
realised in the present state of science. If, indeed, they could
have prevailed on us to view all advances in science as dangerous
innovations, and to look back to the opinions and practices of our
forefathers, instead of looking forward, for improvement, a promising
groundwork would have been laid. But I am in hopes their good sense
will dictate to them, that since the mountain will not come to them,
they had better go to the mountain: that they will find their
interest in acquiescing in the liberty and science of their country,
and that the Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which
they have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and
simplicity of its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others
most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the
human mind.
I sincerely wish with you, we could see our government so
secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose
hands it is trusted. Bad men will sometimes get in, and with such an
immense patronage, may make great progress in corrupting the public
mind and principles. This is a subject with which wisdom and
patriotism should be occupied.
I pray you to accept assurances of my high respect and esteem.
RECONCILIATION AND REFORM
_To Elbridge Gerry_
_Washington, Mar. 29, 1801_
MY DEAR SIR, -- Your two letters of Jan. 15 and Feb. 24, came
safely to hand, and I thank you for the history of a transaction
which will ever be interesting in our affairs. It has been very
precisely as I had imagined. I thought, on your return, that if you
had come forward boldly, and appealed to the public by a full
statement, it would have had a great effect in your favor personally,
& that of the republican cause then oppressed almost unto death. But
I judged from a tact of the southern pulse. I suspect that of the
north was different and decided your conduct; and perhaps it has been
as well. If the revolution of sentiment has been later, it has
perhaps been not less sure. At length it is arrived. What with the
natural current of opinion which has been setting over to us for 18.
months, and the immense impetus which was given it from the 11th to
the 17th of Feb., we may now say that the U.S. from N.Y. southwardly,
are as unanimous in the principles of '76, as they were in '76. The
only difference is, that the leaders who remain behind are more
numerous & bolder than the apostles of toryism in '76. The reason
is, that we are now justly more tolerant than we could safely have
been then, circumstanced as we were. Your part of the Union tho' as
absolutely republican as ours, had drunk deeper of the delusion, & is
therefore slower in recovering from it. The aegis of government, &
the temples of religion & of justice, have all been prostituted there
to toll us back to the times when we burnt witches. But your people
will rise again. They will awake like Sampson from his sleep, &
carry away the gates & posts of the city. You, my friend, are
destined to rally them again under their former banner, and when
called to the post, exercise it with firmness & with inflexible
adherence to your own principles. The people will support you,
notwithstanding the howlings of the ravenous crew from whose jaws
they are escaping. It will be a great blessing to our country if we
can once more restore harmony and social love among its citizens. I
confess, as to myself, it is almost the first object of my heart, and
one to which I would sacrifice everything but principle. With the
people I have hopes of effecting it. But their Coryphaei are
incurables. I expect little from them.
I was not deluded by the eulogiums of the public papers in the
first moments of change. If they could have continued to get all the
loaves & fishes, that is, if I would have gone over to them, they
would continue to eulogise. But I well knew that the moment that
such removals should take place, as the justice of the preceding
administration ought to have executed, their hue and cry would be set
up, and they would take their old stand. I shall disregard that
also. Mr. Adams' last appointments, when he knew he was naming
counsellors & aids for me & not for himself, I set aside as far as
depends on me. Officers who have been guilty of gross abuses of
office, such as marshals packing juries, &c., I shall now remove, as
my predecessor ought in justice to have done. The instances will be
few, and governed by strict rule, & not party passion. The right of
opinion shall suffer no invasion from me. Those who have acted well
have nothing to fear, however they may have differed from me in
opinion: those who have done ill, however, have nothing to hope; nor
shall I fail to do justice lest it should be ascribed to that
difference of opinion. A coalition of sentiments is not for the
interest of printers. They, like the clergy, live by the zeal they
can kindle, and the schisms they can create. It is contest of
opinion in politics as well as religion which makes us take great
interest in them, and bestow our money liberally on those who furnish
aliment to our appetite. The mild and simple principles of the
Christian philosophy would produce too much calm, too much regularity
of good, to extract from it's disciples a support for a numerous
priesthood, were they not to sophisticate it, ramify it, split it
into hairs, and twist it's texts till they cover the divine morality
of it's author with mysteries, and require a priesthood to explain
them. The Quakers seem to have discovered this. They have no
priests, therefore no schisms. They judge of the text by the
dictates of common sense & common morality. So the printers can
never leave us in a state of perfect rest and union of opinion. They
would be no longer useful, and would have to go to the plough. In
the first moments of quietude which have succeeded the election, they
seem to have aroused their lying faculties beyond their ordinary
state, to re-agitate the public mind. What appointments to office
have they detailed which had never been thought of, merely to found a
text for their calumniating commentaries. However, the steady
character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor;
and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early
discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct,
will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our
country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be
able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom &
harmony. I shall be happy to hear from you often, to know your own
sentiments & those of others on the course of things, and to concur
with you in efforts for the common good. Your letters through the
post will now come safely. Present my best respects to Mrs. Gerry, &
accept yourself assurances of my constant esteem and high
consideration.
"FREE SHIPS MAKE FREE GOODS"
_To the U.S. Minister to France_
(ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON)
_Monticello, Sep. 9, 1801_
DEAR SIR, -- You will receive, probably by this post, from the
Secretary of State, his final instructions for your mission to
France. We have not thought it necessary to say anything in them on
the great question of the maritime law of nations, which at present
agitates Europe; that is to say, whether free ships shall make free
goods; because we do not mean to take any side in it during the war.
But, as I had before communicated to you some loose thoughts on that
subject, and have since considered it with somewhat more attention, I
have thought it might not be unuseful that you should possess my
ideas in a more matured form than that in which they were before
given. Unforeseen circumstances may perhaps oblige you to hazard an
opinion, on some occasion or other, on this subject, and it is better
that it should not be at variance with ours. I write this, too,
myself, that it may not be considered as official, but merely my
individual opinion, unadvised by those official counsellors whose
opinions I deem my safest guide, & should unquestionably take in
form, were circumstances to call for a solemn decision of the
question.
When Europe assumed the general form in which it is occupied by
the nations now composing it, and turned its attention to maritime
commerce, we found among its earliest practices, that of taking the
goods of an enemy from the ship of a friend; and that into this
practice every maritime State went sooner or later, as it appeared on
the theatre of the ocean. If, therefore, we are to consider the
practice of nations as the sole & sufficient evidence of the law of
nature among nations, we should unquestionably place this principle
among those of natural laws. But it's inconveniences, as they
affected neutral nations peaceably pursuing their commerce, and it's
tendency to embroil them with the powers happening to be at war, and
thus to extend the flames of war, induced nations to introduce by
special compacts, from time to time, a more convenient rule; that
"free ships should make free goods;" and this latter principle has by
every maritime nation of Europe been established, to a greater or
less degree, in it's treaties with other nations; insomuch, that all
of them have, more or less frequently, assented to it, as a rule of
action in particular cases. Indeed, it is now urged, and I think
with great appearance of reason, that this is genuine principle
dictated by national morality; & that the first practice arose from
accident, and the particular convenience of the States which first
figured on the water, rather than from well-digested reflections on
the relations of friend and enemy, on the rights of territorial
jurisdiction, & on the dictates of moral law applied to these. Thus
it had never been supposed lawful, in the territory of a friend to
seize the goods of an enemy. On an element which nature has not
subjected to the jurisdiction of any particular nation, but has made
common to all for the purposes to which it is fitted, it would seem
that the particular portion of it which happens to be occupied by the
vessel of any nation, in the course of it's voyage, is for the
moment, the exclusive property of that, and nation, with the vessel,
is exempt from intrusion by any other, & from it's jurisdiction, as
much as if it were lying in the harbor of it's sovereign. In no
country, we believe, is the rule otherwise, as to the subjects of
property common to all. Thus the place occupied by an individual in
a highway, a church, a theatre, or other public assembly, cannot be
intruded on, while it's occupant holds it for the purposes of it's
institution. The persons on board a vessel traversing the ocean,
carry with them the laws of their nation, have among themselves a
jurisdiction, a police, not established by their individual will, but
by the authority of their nation, of whose territory their vessel
still seems to compose a part, so long as it does not enter the
exclusive territory of another. No nation ever pretended a right to
govern by their laws the ship of another nation navigating the ocean.
By what law then can it enter that ship while in peaceable & orderly
use of the common element? We recognize no natural precept for
submission to such a right; & perceive no distinction between the
movable & immovable jurisdiction of a friend, which would authorize
the entering the one & not the other, to seize the property of an
enemy.
It may be objected that this proves too much, as it proves you
cannot enter the ship of a friend to search for contraband of war.
But this is not proving too much. We believe the practice of seizing
what is called contraband of war, is an abusive practice, not founded
in natural right. War between two nations cannot diminish the rights
of the rest of the world remaining at peace. The doctrine that the
rights of nations remaining quietly under the exercise of moral &
social duties, are to give way to the convenience of those who prefer
plundering & murdering one another, is a monstrous doctrine; and
ought to yield to the more rational law, that "the wrongs which two
nations endeavor to inflict on each other, must not infringe on the
rights or conveniences of those remaining at peace." And what is
_contraband_, by the law of nature? Either everything which may aid
or comfort an enemy, or nothing. Either all commerce which would
accommodate him is unlawful, or none is. The difference between
articles of one or another description, is a difference in degree
only. No line between them can be drawn. Either all intercourse
must cease between neutrals & belligerents, or all be permitted. Can
the world hesitate to say which shall be the rule? Shall two nations
turning tigers, break up in one instant the peaceable relations of
the whole world? Reason & nature clearly pronounce that the neutral
is to go onin the enjoyment of all it's rights, that it's commerce
remains free, not subject to the jurisdiction of another, nor
consequently it's vessels to search, or to enquiries whether their
contents are the property of an enemy, or are of those which have
been called contraband of war.2
Nor does this doctrine contravene the right of preventing
vessels from entering a blockaded port. This right stands on other
ground. When the fleet of any nation actually beleaguers the port of
its enemy, no other has a right to enter their line, any more than
their line of battle in the open sea, or their lines of
circumvallation, or of encampment, or of battle array on land. The
space included within their lines in any of those cases, is either
the property of their enemy, or it is common property assumed and
possessed for the moment, which cannot be intruded on, even by a
neutral, without committing the very trespass we are now considering,
that of intruding into the lawful possession of a friend.
Although I consider the observance of these principles as of
great importance to the interests of peaceable nations, among whom I
hope the U S will ever place themselves, yet in the present state of
things they are not worth a war. Nor do I believe war the most
certain means of enforcing them. Those peaceable coercions which are
in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert & in time of
peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.
The opinions I have here given are those which have generally
been sanctioned by our government. In our treaties with France, the
United Netherlands, Sweden & Prussia, the principle of free bottom,
free goods, was uniformly maintained. In the instructions of 1784,
given by Congress to their ministers appointed to treat with the
nations of Europe generally, the same principle, and the doing away
contraband of war, were enjoined, and were acceded to in the treaty
signed with Portugal. In the late treaty with England, indeed, that
power perseveringly refused the principle of free bottoms, free
goods; and it was avoided in the late treaty with Prussia, at the
instance of our then administration, lest it should seem to take side
in a question then threatening decision by the sword. At the
commencement of the war between France & England, the representative
of the French republic then residing in the U S, complaining that the
British armed ships captured French property in American bottoms,
insisted that the principle of "free bottoms, free goods," was of the
acknowledged law of nations; that the violation of that principle by
the British was a wrong committed on us, and such an one as we ought
to repel by joining in a war against that country. We denied his
position, and appealed to the universal practice of Europe, in proof
that the principle of "free bottoms, free goods," was not
acknowledged as of the natural law of nations, but only of it's
conventional law. And I believe we may safely affirm, that not a
single instance can be produced where any nation of Europe, acting
professedly under the law of nations alone, unrestrained by treaty,
has, either by it's executive or judiciary organs, decided on the
principle of "free bottoms, free goods." Judging of the law of
nations by what has been _practised_ among nations, we were
authorized to say that the contrary principle was their rule, and
this but an exception to it, introduced by special treaties in
special cases only; that having no treaty with England substituting
this instead of the ordinary rule, we had neither the right nor the
disposition to go to war for it's establishment. But though we would
not then, nor will we now, engage in war to establish this principle,
we are nevertheless sincerely friendly to it. We think that the
nations of Europe have originally set out in error; that experience
has proved the error oppressive to the rights and interests of the
peaceable part of mankind; that every nation but one has acknoleged
this, by consenting to the change, & that one has consented in
particular cases; that nations have a right to correct an erroneous
principle, & to establish that which is right as their rule of
action; and if they should adopt measures for effecting this in a
peaceable way, we shall wish them success, and not stand in their way
to it. But should it become, at any time, expedient for us to
co-operate in the establishment of this principle, the opinion of the
executive, on the advice of it's constitutional counsellors, must
then be given; & that of the legislature, an independent & essential
organ in the operation, must also be expressed; in forming which,
they will be governed, every man by his own judgment, and may, very
possibly, judge differently from the executive. With the same honest
views, the most honest men often form different conclusions. As far,
however, as we can judge, the principle of "free bottoms, free
goods," is that which would carry the wishes of our nation.
Wishing you smooth seas and prosperous gales, with the
enjoyment of good health, I tender you the assurances of my constant
friendship & high consideration and respect.
INTERCHANGEABLE PARTS
_To James Monroe_
_Washington, Nov. 14, 1801_
DEAR SIR, -- The bearer hereof is Mr. Whitney at Connecticut a
mechanic of the first order of ingenuity, who invented the cotton gin
now so much used in the South; he is at the head of a considerable
gun manufactory in Connecticut, and furnishes the U.S. with muskets
undoubtedly the best they receive. He has invented molds and
machines for making all the pieces of his locks so exactly equal,
that take 100 locks to pieces and mingle their parts and the hundred
locks may be put together as well by taking the first pieces which
come to hand. This is of importance in repairing, because out of 10
locks e.g. disabled for the want of different pieces, 9 good locks
may be put together without employing a smith. Leblanc in France had
invented a similar process in 1788 and had extended it to the barrel,
mounting & stock. I endeavored to get the U.S. to bring him over,
which he was ready for on moderate terms. I failed and I do not know
what became of him. Mr. Whitney has not yet extended his
improvements beyond the lock. I think it possible he might be
engaged in our manufactory of Richmd. tho' I have not asked him the
question. I know nothing of his moral character. He is now on his
way to S. Carola. on the subject of his gin. Health & happiness cum
caeteris votis.
AFRICAN COLONIZATION
_To the Governor of Virginia_
(JAMES MONROE)
_Washington, Nov. 24, 1801_
DEAR SIR, -- I had not been unmindful of your letter of June
15, covering a resolution of the House of Representatives of
Virginia, and referred to in yours of the 17th inst. The importance
of the subject, and the belief that it gave us time for consideration
till the next meeting of the Legislature, have induced me to defer
the answer to this date. You will perceive that some circumstances
connected with the subject, & necessarily presenting themselves to
view, would be improper but for yours' & the legislative ear. Their
publication might have an ill effect in more than one quarter. In
confidence of attention to this, I shall indulge greater freedom in
writing.
Common malefactors, I presume, make no part of the object of
that resolution. Neither their numbers, nor the nature of their
offences, seem to require any provisions beyond those practised
heretofore, & found adequate to the repression of ordinary crimes.
Conspiracy, insurgency, treason, rebellion, among that description of
persons who brought on us the alarm, and on themselves the tragedy,
of 1800, were doubtless within the view of every one; but many
perhaps contemplated, and one expression of the resolution might
comprehend, a much larger scope. Respect to both opinions makes it
my duty to understand the resolution in all the extent of which it is
susceptible.
The idea seems to be to provide for these people by a purchase
of lands; and it is asked whether such a purchase can be made of the
U S in their western territory? A very great extent of country,
north of the Ohio, has been laid off into townships, and is now at
market, according to the provisions of the acts of Congress, with
which you are acquainted. There is nothing which would restrain the
State of Virginia either in the purchase or the application of these
lands; but a purchase, by the acre, might perhaps be a more expensive
provision than the H of Representatives contemplated. Questions
would also arise whether the establishment of such a colony within
our limits, and to become a part of our union, would be desirable to
the State of Virginia itself, or to the other States --- especially
those who would be in its vicinity?
Could we procure lands beyond the limits of the U S to form a
receptacle for these people? On our northern boundary, the country
not occupied by British subjects, is the property of Indian nations,
whose title would be to be extinguished, with the consent of Great
Britain; & the new settlers would be British subjects. It is hardly
to be believed that either Great Britain or the Indian proprietors
have so disinterested a regard for us, as to be willing to relieve
us, by receiving such a colony themselves; and as much to be doubted
whether that race of men could long exist in so rigorous a climate.
On our western & southern frontiers, Spain holds an immense country,
the occupancy of which, however, is in the Indian natives, except a
few insulated spots possessed by Spanish subjects. It is very
questionable, indeed, whether the Indians would sell? whether Spain
would be willing to receive these people? and nearly certain that she
would not alienate the sovereignty. The same question to ourselves
would recur here also, as did in the first case: should we be willing
to have such a colony in contact with us? However our present
interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not
to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will
expand itself beyond those limits, & cover the whole northern, if not
the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language,
governed in similar forms, & by similar laws; nor can we contemplate
with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface. Spain,
France, and Portugal hold possessions on the southern continent, as
to which I am not well enough informed to say how far they might meet
our views. But either there or in the northern continent, should the
constituted authorities of Virginia fix their attention, of
preference, I will have the dispositions of those powers sounded in
the first instance.
The West Indies offer a more probable & practicable retreat for
them. Inhabited already by a people of their own race & color;
climates congenial with their natural constitution; insulated from
the other descriptions of men; nature seems to have formed these
islands to become the receptacle of the blacks transplanted into this
hemisphere. Whether we could obtain from the European sovereigns of
those islands leave to send thither the persons under consideration,
I cannot say; but I think it more probable than the former
propositions, because of their being already inhabited more or less
by the same race. The most promising portion of them is the island
of St. Domingo, where the blacks are established into a sovereignty
_de facto_, & have organized themselves under regular laws &
government. I should conjecture that their present ruler might be
willing, on many considerations, to receive even that description
which would be exiled for acts deemed criminal by us, but
meritorious, perhaps, by him. The possibility that these exiles
might stimulate & conduct vindicative or predatory descents on our
coasts, & facilitate concert with their brethren remaining here,
looks to a state of things between that island & us not probable on a
contemplation of our relative strength, and of the disproportion
daily growing; and it is overweighed by the humanity of the measures
proposed, & the advantages of disembarrassing ourselves of such
dangerous characters. Africa would offer a last & undoubted resort,
if all others more desirable should fail us. Whenever the
Legislature of Virginia shall have brought it's mind to a point, so
that I may know exactly what to propose to foreign authorities, I
will execute their wishes with fidelity & zeal. I hope, however,
they will pardon me for suggesting a single question for their own
consideration. When we contemplate the variety of countries & of
sovereigns towards which we may direct our views, the vast
revolutions & changes of circumstances which are now in a course of
progression, the possibilities that arrangements now to be made, with
a view to any particular plan, may, at no great distance of time, be
totally deranged by a change of sovereignty, of government, or of
other circumstances, it will be for the Legislature to consider
whether, after they shall have made all those general provisions
which may be fixed by legislative authority, it would be reposing too
much confidence in their Executive to leave the place of relegation
to be decided on by _them_. They could accommodate their
arrangements to the actual state of things, in which countries or
powers may be found to exist at the day; and may prevent the effect
of the law from being defeated by intervening changes. This,
however, is for them to decide. Our duty will be to respect their
decision.
LIMITS OF THE PRACTICABLE
_To P. S. Dupont de Nemours_
_Washington, Jan. 18, 1802_
DEAR SIR, -- It is rare I can indulge myself in the luxury of
philosophy. Your letters give me a few of those delicious moments.
Placed as you are in a great commercial town, with little opportunity
of discovering the dispositions of the country portions of our
citizens, I do not wonder at your doubts whether they will generally
and sincerely concur in the sentiments and measures developed in my
message of the 7th Jany. But from 40. years of intimate conversation
with the agricultural inhabitants of my country, I can pronounce them
as different from those of the cities, as those of any two nations
known. The sentiments of the former can in no degree be inferred
from those of the latter. You have spoken a profound truth in these
words, "Il y a dans les etats unis un bon sens silencieux, un esprit
de justice froide, qui lorsqu'il est question d'emettre un _vote_
comme les bavardages de ceux qui font les habiles." A plain country
farmer has written lately a pamphlet on our public affairs. His
testimony of the sense of the country is the best which can be
produced of the justness of your observation. His words are "The
tongue of man is not his whole body. So, in this case, the noisy
part of the community was not all the body politic. During the
career of fury and contention (in 1800) the sedate, grave part of the
people were still; hearing all, and judging for themselves, what
method to take, when the constitutional time of action should come,
the exercise of the right of suffrage." The majority of the present
legislature are in unison with the agricultural part of our citizens,
and you will see that there is nothing in the message, to which they
do not accord. Some things may perhaps be left undone from motives
of compromise for a time, and not to alarm by too sudden a
reformation, but with a view to be resumed at another time. I am
perfectly satisfied the effect of the proceedings of this session of
congress will be to consolidate the great body of well meaning
citizens together, whether federal or republican, heretofore called.
I do not mean to include royalists or priests. Their opposition is
immovable. But they will be vox et preterea nihil, leaders without
followers. I am satisfied that within one year from this time were
an election to take place between two candidates merely republican
and federal, where no personal opposition existed against either, the
federal candidate would not get the vote of a single elector in the
U.S. I must here again appeal to the testimony of my farmer, who
says "The great body of the people are one in sentiment. If the
federal party and the republican party, should each of them choose a
convention to frame a constitution of government or a code of laws,
there would be no radical difference in the results of the two
conventions." This is most true. The body of our people, tho'
divided for a short time by an artificial panic, and called by
different names, have ever had the same object in view, to wit, the
maintenance of a federal, republican government, and have never
ceased to be all federalists, all republicans: still excepting the
noisy band of royalists inhabiting cities chiefly, and priests both
of city and country. When I say that in an election between a
republican and federal candidate, free from personal objection, the
former would probably get every vote, I must not be understood as
placing myself in that view. It was my destiny to come to the
government when it had for several years been committed to a
particular political sect, to the absolute and entire exclusion of
those who were in sentiment with the body of the nation. I found the
country entirely in the enemies hands. It was necessary to dislodge
some of them. Out of many thousands of officers in the U.S. 9. only
have been removed for political principle, and 12. for delinquincies
chiefly pecuniary. The whole herd have squealed out, as if all their
throats were cut. These acts of justice few as they have been, have
raised great personal objections to me, of which a new character
would be [_faded_]. When this government was first established, it
was possible to have kept it going on true principles, but the
contracted, English, half-lettered ideas of Hamilton, destroyed that
hope in the bud. We can pay off his debt in 15. years; but we can
never get rid of his financial system. It mortifies me to be
strengthening principles which I deem radically vicious, but this
vice is entailed on us by the first error. In other parts of our
government I hope we shall be able by degrees to introduce sound
principles and make them habitual. What is practicable must often
controul what is pure theory; and the habits of the governed
determine in a great degree what is practicable. Hence the same
original principles, modified in practice according to the different
habits of different nations, present governments of very different
aspects. The same principles reduced to forms of practice
accommodated to our habits, and put into forms accommodated to the
habits of the French nation would present governments very unlike
each other. I have no doubt but that a great man, thoroughly knowing
the habits of France, might so accommodate to them the principles of
free government as to enable them to live free. But in the hands of
those who have not this coup d'oeil, many unsuccessful experiments I
fear are yet to be tried before they will settle down in freedom and
tranquility. I applaud therefore your determination to remain here,
tho' for yourself and the adults of your family the dissimilitude of
our manners and the difference of tongue will be sources of real
unhappiness. Yet less so than the horrors and dangers which France
would present to you, and as to those of your family still in
infancy, they will be formed to the circumstances of the country, and
will, I doubt not, be happier here than they could have been in
Europe under any circumstances. Be so good as to make my respectful
salutations acceptable to Made. Dupont, and all of your family and to
be assured yourself of my constant and affectionate esteem.
"TO BE LOVED BY EVERY BODY"
_To Anne Cary, Thomas Jefferson, and
Ellen Wayles Randolph_
_Washington, Mar. 2, 1802_
MY DEAR CHILDREN -- I am very happy to find that two of you can
write. I shall now expect that whenever it is inconvenient for your
papa and mama to write, one of you will write on a piece of paper
these words `all is well' and send it for me to the post office. I
am happy too that Miss Ellen can now read so readily. If she will
make haste and read through all the books I have given her, and will
let me know when she is through them, I will go and carry her some
more. I shall now see whether she wishes to see me as much as she
says. I wish to see you all: and the more I perceive that you are
all advancing in your learning and improving in good dispositions the
more I shall love you, and the more every body will love you. It is
a charming thing to be loved by every body: and the way to obtain it
is, never to quarrel or be angry with any body and to tell a story.
Do all the kind things you can to your companions, give them every
thing rather than to yourself. Pity and help any thing you see in
distress and learn your books and improve your minds. This will make
every body fond of you, and desirous of doing it to you. Go on then
my dear children, and, when we meet at Monticello, let me see who has
improved most. I kiss this paper for each of you: it will therefore
deliver the kisses to yourselves, and two over, which one of you must
deliver to your Mama for me; and present my affectionate attachment
to your papa. Yourselves love and Adieux.
THE PROGRESS OF REFORM
_To General Thaddeus Kosciusko_
_Washington, April 2, 1802_
DEAR GENERAL, -- It is but lately that I have received your
letter of the 25th Frimaire (December 15) wishing to know whether
some officers of your country could expect to be employed in this
country. To prevent a suspense injurious to them, I hasten to inform
you, that we are now actually engaged in reducing our military
establishment one third, and discharging one third of our officers.
We keep in service no more than men enough to garrison the small
posts dispersed at great distances on our frontiers, which garrisons
will generally consist of a captain's company only, and in no case of
more than two or three, in not one, of a sufficient number to require
a field officer; and no circumstance whatever can bring these
garrisons together, because it would be an abandonment of their
forts. Thus circumstanced, you will perceive the entire
impossibility of providing for the persons you recommend. I wish it
had been in my power to give you a more favorable answer; but next to
the fulfilling your wishes, the most grateful thing I can do is to
give a faithful answer. The session of the first Congress convened
since republicanism has recovered its ascendancy, is now drawing to a
close. They will pretty completely fulfil all the desires of the
people. They have reduced the army and navy to what is barely
necessary. They are disarming executive patronage and preponderance,
by putting down one half the offices of the United States, which are
no longer necessary. These economies have enabled them to suppress
all the internal taxes, and still to make such provision for the
payment of their public debt as to discharge that in eighteen years.
They have lopped off a parasite limb, planted by their predecessors
on their judiciary body for party purposes; they are opening the
doors of hospitality to the fugitives from the oppressions of other
countries; and we have suppressed all those public forms and
ceremonies which tended to familiarise the public eye to the
harbingers of another form of government. The people are nearly all
united; their quondam leaders, infuriated with the sense of their
impotence, will soon be seen or heard only in the newspapers, which
serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke, and all is
now tranquil, firm and well, as it should be. I add no signature
because unnecessary for you. God bless you, and preserve you still
for a season of usefulness to your country.
THE AFFAIR OF LOUISIANA
_To the U.S. Minister to France_
(ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON)
_Washington, Apr. 18, 1802_
DEAR SIR -- A favorable and a confidential opportunity offering
by Mr. Dupont de Nemours, who is revisiting his native country gives
me an opportunity of sending you a cipher to be used between us,
which will give you some trouble to understand, but, once understood,
is the easiest to use, the most indecipherable, and varied by a new
key with the greatest facility of any one I have ever known. I am in
hopes the explanation inclosed will be sufficient. Let our key of
letters be [_some figures which are illegible_] and the key of lines
be [_figures illegible_] and lest we should happen to lose our key or
be absent from it, it is so formed as to be kept in the memory and
put upon paper at pleasure; being produced by writing our names and
residences at full length, each of which containing 27 letters is
divided into two parts of 9. letters each; and each of the 9. letters
is then numbered according to the place it would hold if the 9. were
arranged alphabetically, thus [_so blotted as to be illegible]. The
numbers over the letters being then arranged as the letters to which
they belong stand in our names, we can always construct our key. But
why a cipher between us, when official things go naturally to the
Secretary of State, and things not political need no cipher. 1.
matters of a public nature, and proper to go on our records, should
go to the secretary of state. 2. matters of a public nature not
proper to be placed on our records may still go to the secretary of
state, headed by the word `private.' But 3. there may be matters
merely personal to ourselves, and which require the cover of a cipher
more than those of any other character. This last purpose and others
which we cannot foresee may render it convenient and advantageous to
have at hand a mask for whatever may need it. But writing by Mr.
Dupont I need no cipher. I require from him to put this into your
own and no other hand, let the delay occasioned by that be what it
will.
The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by Spain to France
works most sorely on the U.S. On this subject the Secretary of State
has written to you fully. Yet I cannot forbear recurring to it
personally, so deep is the impression it makes in my mind. It
compleatly reverses all the political relations of the U.S. and will
form a new epoch in our political course. Of all nations of any
consideration France is the one which hitherto has offered the fewest
points on which we could have any conflict of right, and the most
points of a communion of interests. From these causes we have ever
looked to her as our _natural friend_, as one with which we never
could have an occasion of difference. Her growth therefore we viewed
as our own, her misfortunes ours. There is on the globe one single
spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It
is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our
territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere
long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than
half our inhabitants. France placing herself in that door assumes to
us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly
for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce
her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the
place would be hardly felt by us, and it would not perhaps be very
long before some circumstance might arise which might make the
cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her. Not
so can it ever be in the hands of France. The impetuosity of her
temper, the energy and restlessness of her character, placed in a
point of eternal friction with us, and our character, which though
quiet, and loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded,
despising wealth in competition with insult or injury, enterprising
and energetic as any nation on earth, these circumstances render it
impossible that France and the U.S. can continue long friends when
they meet in so irritable a position. They as well as we must be
blind if they do not see this; and we must be very improvident if we
do not begin to make arrangements on that hypothesis. The day that
France takes possession of N. Orleans fixes the sentence which is to
restrain her forever within her low water mark. It seals the union
of two nations who in conjunction can maintain exclusive possession
of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the
British fleet and nation. We must turn all our attentions to a
maritime force, for which our resources place us on very high
grounds: and having formed and cemented together a power which may
render reinforcement of her settlements here impossible to France,
make the first cannon, which shall be fired in Europe the signal for
tearing up any settlement she may have made, and for holding the two
continents of America in sequestration for the common purposes of the
united British and American nations. This is not a state of things
we seek or desire. It is one which this measure, if adopted by
France, forces on us, as necessarily as any other cause, by the laws
of nature, brings on its necessary effect. It is not from a fear of
France that we deprecate this measure proposed by her. For however
greater her force is than ours compared in the abstract, it is
nothing in comparison of ours when to be exerted on our soil. But it
is from a sincere love of peace, and a firm persuasion that bound to
France by the interests and the strong sympathies still existing in
the minds of our citizens, and holding relative positions which
ensure their continuance we are secure of a long course of peace.
Whereas the change of friends, which will be rendered necessary if
France changes that position, embarks us necessarily as a belligerent
power in the first war of Europe. In that case France will have held
possession of New Orleans during the interval of a peace, long or
short, at the end of which it will be wrested from her. Will this
short-lived possession have been an equivalent to her for the
transfer of such a weight into the scale of her enemy? Will not the
amalgamation of a young, thriving, nation continue to that enemy the
health and force which are at present so evidently on the decline?
And will a few years possession of N. Orleans add equally to the
strength of France? She may say she needs Louisiana for the supply
of her West Indies. She does not need it in time of peace. And in
war she could not depend on them because they would be so easily
intercepted. I should suppose that all these considerations might in
some proper form be brought into view of the government of France.
Tho' stated by us, it ought not to give offence; because we do not
bring them forward as a menace, but as consequences not controulable
by us, but inevitable from the course of things. We mention them not
as things which we desire by any means, but as things we deprecate;
and we beseech a friend to look forward and to prevent them for our
common interests.
If France considers Louisiana however as indispensable for her
views she might perhaps be willing to look about for arrangements
which might reconcile it to our interests. If anything could do this
it would be the ceding to us the island of New Orleans and the
Floridas. This would certainly in a great degree remove the causes
of jarring and irritation between us, and perhaps for such a length
of time as might produce other means of making the measure
permanently conciliatory to our interests and friendships. It would
at any rate relieve us from the necessity of taking immediate
measures for countervailing such an operation by arrangements in
another quarter. Still we should consider N. Orleans and the
Floridas as equivalent for the risk of a quarrel with France produced
by her vicinage. I have no doubt you have urged these considerations
on every proper occasion with the government where you are. They are
such as must have effect if you can find the means of producing
thorough reflection on them by that government. The idea here is
that the troops sent to St. Domingo, were to proceed to Louisiana
after finishing their work in that island. If this were the
arrangement, it will give you time to return again and again to the
charge, for the conquest of St. Domingo will not be a short work. It
will take considerable time to wear down a great number of souldiers.
Every eye in the U.S. is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana.
Perhaps nothing since the revolutionary war has produced more uneasy
sensations through the body of the nation. Notwithstanding temporary
bickerings have taken place with France, she has still a strong hold
on the affections of our citizens generally. I have thought it not
amiss, by way of supplement to the letters of the Secretary of State
to write you this private one to impress you with the importance we
affix to this transaction. I pray you to cherish Dupont. He has the
best dispositions for the continuance of friendship between the two
nations, and perhaps you may be able to make a good use of him.
Accept assurances of my affectionate esteem and high consideration.
DRY-DOCKING THE NAVY
_To Benjamin H. Latrobe_
_Washington, Nov. 2, 1802_
DEAR SIR -- The placing of a navy in a state of perfect
preservation, so that at the beginning of a subsequent war it shall
be as sound as at the end of the preceding one when laid up, and the
lessening the expence of repairs, perpetually necessary while they
lie in the water, are objects of the first importance to a nation
which to a certain degree must be maritime. The dry docks of Europe,
being below the level of tide water, are very expensive in their
construction and in the manner of keeping them clear of water, and
are only practicable at all where they have high tides: insomuch that
no nation has ever proposed to lay up their whole navy in dry docks.
But if the dry dock were above the level of tide water, and there be
any means of raising the vessels up into them, and of covering the
dock with a roof, thus withdrawn from the rot and the sun, they would
last as long as the interior timbers, doors and floors of a house.
The vast command of running water at this place, at different heights
from 30 to 200 feet above tide water, enables us to effect this
desirable object by forming a lower bason into which the tide water
shall float the vessel and then have its gates closed, and adjoining
to this, but 24 feet higher, an upper bason 275 feet wide, and 800 f.
long (sufficient to contain 12 frigates) into which running water can
be introduced from above, so that filling both basons (as in a lock)
the vessel shall be raised up and floated into the upper one, and the
water being discharged leave her dry. Over a bason not wider than
175 feet, a roof can be thrown, in the manner of that of the Halle au
ble at Paris, which needing no underworks to support it, will permit
the bason to be entirely open and free for the movement of the
vessels. I mean to propose the construction of one of these to the
National legislature, convinced it will be a work of no great cost,
that it will save us great annual expence, and be an encouragement to
prepare in peace the vessels we shall need in war, when we find they
can be kept in a state of perfect preservation and without expence.
The first thing to be done is to chuse from which of the
streams we will derive our water for the lock. These are the Eastern
branch, Tyber, Rock creek, and the Potomak itself. Then to trace the
canal, draw plans of that and of the two basons, and calculate the
expence of the whole, that we may lead the legislature to no expence
in the execution of which they shall not be apprised in the
beginning. For this I ask your aid, which will require your coming
here. Some surveys and elevations have been already made by Mr. N.
King, a very accurate man in that line, and who will assist in any
thing you desire, and execute on the ground any tracings you may
direct, unless you prefer doing them yourself. It is very material
too that this should be done immediately, as we have little more than
4 weeks to the meeting of the legislature, and there will then be but
2 weeks for them to consider and decide before the day arrives (Jan.
1) at which alone any number of labourers can be hired here. Should
that pass either the work must lie over for a year, or be executed by
day labourers at double expence. I propose that such a force shall
be provided as to compleat the work in one year. If this results, as
it will receive all our present ships, the next work will be a second
one, to build and lay up additional ships. On the subject of your
superintending the execution of the work it would be premature to say
any thing till the legislature shall have declared their will. Be so
good as to let me hear from you immediately, if you cannot come so
soon as you can write. Accept my best wishes and respects.
"A NOISELESS COURSE"
_To Thomas Cooper_
_Washington, Nov. 29, 1802_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of Oct 25 was received in due time, and
I thank you for the long extract you took the trouble of making from
Mr. Stone's letter. Certainly the information it communicates as to
Alexander kindles a great deal of interest in his existence, and
strong spasms of the heart in his favor. Tho his means of doing good
are great, yet the materials on which he is to work are refractory.
Whether he engages in private correspondences abroad, as the King of
Prussia did much, his grandmother sometimes, I know not; but
certainly such a correspondence would be very interesting to those
who are sincerely anxious to see mankind raised from their present
abject condition. It delights me to find that there are persons who
still think that all is not lost in France: that their retrogradation
from a limited to an unlimited despotism, is but to give themselves a
new impulse. But I see not how or when. The press, the only tocsin
of a nation, is compleatly silenced there, and all means of a general
effort taken away. However, I am willing to hope, as long as anybody
will hope with me; and I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of
the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration
between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained
for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must
respect them the more. I think you will be sensible that our
citizens are fast returning, from the panic into which they were
artfully thrown to the dictates of their own reason; and I believe
the delusions they have seen themselves hurried into will be useful
as a lesson under similar attempts on them in future. The good
effects of our late fiscal arrangements will certainly tend to unite
them in opinion, and in a confidence as to the views of their public
functionaries, legislative & executive. The path we have to pursue
is so quiet that we have nothing scarcely to propose to our
Legislature. A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of
others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in
happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors
of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must
become happy. Their finances are now under such a course of
application as nothing could derange but war or federalism. The
gripe of the latter has shown itself as deadly as the jaws of the
former. Our adversaries say we are indebted to their providence for
the means of paying the public debt. We never charged them with the
want of foresight in providing money, but with the misapplication of
it after they have levied it. We say they raised not only enough,
but too much; and that after giving back the surplus we do more with
a part than they did with the whole.
Your letter of Nov 18 is also received. The places of
midshipman are so much sought that (being limited) there is never a
vacancy. Your son shall be set down for the 2d, which shall happen;
the 1st being anticipated. We are not long generally without
vacancies happening. As soon as he can be appointed you shall know
it. I pray you to accept assurances of my great attachment and
respect.
CRISIS ON THE MISSISSIPPI
_To the Special Envoy to France_
(JAMES MONROE)
_Washington, Jan. 13, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- I dropped you a line on the 10th informing you of
a nomination I had made of you to the Senate, and yesterday I
enclosed you their approbation not then having time to write. The
agitation of the public mind on occasion of the late suspension of
our right of deposit at N. Orleans is extreme. In the western
country it is natural and grounded on honest motives. In the
seaports it proceeds from a desire for war which increases the
mercantile lottery; in the federalists generally and especially those
of Congress the object is to force us into war if possible, in order
to derange our finances, or if this cannot be done, to attach the
western country to them, as their best friends, and thus get again
into power. Remonstrances memorials &c. are now circulating through
the whole of the western country and signing by the body of the
people. The measures we have been pursuing being invisible, do not
satisfy their minds. Something sensible therefore was become
necessary; and indeed our object of purchasing N. Orleans and the
Floridas is a measure liable to assume so many shapes, that no
instructions could be squared to fit them, it was essential then to
send a minister extraordinary to be joined with the ordinary one,
with discretionary powers, first however well impressed with all our
views and therefore qualified to meet and modify to these every form
of proposition which could come from the other party. This could be
done only in full and frequent oral communications. Having
determined on this, there could not be two opinions among the
republicans as to the person. You possess the unlimited confidence
of the administration and of the western people; and generally of the
republicans everywhere; and were you to refuse to go, no other man
can be found who does this. The measure has already silenced the
Feds. here. Congress will no longer be agitated by them: and the
country will become calm as fast as the information extends over it.
All eyes, all hopes, are now fixed on you; and were you to decline,
the chagrin would be universal, and would shake under your feet the
high ground on which you stand with the public. Indeed I know
nothing which would produce such a shock, for on the event of this
mission depends the future destinies of this republic. If we cannot
by a purchase of the country insure to ourselves a course of
perpetual peace and friendship with all nations, then as war cannot
be distant, it behooves us immediately to be preparing for that
course, without, however, hastening it, and it may be necessary (on
your failure on the continent) to cross the channel.
We shall get entangled in European politics, and figuring more,
be much less happy and prosperous. This can only be prevented by a
successful issue to your present mission. I am sensible after the
measures you have taken for getting into a different line of
business, that it will be a great sacrifice on your part, and
presents from the season and other circumstances serious
difficulties. But some men are born for the public. Nature by
fitting them for the service of the human race on a broad scale, has
stamped with the evidences of her destination and their duty.
But I am particularly concerned that in the present case you
have more than one sacrifice to make. To reform the prodigalities of
our predecessors is understood to be peculiarly our duty, and to
bring the government to a simple and economical course. They, in
order to increase expense, debt, taxation, and patronage tried always
how much they could give. The outfit given to ministers resident to
enable them to furnish their house, but given by no nation to a
temporary minister, who is never expected to take a house or to
entertain, but considered on a footing of a voyageur, they gave to
their extraordinary missionaries by wholesale. In the beginning of
our administration, among other articles of reformation in expense,
it was determined not to give an outfit to missionaries
extraordinary, and not to incur the expense with any minister of
sending a frigate to carry him or bring him. The Boston happened to
be going to the Mediterranean, and was permitted therefore to take up
Mr. Livingstone and touch in a port of France. A frigate was denied
to Charles Pinckney and has been refused to Mr. King for his return.
Mr. Madison's friendship and mine to you being so well known, the
public will have eagle eyes to watch if we grant you any indulgencies
of the general rule; and on the other hand, the example set in your
case will be more cogent on future ones, and produce greater
approbation to our conduct. The allowance therefore will be in this
and all similar cases, all the expenses of your journey and voiage,
taking a ship's cabin to yourself, 9,000 D. a year from your leaving
home till the proceedings of your mission are terminated, and then
the quarter's salary for the expenses of the return as prescribed by
law. As to the time of your going you cannot too much hasten it, as
the moment in France is critical. St. Domingo delays their taking
possession of Louisiana, and they are in the last distress for money
for current purposes. You should arrange your affairs for an absence
of a year at least, perhaps for a long one. It will be necessary for
you to stay here some days on your way to New York. You will receive
here what advance you chuse. Accept assurances of my constant and
affectionate attachment.
CIVILIZATION OF THE INDIANS
_To Benjamin Hawkins_
_Washington, Feb. 18, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- Mr. Hill's return to you offers so safe a
conveyance for a letter, that I feel irresistibly disposed to write
one, tho' there is but little to write about. You have been so long
absent from this part of the world, and the state of society so
changed in that time, that details respecting those who compose it
are no longer interesting or intelligible to you. One source of
great change in social intercourse arose while you were with us, tho'
it's effects were as yet scarcely sensible on society or government.
I mean the British treaty, which produced a schism that went on
widening and rankling till the years '98, '99, when a final
dissolution of all bonds, civil & social, appeared imminent. In that
awful crisis, the people awaked from the phrenzy into which they had
been thrown, began to return to their sober and ancient principles, &
have now become five-sixths of one sentiment, to wit, for peace,
economy, and a government bottomed on popular election in its
legislative & executive branches. In the public counsels the federal
party hold still one-third. This, however, will lessen, but not
exactly to the standard of the people; because it will be forever
seen that of bodies of men even elected by the people, there will
always be a greater proportion aristocratic than among their
constituents. The present administration had a task imposed on it
which was unavoidable, and could not fail to exert the bitterest
hostility in those opposed to it. The preceding administration left
99. out of every hundred in public offices of the federal sect.
Republicanism had been the mark on Cain which had rendered those who
bore it exiles from all portion in the trusts & authorities of their
country. This description of citizens called imperiously & justly
for a restoration of right. It was intended, however, to have
yielded to this in so moderate a degree as might conciliate those who
had obtained exclusive possession; but as soon as they were touched,
they endeavored to set fire to the four corners of the public fabric,
and obliged us to deprive of the influence of office several who were
using it with activity and vigilance to destroy the confidence of the
people in their government, and thus to proceed in the drudgery of
removal farther than would have been, had not their own hostile
enterprises rendered it necessary in self-defence. But I think it
will not be long before the whole nation will be consolidated in
their ancient principles, excepting a few who have committed
themselves beyond recall, and who will retire to obscurity & settled
disaffection.
Altho' you will receive, thro' the official channel of the War
Office, every communication necessary to develop to you our views
respecting the Indians, and to direct your conduct, yet, supposing it
will be satisfactory to you, and to those with whom you are placed,
to understand my personal dispositions and opinions in this
particular, I shall avail myself of this private letter to state them
generally. I consider the business of hunting as already become
insufficient to furnish clothing and subsistence to the Indians. The
promotion of agriculture, therefore, and household manufacture, are
essential in their preservation, and I am disposed to aid and
encourage it liberally. This will enable them to live on much
smaller portions of land, and indeed will render their vast forests
useless but for the range of cattle; for which purpose, also, as they
become better farmers, they will be found useless, and even
disadvantageous. While they are learning to do better on less land,
our increasing numbers will be calling for more land, and thus a
coincidence of interests will be produced between those who have
lands to spare, and want other necessaries, and those who have such
necessaries to spare, and want lands. This commerce, then, will be
for the good of both, and those who are friends to both ought to
encourage it. You are in the station peculiarly charged with this
interchange, and who have it peculiarly in your power to promote
among the Indians a sense of the superior value of a little land,
well cultivated, over a great deal, unimproved, and to encourage them
to make this estimate truly. The wisdom of the animal which
amputates & abandons to the hunter the parts for which he is pursued
should be theirs, with this difference, that the former sacrifices
what is useful, the latter what is not. In truth, the ultimate point
of rest & happiness for them is to let our settlements and theirs
meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people.
Incorporating themselves with us as citizens of the U.S., this is
what the natural progress of things will of course bring on, and it
will be better to promote than to retard it. Surely it will be
better for them to be identified with us, and preserved in the
occupation of their lands, than be exposed to the many casualties
which may endanger them while a separate people. I have little doubt
but that your reflections must have led you to view the various ways
in which their history may terminate, and to see that this is the one
most for their happiness. And we have already had an application
from a settlement of Indians to become citizens of the U.S. It is
possible, perhaps probable, that this idea may be so novel as that it
might shock the Indians, were it even hinted to them. Of course, you
will keep it for your own reflection; but, convinced of its
soundness, I feel it consistent with pure morality to lead them
towards it, to familiarize them to the idea that it is for their
interest to cede lands at times to the U S, and for us thus to
procure gratifications to our citizens, from time to time, by new
acquisitions of land. From no quarter is there at present so strong
a pressure on this subject as from Georgia for the residue of the
fork of Oconee & Ockmulgee; and indeed I believe it will be difficult
to resist it. As it has been mentioned that the Creeks had at one
time made up their minds to sell this, and were only checked in it by
some indiscretions of an individual, I am in hopes you will be able
to bring them to it again. I beseech you to use your most earnest
endeavors; for it will relieve us here from a great pressure, and
yourself from the unreasonable suspicions of the Georgians which you
notice, that you are more attached to the interests of the Indians
than of the U S, and throw cold water on their willingness to part
with lands. It is so easy to excite suspicion, that none are to be
wondered at; but I am in hopes it will be in your power to quash them
by effecting the object.
Mr. Madison enjoys better health since his removal to this
place than he had done in Orange. Mr. Giles is in a state of health
feared to be irrecoverable, although he may hold on for some time,
and perhaps be re-established. Browze Trist is now in the
Mississippi territory, forming an establishment for his family, which
is still in Albemarle, and will remove to the Mississippi in the
spring. Mrs. Trist, his mother, begins to yield a little to time. I
retain myself very perfect health, having not had 20. hours of fever
in 42 years past. I have sometimes had a troublesome headache, and
some slight rheumatic pains; but now sixty years old nearly, I have
had as little to complain of in point of health as most people. I
learn you have the gout. I did not expect that Indian cookery or
Indian fare would produce that; but it is considered as a security
for good health otherwise. That it may be so with you, I sincerely
pray, and tender you my friendly and respectful salutations.
MACHIAVELLIAN BENEVOLENCE AND THE INDIANS
_To Governor William H. Harrison_
_Washington, February 27, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- While at Monticello in August last I received your
favor of August 8th, and meant to have acknowledged it on my return
to the seat of government at the close of the ensuing month, but on
my return I found that you were expected to be on here in person, and
this expectation continued till winter. I have since received your
favor of December 30th.
In the former you mentioned the plan of the town which you had
done me the honor to name after me, and to lay out according to an
idea I had formerly expressed to you. I am thoroughly persuaded that
it will be found handsome and pleasant, and I do believe it to be the
best means of preserving the cities of America from the scourge of
the yellow fever, which being peculiar to our country, must be
derived from some peculiarity in it. That peculiarity I take to be
our cloudless skies. In Europe, where the sun does not shine more
than half the number of days in the year which it does in America,
they can build their town in a solid block with impunity; buthere a
constant sun produces too great an accumulation ofheat to admit that.
Ventilation is indispensably necessary. Experience has taught us
that in the open air of the country the yellow fever is not only not
generated,but ceases to be infectious. I cannot decidefrom the
drawing you sent me, whether you havelaid off streets round the
squares thus: (Illustration omitted) or only the diagonal streets
therein marked. The former was my idea, and is, I imagine, most
convenient.
You will receive herewith an answer to your letter as President
of the Convention; and from the Secretary of War you receive from
time to time information and instructions as to our Indian affairs.
These communications being for the public records, are restrained
always to particular objects and occasions; but this letter being
unofficial and private, I may with safety give you a more extensive
view of our policy respecting the Indians, that you may the better
comprehend the parts dealt out to you in detail through the official
channel, and observing the system of which they make a part, conduct
yourself in unison with it in cases where you are obliged to act
without instruction. Our system is to live in perpetual peace with
the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them, by
everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the
bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against
wrongs from our own people. The decrease of game rendering their
subsistence by hunting insufficient, we wish to draw them to
agriculture, to spinning and weaving. The latter branches they take
up with great readiness, because they fall to the women, who gain by
quitting the labors of the field for those which are exercised within
doors. When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece
of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their extensive
forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in
exchange for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote
this disposition to ex-change lands, which they have to spare and we
want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we
shallpush our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and
influential individuals among them run in debt, because we ob-serve
that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they
become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands. At our trading
houses, too, we mean to sell so low as merely to repay us cost and
charges, so as neither to lessen or enlarge our capital. This is
what private traders cannot do, for they must gain; they will
consequently retire from the competition, and we shall thus get clear
of this pest without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians. In
this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the
Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens
of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former
is certainly the termination of their history most happy for
themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to
cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength
and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only
to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them
proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be
fool-hardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the
whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi,
as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a
furtherance of our final consolidation.
Combined with these views, and to be prepared against the
occupation of Louisiana by a powerful and enterprising people, it is
important that, setting less value on interior extension of purchases
from the Indians, we bend our whole views to the purchase and
settlement of the country on the Mississippi, from its mouth to its
northern regions, that we may be able to present as strong a front on
our western as on our eastern border, and plant on the Mississippi
itself the means of its own defence. We now own from 31 to the
Yazoo, and hope this summer to purchase what belongs to the Choctaws
from the Yazoo up to their boundary, supposed to be about opposite
the mouth of Acanza. We wish at the same time to begin in your
quarter, for which there is at present a favorable opening. The
Cahokias extinct, we are entitled to their country by our paramount
sovereignty. The Piorias, we understand, have all been driven off
from their country, and we might claim it in the same way; but as we
understand there is one chief remaining, who would, as the survivor
of the tribe, sell the right, it is better to give him such terms as
will make him easy for life, and take a conveyance from him. The
Kaskaskias being reduced to a few families, I presume we may purchase
their whole country for what would place every individual of them at
his ease, and be a small price to us, -- say by laying off for each
family, whenever they would choose it, as much rich land as they
could cultivate, adjacent to each other, enclosing the whole in a
single fence, and giving them such an annuity in money or goods
forever as would place them in happiness; and we might take them also
under the protection of the United States. Thus possessed of the
rights of these tribes, we should proceed to the settling their
boundaries with the Poutewatamies and Kickapoos; claiming all
doubtful territory, but paying them a price for the relinquishment of
their concurrent claim, and even prevailing on them, if possible, to
_cede_, for a price, such of their own unquestioned territory as
would give us a convenient northern boundary. Before broaching this,
and while we are bargaining with the Kaskaskies, the minds of the
Poutewatamies and Kickapoos should be soothed and conciliated by
liberalities and sincere assurances of friendship. Perhaps by
sending a well-qualified character to stay some time in Decoigne's
village, as if on other business, and to sound him and introduce the
subject by degrees to his mind and that of the other heads of
families, inculcating in the way of conversation, all those
considerations which prove the advantages they would receive by a
cession on these terms, the object might be more easily and
effectually obtained than by abruptly proposing it to them at a
formal treaty. Of the means, however, of obtaining what we wish, you
will be the best judge; and I have given you this view of the system
which we suppose will best promote the interests of the Indians and
ourselves, and finally consolidate our whole country to one nation
only; that you may be enabled the better to adapt your means to the
object, for this purpose we have given you a general commission for
treating. The crisis is pressing: whatever can now be obtained must
be obtained quickly. The occupation of New Orleans, hourly expected,
by the French, is already felt like a light breeze by the Indians.
You know the sentiments they entertain of that nation; under the hope
of their protection they will immediately stiffen against cessions of
lands to us. We had better, therefore, do at once what can now be
done.
I must repeat that this letter is to be considered as private
and friendly, and is not to control any particular instructions which
you may receive through official channel. You will also perceive how
sacredly it must be kept within your own breast, and especially how
improper to be understood by the Indians. For their interests and
their tranquillity it is best they should see only the present age of
their history. I pray you to accept assurances of my esteem and high
consideration.
JESUS, SOCRATES, AND OTHERS
_To Dr. Joseph Priestley_
_Washington, Apr. 9, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- While on a short visit lately to Monticello, I
received from you a copy of your comparative view of Socrates &
Jesus, and I avail myself of the first moment of leisure after my
return to acknolege the pleasure I had in the perusal of it, and the
desire it excited to see you take up the subject on a more extensive
scale. In consequence of some conversation with Dr. Rush, in the
year 1798-99, I had promised some day to write him a letter giving
him my view of the Christian system. I have reflected often on it
since, & even sketched the outlines in my own mind. I should first
take a general view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable of
the antient philosophers, of whose ethics we have sufficient
information to make an estimate, say of Pythagoras, Epicurus,
Epictetus, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, Antoninus. I should do justice
to the branches of morality they have treated well; but point out the
importance of those in which they are deficient. I should then take
a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a
degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a
reformation. I should proceed to a view of the life, character, &
doctrines of Jesus, who sensible of incorrectness of their ideas of
the Deity, and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the
principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of
God, to reform their moral doctrines to the standard of reason,
justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future
state. This view would purposely omit the question of his divinity,
& even his inspiration. To do him justice, it would be necessary to
remark the disadvantages his doctrines have to encounter, not having
been committed to writing by himself, but by the most unlettered of
men, by memory, long after they had heard them from him; when much
was forgotten, much misunderstood, & presented in very paradoxical
shapes. Yet such are the fragments remaining as to show a master
workman, and that his system of morality was the most benevolent &
sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more
perfect than those of any of the antient philosophers. His character
& doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend
to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and
sophisticated his actions & precepts, from views of personal
interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off
the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as an impostor on
the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime
character that ever has been exhibited to man. This is the outline;
but I have not the time, & still less the information which the
subject needs. It will therefore rest with me in contemplation only.
You are the person who of all others would do it best, and most
promptly. You have all the materials at hand, and you put together
with ease. I wish you could be induced to extend your late work to
the whole subject. I have not heard particularly what is the state
of your health; but as it has been equal to the journey to
Philadelphia, perhaps it might encourage the curiosity you must feel
to see for once this place, which nature has formed on a beautiful
scale, and circumstances destine for a great one. As yet we are but
a cluster of villages; we cannot offer you the learned society of
Philadelphia; but you will have that of a few characters whom you
esteem, & a bed & hearty welcome with one who will rejoice in every
opportunity of testifying to you his high veneration & affectionate
attachment.
THE MORALS OF JESUS
_To Dr. Benjamin Rush, with a Syllabus_
_Washington, Apr. 21, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- In some of the delightful conversations with you,
in the evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an anodyne to the
afflictions of the crisis through which our country was then
laboring, the Christian religion was sometimes our topic; and I then
promised you, that one day or other, I would give you my views of it.
They are the result of a life of inquiry & reflection, and very
different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who
know nothing ofmy opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am
indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I
am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely
attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to
himself every _human_ excellence; & believing he never claimed any
other. At the short intervals since these conversations, when I
could justifiably abstract my mind from public affairs, the subject
has been under my contemplation. But the more I considered it, the
more it expanded beyond the measure of either my time or information.
In the moment of my late departure from Monticello, I received from
Doctr Priestley, his little treatise of "Socrates & Jesus compared."
This being a section of the general view I had taken of the field, it
became a subject of reflection while on the road, and unoccupied
otherwise. The result was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus, or
outline of such an estimate of the comparative merits of
Christianity, as I wished to see executed by some one of more leisure
and information for the task, than myself. This I now send you, as
the only discharge of my promise I can probably ever execute. And in
confiding it to you, I know it will not be exposed to the malignant
perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new
misrepresentations & calumnies. I am moreover averse to the
communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would
countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them
before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself
into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws
have so justly proscribed. It behoves every man who values liberty
of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of
others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his
own. It behoves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of
concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by
answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God &
himself. Accept my affectionate salutations.
SYLLABUS OF AN ESTIMATE OF THE MERIT OF THE DOCTRINES OF JESUS,
COMPARED WITH THOSE OF OTHERS
_April, 1803_
In a comparative view of the Ethics of the enlightened nations
of antiquity, of the Jews and of Jesus, no notice should be taken of
the corruptions of reason among the ancients, to wit, the idolatry &
superstition of the vulgar, nor of the corruptions of Christianity by
the learned among its professors.
Let a just view be taken of the moral principles inculcated by
the most esteemed of the sects of ancient philosophy, or of their
individuals; particularly Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero,
Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus.
I. PHILOSOPHERS. 1. Their precepts related chiefly to
ourselves, and the government of those passions which, unrestrained,
would disturb our tranquillity of mind. In this branch of philosophy
they were really great.
2. In developing our duties to others, they were short and
defective. They embraced, indeed, the circles of kindred & friends,
and inculcated patriotism, or the love of our country in the
aggregate, as a primary obligation: toward our neighbors & countrymen
they taught justice, but scarcely viewed them as within the circle of
benevolence. Still less have they inculcated peace, charity & love
to our fellow men, or embraced with benevolence the whole family of
mankind.
II. JEWS. 1. Their system was Deism; that is, the belief of one
only God. But their ideas of him & of his attributes were degrading
& injurious.
2. Their Ethics were not only imperfect, but often
irreconcilable with the sound dictates of reason & morality, as they
respect intercourse with those around us; & repulsive & anti-social,
as respecting other nations. They needed reformation, therefore, in
an eminent degree.
III. JESUS. In this state of things among the Jews, Jesus
appeared. His parentage was obscure; his condition poor; his
education null; his natural endowments great; his life correct and
innocent: he was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested, & of
the sublimest eloquence.
The disadvantages under which his doctrines appear are
remarkable.
1. Like Socrates & Epictetus, he wrote nothing himself.
2. But he had not, like them, a Xenophon or an Arrian to write
for him. On the contrary, all the learned of his country, entrenched
in its power and riches, were opposed to him, lest his labors should
undermine their advantages; and the committing to writing his life &
doctrines fell on the most unlettered & ignorant men; who wrote, too,
from memory, & not till long after the transactions had passed.
3. According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to
enlighten and reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the jealousy
& combination of the altar and the throne, at about 33. years of age,
his reason having not yet attained the _maximum_ of its energy, nor
the course of his preaching, which was but of 3. years at most,
presented occasions for developing a complete system of morals.
4. Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective
as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us
mutilated, misstated, & often unintelligible.
5. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of
schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating
& perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the
mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, &
obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject
the whole in disgust, & to view Jesus himself as an impostor.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is
presented to us, which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of
the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime
that has ever been taught by man.
The question of his being a member of the Godhead, or in direct
communication with it, claimed for him by some of his followers, and
denied by others, is foreign to the present view, which is merely an
estimate of the intrinsic merit of his doctrines.
1. He corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in their
belief of one only God, and giving them juster notions of his
attributes and government.
2. His moral doctrines, relating to kindred & friends, were
more pure & perfect than those of the most correct of the
philosophers, and greatly more so than those of the Jews; and they
went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only
to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all
mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love,
charity, peace, common wants and common aids. A development of this
head will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over
all others.
3. The precepts of philosophy, & of the Hebrew code, laid hold
of actions only. He pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man;
erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the
waters at the fountain head.
4. He taught, emphatically, the doctrines of a future state,
which was either doubted, or disbelieved by the Jews; and wielded it
with efficacy, as an important incentive, supplementary to the other
motives to moral conduct.
EXPEDITION TO THE PACIFIC
_Instructions to Captain Lewis_
_June 20, 1803_
To Merryweather Lewis, Esq., Captain of the 1st Regiment of
Infantry of the United States of America.
Your situation as Secretary of the President of the United
States has made you acquainted with the objects of my confidential
message of Jan. 18, 1803, to the legislature. You have seen the act
they passed, which, tho' expressed in general terms, was meant to
sanction those objects, and you are appointed to carry them into
execution.
Instruments for ascertaining by celestial observations the
geography of the country thro' which you will pass, have been already
provided. Light articles for barter, & presents among the Indians,
arms for your attendants, say for from 10 to 12 men, boats, tents, &
other travelling apparatus, with ammunition, medicine, surgical
instruments & provision you will have prepared with such aids as the
Secretary at War can yield in his department; & from him also you
will receive authority to engage among our troops, by voluntary
agreement, the number of attendants above mentioned, over whom you,
as their commanding officer are invested with all the powers the laws
give in such a case.
As your movements while within the limits of the U.S. will be
better directed by occasional communications, adapted to
circumstances as they arise, they will not be noticed here. What
follows will respect your proceedings after your departure from the
U.S.
Your mission has been communicated to the Ministers here from
France, Spain, & Great Britain, and through them to their
governments: and such assurances given them as to it's objects as we
trust will satisfy them. The country of Louisiana having been ceded
by Spain to France, the passport you have from the Minister of
France, the representative of the present sovereign of the country,
will be a protection with all it's subjects: And that from the
Minister of England will entitle you to the friendly aid of any
traders of that allegiance with whom you may happen to meet.
The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, &
such principal stream of it, as, by it's course & communication with
the water of the Pacific Ocean may offer the most direct &
practicable water communication across this continent, for the
purposes of commerce.
Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take
observations of latitude and longitude at all remarkable points on
the river, & especially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at
islands & other places & objects distinguished by such natural marks
& characters of a durable kind, as that they may with certainty be
recognized hereafter. The courses of the river between these points
of observation may be supplied by the compass, the log-line & by
time, corrected by the observations themselves. The variations of
the compass too, in different places should be noticed.
The interesting points of the portage between the heads of the
Missouri & the water offering the best communication with the Pacific
Ocean should be fixed by observation & the course of that water to
the ocean, in the same manner as that of the Missouri.
Your observations are to be taken with great pains & accuracy,
to be entered distinctly, & intelligibly for others as well as
yourself, to comprehend all the elements necessary, with the aid of
the usual tables to fix the latitude & longitude of the places at
which they were taken, & are to be rendered to the war office, for
the purpose of having the calculations made concurrently by proper
persons within the U.S. Several copies of these as well as of your
other notes, should be made at leisure times & put into the care of
the most trustworthy of your attendants, to guard by multiplying them
against the accidental losses to which they will be exposed. A
further guard would be that one of these copies be written on the
paper of the birch, as less liable to injury from damp than common
paper.
The commerce which may be carried on with the people inhabiting
the line you will pursue, renders a knolege of these people
important. You will therefore endeavor to make yourself acquainted,
as far as a diligent pursuit of your journey shall admit.
with the names of the nations & their numbers;
the extent & limits of their possessions;
their relations with other tribes or nations;
their language, traditions, monuments;
their ordinary occupations in agriculture, fishing, hunting,
war, arts, & the implements for these;
their food, clothing, & domestic accommodations;
the diseases prevalent among them, & the remedies they
use;
moral and physical circumstance which distinguish them
from the tribes they know;
peculiarities in their laws, customs & dispositions;
and articles of commerce they may need or furnish & to
what extent.
And considering the interest which every nation has in
extending & strengthening the authority of reason & justice among the
people around them, it will be useful to acquire what knolege you can
of the state of morality, religion & information among them, as it
may better enable those who endeavor to civilize & instruct them, to
adapt their measures to the existing notions & practises of those on
whom they are to operate.
Other objects worthy of notice will be
the soil & face of the country, its growth & vegetable
productions; especially those not of the U.S.
the animals of the country generally, & especially those not
known in the U.S.
The remains & accounts of any which may be deemed rare or
extinct;
the mineral productions of every kind; but more particularly
metals, limestone, pit coal & saltpetre; salines & mineral waters,
noting the temperature of the last & such circumstances as may
indicate their character; volcanic appearances;
climate as characterized by the thermometer, by the proportion
of rainy, cloudy & clear days, by lightening, hail, snow, ice, by the
access & recess of frost, by the winds, prevailing at different
seasons, the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their
flowers, or leaf, times of appearance of particular birds, reptiles
or insects.
Altho' your route will be along the channel of the Missouri,
yet you will endeavor to inform yourself by inquiry, of the character
and extent of the country watered by its branches, and especially on
it's southern side. The north river or Rio Bravo which runs into the
gulph of Mexico, and the north river, or Rio colorado, which runs
into the gulph of California, are understood to be the principal
streams heading opposite to the waters of the Missouri, & running
Southwardly. Whether the dividing grounds between the Missouri &
them are mountains or flatlands, what are their distance from the
Missouri, the character of the intermediate country, & the people
inhabiting it, are worthy of particular enquiry. The northern waters
of the Missouri are less to be enquired after, because they have been
ascertained to a considerable degree, and are still in a course of
ascertainment by English traders & travellers. But if you can learn
anything certain of the most northern source of the Mississippi, & of
it's position relative to the lake of the woods, it will be
interesting to us. Some account too of the path of the Canadian
traders from the Mississippi, at the mouth of the Ouisconsin river,
to where it strikes the Missouri and of the soil and rivers in it's
course, is desirable.
In all your intercourse with the natives treat them in the most
friendly & conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit;
allay all jealousies as to the object of your journey, satisfy them
of it's innocence, make them acquainted with the position, extent,
character, peaceable & commercial dispositions of the U.S., of our
wish to be neighborly, friendly & useful to them, & of our
dispositions to a commercial intercourse with them; confer with them
on the points most convenient as mutual emporiums, & the articles of
most desirable interchange for them & us. If a few of their
influential chiefs, within practicable distance, wish to visit us,
arrange such a visit with them, and furnish them with authority to
call on our officers, on their entering the U.S. to have them
conveyed to this place at the public expense. If any of them should
wish to have some of their young people brought up with us, & taught
such arts as may be useful to them, we will receive, instruct & take
care of them. Such a mission, whether of influential chiefs, or of
young people, would give some security to your own party. Carry with
you some matter of the kine-pox, inform those of them with whom you
may be of it's efficacy as a preservative from the small-pox; and
instruct & encourage them in the use of it. This may be especially
done wherever you may winter.
As it is impossible for us to foresee in what manner you will
be received by those people, whether with hospitality or hostility,
so is it impossible to prescribe the exact degree of perseverance
with which you are to pursue your journey. We value too much the
lives of citizens to offer them to probably destruction. Your
numbers will be sufficient to secure you against the unauthorized
opposition of individuals, or of small parties: but if a superior
force, authorized or not authorized, by a nation, should be arrayed
against your further passage, & inflexibly determined to arrest it,
you must decline it's further pursuit, & return. In the loss of
yourselves, we should lose also the information you will have
acquired. By returning safely with that, you may enable us to renew
the essay with better calculated means. To your own discretion
therefore must be left the degree of danger you may risk, & the point
at which you should decline, only saying we wish you to err on the
side of your safety, & to bring back your party safe, even if it be
with less information.
As far up the Missouri as the white settlements extend, an
intercourse will probably be found to exist between them and the
Spanish posts at St. Louis, opposite Cahokia, or Ste. Genevieve
opposite Kaskaskia. From still farther up the river, the traders may
furnish a conveyance for letters. Beyond that you may perhaps be
able to engage Indians to bring letters for the government to Cahokia
or Kaskaskia on promising that they shall there receive such special
compensation as you shall have stipulated with them. Avail yourself
of these means to communicate to us at seasonable intervals a copy of
your journal, notes & observations of every kind, putting into cipher
whatever might do injury if betrayed.
Should you reach the Pacific Ocean inform yourself of the
circumstances which may decide whether the furs of those parts may
not be collected as advantageously at the head of the Missouri
(convenient as is supposed to the waters of the Colorado & Oregon or
Columbia) as at Nootka Sound or any other point of that coast; & that
trade be consequently conducted through the Missouri & U.S. more
beneficially than by the circumnavigation now practised.
On your arrival on that coast endeavor to learn if there be any
port within your reach frequented by the sea-vessels of any nation,
and to send two of your trusted people back by sea, in such way as
shall appear practicable, with a copy of your notes. And should you
be of opinion that the return of your party by the way they went will
be eminently dangerous, then ship the whole, & return by sea by way
of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, as you shall be able. As you
will be without money, clothes or provisions, you must endeavor to
use the credit of the U.S. to obtain them; for which purpose open
letters of credit shall be furnished you authorizing you to draw on
the Executive of the U.S. or any of its officers in any part of the
world, in which drafts can be disposed of, and to apply with our
recommendations to the consuls, agents, merchants or citizens of any
nation with which we have intercourse, assuring them in our name that
any aids they may furnish you, shall be honorably repaid and on
demand. Our consuls Thomas Howes at Batavia in Java, William
Buchanan of the Isles of France and Bourbon & John Elmslie at the
Cape of Good Hope will be able to supply your necessities by drafts
on us.
Should you find it safe to return by the way you go, after
sending two of your party round by sea, or with your whole party, if
no conveyance by sea can be found, do so; making such observations on
your return as may serve to supply, correct or confirm those made on
your outward journey.
In re-entering the U.S. and reaching a place of safety,
discharge any of your attendants who may desire & deserve it:
procuring for them immediate paiment of all arrears of pay &
cloathing which may have incurred since their departure & assure them
that they shall be recommended to the liberality of the Legislature
for the grant of a souldier's portion of land each, as proposed in my
message to Congress: & repair yourself with your papers to the seat
of government.
To provide, on the accident of your death, against anarchy,
dispersion & the consequent danger to your party, and total failure
of the enterprise, you are hereby authorized by any instrument signed
& written in your own hand to name the person among them who shall
succeed to the command on your decease, & by like instruments to
change the nomination from time to time, as further experience of the
characters accompanying you shall point out superior fitness: and all
the powers & authorities given to yourself are, in the event of your
death transferred to & vested in the successor so named, with further
power to him, & his successors in like manner to name each his
successor, who, on the death of his predecessor shall be invested
with all the powers & authorities given to yourself.
Given under my hand at the city of Washington, this 20th day of
June, 1803.
A NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
_To Sir John Sinclair_
_Washington, June 30, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- It is so long since I have had the pleasure of
writing to you, that it would be vain to look back to dates to
connect the old and the new. Yet I ought not to pass over my
acknowledgments to you for various publications received from time to
time, and with great satisfaction and thankfulness. I send you a
small one in return, the work of a very unlettered farmer, yet
valuable, as it relates plain facts of importance to farmers. You
will discover that Mr. Binns is an enthusiast for the use of gypsum.
But there are two facts which prove he has a right to be so: 1. He
began poor, andhas made himself tolerably rich by his farming alone.
2. The county of Loudon, in which he lives, had been so exhausted and
wasted by bad husbandry, that it began to depopulate, the inhabitants
going Southwardly in quest of better lands. Binns' success has
stopped that emigration. It is now becoming one of the most
productive counties of the State of Virginia, and the price given for
the lands is multiplied manifold.
We are still uninformed here whether you are again at war.
Bonaparte has produced such a state of things in Europe as it would
seem difficult for him to relinquish in any sensible degree, and
equally dangerous for Great Britain to suffer to go on, especially if
accompanied by maritime preparations on his part. The events which
have taken place in France have lessened in the American mind the
motives of interest which it felt in that revolution, and its amity
towards that country now rests on its love of peace and commerce. We
see, at the same time, with great concern, the position in which
Great Britain is placed, and should be sincerely afflicted were any
disaster to deprive mankind of the benefit of such a bulwark against
the torrent which has for some time been bearing down all before it.
But her power and powers at sea seem to render everything safe in the
end. Peace is our passion, and the wrongs might drive us from it.
We prefer trying _ever_ other just principles, right and safety,
before we would recur to war.
I hope your agricultural institution goes on with success. I
consider you as the author of all the good it shall do. A better
idea has never been carried into practice. Our agricultural society
has at length formed itself. Like our American Philosophical
Society, it is voluntary, and unconnected with the public, and is
precisely an execution of the plan I formerly sketched to you. Some
State societies have been formed heretofore; the others will do the
same. Each State society names two of its members of Congress to be
their members in the Central society, which is of course together
during the sessions of Congress. They are to select matter from the
proceedings of the State societies, and to publish it; so that their
publications may be called _l'esprit des societes d'agriculture_, &c.
The Central society was formed the last winter only, so that it will
be some time before they get under way. Mr. Madison, the Secretary
of State, was elected their President.
Recollecting with great satisfaction our friendly intercourse
while I was in Europe, I nourish the hope it still preserves a place
in your mind; and with my salutations, I pray you to accept
assurances of my constant attachment and high respect.
PEACE FOUNDED ON INTEREST
_To the Earl of Buchan_
_Washington, July 10, 1803_
MY LORD, -- I received, through the hands of Mr. Lenox, on his
return to the United States, the valuable volume you were so good as
to send me on the life and writings of Fletcher, of Saltoun. The
political principles of that patriot were worthy the purest periods
of the British Constitution; they are those which were in vigor at
the epoch of the American emigration. Our ancestors brought them
here, and they needed little strengthening to make us what we are.
But in the weakened condition of English whigism at this day, it
requires more firmness to publish and advocate them than it then did
to act on them. This merit is peculiarly your Lordship's; and no one
honors it more than myself. While I freely admit the right of a
nation to change its political principles and constitution at will,
and the impropriety of any but its own citizens censuring that
change, I expect your Lordship has been disappointed, as I
acknowledge I have been, in the issue of the convulsions on the other
side the channel. This has certainly lessened the interest which the
philanthropist warmly felt in those struggles. Without befriending
human liberty, a gigantic force has risen up which seems to threaten
the world. But it hangs on the thread of opinion, which may break
from one day to another. I feel real anxiety on the conflict to
which imperious circumstances seem to call your nation, and bless the
Almighty Being, who, in gathering together the waters under the
heavens into one place, divided the dry land of your hemisphere from
the dry lands of ours, and said, at least be there peace. I hope
that peace and amity with all nations will long be the character of
our land, and that its prosperity under the Charter will react on the
mind of Europe, and profit her by the example. My hope of preserving
peace for our country is not founded in the greater principles of
non-resistance under every wrong, but in the belief that a just and
friendly conduct on our part will procure justice and friendship from
others. In the existing contest, each of the combatants will find an
interest in our friendship. I cannot say we shall be unconcerned
spectators of this combat. We feel for human sufferings, and we wish
the good of all. We shall look on, therefore, with the sensations
which these dispositions and the events of the war will produce.
I feel a pride in the justice which your Lordship's sentiments
render to the character of my illustrious countryman, Washington.
The moderation of his desires, and the strength of his judgment,
enabled him to calculate correctly, that the road to that glory which
never dies is to use power for the support of the laws and liberties
of our country, not for their destruction; and his will accordingly
survives the wreck of everything now living.
Accept, my lord, the tribute of esteem, from one who renders it
with warmth to the disinterested friend of mankind, and assurances of
my high consideration and respect.
PHILOSOPHY AND BLASTED HOPES
_To Pierre J. G. Cabanis_
_Washington, July 12, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- I lately received your friendly letter of 28
Vendem. an. 11, with the two volumes on the relations between the
physical and moral faculties of man. This has ever been a subject of
great interest to the inquisitive mind, and it could not have got
into better hands for discussion than yours. That thought may be a
faculty of our material organization, has been believed in the gross;
and though the "modus operandi" of nature, in this, as in most other
cases, can never be developed and demonstrated to beings limited as
we are, yet I feel confident you will have conducted us as far on the
road as we can go, and have lodged us within reconnoitering distance
of the citadel itself. While _here_, I have time to read nothing.
But our annual recess for the months of August and September is now
approaching, during which time I shall be at the Montrials, where I
anticipate great satisfaction in the presence of these volumes. It
is with great satisfaction, too, I recollect the agreeable hours I
have past with yourself and M. de La Roche, at the house of our late
excellent friend, Madame Helvetius, and elsewhere; and I am happy to
learn you continue your residence there. Antevil always appeared to
me a delicious village, and Madame Helvetius's the most delicious
spot in it. In those days how sanguine we were! and how soon were
the virtuous hopes and confidence of every good man blasted! and how
many excellent friends have we lost in your efforts towards
self-government, _et cui bono_? But let us draw a veil over the
dead, and hope the best for the living. If the hero who has saved
you from a combination of enemies, shall also be the means of giving
you as great a portion of liberty as the opinions, habits and
character of the nation are prepared for, progressive preparation may
fit you for progressive portions of that first of blessings, and you
may in time attain what we erred in supposing could be hastily seized
and maintained, in the present state of political information among
your citizens at large. In this way all may end well.
You are again at war, I find. But we, I hope, shall be
permitted to run the race of peace. Your government has wisely
removed what certainly endangered collision between us. I now see
nothing which need ever interrupt the friendship between France and
this country. Twenty years of peace, and the prosperity so visibly
flowing from it, have but strengthened our attachment to it, and the
blessings it brings, and we do not despair of being always a
peaceable nation. We think that peaceable means may be devised of
keeping nations in the path of justice towards us, by making justice
their interest, and injuries to react on themselves. Our distance
enables us to pursue a course which the crowded situation of Europe
renders perhaps impracticable there.
Be so good as to accept for yourself and M. de La Roche, my
friendly salutations, and assurances of great consideration and
respect.
THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
_To John C. Breckinridge_
_Monticello, Aug. 12, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- The enclosed letter, tho' directed to you, was
intended to me also, and was left open with a request, that when
perused, I would forward it to you. It gives me occasion to write a
word to you on the subject of Louisiana, which being a new one, an
interchange of sentiments may produce correct ideas before we are to
act on them.
Our information as to the country is very incompleat; we have
taken measures to obtain it in full as to the settled part, which I
hope to receive in time for Congress. The boundaries, which I deem
not admitting question, are the high lands on the western side of the
Missisipi enclosing all it's waters, the Missouri of course, and
terminating in the line drawn from the northwestern point of the Lake
of the Woods to the nearest source of the Missipi, as lately settled
between Gr Britain and the U S. We have some claims, to extend on
the sea coast Westwardly to the Rio Norte or Bravo, and better, to go
Eastwardly to the Rio Perdido, between Mobile & Pensacola, the
antient boundary of Louisiana. These claims will be a subject of
negociation with Spain, and if, as soon as she is at war, we push
them strongly with one hand, holding out a price in the other, we
shall certainly obtain the Floridas, and all in good time. In the
meanwhile, without waiting for permission, we shall enter into the
exercise of the natural right we have always insisted on with Spain,
to wit, that of a nation holding the upper part of streams, having a
right of innocent passage thro' them to the ocean. We shall prepare
her to see us practise on this, & she will not oppose it by force.
Objections are raising to the Eastward against the vast extent
of our boundaries, and propositions are made to exchange Louisiana,
or a part of it, for the Floridas. But, as I have said, we shall get
the Floridas without, and I would not give one inch of the waters of
the Mississippi to any nation, because I see in a light very
important to our peace the exclusive right to it's navigation, & the
admission of no nation into it, but as into the Potomak or Delaware,
with our consent & under our police. These federalists see in this
acquisition the formation of a new confederacy, embracing all the
waters of the Missipi, on both sides of it, and a separation of it's
Eastern waters from us. These combinations depend on so many
circumstances which we cannot foresee, that I place little reliance
on them. We have seldom seen neighborhood produce affection among
nations. The reverse is almost the universal truth. Besides, if it
should become the great interest of those nations to separate from
this, if their happiness should depend on it so strongly as to induce
them to go through that convulsion, why should the Atlantic States
dread it? But especially why should we, their present inhabitants,
take side in such a question? When I view the Atlantic States,
procuring for those on the Eastern waters of the Missipi friendly
instead of hostile neighbors on it's Western waters, I do not view it
as an Englishman would the procuring future blessings for the French
nation, with whom he has no relations of blood or affection. The
future inhabitants of the Atlantic & Missipi States will be our sons.
We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we
see their happiness in their union, & we wish it. Events may prove
it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why
should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Missipi
descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God
bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good, but
separate them, if it be better. The inhabited part of Louisiana,
from Point Coupee to the sea, will of course be immediately a
territorial government, and soon a State. But above that, the best
use we can make of the country for some time, will be to give
establishments in it to the Indians on the East side of the Missipi,
in exchange for their present country, and open land offices in the
last, & thus make this acquisition the means of filling up the
Eastern side, instead of drawing off it's population. When we shall
be full on this side, we may lay off a range of States on the Western
bank from the head to the mouth, & so, range after range, advancing
compactly as we multiply.
This treaty must of course be laid before both Houses, because
both have important functions to exercise respecting it. They, I
presume, will see their duty to their country in ratifying & paying
for it, so as to secure a good which would otherwise probably be
never again in their power. But I suppose they must then appeal to
_the nation_ for an additional article to the Constitution, approving
& confirming an act which the nation had not previously authorized.
The constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign
territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our
Union. The Executive in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so
much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the
Constitution. The Legislature in casting behind them metaphysical
subtleties, and risking themselves like faithful servants, must
ratify & pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing
for them unauthorized what we know they would have done for
themselves had they been in a situation to do it. It is the case of
a guardian, investing the money of his ward in purchasing an
important adjacent territory; & saying to him when of age, I did this
for your good; I pretend to no right to bind you: you may disavow me,
and I must get out of the scrape as I can: I thoughtit my duty to
risk myself for you. But we shall not be disavowed by the nation,
and their act of indemnity will confirm & not weaken the
Constitution, by more strongly marking out its lines.
We have nothing later from Europe than the public papers give.
I hope yourself and all the Western members will make a sacred point
of being at the first day of the meeting of Congress; for _vestra res
agitur._
Accept my affectionate salutations & assurances of esteem &
respect.
A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
_To Wilson Cary Nicholas_
_Monticello, Sep. 7, 1803_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 3d was delivered me at court;
but we were much disappointed at not seeing you here, Mr. Madison &
the Gov. being here at the time. I enclose you a letter from Monroe
on the subject of the late treaty. You will observe a hint in it, to
do without delay what we are bound to do. There is reason, in the
opinion of our ministers, to believe, that if the thing were to do
over again, it could not be obtained, & that if we give the least
opening, they will declare the treaty void. A warning amounting to
that has been given to them, & an unusual kind of letter written by
their minister to our Secretary of State, direct. Whatever Congress
shall think it necessary to do, should be done with as little debate
as possible, & particularly so far as respects the constitutional
difficulty. I am aware of the force of the observations you make on
the power given by the Constn to Congress, to admit new States into
the Union, without restraining the subject to the territory then
constituting the U S. But when I consider that the limits of the U S
are precisely fixed by the treaty of 1783, that the Constitution
expressly declares itself to be made for the U S, I cannot help
believing the intention was to permit Congress to admit into the
Union new States, which should be formed out of the territory for
which, & under whose authority alone, they were then acting. I do
not believe it was meant that they might receive England, Ireland,
Holland, &c. into it, which would be the case on your construction.
When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other
dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which
is safe & precise. I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the
nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a
construction which would make our powers boundless. Our peculiar
security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make
it a blank paper by construction. I say the same as to the opinion
of those who consider the grant of the treaty making power as
boundless. If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has
bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers
which that instrument gives. It specifies & delineates the
operations permitted to the federal government, and gives all the
powers necessary to carry these into execution. Whatever of these
enumerated objects is proper for a law, Congress may make the law;
whatever is proper to be executed by way of a treaty, the President &
Senate may enter into the treaty; whatever is to be done by a
judicial sentence, the judges may pass the sentence. Nothing is more
likely than that their enumeration of powers is defective. This is
the ordinary case of all human works. Let us go on then perfecting
it, by adding, by way of amendment to the Constitution, those powers
which time & trial show are still wanting. But it has been taken too
much for granted, that by this rigorous construction the treaty power
would be reduced to nothing. I had occasion once to examine its
effect on the French treaty, made by the old Congress, & found that
out of thirty odd articles which that contained, there were one, two,
or three only which could not now be stipulated under our present
Constitution. I confess, then, I think it important, in the present
case, to set an example against broad construction, by appealing for
new power to the people. If, however, our friends shall think
differently, certainly I shall acquiesce with satisfaction;
confiding, that the good sense of our country will correct the evil
of construction when it shall produce ill effects.
No apologies for writing or speaking to me freely are
necessary. On the contrary, nothing my friends can do is so dear to
me, & proves to me their friendship so clearly, as the information
they give me of their sentiments & those of others on interesting
points where I am to act, and where information & warning is so
essential to excite in me that due reflection which ought to precede
action. I leave this about the 21st, and shall hope the District
Court will give me an opportunity of seeing you.
Accept my affectionate salutations, & assurances of cordial
esteem & respect.
JESUS, LOUISIANA, AND MALTHUS
_To Dr. Joseph Priestley_
_Washington, Jan. 29, 1804_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of December 12 came duly to hand, as
did the 2'd. letter to Doctor Linn, and the treatise of Phlogiston,
for which I pray you to accept my thanks. The copy for Mr.
Livingston has been delivered, together with your letter to him, to
Mr. Harvie, my secretary, who departs in a day or two for Paris, &
will deliver them himself to Mr. Livingston, whose attention to your
matter cannot be doubted. I have also to add my thanks to Mr.
Priestley, your son, for the copy of your Harmony, which I have gone
through with great satisfaction. It is the first I have been able to
meet with, which is clear of those long repetitions of the same
transaction, as if it were a different one because related with some
different circumstances.
I rejoice that you have undertaken the task of comparing the
moral doctrines of Jesus with those of the ancient Philosophers. You
are so much in possession of the whole subject, that you will do it
easier & better than any other person living. I think you cannot
avoid giving, as preliminary to the comparison, a digest of his moral
doctrines, extracted in his own words from the Evangelists, and
leaving out everything relative to his personal history and
character. It would be short and precious. With a view to do this
for my own satisfaction, I had sent to Philadelphia to get two
testaments Greek of the same edition, & two English, with a design to
cut out the morsels of morality, and paste them on the leaves of a
book, in the manner you describe as having been pursued in forming
your Harmony. But I shall now get the thing done by better hands.
I very early saw that Louisiana was indeed a speck in our
horizon which was to burst in a tornado; and the public are
unapprized how near this catastrophe was. Nothing but a frank &
friendly development of causes & effects on our part, and good sense
enough in Bonaparte to see that the train was unavoidable, and would
change the face of the world, saved us from that storm. I did not
expect he would yield till a war took place between France and
England, and my hope was to palliate and endure, if Messrs. Ross,
Morris, &c. did not force a premature rupture, until that event. I
believed the event not very distant, but acknolege it came on sooner
than I had expected. Whether, however, the good sense of Bonaparte
might not see the course predicted to be necessary & unavoidable,
even before a war should be imminent, was a chance which we thought
it our duty to try; but the immediate prospect of rupture brought the
case to immediate decision. The _denoument_ has been happy; and I
confess I look to this duplication of area for the extending a
government so free and economical as ours, as a great achievement to
the mass of happiness which is to ensue. Whether we remain in one
confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I
believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of
the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as
those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that
country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a
separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the
desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern,
doing all the good for both portions of our future family which
should fall within my power.
Have you seen the new work of Malthus on population? It is one
of the ablest I have ever seen. Altho' his main object is to
delineate the effects of redundancy of population, and to test the
poor laws of England, & other palliations for that evil, several
important questions in political economy, allied to his subject
incidentally, are treated with a masterly hand. It is a single 4'to.
volume, and I have been only able to read a borrowed copy, the only
one I have yet heard of. Probably our friends in England will think
of you, & give you an opportunity of reading it. Accept my
affectionate salutations, and assurances of great esteem & respect.
MALTHUS AND THE NEW WORLD
_To Jean Baptiste Say_
_Washington, February 1, 1804_
DEAR SIR, -- I have to acknowledge the receipt of your obliging
letter, and with it, of two very interesting volumes on Political
Economy. These found me engaged in giving the leisure moments I
rarely find, to the perusal of Malthus' work on population, a work of
sound logic, in which some of the opinions of Adam Smith, as well as
of the economists, are ably examined. I was pleased, on turning to
some chapters where you treat the same questions, to find his
opinions corroborated by yours. I shall proceed to the reading of
your work with great pleasure. In the meantime, the present
conveyance, by a gentleman of my family going to Paris, is too safe
to hazard a delay in making my acknowledgments for this mark of
attention, and for having afforded to me a satisfaction, which the
ordinary course of literary communications could not have given me
for a considerable time.
The differences of circumstance between this and the old
countries of Europe, furnish differences of fact whereon to reason,
in questions of political economy, and will consequently produce
sometimes a difference of result. There, for instance, the quantity
of food is fixed, or increasing in a slow and only arithmetical
ratio, and the proportion is limited by the same ratio.
Supernumerary births consequently add only to your mortality. Here
the immense extent of uncultivated and fertile lands enables every
one who will labor to marry young, and to raise a family of any size.
Our food, then, may increase geometrically with our laborers, and our
births, however multiplied, become effective. Again, there the best
distribution of labor is supposed to be that which places the
manufacturing hands alongside the agricultural; so that the one part
shall feed both, and the other part furnish both with clothes and
other comforts. Would that be best here? Egoism and first
appearances say yes. Or would it be better that all our laborers
should be employed in agriculture? In this case a double or treble
portion of fertile lands would be brought into culture; a double or
treble creation of food be produced, and its surplus go to nourish
the now perishing births of Europe, who in return would manufacture
and send us in exchange our clothes and other comforts. Morality
listens to this, and so invariably do the laws of nature create our
duties and interests, that when they seem to be at variance, we ought
to suspect some fallacy in our reasonings. In solving this question,
too, we should allow its just weight to the moral and physical
preference of the agricultural, over the manufacturing, man. My
occupations permit me only to ask questions. They deny me the time,
if I had the information, to answer them. Perhaps, as worthy the
attention of the author of the Traite d'Economie Politique, I shall
find them answered in that work. If they are not, the reason will
have been that you wrote for Europe; while I shall have asked them
because I think for America. Accept, Sir, my respectful salutations,
and assurances of great consideration.
GRIEF AND GRIEVANCES
_To Abigail Adams_
_Washington, June 13, 1804_
DEAR MADAM -- The affectionate sentiments which you have had
the goodness to express in your letter of May 20. towards my dear
departed daughter, have awakened in me sensibilities natural to the
occasion, and recalled your kindnesses to her which I shall ever
remember with gratitude and friendship. I can assure you with truth
they had made an indelible impression on her mind, and that, to the
last, on our meetings after long separations, whether I had heard
lately of you, and how you did, were among the earliest of her
enquiries. In giving you this assurance I perform a sacred duty for
her, and at the same time am thankful for the occasion furnished me
of expressing my regret that circumstances should have arisen which
have seemed to draw a line of separation between us. The friendship
with which you honoured me has ever been valued, and fully
reciprocated; and altho' events have been passing which might be
trying to some minds, I never believed yours to be of that kind, nor
felt that my own was. Neither my estimate of your character, nor the
esteem founded in that, have ever been lessened for a single moment,
although doubts whether it would be acceptable may have forbidden
manifestations of it. Mr. Adams's friendship and mine began at an
earlier date. It accompanied us thro' long and important scenes.
The different conclusions we had drawn from our political reading and
reflections were not permitted to lessen mutual esteem, each party
being conscious they were the result of an honest conviction in the
other. Like differences of opinion existing among our fellow
citizens attached them to the one or the other of us, and produced a
rivalship in their minds which did not exist in ours. We never stood
in one another's way: for if either had been withdrawn at any time,
his favorers would not have gone over to the other, but would have
sought for some one of homogeneous opinions. This consideration was
sufficient to keep down all jealousy between us, and to guard our
friendship from any disturbance by sentiments of rivalship: and I can
say with truth that one act of Mr. Adams's life, and one only, ever
gave me a moment's personal displeasure. I did consider his last
appointments to office as personally unkind. They were from among my
most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful cooperation
could ever be expected, and laid me under the embarrasment of acting
thro' men whose views were to defeat mine; or to encounter the odium
of putting others in their places. It seemed but common justice to
leave a successor free to act by instruments of his own choice. If
my respect for him did not permit me to ascribe the whole blame to
the influence of others, it left something for friendship to forgive,
and after brooding over it for some little time, and not always
resisting the expression of it, I forgave it cordially, and returned
to the same state of esteem and respect for him which had so long
subsisted. Having come into life a little later than Mr. Adams, his
career has preceded mine, as mine is followed by some other, and it
will probably be closed at the same distance after him which time
originally placed between us. I maintain for him, and shall carry
into private life an uniform and high measure of respect and good
will, and for yourself a sincere attachment. I have thus, my dear
Madam, opened myself to you without reserve, which I have long wished
an opportunity of doing; and, without knowing how it will be
recieved, I feel relief from being unbosomed. And I have now only to
entreat your forgiveness for this transition from a subject of
domestic affliction to one which seems of a different aspect. But
tho connected with political events, it has been viewed by me most
strongly in it's unfortunate bearings on my private friendships. The
injury these have sustained has been a heavy price for what has never
given me equal pleasure. That you may both be favored with health,
tranquility and long life, is the prayer of one who tenders you the
assurances of his highest consideration and esteem.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
_To Judge John Tyler_
_Washington, June 28, 1804_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 10th instant has been duly
received. Amidst the direct falsehoods, the misrepresentations of
truth, the calumnies and the insults resorted to by a faction to
mislead the public mind, and to overwhelm those entrusted with its
interests, our support is to be found in the approving voice of our
conscience and country, in the testimony of our fellow citizens, that
their confidence is not shaken by these artifices. When to the
plaudits of the honest multitude, the sober approbation of the sage
in his closet is added, it becomes a gratification of an higher
order. It is the sanction of wisdom superadded to the voice of
affection. The terms, therefore, in which you are so good as to
express your satisfaction with the course of the present
administration cannot but give me great pleasure. I may err in my
measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the
public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the
power of the few to riot on the labors of the many. No experiment
can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we
trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by
reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave
open to him all the avenues to truth.The most effectual hitherto
found, is the freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut
up by those who fear the investigation of their actions. The
firmness with which the people have withstood the late abuses of the
press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and
falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything
true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them. As
little is it necessary to impose on their senses, or dazzle their
minds by pomp, splendor, or forms. Instead of this artificial, how
much surer is that real respect, which results from the use of their
reason, and the habit of bringing everything to the test of common
sense.
I hold it, therefore, certain, that to open the doors of truth,
and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason, are the
most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors
to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent. The
panic into which they were artfully thrown in 1798, the frenzy which
was excited in them by their enemies against their apparent readiness
to abandon all the principles established for their own protection,
seemed for awhile to countenance the opinions of those who say they
cannot be trusted with their own government. But I never doubted
their rallying; and they did rally much sooner than I expected. On
the whole, that experiment on their credulity has confirmed my
confidence in their ultimate good sense and virtue.
I lament to learn that a like misfortune has enabled you to
estimate the afflictions of a father on the loss of a beloved child.
However terrible the possibility of such another accident, it is
still a blessing for you of inestimable value that you would not even
then descend childless to the grave. Three sons, and hopeful ones
too, are a rich treasure. I rejoice when I hear of young men of
virtue and talents, worthy to receive, and likely to preserve the
splendid inheritance of self-government, which we have acquired and
shaped for them.
The complement of midshipmen for the Tripoline squadron, is
full; and I hope the frigates have left the Capes by this time. I
have, however, this day, signed warrants of midshipmen for the two
young gentlemen you recommended. These will be forwarded by the
Secretary of the Navy. He tells me that their first services will be
to be performed on board the gun boats.
Accept my friendly salutations, and assurances of great esteem
and respect.
"THE OFFICE OF HANGMAN"
_To Larkin Smith_
_Washington, Nov. 26, 1804_
SIR, -- Your letter of the 10th came to hand yesterday evening.
It was written with frankness and independance and will be answered
in the same way. You complain that I did not answer your letters
applying for office. But if you will reflect a moment you may judge
whether this ought to be expected. To the successful applicant for
an office the commission is the answer. To the unsuccessful
multitude am I to go with every one into the reasons for not
appointing him? Besides that this correspondence would literally
engross my whole time, into what controversies would it lead me.
Sensible of this dilemma, from the moment of coming into office I
laid it down as a rule to leave the applicants to collect their
answer from the facts. To entitle myself to the benefit of the rule
in any case it must be observed in every one: and I never have
departed from it in a single case, not even for my bosom friends.
You observe that you are, or probably will be appointed an elector.
I have no doubt you will do your duty with a conscientious regard to
the public good & to that only. Your decision in favor of another
would not excite in my mind the slightest dissatisfaction towards
you. On the contrary I should honor the integrity of your choice.
In the nominations I have to make, do the same justice to my motives.
Had you hundreds to nominate, instead of one, be assured they would
not compose for you a bed of roses. You would find yourself in most
cases with one loaf and ten wanting bread. Nine must be
disappointed, perhaps become secret, if not open enemies. The
transaction of the great interests of our country costs us little
trouble or difficulty. There the line is plain to men of some
experience. But the task of appointment is a heavy one indeed. He
on whom it falls may envy the lot of a Sisyphus or Ixion. Their
agonies were of the body: this of the mind. Yet, like the office of
hangman it must be executed by some one. It has been assigned to me
and made my duty. I make up my mind to it therefore, & abandon all
regard to consequences. Accept my salutations & assurances of
respect.
BLUEPRINT OF THE UNIVERSITY
_To Littleton Waller Tazewell_
_Washington, Jan. 5, 1805_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of December 24 never came to my hands
till last night. It's importance induces me to hasten the answer.
No one can be more rejoiced at the information that the legislature
of Virginia are likely at length to institute an University on a
liberal plan. Convinced that the people are the only safe
depositories of their own liberty, & that they are not safe unless
enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state
of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people
could be informed to a certain degree. This requires two grades of
education. First some institution where science in all it's branches
is taught, and in the highest degree to which the human mind has
carried it. This would prepare a few subjects in every State, to
whom nature has given minds of the first order. Secondly such a
degree of learning given to every member of the society as will
enable him to read, to judge & to vote understandingly on what is
passing. This would be the object of the township schools. I
understand from your letter that the first of these only is under
present contemplation. Let us receive with contentment what the
legislature is now ready to give. The other branch will be
incorporated into the system at some more favorable moment.
The first step in this business will be for the legislature to
pass an act of establishment equivalent to a charter. This should
deal in generals only. It's provisions should go 1. to the object of
the institution. 2. it's location. 3. it's endowment. 4. it's
Direction. On each of these heads I will hazard a first thought or
two. 1. It's object should be defined only generally for teaching
the useful branches of science, leaving the particulars to the
direction of the day. Science is progressive. What was useful two
centuries ago is now become useless, e.g. one half the professorships
of Wm & Mary. What is now deemed useful will in some of it's parts
become useless in another century. The visitors will be the best
qualified to keep their institution up in even pace with the science
of the times. Every one knows that Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne,
etc. are now a century or two behind the science of the age. 2. The
location. The legislature is the proper judges of a general
position, within certain limits, as for instance the county in which
it shall be. To fix on the spot identically they would not be so
competent as persons particularly appointed to examine the grounds.
This small degree of liberty in location would place the landholders
in the power of the purchasers: to fix the spot would place the
purchaser in the power of the landholder. 3. It's endowment. Bank
stock, or public stock of any kind should be immediately converted
into real estate. In the form of stock it is a dead fund, it's
depreciation being equal to it's interest. Every one must see that
money put into our funds when first established (in 1791) with all
its interest from that day would not buy more now than the principal
would then have done. Mr. Pitt states to parliament that the
expenses of living in England have, in the last 20 years, increased
50. percent: that is that money has depreciated that much. Even the
precious metals depreciate slowly so that in perpetual institutions,
as colleges, that ought to be guarded against. But in countries
admitting paper, the abusive emissions of that produces two, three or
four courses of depreciation & annihilation in a century. Lands will
keep _advancing_ nominally so as to keep _even_ really. Canal shares
are as good as lands, perhaps better: but the whole funds should not
be risked in any one form. They should be vested in the visitors,
without any power given them to lessen their capital, or even to
_change_ what is real. 4. The Direction. This would of course be in
the hands of Visitors. The legislature would name the first set, &
lay down the laws of their succession. On death or resignation the
legislature or the Chancellor might name three persons of whom the
visitors should chuse one. The visitors should be few. If many,
those half qualified would by their numbers bring every thing down to
the level of their own capacities, by out-voting the few of real
science. I doubt if they should exceed five. For this is an office
for which good sense alone does not qualify a man. To analyse
science into it's different branches, to distribute these into
professorships, to superintend the course practiced by each
professor, he must know what these sciences are and possess their
outlines at least. Can any state in the union furnish more than 5.
men so qualified as to the whole field of the sciences. The Visitors
should receive no pay. Such qualifications are properly rewarded by
honor, not by money.
The charter being granted & the Visitors named, these become
then the agents as to every thing else. Their first objects will be
1. the special location. 2. the institution of professorships. 3.
the employment of their capital. 4. the necessary buildings. A word
on each. 1. Special location needs no explanation. 2.
Professorships. They would have to select all the branches of
science deemed useful at this day, & in this country: to groupe as
many of these together as could be taught by one professor and thus
reduce the number of professors to the minimum consistent with the
essential object. Having for some years entertained the hope that
our country would some day establish an institution on a liberal
scale, I have been taking measures to have in readiness such
materials as would require time to collect. I have from Dr.
Priestley a designation of the branches of science grouped into
professorships which he furnished at my request. He was an excellent
judge of what may be called the old studies, of those useful and
those useless. I have the same thing from Mr. Dupont, a good judge
of the new branches. His letter to me is quite a treatise. I have
the plan of the institutions of Edinburgh, & those of the National
institute of France; and I expect from Mr. Pictet, one of the most
celebrated professors of Geneva, their plan, in answer to a letter
written some time ago. From these the Visitors could select the
branches useful for the country & how to groupe them. A hasty view
of the subject on a former occasion led me to believe 10.
professorships would be necessary, but not all immediately. Half a
dozen of the most urgent would make a good beginning. The salaries
of the first professors should be very liberal, that we might draw
the first names of Europe to our institution in order to give it a
celebrity in the outset, which will draw to it the youth of all the
states, and make Virginia their cherished & beloved Alma mater. I
have good reasons to believe we can command the services of some of
the first men of Europe. 3. The emploiment of their capital. On
this subject others are so much better judges than myself that I
shall say nothing. 4. Buildings. The greatest danger will be their
over-building themselves, by attempting a large house in the
beginning, sufficient to contain the whole institution. Large houses
are always ugly, inconvenient, exposed to the accident of fire, and
bad in cases of infection. A plain small house for the school &
lodging of each professor is best. These connected by covered ways
out of which the rooms of the students should open would be best.
These may then be built only as they shall be wanting. In fact an
University should not be an house but a village. This will much
lessen their first expenses.
Not having written any three lines of this without interruption
it has been impossible to keep my ideas rallied to the subject. I
must let these hasty outlines go therefore as they are. Some are
premature, some probably immature: but make what use you please of
them except letting them get into print. Should this establishment
take place on a plan worthy of approbation, I shall have a valuable
legacy to leave it, to wit, my library, which certainly has not cost
less than 15,000 Dollars. But it's value is more in the selection, a
part of which, that which respects America, is the result of my own
personal searches in Paris for 6. or 7. years, & of persons employed
by me in England, Holland, Germany and Spain to make similar
searches. Such a collection on that subject can never again be made.
With my sincere wishes for the success of this measure accept my
salutations & assurances of great esteem & respect.
THE TWO-TERM PRECEDENT
_To John Taylor_
_Washington, Jan. 6, 1805_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of Dec. 26th has been duly received,
and was received as a proof of your friendly partialities to me, of
which I have so often had reason to be sensible. My opinion
originally was that the President of the U.S. should have been
elected for 7. years, & forever ineligible afterwards. I have since
become sensible that 7. years is too long to be irremovable, and that
there should be a peaceable way of withdrawing a man in midway who is
doing wrong. The service for 8. years with a power to remove at the
end of the first four, comes nearly to my principle as corrected by
experience. And it is in adherence to that that I determined to
withdraw at the end of my second term. The danger is that the
indulgence & attachments of the people will keep a man in the chair
after he becomes a dotard, that reelection through life shall become
habitual, & election for life follow that. Genl. Washington set the
example of voluntary retirement after 8. years. I shall follow it,
and a few more precedents will oppose the obstacle of habit to anyone
after a while who shall endeavor to extend his term. Perhaps it may
beget a disposition to establish it by an amendment of the
constitution. I believe I am doing right, therefore, in pursuing my
principle. I had determined to declare my intention, but I have
consented to be silent on the opinion of friends, who think it best
not to put a continuance out of my power in defiance of all
circumstances. There is, however, but one circumstance which could
engage my acquiescence in another election, to wit, such a division
about a successor as might bring in a Monarchist. But this
circumstance is impossible. While, therefore, I shall make no formal
declarations to the public of my purpose, I have freely let it be
understood in private conversation. In this I am persuaded yourself
& my friends generally will approve of my views: and should I at the
end of a 2d term carry into retirement all the favor which the 1st
has acquired, I shall feel the consolation of having done all the
goodin my power, and expect with more than composure thetermination
of a life no longer valuable to others or of im-portance to myself.
Accept my affectionate salutations & assurances of great esteem &
respect.
CLIMATE, FEVERS, AND THE POLYGRAPH
_To C. F. de C. Volney_
_Washington, February 8, 1805_
DEAR SIR, -- Your letter of November the 26th came to hand May
the 14th; the books some time after, which were all distributed
according to direction. The copy for the East Indies went
immediately by a safe conveyance. The letter of April the 28th, and
the copy of your work accompanying that, did not come to hand till
August. That copy was deposited in the Congressional library. It
was not till my return here from my autumnal visit to Monticello,
that I had an opportunity of reading your work. I have read it, and
with great satisfaction. Of the first part I am less a judge than
most people, having never travelled westward of Staunton, so as to
know any thing of the face of the country; nor much indulged myself
in geological inquiries, from a belief that the skin-deep scratches
which we can make or find on the surface of the earth, do not repay
our time with as certain and useful deductions, as our pursuits in
some other branches. The subject of our winds is more familiar to
me. On that, the views you have taken are always great, supported in
their outlines by your facts; and though more extensive observations,
and longer continued, may produce some anomalies, yet they will
probably take their place in this first great canvass which you have
sketched. In no case, perhaps, does habit attach our choice or
judgment more than in climate. The Canadian glows with delight in
his sleigh and snow, the very idea of which gives me the shivers.
The comparison of climate between Europe and North America, taking
together its corresponding parts, hangs chiefly on three great
points. 1. The changes between heat and cold in America, are greater
and more frequent, and the extremes comprehend a greater scale on the
thermometer in America than in Europe. Habit, however, prevents
these from affecting us more than the smaller changes of Europe
affect the European. But he is greatly affected by ours. 2. Our sky
is always clear; that of Europe always cloudy. Hence a greater
accumulation of heat here than there, in the same parallel. 3. The
changes between wet and dry are much more frequent and sudden in
Europe than in America. Though we have double the rain, it falls in
half the time. Taking all these together, I prefer much the climate
of the United States to that of Europe. I think it a more cheerful
one. It is our cloudless sky which has eradicated from our
constitutions all disposition to hang ourselves, which we might
otherwise have inherited from our English ancestors. During a
residence of between six and seven years in Paris, I never, but once,
saw the sun shine through a whole day, without being obscured by a
cloud in any part of it: and I never saw the moment, in which,
viewing the sky through its whole hemisphere, I could say there was
not the smallest speck of a cloud in it. I arrived at Monticello, on
my return from France, in January, and during only two months' stay
there, I observed to my daughters, who had been with me to France,
that twenty odd times within that term, there was not a speck of a
cloud in the whole hemisphere. Still I do not wonder that an
European should prefer his grey to our azure sky. Habit decides our
taste in this, as in most other cases.
The account you give of the yellow fever, is entirely agreeable
to what we then knew of it. Further experience has developed more
and more its peculiar character. Facts appear to have established
that it is originated here by a local atmosphere, which is never
generated but in the lower, closer, and dirtier parts of our large
cities, in the neighborhood of the water; and that, to catch the
disease, you must enter the local atmosphere. Persons having taken
the disease in the infected quarter, and going into the country, are
nursed and buried by their friends, without an example of
communicating it. A vessel going from the infected quarter, and
carrying its atmosphere in its hold into another State, has given the
disease to every person who there entered her. These have died in
the arms of their families without a single communication of the
disease. It is certainly, therefore, an epidemic, not a contagious
disease; and calls on the chemists for some mode of purifying the
vessel by a decomposition of its atmosphere, if ventilation be found
insufficient. In the long scale of bilious fevers, graduated by many
shades, this is probably the last and most mortal term. It seizes
the native of the place equally with strangers. It has not been long
known in any part of the United States. The shade next above it,
called the stranger's fever, has been coeval with the settlement of
the larger cities in the southern parts, to wit, Norfolk, Charleston,
New Orleans. Strangers going to these places in the months of July,
August or September, find this fever as mortal as the genuine yellow
fever. But it rarely attacks those who have resided in them some
time. Since we have known that kind of yellow fever which is no
respecter of persons, its name has been extended to the stranger's
fever, and every species of bilious fever which produces a black
vomit, that is to say, a discharge of very dark bile. Hence we hear
of yellow fever on the Alleganey mountains, in Kentucky, &c. This is
a matter of definition only: but it leads into error those who do not
know how loosely and how interestedly some physicians think and
speak. So far as we have yet seen, I think we are correct insaying,
that the yellow fever which seizes on all indiscriminately, is an
ultimate degree of bilious fever never known in the United States
till lately, nor farther south, as yet, than Alexandria, and that
what they have recently called the yellow fever in New Orleans,
Charleston and Norfolk, is what has always been known in those places
as confined chiefly to strangers, and nearly as mortal _to them_, as
the other is to _all_ its subjects. But both grades are local: the
stranger's fever less so, as it sometimes extends a little into the
neighborhood; but the yellow fever rigorously so, confined within
narrow and well defined limits, and not communicable out of those
limits. Such a constitution of atmosphere being requisite to
originate this disease as is generated only in low, close, and
ill-cleansed parts of a town, I have supposed it practicable to
prevent its generation by building our cities on a more open plan.
Take, for instance, the chequer board for a plan. Let the black
squares only be building squares, and the white ones be left open, in
turf and trees. Every square of houses will be surrounded by four
open squares, and every house will front an open square. The
atmosphere of such a town would be like that of the country,
insusceptible of the miasmata which produce yellow fever. I have
accordingly proposed that the enlargements of the city of New
Orleans, which must immediately take place, shall be on this plan.
But it is only in case of enlargements to be made, or of cities to be
built, that this means of prevention can be employed.
The _genus irritabile vatum_ could not let the author of the
Ruins publish a new work, without seeking in it the means of
discrediting that puzzling composition. Some one of those holy
calumniators has selected from your new work every scrap of a
sentence, which, detached from its context, could displease an
American reader. A cento has been made of these, which has run
through a particular description of newspapers, and excited a
disapprobation even in friendly minds, which nothing but the reading
of the book will cure. But time and truth will at length correct
error.
Our countrymen are so much occupied in the busy scenes of life,
that they have little time to write or invent. A good invention
here, therefore, is such a rarity as it is lawful to offer to the
acceptance of a friend. A Mr. Hawkins of Frankford, near
Philadelphia, has invented a machine which he calls a polygraph, and
which carries two, three, or four pens. That of two pens, with which
I am now writing, is best; and is so perfect that I have laid aside
the copying-press, for a twelve month past, and write always with the
polygraph. I have directed one to be made, of which I ask your
acceptance. By what conveyance I shall send it while Havre is
blockaded, I do not yet know. I think you will be pleased with it,
and will use it habitually as I do; because it requires only that
degree of mechanical attention which I know you to possess. I am
glad to hear that M. Cabanis is engaged in writing on the reformation
of medicine. It needs the hand of a reformer, and cannot be in
better hands than his. Will you permit my rekspects to him and the
Abbe de la Roche to find a place here.
A word now on our political state. The two parties which
prevailed with so much violence when you were here, are almost wholly
melted into one. At the late Presidential election I have received
one hundred and sixty-two votes against fourteen only. Connecticut
is still federal by a small majority; and Delaware on a poise, as she
has been since 1775, and will be till Anglomany with her yields to
Americanism. Connecticut will be with us in a short time. Though
the people in mass have joined us, their leaders had committed
themselves too far to retract. Pride keeps them hostile; they brood
over their angry passions, and give them vent in the newspapers which
they maintain. They still make as much noise as if they were the
whole nation. Unfortunately, these being the mercantile papers,
published chiefly in the sea ports, are the only ones which find
their way to Europe, and make very false impressions there. I am
happy to hear that the late derangement of your health is going
off,and that you are re-established. I sincerely pray for the
continuance of that blessing, and with my affectionate salutations,
tender you assurances of great respect and attachment.
P. S. The sheets which you receive are those of the copying pen
of the polygraph, not of the one with which I have written.
NEWS OF CAPTAIN LEWIS
_To C. F. de C. Volney_
_Washington, Feb. 11, 1806_
DEAR SIR, -- Since mine of Feb. 18 of the last year, I have
received yours of July 2. I have been constantly looking out for an
opportunity of sending your Polygraph; but the blockade of Havre has
cut off that resource, and I have feared to send it to a port from
which there would be only land carriage. A safe conveyance now
offering to Nantes, & under the particular care of Mr. Skipwith, who
is returning to France, he will take care of it from Nantes by land
if an easy carriage is found, or if not, then by the canal of Briare.
Another year's constant use of a similar one attaches me more and
more to it as a most valuable convenience. I send you also a
pamphlet published here against the English doctrine which denies to
neutrals a trade in war not open to them in peace in which you will
find it pulverized by a logic not to be controverted.
Our last news of Captn Lewis was that he had reached the upper
part of the Missouri, & had taken horses to cross the Highlands to
the Columbia river. He passed the last winter among the Manians 1610
miles above the mouth of the river. So far he had delineated it with
as great accuracy as will probably be ever applied to it, as his
courses & distances by mensuration were corrected by almost daily
observations of latitude and longitude. With his map he sent us
specimens or information of the following animals not before known to
the northern continent of America. 1. The horns of what is perhaps a
species of Ovis Ammon. 2. A new variety of the deer having a black
tail. 3. An antelope. 4. The badger, not before known out of
Europe. 5. A new species of marmotte. 6. A white weasel. 7. The
magpie. 8. The Prairie hen, said to resemble the Guinea hen
(peintade). 9. A prickly lizard. To these are added a considerable
collection of minerals, not yet analyzed. He wintered in Lat. 47
degrees 20' and found the maximum of cold 43 degrees below the zero
of Fahrenheit. We expect he has reached the Pacific, and is now
wintering on the head of the Missouri, and will be here next autumn.
Having been disappointed in our view of sending an exploring party up
the Red river the last year, they were sent up the Washita, as far as
the hot springs, under the direction of Mr. Dunbar. He found the
temperature of the springs 150 degrees of Fahrenheit & the water
perfectly potable when cooled. We obtain also the geography of that
river, so far with perfect accuracy. Our party is just at this time
setting out from Natchez to ascend the Red river. These expeditions
are so laborious, & hazardous, that men of science, used to the
temperature & inactivity of their closet, cannot be induced to
undertake them. They are headed therefore by persons qualified
expressly to give us the geography of the rivers with perfect
accuracy, and of good common knolege and observation in the animal,
vegetable & mineral departments. When the route shall be once open
and known, scientific men will undertake, & verify & class it's
subjects. Our emigration to the western country from these states
the last year is estimated at about 100,000. I conjecture that about
one-half the number of our increase will emigrate westwardly
annually. A newspaper paragraph tells me, with some details, that
the society of agriculture of Paris had thought a mould-board of my
construction worthy their notice & Mr. Dupont confirms it in a
letter, but not specifying anything particular. I send him a model
with an advantageous change in the form, in which however the
principle is rigorously the same. I mention this to you lest he
should have left France for America, and I notice it no otherwise
lest there should have been any error in the information. Present my
respectful salutations to Doctr. Cabanis & accept them yourself with
assurances of my constant friendship & attachment.
A NATIONAL ACADEMY
_To Joel Barlow_
_Feb. 24, 1806_
I return you the draft of the bill for the establishment of a
National Academy & University at the city of Washington, with such
alterations as we talked over the last night. They are chiefly
verbal. I have often wished we could have a Philosophical society or
academy so organized as that while the central academy should be at
the seat of government, it's members dispersed over the states,
should constitute filiated academies in each state, publish their
communications, from which the central academy should select
unpublished what should be most choice. In this way all the members
wheresoever dispersed might be brought into action, and an useful
emulation might arise between the filiated societies. Perhaps the
great societies now existing might incorporate themselves in this way
with the National one. But time does not allow me to pursue this
idea, nor perhaps had we time at all to get it into the present bill.
I procured an Agricultural society to be established (voluntarily) on
this plan, but it has done nothing. Friendly salutations.
COURTING ALEXANDER
_To the Emperor Alexander_
_Washington, April 19, 1806_
I owe an acknowledgment to your Imperial Majesty for the great
satisfaction I have received from your letter of Aug. 20, 1805, and
embrace the opportunity it affords of giving expression to the
sincere respect and veneration I entertain for your character. It
will be among the latest and most soothing comforts of my life, to
have seen advanced to the government of so extensive a portion of the
earth, and at so early a period of his life, a sovereign whose ruling
passion is the advancement of the happiness and prosperity of his
people; and not of his own people only, but who can extend his eye
and his good will to a distant and infant nation, unoffending in its
course, unambitious in its views.
The events of Europe come to us so late, and so suspiciously,
that observations on them would certainly be stale, and possibly wide
of their actual state. From their general aspect, however, I collect
that your Majesty's interposition in them has been disinterested and
generous, and having in view only the general good of the great
European family. When you shall proceed to the pacification which is
to re-establish peace and commerce, the same dispositions of mind
will lead you to think of the general intercourse of nations, and to
make that provision for its future maintenance which, in times past,
it has so much needed. The northern nations of Europe, at the head
of which your Majesty is distinguished, are habitually peaceable.
The United States of America, like them, are attached to peace. We
have then with them a common interest in the neutral rights. Every
nation indeed, on the continent of Europe, belligerent as well as
neutral, is interested in maintaining these rights, in liberalizing
them progressively with the progress of science and refinement of
morality, and in relieving them from restrictions which the extension
of the arts has long since rendered unreasonable and vexatious.
Two personages in Europe, of which your Majesty is one, have it
in their power, at the approaching pacification, to render eminent
service to nations in general, by incorporating into the act of
pacification, a correct definition of the rights of neutrals on the
high seas. Such a definition, declared by all the powers lately or
still belligerent, would give to those rights a precision and
notoriety, and cover them with an authority, which would protect them
in an important degree against future violation; and should any
further sanction be necessary, that of an exclusion of the violating
nation from commercial intercourse with all the others, would be
preferred to war, as more analogous to the offence, more easy and
likely to be executed with good faith. The essential articles of
these rights, too, are so few and simple as easily to be defined.
Having taken no part in the past or existing troubles of
Europe, we have no part to act in its pacification. But as
principles may then be settled in which we have a deep interest, it
is a great happiness for us that they are placed under the protection
of an umpire, who, looking beyond the narrow bounds of an individual
nation, will take under the cover of his equity the rights of the
absent and unrepresented. It is only by a happy concurrence of good
characters and good occasions, that a step can now and then be taken
to advance the well-being of nations. If the present occasion be
good, I am sure your Majesty's character will not be wanting to avail
the world of it. By monuments of such good offices, may your life
become an epoch in the history of the condition of man; and may He
who called it into being, for the good of the human family, give it
length of days and success, and have it always in His holy keeping.
A TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE
_To Dr. Edward Jenner_
_Monticello, May 14, 1806_
SIR, -- I have received a copy of the evidence at large
respecting the discovery of the vaccine inoculation which you have
been pleased to send me, and for which I return you my thanks.
Having been among the early converts, in this part of the globe, to
its efficiency, I took an early part in recommending it to my
countrymen. I avail myself of this occasion of rendering you a
portion of the tribute of gratitude due to you from the whole human
family. Medicine has never before produced any single improvement of
such utility. Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was
a beautiful addition to our knowledge of the animal economy, but on a
review of the practice of medicine before and since that epoch, I do
not see any great amelioration which has been derived from that
discovery. You have erased from the calendar of human afflictions
one of its greatest. Yours is the comfortable reflection that
mankind can never forget that you have lived. Future nations will
know by history only that the loathsome small-pox has existed and by
you has been extirpated.
Accept my fervent wishes for your health and happiness and
assurances of the greatest respect and consideration.
SCHISM AND THE MAJORITY LEADSHIP
_To Barnabas Bidwell_
_Washington, July 5, 1806_
SIR, -- Your favor of June the 21st has been duly received. We
have not as yet heard from General Skinner on the subject of his
office. Three persons are proposed on the most respectable
recommendations, and under circumstances of such equality as renders
it difficult to decide between them. But it shall be done
impartially. I sincerely congratulate you on the triumph of
republicanism in Massachusetts. The Hydra of federalism has now lost
all its heads but two. Connecticut I think will soon follow
Massachusetts. Delaware will probably remain what it ever has been,
a mere county of England, conquered indeed, and held under by force,
but always disposed to counter-revolution. I speak of its majority
only.
Our information from London continues to give us hopes of an
accommodation there on both the points of `accustomed commerce and
impressment.' In this there must probably be some mutual concession,
because we cannot expect to obtain every thing and yield nothing.
But I hope it will be such an one as may be accepted. The arrival of
the Hornet in France is so recently known, that it will yet be some
time before we learn our prospects there. Notwithstanding the
efforts made here, and made professedly to assassinate that
negotiation in embryo, if the good sense of Buonaparte should prevail
over his temper, the present state of things in Europe may induce him
to require of Spain that she should do us justice at least. That he
should require her to sell us East Florida, we have no right to
insist: yet there are not wanting considerations which may induce him
to wish a permanent foundation for peace laid between us. In this
treaty, whatever it shall be, our old enemies the federalists, and
their new friends, will find enough to carp at. This is a thing of
course, and I should suspect error where they found no fault. The
buzzard feeds on carrion only. Their rallying point is `war with
France and Spain, and alliance with Great Britain:' and every thing
is wrong with them which checks their new ardor to be fighting for
the liberties of mankind; on the sea always excepted. There one
nation is to monopolise all the liberties of the others.
I read, with extreme regret, the expressions of an inclination
on your part to retire from Congress. I will not say that this time,
more than all others, calls for the service of every man; but I will
say, there never was a time when the services of those who possess
talents, integrity, firmness and sound judgment, were more wanted in
Congress. Some one of that description is particularly wanted to
take the lead in the House of Representatives, to consider the
business of the nation as his own business, to take it up as if he
were singly charged with it, and carry it through. I do not mean
that any gentleman, relinquishing his own judgment, should implicitly
support all the measures of the administration; but that,where he
does not disapprove of them, he should not suffer them to go off in
sleep, but bring them to the attention of the House, and give them a
fair chance. Where he disapproves, he will of course leave them to
be brought forward by those who concur in the sentiment. Shall I
explain my idea by an example? The classification of the militia was
communicated to General Varnum and yourself merely as a proposition,
which, if you approved, it was trusted you would support. I knew,
indeed, that General Varnum was opposed to any thing which might
break up the present organization of the militia: but when so
modified as to avoid this, I thought he might, perhaps, be reconciled
to it. As soon as I found it did not coincide with your sentiments,
I could not wish you to support it; but using the same freedom of
opinion, I procured it to be brought forward elsewhere. It failed
there also, and for a time perhaps, may not prevail: but a militia
can never be used for distant service on any other plan; and
Buonaparte will conquer the world, if they do not learn his secret of
composing armies of young men only, whose enthusiasm and health
enable them to surmount all obstacles. When a gentleman, through
zeal for the public service, undertakes to do the public business, we
know that we shall hear the cant of backstairs counsellors. But we
never heard this while the declaimer was himself a backstairs man, as
he calls it, but in the confidence and views of the administration,
as may more properly and respectfully be said. But if the members
are to know nothing but what is important enough to be put into a
public message, and indifferent enough to be made known to all the
world; if the executive is to keep all other information to himself,
and the House to plunge on in the dark, it becomes a government of
chance and not of design. The imputation was one of those artifices
used to despoil an adversary of his most effectual arms; and men of
mind will place themselves above a gabble of this order. The last
session of Congress was indeed an uneasy one for a time: but as soon
as the members penetrated into the views of those who were taking a
new course, they rallied in as solid a phalanx as I have ever seen
act together. Indeed I have never seen a House of better
dispositions. They want only a man of business & in whom they can
confide to conduct things in the house; and they are as much disposed
to support him as can be wished. It is only speaking a truth to say
that all eyes look to you. It was not perhaps expected from a new
member, at his first session, & before the forms & style of doing
business were familiar. But it would be a subject of deep regret
were you to refuse yourself to the conspicuous part in the business
of the house which all assign you. Perhaps I am not entitled to
speak with so much frankness; but it proceeds from no motive which
has not a right to your forgiveness. Opportunities of candid
explanation are so seldom afforded me, that I must not lose them when
they occur.
The information I receive from your quarter agrees with that
from the south; that the late schism has made not the smallest
impression on the public, and that the seceders are obliged to give
to it other grounds than those which we know to be the true ones.
All we have to wish is, that at the ensuing session, every one may
take the part openly which he secretly befriends. I recollect
nothing new and true, worthy communicating to you. As for what is
not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers. Among
other things, are those perpetual alarms as to the Indians, for no
one ofwhich has there ever been the slightest ground. They are the
suggestions of hostile traders, always wishing to embroil us with the
Indians, to perpetuate their own extortionate commerce. I salute you
with esteem and respect.
GARDENS FOR MONTICELLO
_To William Hamilton_
_Washington, July, 1806_
Your favor of the 7'th came duly to hand and the plant you are
so good as to propose to send me will be thankfully rec'd. The
little Mimosa Julibrisin you were so kind as to send me the last year
is flourishing. I obtained from a gardener in this nbh'd
[neighborhood] 2 plants of the paper mulberry; but the parent plant
being male, we are to expect no fruit from them,unless your [trees]
should chance to be of the sex wanted. at a future day, say two years
hence I shall ask from you some seeds of the Mimosa Farnesiana or
Nilotica, of which you were kind enough before to furnish me some.
but the plants have been lost during my absence from home. I
remember seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet height
in a pot the fragrance of which (from it's gummy bud if I recollect
rightly) was peculiarly agreeable to me and you were so kind as to
remark that it required only a greenhouse, and that you would furnish
me one when I should be in a situation to preserve it. but it's name
has entirely escaped me & I cannot suppose you can recollect or
conjecture in your vast collection what particular plant this might
be. I must acquiese therefore in a privation which my own defect of
memory has produced, unless indeed I could some of these days make an
impromptu visit to Phila. & recognise it myself at the Woodlands.
Having decisively made up my mind for retirement at the end of
my present term, my views and attentions are all turned homewards. I
have hitherto been engaged in my buildings which will be finished in
the course of the present year. The improvement of my grounds has
been reserved formy occupation on my return home. For this reason it
is that I have put off to the fall of the year after next the
collection of such curious trees as will bear our winters in the open
air.
The grounds which I destine to improve in the style of the
English gardens are in a form very difficult to be managed. They
compose the northern quadrant of a mountain for about 2/3 of its
height & then spread for the upper third over its whole crown. They
contain about three hundred acres, washed at the foot for about a
mile, by a river of the size of the Schuylkill. The hill is
generally too steep for direct ascent, but we make level walks
successively along it's side, which in it's upper part encircle the
hill & intersect these again by others of easy ascent in various
parts. They are chiefly still in their native woods, which are
majestic, and very generally a close undergrowth, which I have not
suffered to be touched, knowing how much easier it is to cut away
than to fill up. The upper third is chiefly open, but to the South
is covered with a dense thicket of Scotch broom (Spartium scoparium
Lin.) which being favorably spread before the sun will admit of
advantageous arrangement for winter enjoyment. You are sensible that
this disposition of the ground takes from me the first beauty in
gardening, the variety of hill & dale, & leaves me as an awkward
substitute a few hanging hollows & ridges, this subject is so unique
and at the same time refractory, that to make a disposition analogous
to its character would require much more of the genius of the
landscape painter & gardener than I pretend to. I had once hoped to
get Parkins to go and give me some outlines, but I was disappointed.
Certainly I could never wish your health to be such as to render
travelling necessary; but should a journey at any time promise
improvement to it, there is no one on which you would be received
with more pleasure than at Monticello. Should I be there you will
have an opportunity of indulging on a new field some of the taste
which has made the Woodlands the only rival which I have known in
America to what may be seen in England.
Thither without doubt we are to go for models in this art.
Their sunless climate has permitted them to adopt what is certainly a
beauty of the very first order in landscape. Their canvas is of open
ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste. They
need no more of wood than will serve to embrace a lawn or a glade.
But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia,
shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye
can be enjoyed. This organ must yield it's gratification to that of
the other senses; without the hope of any equivalent to the beauty
relinquished. The only substitute I have been able to imagine is
this. Let your ground be covered with trees of the loftiest stature.
Trim up their bodies as high as the constitution & form of the tree
will bear, but so as that their tops shall still unite & yeild dense
shade. A wood, so open below, will have nearly the appearance of
open grounds. Then, when in the open ground you would plant a clump
of trees, place a thicket of shrubs presenting a hemisphere the crown
of which shall distinctly show itself under the branches of the
trees. This may be effected by a due selection & arrangement of the
shrubs, & will I think offer a group not much inferior to that of
trees. The thickets may be varied too by making some of them of
evergreens altogether, our red cedar made to grow in a bush,
evergreen privet, pyrocanthus, Kalmia, Scotch broom. Holly would be
elegant but it does not grow in my part of the country.
Of prospect I have a rich profusion and offering itself at
every point of the compass. Mountains distant & near, smooth &
shaggy, single & in ridges, a little river hiding itself among the
hills so as to shew in lagoons only, cultivated grounds under the eye
and two small villages. To prevent a satiety of this is the
principal difficulty. It may be successively offered, & in different
portions through vistas, or which will be better, between thickets so
disposed as to serve as vistas, with the advantage of shifting the
scenes as you advance on your way.
You will be sensible by this time of the truth of my
information that my views are turned so steadfastly homeward that the
subject runs away with me whenever I get on it. I sat down to thank
you for kindnesses received, & to bespeak permission to ask further
contributions from your collection & I have written you a treatise on
gardening generally, in which art lessons would come with more
justice from you to me.
DISCONTENTS IN THE WEST
_To John Dickinson_
_Washington, Jan. 13, 1807_
MY DEAR AND ANCIENT FRIEND, -- I have duly received your favor
of the 1st inst., and am ever thankful for communications which may
guide me in the duties which I wish to perform as well as I am able.
It is but too true that great discontents exist in the territory of
Orleans. Those of the French inhabitants have for their sources, 1,
the prohibition of importing slaves. This may be partly removed by
Congress permitting them to receive slaves from the other States,
which, by dividing that evil, would lessen its danger; 2, the
administration of justice in our forms, principles, & language, with
all of which they are unacquainted, & are the more abhorrent, because
of the enormous expense, greatly exaggerated by the corruption of
bankrupt & greedy lawyers, who have gone there from the Ud S. &
engrossed the practice; 3, the call on them by the land commissioners
to produce the titles of their lands. The object of this is really
to record & secure their rights. But as many of them hold on rights
so ancient that the title papers are lost, they expect the land is to
be taken from them wherever they cannot produce a regular deduction
of title in writing. In this they will be undeceived by the final
result, which will evince to them a liberal disposition of the
government towards them. Among the American inhabitants it is the
old division of federalists & republicans. The former are as hostile
there as they are everywhere, & are the most numerous & wealthy.
They have been long endeavoring to batter down the Governor, who has
always been a firm republican. There were characters superior to him
whom I wished to appoint, but they refused the office: I know no
better man who would accept of it, and it would not be right to turn
him out for one not better. But it is the 2d. cause, above
mentioned, which is deep-seated & permanent. The French members of
the Legislature, being the majority in both Houses, lately passed an
act declaring that the civil, or French laws, should be the laws of
their land, and enumerated about 50 folio volumes, in Latin, as the
depositories of these laws. The Governor negatived the act. One of
the houses thereupon passed a vote for self-dissolution of the
Legislature as a useless body, which failed in the other House by a
single vote only. They separated, however, & have disseminated all
the discontent they could. I propose to the members of Congress in
conversation, the enlisting 30,000 volunteers, Americans by birth, to
be carried at the public expense, & settled immediately on a bounty
of 160 acres of land each, on the west side of the Mississippi, on
the condition of giving two years of military service, if that
country should be attacked within 7 years. The defence of the
country would thus be placed on the spot, and the additional number
would entitle the territory to become a State, would make the
majority American, & make it an American instead of a French State.
This would not sweeten the pill to the French; but in making that
acquisition we had some view to our own good as well as theirs, and I
believe the greatest good of both will be promoted by whatever will
amalgamate us together.
I have tired you, my friend, with a long letter. But your
tedium will end in a few lines more. Mine has yet two years to
endure. I am tired of an office where I can do no more good than
many others, who would be glad to be employed in it. To myself,
personally, it brings nothing but unceasing drudgery & daily loss of
friends. Every office becoming vacant, every appointment made, me
donne un ingrat, et cent ennemis. My only consolation is in the
belief that my fellow citizens at large give me credit for good
intentions. I will certainly endeavor to merit the continuance of
that good-will which follows well-intended actions, and their
approbation will be the dearest reward I can carry into retirement.
God bless you, my excellent friend, and give you yet many
healthy and happy years.
LAWS OF VIRGINIA
_To William Waller Hening_
_Washington, January 14, 1807_
SIR, -- Your letter of Dec. 26th, was received in due time.
The only object I had in making my collection of the laws of
Virginia, was to save all those for the Public which were not then
already lost, in the hope that at some future day they might be
republished. Whether this be by public or private enterprise, my end
will be equally answered. The work divides itself into two very
distinct parts; to wit, the printed and the unprinted laws. The
former begin in 1682, (Purvis' collection.) My collection of these is
in strong volumes, well bound, and therefore may safely be
transported anywhere. Any of these volumes which you do not possess,
are at your service for the purpose of republication, but the
unprinted laws are dispersed through many MS. volumes, several of
them so decayed that the leaf can never be opened but once without
falling into powder. These can never bear removal further than from
their shelf to a table. They are, as well as I recollect, from 1622
downwards. I formerly made such a digest of their order, and the
volumes where they are to be found, that, under my own
superintendence, they could be copied with once handling. More they
would not bear. Hence the impracticability of their being copied but
at Monticello. But independent of them, the printed laws, beginning
in 1682, with all our former printed collections, will be a most
valuable publication, & sufficiently distinct. I shall have no doubt
of the exactness of your part of the work, but I hope you will take
measures for having the typography & paper worthy of the work. I am
lead to this caution by the scandalous volume of our laws printed by
Pleasants in 1803, & those by Davis, in 1796 were little better; both
unworthy the history of Tom Thumb. You can have them better &
cheaper printed anywhere north of Richmond. Accept my salutations &
assurances of respect.
LESSONS OF THE BURR CONSPIRACY
_To Governor William C. C. Claiborne_
_Washington, February 3, 1807_
DEAR SIR, -- I pray you to read the enclosed letter, to seal
and deliver it. It explains itself so fully, that I need say
nothing. I am sincerely concerned for Mr. Reibelt, who is a man of
excellent understanding and extensive science. If you had any
academical berth, he would be much better fitted for thatthan for the
bustling business of life. I enclose to General Wilkinson my message
of January 22d. I presume, however, you will have seen it in the
papers. It gives the history of Burr's conspiracy, all but the last
chapter, which will, I hope, be that of his capture before this time,
at Natchez. Your situations have been difficult, and we judge of the
merit of our agents there by the magnitude of the danger as it
appeared to them, not as it was known to us. On great occasions
every good officer must be ready to risk himself in going beyond the
strict line of law, when the public preservation requires it; his
motives will be a justification as far as there is any discretion in
his ultra-legal proceedings, and no indulgence of private feelings.
On the whole, this squall, by showing with what ease our government
suppresses movements which in other countries requires armies, has
greatly increased its strength by increasing the public confidence in
it. It has been a wholesome lesson too to our citizens, of the
necessary obedience to their government. The Feds, and the little
band of Quids, in opposition, will try to make something of the
infringement of liberty by the military arrest and deportation of
citizens, but if it does not go beyond such offenders as Swartwout,
Bollman, Burr, Blennerhasset, Tyler, &c., they will be supported by
the public approbation. Accept my friendly salutations, and
assurances of esteem and respect.
THE BURR TRIAL
_To William Branch Giles_
_Monticello, April 20, 1807_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 6th, on the subject of Burr's
offences, was received only 4 days ago. That there should be anxiety
& doubt in the public mind, in the present defective state of the
proof, is not wonderful; and this has been sedulously encouraged by
the tricks of the judges to force trials before it is possible to
collect the evidence, dispersed through a line of 2000 miles from
Maine to Orleans. The federalists, too, give all their aid, making
Burr's cause their own, mortified only that he did not separate the
Union or overturn the government, & proving, that had he had a little
dawn of success, they would have joined him to introduce his object,
their favorite monarchy, as they would any other enemy, foreign or
domestic, who could rid them of this hateful republic for any other
government in exchange.
The first ground of complaint was the supine inattention of the
administration to a treason stalking through the land in open day.
The present one, that they have crushed it before it was ripe for
execution, so that no overt acts can be produced. This last may be
true; tho' I believe it is not. Our information having been chiefly
by way of letter, we do not know of a certainty yet what will be
proved. We have set on foot an inquiry through the whole of the
country which has been the scene of these transactions, to be able to
prove to the courts, if they will give time, or to the public by way
of communication to Congress, what the real facts have been. For
obtaining this, we are obliged to appeal to the patriotism of
particular persons in different places, of whom we have requested to
make the inquiry in their neighborhood, and on such information as
shall be voluntarily offered. Aided by no process or facilities from
the _federal_ courts, but frowned on by their new born zeal for the
liberty of those whom we would not permit to overthrow the liberties
of their country, we can expect no revealments from the accomplices
of the chief offender. Of treasonable intentions, the judges have
been obliged to confess there is probable appearance. What loophole
they will find in it, when it comes to trial, we cannot foresee.
Eaton, Stoddart, Wilkinson, and two others whom I must not name, will
satisfy the world, if not the judges, on that head. And I do suppose
the following overt acts will be proved. 1. The enlistment of men in
a regular way. 2. The regular mounting of guard round
Blennerhassett's island when they expected Governor Tiffin's men to
be on them, _modo guerrino arraiali_. 3. The rendezvous of Burr with
his men at the mouth of the Cumberland. 4. His letter to the acting
Governor of Mississippi, holding up the prospect of civil war. 5.
His capitulation regularly signed with the aids of the Governor, as
between two independent & hostile commanders.
But a moment's calculation will shew that this evidence cannot
be collected under 4 months, probably 5. from the moment of deciding
when & where the trial shall be. I desired Mr. Rodney expressly to
inform the Chief Justice of this, inofficially. But Mr. Marshall
says, "more than 5 weeks have elapsed since the opinion of the
Supreme court has declared the necessity of proving the overt acts,
if they exist. Why are they not proved?" In what terms of decency
can we speak of this? As if an express could go to Natchez, or the
mouth of Cumberland, & return in 5 weeks, to do which has never taken
less than twelve. Again, "If, in Nov. or Dec. last, a body of troops
had been assembled on the Ohio, it is impossible to suppose the
affidavits establishing the fact could not have been obtained by the
last of March." But I ask the judge where they should have been
lodged? At Frankfort? at Cincinnati? at Nashville? St. Louis?
Natchez? New Orleans? These were the probable places of apprehension
& examination. It was not known at _Washington_ till the 26th of
March that Burr would escape from the Western tribunals, be retaken &
brought to an Eastern one; and in 5 days after, (neither 5. months
nor 5. weeks, as the judge calculated,) he says, it is "impossible to
suppose the affidavits could not have been obtained." Where? At
Richmond he certainly meant, or meant only to throw dust in the eyes
of his audience. But all the principles of law are to be perverted
which would bear on the favorite offenders who endeavor to overrun
this odious Republic. "I understand," sais the judge, "_probable_
cause of guilt to be a case made out by _proof_ furnishing good
reason to believe," &c. Speaking as a lawyer, he must mean legal
proof, i. e., proof on oath, at least. But this is confounding
_probability_ and _proof_. We had always before understood that
where there was reasonable ground to believe guilt, the offender must
be put on his trial. That guilty intentions were probable, the judge
believed. And as to the overt acts, were not the bundle of letters
of information in Mr. Rodney's hands, the letters and facts published
in the local newspapers, Burr's flight, & the universal belief or
rumor of his guilt, probable ground for presuming the facts of
enlistment, military guard, rendezvous, threats of civil war, or
capitulation, so as to put him on trial? Is there a candid man in
the U S who does not believe some one, if not all, of these overt
acts to have taken place?
If there ever had been an instance in this or the preceding
administrations, of federal judges so applying principles of law as
to condemn a federal or acquit a republican offender, I should have
judged them in the present case with more charity. All this,
however, will work well. The nation will judge both the offender &
judges for themselves. If a member of the Executive or Legislature
does wrong, the day is never far distant when the people will remove
him. They will see then & amend the error in our Constitution, which
makes any branch independent of the nation. They will see that one
of the great co-ordinate branches of the government, setting itself
in opposition to the other two, and to the common sense of the
nation, proclaims impunity to that class of offenders which endeavors
to overturn the Constitution, and are themselves protected in it by
the Constitution itself; for impeachment is a farce which will not be
tried again. If their protection of Burr produces this amendment, it
will do more good than his condemnation would have done. Against
Burr, personally, I never had one hostile sentiment. I never indeed
thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a
crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose aim or stroke you
could never be sure of. Still, while he possessed the confidence of
the nation, I thought it my duty to respect in him their confidence,
& to treat him as if he deserved it; and if this punishment can be
commuted now for any useful amendment of the Constitution, I shall
rejoice in it. My sheet being full, I perceive it is high time to
offer you my friendly salutations, and assure you of my constant and
affectionate esteem and respect.
HISTORY, HUME, AND THE PRESS
_To John Norvell_
_Washington, June 14, 1807_
SIR, -- Your letter of May 9 has been duly received. The
subject it proposes would require time & space for even moderate
development. My occupations limit me to a very short notice of them.
I think there does not exist a good elementary work on the
organization of society into civil government: I mean a work which
presents in one full & comprehensive view the system of principles on
which such an organization should be founded, according to the rights
of nature. For want of a single work of that character, I should
recommend Locke on Government, Sidney, Priestley's Essay on the first
Principles of Government, Chipman's Principles of Government, & the
Federalist. Adding, perhaps, Beccaria on crimes & punishments,
because of the demonstrative manner in which he has treated that
branch of the subject. If your views of political inquiry go
further, to the subjects of money & commerce, Smith's Wealth of
Nations is the best book to be read, unless Say's Political Economy
can be had, which treats the same subject on the same principles, but
in a shorter compass & more lucid manner. But I believe this work
has not been translated into our language.
History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.
But as we have employed some of the best materials of the British
constitution in the construction of our own government, a knolege of
British history becomes useful to the American politician. There is,
however, no general history of that country which can be recommended.
The elegant one of Hume seems intended to disguise & discredit the
good principles of the government, and is so plausible & pleasing in
it's style & manner, as to instil it's errors & heresies insensibly
into the minds of unwary readers. Baxter has performed a good
operation on it. He has taken the text of Hume as his ground work,
abridging it by the omission of some details of little interest, and
wherever he has found him endeavoring to mislead, by either the
suppression of a truth or by giving it a false coloring, he has
changed the text to what it should be, so that we may properly call
it Hume's history republicanised. He has moreover continued the
history (but indifferently) from where Hume left it, to the year
1800. The work is not popular in England, because it is republican;
and but a few copies have ever reached America. It is a single 4to.
volume. Adding to this Ludlow's Memoirs, Mrs. M'Cauley's & Belknap's
histories, a sufficient view will be presented of the free principles
of the English constitution.
To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a
newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should
answer, `by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.'
Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a
melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more
compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's
abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed
which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by
being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state
of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to
confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I
really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow
citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that
they have known something of what has been passing in the world in
their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are
just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the
present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their
fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as
that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful
warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will,
&c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man
who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads
them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he
whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing
will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as
this. Divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, Truths.
2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter
would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic
papers, and information from such sources, as the editor would be
willing to risk his own reputation for their truth. The 2d would
contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his
judgment should conclude to be probably true. This, however, should
rather contain too little than too much. The 3d & 4th should be
professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their
money than the blank paper they would occupy.
Such an editor too, would have to set his face against the
demoralising practice of feeding the public mind habitually on
slander, & the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment
induces. Defamation is becoming a necessary of life; insomuch, that
a dish of tea in the morning or evening cannot be digested without
this stimulant. Even those who do not believe these abominations,
still read them with complaisance to their auditors, and instead of
the abhorrence & indignation which should fill a virtuous mind,
betray a secret pleasure in the possibility that some may believe
them, tho they do not themselves. It seems to escape them, that it
is not he who prints, but he who pays for printing a slander, who is
it's real author.
These thoughts on the subjects of your letter are hazarded at
your request. Repeated instances of the publication of what has not
been intended for the public eye, and the malignity with which
political enemies torture every sentence from me into meanings
imagined by their own wickedness only, justify my expressing a
solicitude, that this hasty communication may in nowise be permitted
to find it's way into the public papers. Not fearing these political
bull-dogs, I yet avoid putting myself in the way of being baited by
them, and do not wish to volunteer away that portion of tranquillity,
which a firm execution of my duties will permit me to enjoy.
I tender you my salutations, and best wishes for your success.
A SUBPOENA FOR THE PRESIDENT
_To George Hay_
_Washington, June 20, 1807_
DEAR SIR, -- Mr. Latrobe now comes on as a witness against
Burr. His presence here is with great inconvenience dispensed with,
as 150 workmen require his constant directions on various public
works of pressing importance. I hope you will permit him to come
away as soon as possible. How far his testimony will be important as
to the prisoner, I know not; but I am desirous that those meetings of
Yrujo with Burr and his principal accomplices, should come fully out,
and judicially, as they will establish the just complaints we have
against his nation.
I did not see till last night the opinion of the Judge on the
_subpoena duces tecum_ against the President. Considering the
question there as _coram non judice_, I did not read his argument
with much attention. Yet I saw readily enough, that, as is usual
where an opinion is to be supported, right or wrong, he dwells much
on smaller objections, and passes over those which are solid. Laying
down the position generally, that all persons owe obedience to
subpoenas, he admits no exception unless it can be produced in his
law books. But if the Constitution enjoins on a particular officer
to be always engaged in a particular set of duties imposed on him,
does not this supersede the general law, subjecting him to minor
duties inconsistent with these? The Constitution enjoins his
constant agency in the concerns of 6. millions of people. Is the law
paramount to this, which calls on him on behalf of a single one? Let
us apply the Judge's own doctrine to the case of himself & his
brethren. The sheriff of Henrico summons him from the bench, to
quell a riot somewhere in his county. The federal judge is, by the
general law, a part of the _posse_ of the State sheriff. Would the
Judge abandon major duties to perform lesser ones? Again; the court
of Orleans or Maine commands, by subpoenas, the attendance of all the
judges of the Supreme Court. Would they abandon their posts as
judges, and the interests of millions committed to them, to serve the
purposes of a single individual? The leading principle of our
Constitution is the independence of the Legislature, executive and
judiciary of each other, and none are more jealous of this than the
judiciary. But would the executive be independent of the judiciary,
if he were subject to the _commands_ of the latter, & to imprisonment
for disobedience; if the several courts could bandy him from pillar
to post, keep him constantly trudging from north to south & east to
west, and withdraw him entirely from his constitutional duties? The
intention of the Constitution, that each branch should be independent
of the others, is further manifested by the means it has furnished to
each, to protect itself from enterprises of force attempted on them
by the others, and to none has it given more effectual or diversified
means than to the executive. Again; because ministers can go into a
court in London as witnesses, without interruption to their executive
duties, it is inferred that they would go to a court 1000. or 1500.
miles off, and that ours are to be dragged from Maine to Orleans by
every criminal who will swear that their testimony `may be of use to
him.' The Judge says, `_it is apparent_ that the President's duties
as chief magistrate do not demand his whole time, & are not
unremitting.' If he alludes to our annual retirement from the seat of
government, during the sickly season, he should be told that such
arrangements are made for carrying on the public business, at and
between the several stations we take, that it goes on as
unremittingly there, as if we were at the seat of government. I pass
more hours in public business at Monticello than I do here, every
day; and it is much more laborious, because all must be done in
writing. Our stations being known, all communications come to them
regularly, as to fixed points. It would be very different were we
always on the road, or placed in the noisy & crowdedtaverns where
courts are held. Mr. Rodney is expected here every hour, having been
kept away by a sick child.
I salute you with friendship and respect.
"UNLEARNED VIEWS OF MEDICINE"
_To Dr. Caspar Wistar_
_Washington, June 21, 1807_
DEAR SIR, -- I have a grandson, the son of Mr. Randolph, now
about 15 years of age, in whose education I take a lively interest.
His time has not hitherto been employed to the greatest advantage, a
frequent change of tutors having prevented the steady pursuit of any
one plan. Whether he possesses that lively imagination, usually
called genius, I have not had opportunities of knowing. But I think
he has an observing mind & sound judgment. He is assiduous, orderly,
& of the most amiable temper & dispositions. As he will be at ease
in point of property, his education is not directed to any particular
possession, but will embrace those sciences which give to retired
life usefulness, ornament or amusement. I am not a friend to placing
growing men in populous cities, because they acquire there habits &
partialities which do not contribute to the happiness of their after
life. But there are particular branches of science, which are not so
advantageously taught anywhere else in the U.S. as in Philadelphia.
The garden at the Woodlands for Botany, Mr. Peale's Museum for
Natural History, your Medical school for Anatomy, and the able
professors in all of them, give advantages not to be found elsewhere.
We propose, therefore, to send him to Philadelphia to attend the
schools of Botany, Natural History, Anatomy, & perhaps Surgery; but
not of Medicine. And why not of Medicine, you will ask? Being led
to the subject, I will avail myself of the occasion to express my
opinions on that science, and the extent of my medical creed. But,
to finish first with respect to my grandson, I will state the favor I
ask of you, which is the object of this letter.
Having been born & brought up in a mountainous & healthy
country, we should be unwilling he should go to Philadelphia until
the autumnal diseases cease. It is important therefore for us to
know, at what period after that, the courses of lectures in Natural
history, Botany, Chemistry, Anatomy & Surgery begin and end, and what
days or hours they occupy? The object of this is that we may be able
so to marshal his pursuits as to bring their accomplishment within
the shortest space practicable. I shall write to Doctor Barton for
information as to the courses of natural history & botany but not
having a sufficient acquaintance with professors of chemistry &
surgery, if you can add the information respecting their school to
that of your own, I shall be much obliged to you. What too are the
usual terms of boarding? What the compensations to professors? And
can you give me a conjectural estimate of other necessary expenses?
In these we do not propose to indulge him beyond what is necessary,
decent, & usual, because all beyond that leads to dissipation &
idleness, to which, at present, he has no propensities. I think Mr.
Peale has not been in the habit of receiving a boarder. His house &
family would, of themselves, be a school of virtue & instruction; &
hours of leisure there would be as improving as busy ones elsewhere.
But I say this only on the possibility of so desirable a location for
him, and not with the wish that the thought should become known to
Mr. Peale, unless some former precedent should justify it's
suggestion to him. I am laying a heavy tax on your busy time, but I
think your goodness will pardon it in consideration of it's bearing
on my happiness.
This subject dismissed, I may now take up that which it led to,
and further tax your patience with unlearned views of medicine;
which, as in most cases, are, perhaps, the more confident in
proportion as they are less enlightened.
We know, from what we see & feel, that the animal body in it's
organs and functions is subject to derangement, inducing pain, &
tending to it's destruction. In this disordered state, we observe
nature providing for the re-establishment of order, by exciting some
salutary evacuation of the morbific matter, or by some other
operation which escapes our imperfect senses and researches. She
brings on a crisis, by stools, vomiting, sweat, urine, expectoration,
bleeding, &c., which, for the most part, ends in the restoration of
healthy action. Experience has taught us, also, that there are
certain substances, by which, applied to the living body, internally
or externally, we can at will produce these same evacuations, and
thus do, in a short time, what nature would do but slowly, and do
effectually, what perhaps she would not have strength to accomplish.
Where, then, we have seen a disease, characterized by specific signs
or phenomena, and relieved by a certain natural evacuation or
process, whenever that disease recurs under the same appearances, we
may reasonably count on producing a solution of it, by the use of
such substances as we have found produce the same evacuation or
movement. Thus, fulness of the stomach we can relieve by emetics;
diseases of the bowels, by purgatives; inflammatory cases, by
bleeding; intermittents, by the Peruvian bark; syphilis, by mercury:
watchfulness, by opium; &c. So far, I bow to the utility of
medicine. It goes to the well-defined forms of disease, & happily,
to those the most frequent. But the disorders of the animal body, &
the symptoms indicating them, are as various as the elements of which
the body is composed. The combinations, too, of these symptoms are
so infinitely diversified, that many associations of them appear too
rarely to establish a definite disease; and to an unknown disease,
there cannot be a known remedy. Here then, the judicious, the moral,
the humane physician should stop. Having been so often a witness to
the salutary efforts which nature makes to re-establish the
disordered functions, he should rather trust to their action, than
hazard the interruption of that, and a greater derangement of the
system, by conjectural experiments on a machine so complicated & so
unknown as the human body, & a subject so sacred as human life. Or,
ifthe appearance of doing something be necessary to keep alive the
hope & spirits of the patient, it should be of the most innocent
character. One of the most successful physicians I have ever known,
has assured me, that he used more bread pills, drops of colored
water, & powders of hickory ashes, than of all other medicines put
together. It was certainly a pious fraud. But the adventurous
physician goes on, & substitutes presumption for knolege. From the
scanty field of what is known, he launches into the boundless region
of what is unknown. He establishes for his guide some fanciful
theory of corpuscular attraction, of chemical agency, of mechanical
powers, of stimuli, of irritability accumulated or exhausted, of
depletion by the lancet & repletion by mercury, or some other
ingenious dream, which lets him into all nature's secrets at short
hand. On the principle which he thus assumes, he forms his table of
nosology, arrays his diseases into families, and extends his curative
treatment, by analogy, to all the cases he has thus arbitrarily
marshalled together. I have lived myself to see the disciples of
Hoffman, Boerhaave, Stalh, Cullen, Brown, succeed one another like
the shifting figures of a magic lantern, & their fancies, like the
dresses of the annual doll-babies from Paris, becoming, from their
novelty, the vogue of the day, and yielding to the next novelty their
ephemeral favor. The patient, treated on the fashionable theory,
sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine. The medicine therefore
restored him, & the young doctor receives new courage to proceed in
his bold experiments on the lives of his fellow creatures. I believe
we may safely affirm, that the inexperienced & presumptuous band of
medical tyros let loose upon the world, destroys more of human life
in one year, than all the Robinhoods, Cartouches, & Macheaths do in a
century. It is in this part of medicine that I wish to see a reform,
an abandonment of hypothesis for sober facts, the first degree of
value set on clinical observation, and the lowest on visionary
theories. I would wish the young practitioner, especially, to have
deeply impressed on his mind, the real limits of his art, & that when
the state of his patient gets beyond these, his office is to be a
watchful, but quiet spectator of the operations of nature, giving
them fair play by a well-regulated regimen, & by all the aid they can
derive from the excitement of good spirits & hope in the patient. I
have no doubt, that some diseases not yet understood may in time be
transferred to the table of those known. But, were I a physician, I
would rather leave the transfer to the slow hand of accident, than
hasten it by guilty experiments on those who put their lives into my
hands. The only sure foundations of medicine are, an intimate
knolege of the human body, and observation on the effects of
medicinal substances on that. The anatomical & clinical schools,
therefore, are those in which the young physician should be formed.
If he enters with innocence that of the theory of medicine, it is
scarcely possible he should come out untainted with error. His mind
must be strong indeed, if, rising above juvenile credulity, it can
maintain a wise infidelity against the authority of his instructors,
& the bewitching delusions of their theories. You see that I
estimate justly that portion of instruction which our medical
students derive from your labors; &, associating with it one of the
chairs which my old & able friend, Doctor Rush, so honorably fills, I
consider them as the two fundamental pillars of the edifice. Indeed,
I have such an opinion of the talents of the professors in the other
branches which constitute the school of medicine with you, as to hope
& believe, that it is from this side of the Atlantic, that Europe,
which has taught us so many other things, will at length be led into
sound principles in this branch of science, the most important of all
others, being that to which we commit the care of health & life.
I dare say, that by this time, you are sufficiently sensible
that old heads as well as young, may sometimes be charged with
ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is
certainly from credulity to scepticism; and this is perhaps the most
favorable apology I can make for venturing so far out of my depth, &
to one too, to whom the strong as well as the weak points of this
science are so familiar. But having stumbled on the subject in my
way, I wished to give a confession of my faith to a friend; & the
rather, as I had perhaps, at time, to him as well as others,
expressed my scepticism in medicine, without defining it's extent or
foundation. At any rate, it has permitted me, for a moment, to
abstract myself from the dry & dreary waste of politics, into which I
have been impressed by the times on which I happened, and to indulge
in the rich fields of nature, where alone I should have served as a
volunteer, if left to my natural inclinations & partialities.
I salute you at all times with affection & respect.
TORPEDOES AND SUBMARINES
_To Robert Fulton_
_Monticello, August 16, 1807_
SIR, -- Your letter of July 28, came to hand just as I was
about leaving Washington, & it has not been sooner in my power to
acknolege it. I consider your torpedoes as very valuable means of
defence of harbors, & have no doubt that we should adopt them to a
considerable degree. Not that I go the whole length (as I believe
you do) of considering them as solely to be relied on. Neither a
nation nor those entrusted with it's affairs, could be justifiable,
however sanguine their expectations, in trusting solely to an engine
not yet sufficiently tried, under all the circumstances which may
occur, & against which we know not as yet what means of parrying may
be devised. If, indeed, the mode of attaching them to the cable of a
ship be the only one proposed, modes of prevention cannot be
difficult. But I have ever looked to the submarine boat as most to
be depended on for attaching them, & tho' I see no mention of it in
your letter, or your publications, I am in hopes it is not abandoned
as impracticable. I should wish to see a corps of young men trained
to this service. It would belong to the engineers if at land, but
being nautical, I suppose we must have a corps of naval engineers, to
practise & use them. I do not know whether we have authority to put
any part of our existing naval establishment in a course of training,
but it shall be the subject of a consultation with the Secretary of
the Navy. Genl Dearborne has informed you of the urgency of our want
of you at N Orleans for the locks there.
I salute you with great respect & esteem.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
_To Rev. Samuel Miller_
_Washington, Jan. 23, 1808_
SIR, -- I have duly received your favor of the 18th and am
thankful to you for having written it, because it is more agreeable
to prevent than to refuse what I do not think myself authorized to
comply with. I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by
the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions,
their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only
from the provision that no lawshall be made respecting the
establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also
which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the U.S.
Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume
authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general
government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be
in any human authority. But it is only proposed that I should
_recommend_, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer. That is, that
I should _indirectly_ assume to the U.S. an authority over religious
exercises which the Constitution has directly precluded them from.
It must be meant too that this recommendation is to carry some
authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on those who
disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree
of proscription perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in
the nature of the penalty make the recommendation the less _a law_ of
conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do not believe it is for
the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct
it's exercises, it's discipline, or it's doctrines; nor of the
religious societies that the general government should be invested
with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among
them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them
an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to
determine for itself the times for these exercises, & the objects
proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this
right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the
constitution has deposited it.
I am aware that the practice of my predecessors may be quoted.
But I have ever believed that the example of state executives led to
the assumption of that authority by the general government, without
due examination, which would have discovered that what might be a
right in a state government, was a violation of that right when
assumed by another. Be this as it may, every one must act according
to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers
alone have been given to the President of the U S. and no authority
to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
I again express my satisfaction that you have been so good as
to give me an opportunity of explaining myself in a private letter,
in which I could give my reasons more in detail than might have been
done in a public answer: and I pray you to accept the assurances of
my high esteem & respect.
"SUBJECTS FOR A MAD-HOUSE"
_To Dr. Thomas Leib_
_Washington, June 23, 1808_
SIR, -- I have duly received your favor covering a copy of the
talk to the Tammany society, for which I thank you, and particularly
for the favorable sentiments expressed towards myself. Certainly,
nothing will so much sweeten the tranquillity and comfort of
retirement, as the knoledge that I carry with me the good will &
approbation of my republican fellow citizens, and especially of the
individuals in unison with whom I have so long acted. With respect
to the federalists, I believe we think alike; for when speaking of
them, we never mean to include a worthy portion of our fellow
citizens, who consider themselves as in duty bound to support the
constituted authorities of every branch, and to reserve their
opposition to the period of election. These having acquired the
appellation of federalists, while a federal administration was in
place, have not cared about throwing off their name, but adhering to
their principle, are the supporters of the present order of things.
The other branch of the federalists, those who are so in principle as
well as in name, disapprove of the republican principles & features
of our Constitution, and would, I believe, welcome any public
calamity (war with England excepted) which might lessen the
confidence of our country in those principles & forms. I have
generally considered them rather as subjects for a mad-house. But
they are now playing a game of the most mischevious tendency, without
perhaps being themselves aware of it. They are endeavoring to
convince England that we suffer more by the embargo than they do, &
that if they will but hold out awhile, we must abandon it. It is
true, the time will come when we must abandon it. But if this is
before the repeal of the orders of council, we must abandon it only
for a state of war. The day is not distant, when that will be
preferable to a longer continuance of the embargo. But we can never
remove that, & let our vessels go out & be taken under these orders,
without making reprisal. Yet this is the very state of things which
these federal monarchists are endeavoring to bring about; and in this
it is but too possible they may succeed. But the fact is, that if we
have war with England, it will be solely produced by their
manoeuvres. I think that in two or three months we shall know what
will be the issue.
I salute you with esteem & respect.
BONES FOR THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE
_To Lacepede, with a Catalogue_
_Washington, July 14, 1808_
SIR, -- If my recollection does not deceive me, the collection
of the remains of the animal incognitum of the Ohio (sometimes called
mammoth), possessed by the Cabinet of Natural History at Paris, is
not very copious. Under this impression, and presuming that this
Cabinet is allied to the National Institute, to which I am desirous
of rendering some service, I have lately availed myself of an
opportunity of collecting some of those remains. General Clarke (the
companion of Governor Lewis in his expedition to the Pacific Ocean)
being,on a late journey, to pass by the Big-bone Lick of the Ohio,
was kind enough to undertake to employ for me a number of laborers,
and to direct their operations in digging for these bones at this
important deposit of them. The result of these researches will
appear in the enclosed catalogue of specimens which I am now able to
place at the disposal of the National Institute. An aviso being to
leave this place for some port of France on public service, I deliver
the packages to Captain Haley, to be deposited with the Consul of the
United States, at whatever port he may land. They are addressed to
Mr. Warden of our legation at Paris, for the National Institute, and
he will have the honor of delivering them. To these I have added the
horns of an animal called by the natives the Mountain Ram, resembling
the sheep by his head, but more nearly the deer in his other parts;
as also the skin of another animal, resembling the sheep by his
fleece but the goat in his other parts. This is called by the
natives the Fleecy Goat, or in thestyle of the natural historian, the
Pokotragos. I suspect it to be nearly related to the Pacos, and were
we to group the fleecy animals together, it would stand perhaps with
the Vigogne, Pacos, and Sheep. The Mountain Ram was found in
abundance by Messrs. Lewis and Clarke on their western tour, and was
frequently an article of food for their party, and esteemed more
delicate than the deer. The Fleecy Goat they did not see, but
procured two skins from the Indians, of which this is one. Their
description will be given in the work of Governor Lewis, the journal
and geographical part of which may be soon expected from the press;
but the parts relating to the plants and animals observed in his
tour, will be delayed by the engravings. In the meantime, the plants
of which he brought seeds, have been very successfully raised in the
botanical garden of Mr. Hamilton of the Woodlands, and by Mr.
McMahon, a gardener of Philadelphia; and on the whole, it is with
pleasure I can assure you that the addition to our knowledge in every
department, resulting from this tour of Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, has
entirely fulfilled my expectations in setting it on foot, and that
the world will find that those travellers have well earned its favor.
I will take care that the Institute as well as yourself shall receive
Governor Lewis's work as it appears.
It is with pleasure I embrace this occasion of returning you my
thanks for the favor of your very valuable works, _sur les poissons
et les cetacees_, which you were so kind as to send me through Mr.
Livingston and General Turreau, and which I find entirely worthy of
your high reputation in the literary world. That I have not sooner
made this acknowledgment has not proceeded from any want of respect
and attachment to yourself, or a just value of your estimable
present, but from the strong and incessant calls of duty to other
objects. The candor of your character gives me confidence of your
indulgence on this head, and I assure you with truth that no
circumstances are more welcome to me than those which give me the
occasion of recalling myself to your recollection, and of renewing to
you the assurances of sincere personal attachment, and of great
respect and consideration.
_Contents of the large square Box._
A Fibia.
A Radius.
Two ribs belonging to the upper part of the thorax.
Two ribs from a lower part of the thorax.
One entire vertebra.
Two spinous processes of the vertebra broken from the bodies.
Dentes molares, which appear to have belonged to the full-grown
animal.
A portion of the under-jaw of a young animal with two molar
teeth in it.
These teeth appear to have belonged to a first set, as they are
small, and the posterior has but three grinding ridges, instead of
five, the common number in adult teeth of the lower jaw.
Another portion of the under-jaw, including the symphisis, or
chin. In this portion the teeth of one side are every way complete;
to wit, the posterior has five transverse ridges, and the anterior
three.
A fragment of the upper-jaw with one molar tooth much worn.
Molar teeth which we suppose to be like those of the mammoth or
elephant of Siberia. They are essentially different from those of
the mammoth or elephant of this country, and although similar in some
respects to the teeth of the Asiatic elephant, they agree more
completely with the description of the teeth found in Siberia in the
arrangement and size of the transverse lamina of enamel. This idea,
however, is not derived from actual comparison of the different teeth
with each other, for we have no specimens of Siberian teeth in this
country; but from inferences deduced from the various accounts and
drawings of these teeth to be found in books. A few of these teeth
have been found in several places where the bones of the American
animal have existed.
An Astragalus.
An Oscalcis.
Os naviculare.
In the large box in which the preceding bones are, is a small
one containing a promiscuous mass of small bones, chiefly of the
feet.
In the large irregular-shaped box, a tusk of large size. The
spiral twist in all the specimens of these tusks which we have seen,
was remarked so long ago as the time of Breyneus, in his description
of the tusks of the Siberian mammoth in the Philosophical
Transactions, if that paper is rightly recollected, for the book is
not here to be turned to at present. Many fragments of tusks have
been sent from the Ohio, generally resembling portions of such tusks
as are brought to us in the course of commerce. But of these spiral
tusks, in a tolerable complete state, we have had only four. One was
found near the head of the north branch of the Susquehanna. A second
possessed by Mr. Peale, was found with the skeleton, near the Hudson.
A third is at Monticello, found with the bones of this collection at
the Big-bone lick of Ohio, and the fourth isthat now sent for the
Institute, found at the same place and larger than that at
Monticello.
The smallest box contains the horns of the mountain ram, and
skin of the fleecy goat.
PLOUGHS
_To Monsieur Sylvestre_
_Washington, July 15, 1808_
SIR, -- I had received from you on a former occasion the four
first volumes of the Memoirs of the Agricultural Society of the
Seine, and since that, your letter of September 19th, with the 6th,
7th, 8ths, and 9th volumes, being for the years 1804 '5 '6, with some
separate memoirs. These I have read with great avidity and
satisfaction, and now return you my thanksfor them. But I owe
particular acknowledgments for the valuable present of the Theatre de
De Serres, which I consider as a prodigy for the age in which it was
composed, and shows an advancement in the science of agriculture
which I had never suspected to have belonged to that time. Brought
down to the present day by the very valuable notes added, it is
really such a treasure of agricultural knowledge, as has not before
been offered to the world in a single work.
It is not merely for myself, but for my country, that I must do
homage to the philanthropy of the Society, which has dictated their
destination for me of their newly-improved plough. I shall certainly
so use it as to answer their liberal views, by making the
opportunities of profiting by it as general as possible.
I have just received information that a plough addressed to me
has arrived at New York, _from England_, but unaccompanied by any
letter or other explanation. As I have had no intimation of such an
article to be forwarded to me from that country, I presume it is the
one sent by the Society of the Seine, that it has been carried into
England under their orders of council, and permitted to come on from
thence. This I shall know within a short time. I shall with great
pleasure attend to the construction and transmission to the Society
of a plough with my mould board. This is the only part of that
useful instrument to which I have paid any particular attention. But
knowing how much the perfection of the plough must depend, 1st, on
the line of traction; 2d, on the direction of the share; 3d, on the
angle of the wing; 4th, on the form of the mould-board; and persuaded
that I shall find the three first advantages eminently exemplified in
that which the Society sends me, I am anxious to see combined with
these a mould-board of my form, in the hope it will still advance the
perfection of that machine. But for this I must ask time till I am
relieved from the cares which have now a right to all my time, that
is to say, till the next Spring. Then giving, in the leisure of
retirement, all the time and attention this construction merits and
requires, I will certainly render to the Society the result in a
plough of the best form I shall be able to have executed. In the
meantime, accept for them and yourself the assurances of my high
respect and consideration.
EDUCATION OF A GRANDSON
_To Thomas Jefferson Randolph_
_Washington, Nov. 24th, 1808_
MY DEAR JEFFERSON -- I have just recieved the inclosed letter
under cover from Mr. Bankhead which I presume is from Anne and will
inform you she is well. Mr. Bankhead has consented to go and pursue
his studies at Monticello, and live with us till his pursuits or
circumstances may require a separate establishment. Your situation,
thrown at such a distance from us and alone, cannot but give us all,
great anxieties for you. As much has been secured for you, by your
particular position and the acquaintance to which you have been
recommended, as could be done towards shielding you from the dangers
which surround you. But thrown on a wide world, among entire
strangers without a friend or guardian to advise so young too and
with so little experience of mankind, your dangers are great, and
still your safety must rest on yourself. A determination never to do
what is wrong, prudence, and good humor, will go far towards securing
to you the estimation of the world. When I recollect that at 14.
years of age, the whole care and direction of my self was thrown on
my self entirely, without a relation or friend qualified to advise or
guide me, and recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I
associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with
some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were. I had
the good fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters
of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could
even become what they were. Under temptations and difficulties, I
could ask myself what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do
in this situation? What course in it will ensure me their
approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on my conduct
tended more to it's correctness than any reasoning powers I
possessed. Knowing the even and dignified line they pursued, I could
never doubt for a moment which of two courses would be in character
for them. Whereas seeking the same object through a process of moral
reasoning, and with the jaundiced eye of youth, I should often have
erred. From the circumstances of my position I was often thrown into
the society of horseracers, cardplayers, Foxhunters, scientific and
professional men, and of dignified men; and many a time have I asked
myself, in the enthusiastic moment of the death of a fox, the victory
of a favorite horse, the issue of a question eloquently argued at the
bar or in the great Council of the nation, well, which of these kinds
of reputation should I prefer? That of a horse jockey? A foxhunter?
An Orator? Or the honest advocate of my country's rights? Be
assured my dear Jefferson, that these little returns into ourselves,
this self-cathechising habit, is not trifling, nor useless, but leads
to the prudent selection and steady pursuits of what is right? I
have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives of our peace
and tranquillity. It is among the most effectual, and it's effect is
so well imitated and aided artificially by politeness, that this also
becomes an acquisition of first rate value. In truth, politeness is
artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by
rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
It is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society
all the little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them,
and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration; it is the
giving a pleasing and flattering turn to our expressions which will
conciliate others, and make them pleased with us as well as
themselves. How cheap a price for the good will of another! When
this is in return for a rude thing said by another, it brings him to
his senses, it mortifies and corrects him in the most salutary way,
and places him at the feet of your good nature in the eyes of the
company. But in stating prudential rules for our government in
society I must not omit the important one of never entering into
dispute or argument withanother. I never yet saw an instance of one
of two disputantsconvincing the other by argument. I have seen many
on their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another.
Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either
in solitude, or weighing within ourselves dispassionately what we
hear from others standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. It was
one of the rules which above all others made Doctr. Franklin the most
amiable of men in society, `never to contradict any body.' If he was
urged to anounce an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as
if for information, or by suggesting doubts. When I hear another
express an opinion, which is not mine, I say to myself, He has a
right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it. His
error does me no injury, and shall I becomea Don Quixot to bring all
men by force of argument, to one opinion? If a fact be misstated, it
is probable he is gratified by a belief of it, and I have no right to
deprive him of the gratification. If he wants information he will
ask it, and then I will give it in measured terms; but if he still
believes his own story, and shows a desire to dispute the fact with
me, I hear him and say nothing. It is his affair, not mine, if he
prefers error. There are two classes of disputants most frequently
to be met with among us. The first is of young students just entered
the threshold of science, with a first view of it's outlines, not yet
filled up with the details and modifications which a further progress
would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the
ill-tempered and rude men in society who have taken up a passion for
politics. (Good humor and politeness never introduce into mixed
society a question on which they foresee there will be a difference
of opinion.) From both of these classes of disputants, my dear
Jefferson, keep aloof, as you would from the infected subjects of
yellow fever or pestilence. Consider yourself, when with them, as
among the patients of Bedlam needing medical more than moral counsel.
Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish
with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics. In the
fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any
attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights either in fact or
principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe,
and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore as
you would by an angry bull: it is not for a man of sense to dispute
the road with such an animal. You will be more exposed than others
to have these animals shaking their horns at you, because of the
relation in which you stand with me and to hate me as a chief in the
antagonist party your presence will be to them what the vomit-grass
is to the sick dog a nostrum for producing an ejaculation. Look upon
them exactly with that eye, and pity them as objects to whom you can
administer only occasional ease. My character is not within their
power. It is in the hands of my fellow citizens at large, and will
be consigned to honor or infamy by the verdict of the republican mass
of our country, according to what themselves will have seen, not what
their enemies and mine shall have said. Never therefore consider
these puppies in politics as requiring any notice from you, and
always shew that you are not afraid to leave my character to the
umpirage of public opinion. Look steadily to the pursuits which have
carried you to Philadelphia, be very select in the society you attach
yourself to; avoid taverns, drinkers, smoakers, and idlers and
dissipated persons generally; for it is with such that broils and
contentions arise, and you will find your path more easy and
tranquil. The limits of my paper warn me that it is time for me to
close with my affectionate Adieux.
P. S. Present me affectionately to Mr. Ogilvie, and in doing
the same to Mr. Peale tell him I am writing with his polygraph and
shall send him mine the first moment I have leisure enough to pack
it.
SOWING THE UPLAND RICE
_To Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse_
_Washington, December 1, 1808_
SIR, -- In answer to the inquiries of the benevolent Dr. De
Carro on the subject of the upland or mountain rice, Oryza Mutica, I
will state to you what I know of it. I first became informed of the
existence of a rice which would grow in uplands without any more
water than the common rains, by reading a book of Mr. De Porpre, who
had been Governor of the Isle of France, who mentions it as growing
there and all along the coast of Africa successfully, and as having
been introduced from Cochin-China. I was at that time (1784-89) in
France, and there happening to be there a Prince of Cochin-China, on
his travels, and then returning home, I obtained his promise to send
me some. I never received it however, and mention it only as it may
have been sent, and furnished the ground for the inquiries of Dr. De
Carro, respecting my receiving it from China. When at Havre on my
return from France, I found there Captain Nathaniel Cutting, who was
the ensuing spring to go on a voyage along the coast of Africa. I
engaged him to inquire for this; he was there just after the harvest,
procured and sent me a thirty-gallon cask of it. It arrived in time
the ensuing spring to be sown. I divided it between the Agricultural
Society of Charleston and some private gentlemen of Georgia,
recommending it to their care, in the hope which had induced me to
endeavor to obtain it, that if it answered as well as the swamp rice,
it might rid them of that source of their summer diseases. Nothing
came of the trials in South Carolina, but being carried into the
upper hilly parts of Georgia, it succeeded there perfectly, has
spread over the country, and is now commonly cultivated; still,
however, for family use chiefly, as they cannot make it for sale in
competition with the rice of the swamps. The former part of these
details is written from memory, the papers being at Monticello which
would enable me to particularize exactly the dates of times and
places. The latter part is from the late Mr. Baldwin, one of those
whom I engaged in the distribution of the seed in Georgia, and who in
his annual attendance on Congress, gave me from time to time the
history of its progress. It has got from Georgia into Kentucky,
where it is cultivated by many individuals for family use. I
cultivated it two or three years at Monticello, and had good crops,
as did my neighbors, but not having conveniences for husking it, we
declined it. I tried some of it in a pot, while I lived in
Philadelphia, and gave seed to Mr. Bartram. It produced luxuriant
plants with us both, but no seed; nor do I believe it will ripen in
the United States as far north as Philadelphia. Business and an
indisposition of some days must apologize for this delay in answering
your letter of October 24th, which I did not receive till the 6th of
November. And permit me here to add my salutations and assurances of
esteem and respect.
"LAST TRIAL FOR PEACE"
_To James Monroe_
_Washington, January 28, 1809_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 18th was received in due time,
and the answer has been delayed as well by a pressure of business, as
by the expectation of your absence from Richmond.
The idea of sending a special mission to France or England is
not entertained at all here. After so little attention to us from
the former, and so insulting an answer from Canning, such a mark of
respect as an extraordinary mission, would be a degradation against
which all minds revolt here. The idea was hazarded in the House of
Representatives a few days ago, by a member, and an approbation
expressed by another, but rejected indignantly by every other person
who spoke, and very generally in conversation by all others; and I am
satisfied such a proposition would get no vote in the Senate. The
course the Legislature means to pursue, may be inferred from the act
now passed for a meeting in May, and a proposition before them for
repealing the embargo in June, and then resuming and maintaining by
force our right of navigation. There will be considerable opposition
to this last proposition, not only from the federalists, old and new,
who oppose everything, but from sound members of the majority. Yet
it is believed it will obtain a good majority, and that it is the
only proposition which can be devised that could obtain a majority of
any kind. Final propositions will, therefore, be soon despatched to
both the belligerents through the resident ministers, so that their
answers will be received before the meeting in May, and will decide
what is to be done. This last trial for peace is not thought
desperate. If, as is expected, Bonaparte should be successful in
Spain, however every virtuous and liberal sentiment revolts at it, it
may induce both powers to be more accommodating with us. England
will see here the only asylum for her commerce and manufactures,
worth more to her than her orders of council. And Bonaparte, having
Spain at his feet, will look immediately to the Spanish colonies, and
think our neutrality cheaply purchased by a repeal of the illegal
parts of his decrees, with perhaps the Floridas thrown into the
bargain. Should a change in the aspect of affairs in Europe produce
this disposition in both powers, our peace and prosperity may be
revived and long continue. Otherwise, we must again take the tented
field, as we did in 1776 under more inauspicious circumstances.
There never has been a situation of the world before, in which
such endeavors as we have made would not have secured our peace. It
is probable there never will be such another. If we go to war now, I
fear we may renounce forever the hope of seeing an end of our
national debt. If we can keep at peace eight years longer, our
income, liberated from debt, will be adequate to any war, without new
taxes or loans, and our position and increasing strength put us _hors
d'insulte_ from any nation. I am now so near the moment of retiring,
that I take no part in affairs beyond the expression of an opinion.
I think it fair that my successor should now originate those measures
of which he will be charged with the execution and responsibility,
and that it is my duty to clothe them with the forms of authority.
Five weeks more will relieve me from a drudgery to which I am no
longer equal, and restore me to a scene of tranquillity, amidst my
family and friends, more congenial to my age and natural
inclinations. In that situation, it will always be a pleasure to me
to see you, and to repeat to you the assurances of my constant
friendship and respect.
THE REPUBLIC OF SCIENCE
_To John Hollins_
_Washington, February 19, 1809_
DEAR SIR, -- A little transaction of mine, as innocent an one
as I ever entered into, and where an improper construction was never
less expected, is making some noise, I observe, in your city. I beg
leave to explain it to you, because I mean to ask your agency in it.
The last year, the Agricultural Society of Paris, of which I am a
member, having had a plough presented to them, which, on trial with a
graduated instrument, did equal work with half the force of their
best ploughs, they thought it would be a benefit to mankind to
communicate it. They accordingly sent one to me, with a view to its
being made known here, and they sent one to the Duke of Bedford also,
who is one of their members, to be made use of for England, although
the two nations were then at war. By the Mentor, now going to
France, I have given permission to two individuals in Delaware and
New York, to import two parcels of Merino sheep from France, which
they have procured there, and to some gentlemen in Boston, to import
a very valuable machine which spins cotton, wool and flax equally.
The last spring, the Society informed me they were cultivating the
cotton of the Levant and other parts of the Mediterranean, and wished
to try also that of our southern States. I immediately got a friend
to have two tierces of seed forwarded to me. They were consigned to
Messrs. Falls and Brown of Baltimore, and notice of it being given
me, I immediately wrote to them to re-ship them to New York, to be
sent by the Mentor. Their first object was to make a show of my
letter, as something very criminal, and to carry the subject into the
newspapers. I had, on a like request, some time ago, (but before the
embargo) from the President of the Board of Agriculture of London, of
which I am also a member, to send them some of the genuine May wheat
of Virginia, forwarded to them two or three barrels of it. General
Washington, in his time, received from the same Society the seed of
the perennial succory, which Arthur Young had carried over from
France to England, and I have since received from a member of it the
seed of the famous turnip of Sweden, now so well known here. I
mention these things, to shew the nature of the correspondence which
is carried on between societies instituted for the benevolent purpose
of communicating to all parts of the world whatever useful is
discovered in any one of them. These societies are always in peace,
however their nations may be at war. Like the republic of letters,
they form a great fraternity spreading over the whole earth, and
their correspondence is never interrupted by any civilized nation.
Vaccination has been a late and remarkable instance of the liberal
diffusion of a blessing newly discovered. It is really painful, it
is mortifying, to be obliged to note these things, which are known to
every one who knows any thing, and felt with approbation by every one
who has any feeling. But we have a faction to whose hostile passions
the torture even of right into wrong is a delicious gratification.
Their malice I have long learned to disregard, their censure to deem
praise. But I observe, that some republicans are not satisfied (even
while we are receiving liberally from others) that this small return
should be made. They will think more justly at another day: but in
the mean time, I wish to avoid offence. My prayer to you, therefore,
is, that you will be so good, under the inclosed order, as to receive
these two tierces of seed from Falls and Brown, and pay them their
disbursements for freight, &c. which I will immediately remit you on
knowing the amount. Of the seed, when received, be so good as to
make manure for your garden. When rotted with a due mixture of
stable manure or earth, it is the best in the world. I rely on your
friendship to excuse this trouble, it being necessary I should not
commit myself again to persons of whose honor, or the want of it, I
know nothing.
Accept the assurances of my constant esteem and respect.
THE NEGRO RACE
_To Henri Gregoire_
_Washington, February 25, 1809_
SIR, -- I have received the favor of your letter of August
17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the
"Literature of Negroes." Be assured that no person living wishes more
sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I
have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding
allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are
on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal
observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the
opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable,
and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore
with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is
no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to
others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or
property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the
opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their
re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the
human family. I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many
instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence
in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening
the day of their relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of high
and just esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all
sincerity.
"A PRISONER, RELEASED FROM HIS CHAINS"
_To P. S. Dupont de Nemours_
_Washington, March 2, 1809_
DEAR SIR, -- My last to you was of May the 2nd; since which I
have received yours of May the 25th, June the 1st, July the 23rd,
24th, and September the 5th, and distributed the two pamphlets
according to your desire. They are read with the delight which every
thing from your pen gives.
After using every effort which could prevent or delay our being
entangled in the war of Europe, that seems now our only resource.
The edicts of the two belligerents, forbidding us to be seen on the
ocean, we met by an embargo. This gave us time to call home our
seamen, ships and property, to levy men and put our sea ports into a
certain state of defence. We have now taken off the embargo, except
as to France and England and their territories, because fifty
millions of exports, annually sacrificed, are the treble of what war
would cost us; besides, that by war we should take something, and
lose less than at present. But to give you a true description of the
state of things here, I must refer you to Mr. Coles, the bearer of
this, my secretary, a most worthy, intelligent and well informed
young man, whom I recommend to your notice, and conversation on our
affairs. His discretion and fidelity may be relied on. I expect he
will find you with Spain at your feet, but England still afloat, and
a barrier to the Spanish colonies. But all these concerns I am now
leaving to be settled by my friend Mr. Madison. Within a few days I
retire to my family, my books and farms; and having gained the harbor
myself, I shall look on my friends still buffeting the storm, with
anxiety indeed, but not with envy. Never did a prisoner, released
from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the
shackles of power. Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of
science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of
the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in
resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of
political passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retiring from
them without censure, and carrying with me the most consoling proofs
of public approbation. I leave every thing in the hands of men so
able to take care of them, that if we are destined to meet
misfortunes, it will be because no human wisdom could avert them.
Should you return to the United States, perhaps your curiosity may
lead you to visit the hermit of Monticello. He will receive you with
affection and delight; hailing you in the mean time with his
affectionate salutations, and assurances of constant esteem and
respect.
P.S. If you return to us, bring a couple of pair of true-bred
shepherd's dogs. You will add a valuable possession to a country now
beginning to pay great attention to the raising sheep.
A PARTING BLESSING
_To Mrs. Samuel H. Smith_
_Washington, Mar. 6, 1809_
Th: Jefferson presents his respectful salutations to mrs.
Smith, and sends her the Geranium she expressed a willingness to
receive. it is in very bad condition, having been neglected latterly,
as not intended to be removed. he cannot give it his parting blessing
more effectually than by consigning it to the nourishing hand of mrs.
Smith. If plants have sensibility, as the analogy of their
organisation with ours seems to indicate, it cannot but be proudly
sensible of her fostering attentions. of his regrets at parting with
the society of Washington, a very sensible portion attaches to mrs.
Smith, whose friendship he has particularly valued. her promise to
visit Monticello is some consolation; and he can assure her she will
be received with open arms and hearts by the whole family. he prays
her to accept the homage of his affectionate attachment and respect.
THE POTATO AND HARPER'S FERRY
_To Horatio G. Spafford_
_Monticello, May 14, 1809_
SIR, -- I have duly received your favor of April 3d, with the
copy of your "General Geography," for which I pray you to accept my
thanks. My occupations here have not permitted me to read it
through, which alone could justify any judgment expressed on the
work. Indeed, as it appears to be an abridgment of several branches
of science, the scale of abridgment must enter into that judgment.
Different readers require different scales according to the time they
can spare, and their views in reading, and no doubt that the view of
the sciences which you have brought into the compass of a 12mo volume
will be accommodated to the time and object of many who may wish for
but a very general view of them
In passing my eye rapidly over parts of the book, I was struck
with two passages, on which I will make observations, not doubting
your wish, in any future edition, to render the work as correct as
you can. In page 186 you say the potatoe is a native of the United
States. I presume you speak of the Irish potatoe. I have inquired
much into the question, and think I can assure you that plant is not
a native of North America. Zimmerman, in his "Geographical Zoology,"
says it is a native of Guiana; and Clavigero, that the Mexicans got
it from South America, _its native country._ The most probable
account I have been able to collect is, that a vessel of Sir Walter
Raleigh's, returning from Guiana, put into the west of Ireland in
distress, having on board some potatoes which they called
earth-apples. That the season of the year, and circumstance of their
being already sprouted, induced them to give them all out there, and
they were no more heard or thought of, till they had been spread
considerably into that island, whence they were carried over into
England, and therefore called the Irish potatoe. From England they
came to the United States, bringing their name with them.
The other passage respects the description of the passage of
the Potomac through the Blue Ridge, in the Notes on Virginia. You
quote from Volney's account of the United States what his words do
not justify. His words are, "on coming from Fredericktown, one does
not see the rich perspective mentioned in the Notes of Mr. Jefferson.
On observing this to him a few days after, he informed me he had his
information from a French engineer who, during the war of
Independence, ascended the height of the hills, and I conceive that
at that elevation the perspective must be as imposing as a wild
country, whose horizon has no obstacles, may present." That the scene
described in the "Notes" is not visible from any part of the road
from Fredericktown to Harper's ferry is most certain. That road
passes along the valley, nor can it be seen from the tavern after
crossing the ferry; and we may fairly infer that Mr. Volney did not
ascend the height back of the tavern from which alone it can be seen,
but that he pursued his journey from the tavern along the high road.
Yet he admits, that at the elevation of that height the perspective
may be as rich as a wild country can present. But you make him
"surprised to find, _by a view of the spot_, that the description was
_amazingly exaggerated._" But it is evident that Mr. Volney did not
ascend the hill to _get a view of the spot_, and that he supposed
that that height may present as imposing a view as such a country
admits. But Mr. Volney was mistaken in saying I told him I had
received the description from a French engineer. By an error of
memory he has misapplied to this scene what I mentioned to him as to
the Natural Bridge. I told him I received a _drawing_ of that from a
French engineer sent there by the Marquis de Chastellux, and who has
published that drawing in his travels. I could not tell him I had
the description of the passage of the Potomac from a French engineer,
because I never heard any Frenchman say a word about it, much less
did I ever receive a description of it from any mortal whatever. I
visited the place myself in October 1783, wrote the description some
time after, and printed the work in Paris in 1784-5. I wrote the
description from my own view of the spot, stated no fact but what I
saw, and can now affirm that no fact is exaggerated. It is true that
the same scene may excite very different sensations in different
spectators, according to their different sensibilities. The
sensations of some may be much stronger than those of others. And
with respect to the Natural Bridge, it was not a description, but a
drawing only, which I received from the French engineer. The
description was written before I ever saw him. It is not from any
merit which I suppose in either of these descriptions, that I have
gone into these observations, but to correct the imputation of having
given to the world as my own, ideas, and false ones too, which I had
received from another. Nor do I mention the subject to you with a
desire that it should be any otherwise noticed before the public than
by a more correct statement in any future edition of your work.
You mention having enclosed to me some printed letters
announcing a design in which you ask my aid. But no such letters
came to me. Any facts which I possess, and which may be useful to
your views, shall be freely communicated, and I shall be happy to see
you at Monticello, should you come this way as you propose. You will
find me engaged entirely in rural occupations, looking into the field
of science but occasionally and at vacant moments.
I sowed some of the Benni seed the last year, and distributed
some among my neighbors; but the whole was killed by the September
frost. I got a little again the last winter, but it was sowed before
I received your letter. Colonel Fen of New York receives quantities
of it from Georgia, from whom you may probably get some through the
Mayor of New York. But I little expect it can succeed with you. It
is about as hardy as the cotton plant, from which you may judge of
the probability of raising it at Hudson.
I salute you with great respect.
CIRCULATING LIBRARIES
_To John Wyche_
_Monticello, May 19, 1809_
SIR, -- Your favor of March 19th came to hand but a few days
ago, and informs me of the establishment of the Westward Mill Library
Society, of its general views and progress. I always hear with
pleasure of institutions for the promotion of knowledge among my
countrymen. The people of every country are the only safe guardians
of their own rights, and are the only instruments which can be used
for their destruction. And certainly they would never consent to be
so used were they not deceived. To avoid this, they should be
instructed to a certain degree. I have often thought that nothing
would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment
of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few
well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the county, under such
regulations as would secure their safe return in due time. These
should be such as would give them a general view of other history,
and particular view of that of their own country, a tolerable
knowledge of Geography, the elements of Natural Philosophy, of
Agriculture and Mechanics. Should your example lead to this, it will
do great good. Having had more favorable opportunities than fall to
every man's lot of becoming acquainted with the best books on such
subjects as might be selected, I do not know that I can be otherwise
useful to your society than by offering them any information
respecting these which they might wish. My services in this way are
freely at their command, and I beg leave to tender to yourself my
salutations and assurances of respect.
"THE SPIRIT OF MANUFACTURE"
_To P. S. Dupont de Nemours_
_Monticello, June 28, 1809_
DEAR SIR, -- The interruption of our commerce with England,
produced by our embargo and non-intercourse law, and the general
indignation excited by her barefaced attempts to make us accessories
and tributaries to her usurpations on the high seas, have generated
in this country an universal spirit for manufacturing for ourselves,
and of reducing to a minimum the number of articles for which we are
dependent on her. The advantages, too, of lessening the occasions of
risking our peace on the ocean, and of planting the consumer in our
own soil by the side of the grower of produce, are so palpable, that
no temporary suspension of injuries on her part, or agreements
founded on that, will now prevent our continuing in what we have
begun. The spirit of manufacture has taken deep root among us, and
its foundations are laid in too great expense to be abandoned. The
bearer of this, Mr. Ronaldson, will be able to inform you of the
extent and perfection of the works produced here by the late state of
things; and to his information, which is greatest as to what is doing
in the cities, I can add my own as to the country, where the
principal articles wanted in every family are now fabricated within
itself. This mass of _household_ manufacture, unseen by the public
eye, and so much greater than what is seen, is such at present, that
let our intercourse with England be opened when it may, not one half
the amount of what we have heretofore taken from her will ever again
be demanded. The great call from the country has hitherto been of
coarse goods. These are now made in our families, and the advantage
is toosensible ever to be relinquished. It is one of those obvious
improvements in our condition which needed only to be once forced on
our attention, never again to be abandoned.
Among the arts which have made great progress among us is that
of printing. Heretofore we imported our books, and with them much
political principle from England. We now print a great deal, and
shall soon supply ourselves with most of the books of considerable
demand. But the foundation of printing, you know, is the
type-foundry, and a material essential to that is antimony.
Unfortunately that mineral is not among those as yet found in the
United States, and the difficulty and dearness of getting it from
England, will force us to discontinue our type-founderies, and resort
to her again for our books, unless some new source of supply can be
found. The bearer, Mr. Ronaldson, is of the concern of Binney &
Ronaldson, type-founders of Philadelphia. He goes to France for the
purpose of opening some new source of supply, where we learn that
this article is abundant; the enhancement of the price in England has
taught us the fact, that its exportation thither from France must be
interrupted, either by the war or express prohibition. Our
relations, however, with France, are too unlike hers with England, to
place us under the same interdiction. Regulations for preventing the
transportation of the article to England, under the cover of supplies
to America, may be thought requisite. The bearer, I am persuaded,
will readily give any assurances which may be required for this
object, and the wants of his own type-foundry here are a sufficient
pledge that what he gets is _bona fide_ to supply them. I do not
know that there will be any obstacle to his bringing from France any
quantity of antimony he may have occasion for; but lest there should
be, I have taken the liberty of recommending him to your patronage.
I know your enlightened and liberal views on subjects of this kind,
and the friendly interest you take in whatever concerns our welfare.
I place Mr. Ronaldson, therefore, in your hands, and pray you to
advise him, and patronize the object which carries him to Europe, and
is so interesting to him and to our country. His knowledge of what
is passing among us will be a rich source of information for you, and
especially as to the state and progress of our manufactures. Your
kindness to him will confer an obligation on me, and will be an
additional title to the high and affectionate esteem and respect of
an ancient and sincere friend.
AN EDITION OF WRITINGS
_To John W. Campbell_
_Monticello, September 3, 1809_
SIR, -- Your letter of July 29th came to hand some time since,
but I have not sooner been able to acknowledge it. In answer to your
proposition for publishing a complete edition of my different
writings, I must observe that no writings of mine, other than those
merely official, have been published, except the Notes on Virginia
and a small pamphlet under the title of a Summary View of the rights
of British America. The Notes on Virginia, I have always intended to
revise and enlarge, and have, from time to time, laid by materials
for that purpose. It will be long yet before other occupations will
permit me to digest them, and observations and inquiries are still to
be made, which will be more correct in proportion to the length of
time they are continued. It is not unlikely that this may be through
my life. I could not, therefore, at present, offer anything new for
that work.
The Summary View was not written for publication. It was a
draught I had prepared for a petition to the king, which I meant to
propose in my place as a member of the convention of 1774. Being
stopped on the road by sickness, I sent it on to the Speaker, who
laid it on the table for the perusal of the members. It was thought
too strong for the times, and to become the act of the convention,
but was printed by subscription of the members, with a short preface
written by one of them. If it had any merit, it was that of first
taking our true ground, and that which was afterwards assumed and
maintained.
I do not mention the Parliamentary Manual, published for the
use of the Senate of the United States, because it was a mere
compilation, into which nothing entered of my own but the
arrangement, and a few observations necessary to explain that and
some of the cases.
I do not know whether your view extends to official papers of
mine which have been published. Many of these would be like old
newspapers, materials for future historians, but no longer
interesting to the readers of the day. They would consist of
reports, correspondences, messages, answers to addresses; a few of my
reports while Secretary of State, might perhaps be read by some as
essays on abstract subjects. Such as the report on measures, weights
and coins, on the mint, on the fisheries, on commerce, on the use of
distilled sea-water, &c. The correspondences with the British and
French ministers, Hammond and Genet, were published by Congress. The
messages to Congress, which might have been interesting at the
moment, would scarcely be read a second time, and answers to
addresses are hardly read a first time.
So that on a review of these various materials, I see nothing
encouraging a printer to a re-publication of them. They would
probably be bought by those only who are in the habit of preserving
State papers, and who are not many.
I say nothing of numerous draughts of reports, resolutions,
declarations, &c., drawn as a Member of Congress or of the
Legislature of Virginia, such as the Declaration of Independence,
Report on the Money Mint of the United States, the act of religious
freedom, &c., &c.; these having become the acts of public bodies,
there can be no personal claim to them, and they would no more find
readers now, than the journals and statute books in which they are
deposited.
I have presented this general view of the subjects which might
have been within the scope of your contemplation, that they might be
correctly estimated before any final decision. They belong mostly to
a class of papers not calculated for popular reading, and not likely
to offer profit, or even indemnification to the re-publisher.
Submitting it to your consideration, I tender you my salutations and
respects.
INDIAN VOCABULARIES
_To Dr. Benjamin S. Barton_
_Monticello, September 21, 1809_
DEAR SIR, -- I received last night your favor of the 14th, and
would with all possible pleasure have communicated to you any part or
the whole of the Indian vocabularies which I had collected, but an
irreparable misfortune has deprived me of them. I have now been
thirty years availing myself of every possible opportunity of
procuring Indian vocabularies to the same set of words: my
opportunities were probably better than will ever occur again to any
person having the same desire. I had collected about fifty, and had
digested most of them in collateral columns, and meant to have
printed them the last year of my stay in Washington. But not having
yet digested Captain Lewis's collection, nor having leisure then to
do it, I put it off till I should return home. The whole, as well
digest as originals, were packed in a trunk of stationary, and sent
round by water with about thirty other packages of my effects, from
Washington, and while ascending James river, this package, on account
of its weight and presumed precious contents, was singled out and
stolen. The thief being disappointed on opening it, threw into the
river all its contents, of which he thought he could make no use.
Among these were the whole of the vocabularies. Some leaves floated
ashore and were found in the mud; but these were very few, and so
defaced by the mud and water that no general use can ever be made of
them. On the receipt of your letter I turned to them, and was very
happy to find, that the only morsel of an original vocabulary among
them, was Captain Lewis's of the Pani language, of which you say you
have not one word. I therefore inclose it to you, as it is, and a
little fragment of some other, which I see is in his hand writing,
but no indication remains on it of what language it is. It is a
specimen of the condition of the little which was recovered. I am
the more concerned at this accident, as of the two hundred and fifty
words of my vocabularies, and the one hundred and thirty words of the
great Russian vocabularies of the languages of the other quarters of
the globe, severty-three were common to both, and would have
furnished materials for a comparison from which something might have
resulted. Although I believe no general use can ever be made of the
wrecks of my loss, yet I will ask the return of the Pani vocabulary
when you are done with it. Perhaps I may make another attempt to
collect, although I am too old to expect to make much progress in it.
I learn, with pleasure, your acquisition of the pamphlet on the
astronomy of the antient Mexicans. If it be antient and genuine, or
modern and rational, it will be of real value. It is one of the most
interesting countries of our hemisphere, and merits every attention.
I am thankful for your kind offer of sending the original
Spanish for my perusal. But I think it a pity to trust it to the
accidents of the post, and whenever you publish the translation, I
shall be satisfied to read that which shall be given by your
translator, who is, I am sure, a greater adept in the language than I
am.
Accept the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
AMERICAN QUAKERISM
_To Samuel Kercheval_
_Monticello, January 19, 1810_
SIR, -- Yours of the 7th instant has been duly received, with
the pamphlet inclosed, for which I return you my thanks. Nothing can
be more exactly and seriously true than what is there stated; that
but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the
Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those
who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an
engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandising their oppressors in
Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before
preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial
constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to
themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious
heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the
hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest
obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do
in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.
You expect that your book will have some effect on the
prejudices which the society of Friends entertain against the present
and late administrations. In this I think you will be disappointed.
The Friends are men, formed with the same passions, and swayed by the
same natural principles and prejudices as others. In cases where the
passions are neutral, men will display their respect for the
religious _professions_ of their sect. But where their passions are
enlisted, these _professions_ are no obstacle. You observe very
truly, that both the late and present administration conducted the
government on principles _professed_ by the Friends. Our efforts to
preserve peace, our measures as to the Indians, as to slavery, as to
religious freedom, were all in consonance with their _professions_.
Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I
was neither deceived nor disappointed. There is no riddle in this,
to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the
_professions_ of religious sectaries. The theory of American
Quakerism is a very obvious one. The mother society is in England.
Its members are English by birth and residence, devoted to their own
country, as good citizens ought to be. The Quakers of these States
are colonies or filiations from the mother society, to whom that
society sends its yearly lessons. On these the filiated societies
model their opinions, their conduct, their passions and attachments.
A Quaker is, essentially, an Englishman, in whatever part of the
earth he is born or lives. The outrages of Great Britain on our
navigation and commerce, have kept us in perpetual bickerings with
her. The Quakers here have taken side against their own government;
not on their _profession_ of peace, for they saw that peace was our
object also; but from devotion to the views of the mother society.
In 1797 and 8, when an administration sought war with France, the
Quakers were the most clamorous for war. Their principle of peace,
as a secondary one, yielded to the primary one of adherence to the
Friends in England, and what was patriotism in the original became
treason in the copy. On that occasion, they obliged their good old
leader, Mr. Pemberton, to erase his name from a petition to Congress,
against war, which had been delivered to a Representative of
Pennsylvania, a member of the late and present administration. He
accordingly permitted the old gentleman to erase his name. You must
not, therefore, expect that your book will have any more effect on
the society of Friends here, than on the English merchants settled
among us. I apply this to the Friends in general, not universally.
I know individuals among them as good patriots as we have.
I thank you for the kind wishes and sentiments towards myself,
expressed in your letter, and sincerely wish to yourself the
blessings of health and happiness.
NEPOTISM AND THE REPUBLIC
_To John Garland Jefferson_
_Monticello, January 25, 1810_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of December 12th was long coming to
hand. I am much concerned to learn that any disagreeable impression
was made on your mind, by the circumstances which are the subject of
your letter. Permit me first to explain the principles which I had
laid down for my own observance. In a government like ours, it is
the duty of the Chief Magistrate, in order to enable himself to do
all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by all
honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole
people. This alone, in any case where the energy of the nation is
required, can produce a union of the powers of the whole, and point
them in a single direction, as if all constituted but one body and
one mind, and this alone can render a weaker nation unconquerable by
a stronger one. Towards acquiring the confidence of the people, the
very first measure is to satisfy them of his disinterestedness, and
that he is directing their affairs with a single eye to their good,
and not to build up fortunes for himself and family, and especially,
that the officers appointed to transact their business, are appointed
because they are the fittest men, not because they are his relations.
So prone are they to suspicion, that where a President appoints a
relation of his own, however worthy, they will believe that favor and
not merit was the motive. I therefore laid it down as a law of
conduct for myself, never to give an appointment to a relation. Had
I felt any hesitation in adopting this rule, examples were not
wanting to admonish me what to do and what to avoid. Still, the
expression of your willingness to act in any office for which you
were qualified, could not be imputed to you as blame. It would not
readily occur that a person qualified for office ought to be rejected
merely because he was related to the President, and the then more
recent examples favored the other opinion. In this light I
considered the case as presenting itself to your mind, and that the
application might be perfectly justifiable on your part, while, for
reasons occurring to none perhaps, but the person in my situation,
the public interest might render it unadvisable. Of this, however,
be assured that I consider the proposition as innocent on your part,
and that it never lessened my esteem for you, or the interest I felt
in your welfare.
My stay in Amelia was too short, (only twenty-four hours,) to
expect the pleasure of seeing you there. It would be a happiness to
me any where, but especially here, from whence I am rarely absent. I
am leading a life of considerable activity as a farmer, reading
little and writing less. Something pursued with ardor is necessary
to guard us from the _tedium-vitae,_ and the active pursuits lessen
most our sense of the infirmities of age. That to the health of
youth you may add an old age of vigor, is the sincere prayer of
Yours, affectionately.
PROSTRATION OF REASON
_To Caesar A. Rodney_
_Monticello, February 10, 1810_
MY DEAR SIR, -- I have to thank you for your favor of the 31st
ultimo, which is just now received. It has been peculiarly
unfortunate for us, personally, that the portion in the history of
mankind, at which we were called to take a share in the direction of
their affairs, was such an one as history has never before presented.
At any other period, the even-handed justice we have observed towards
all nations, the efforts we have made to merit their esteem by every
act which candor or liberality could exercise, would have preserved
our peace, and secured the unqualified confidence of all other
nations in our faith and probity. But the hurricane which is now
blasting the world, physical and moral, has prostrated all the mounds
of reason as well as right. All those calculations which, at any
other period, would have been deemed honorable, of the existence of a
moral sense in man, individually or associated, of the connection
which the laws of nature have established between his duties and his
interests, of a regard for honest fame and the esteem of our fellow
men, have been a matter of reproach on us, as evidences of
imbecility. As if it could be a folly for an honest man to suppose
that others could be honest also, when it is their interest to be so.
And when is this state of things to end? The death of Bonaparte
would, to be sure, remove the first and chiefest apostle of the
desolation of men and morals, and might withdraw the scourge of the
land. But what is to restore order and safety on the ocean? The
death of George III? Not at all. He is only stupid; and his
ministers, however weak and profligate in morals, are ephemeral. But
his nation is permanent, and it is that which is the tyrant of the
ocean. The principle that force is right, is become the principle of
the nation itself. They would not permit an honest minister, were
accident to bring such an one into power, to relax their system of
lawless piracy. These were the difficulties when I was with you. I
know they are not lessened, and I pity you.
It is a blessing, however, that our people are reasonable; that
they are kept so well informed of the state of things as to judge for
themselves, to see the true sources of their difficulties, and to
maintain their confidence undiminished in the wisdom and integrity of
their functionaries. _Macte virtute_ therefore. Continue to go
straight forward, pursuing always that which is right, as the only
clue which can lead us out of the labyrinth. Let nothing be spared
of either reason or passion, to preserve the public confidence
entire, as the only rock of our safety. In times of peace the people
look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive
solely. It is visible that their confidence is even now veering in
that direction; that they are looking to the executive to give the
proper direction to their affairs, with a confidence as auspicious as
it is well founded.
I avail myself of this, the first occasion of writing to you,
to express all the depth of my affection for you; the sense I
entertain of your faithful co-operation in my late labors, and the
debt I owe for the valuable aid I received from you. Though
separated from my fellow laborers in place and pursuit, my affections
are with you all, and I offer daily prayers that ye love one another,
as I love you. God bless you.
"THE BOOK OF KINGS"
_To Governor John Langdon_
_Monticello, March 5, 1810_
Your letter, my dear friend, of the 18th ultimo, comes like the
refreshing dews of the evening on a thirsty soil. It recalls antient
as well as recent recollections, very dear to my heart. For five and
thirty years we have walked together through a land of tribulations.
Yet these have passed away, and so, I trust, will those of the
present day. The toryism with which we struggled in '77, differed
but in name from the federalism of '99, with which we struggled also;
and the Anglicism of 1808, against which we are now struggling, is
but the same thing still, in another form. It is a longing for a
King, and an English King rather than any other. This is the true
source of their sorrows and wailings.
The fear that Buonaparte will come over to us and conquer us
also, is too chimerical to be genuine. Supposing him to have
finished Spain and Portugal, he has yet England and Russia to subdue.
The maxim of war was never sounder than in this case, not to leave an
enemy in the rear; and especially where an insurrectionary flame is
known to be under the embers, merely smothered, and ready to burst at
every point. These two subdued, (and surely the Anglomen will not
think the conquest of England alone a short work) antient Greece and
Macedonia, the cradle of Alexander, his prototype, and
Constantinople, the seat of empire for the world, would glitter more
in his eye than our bleak mountains and rugged forests. Egypt, too,
and the golden apples of Mauritania, have for more than half a
century fixed the longing eyes of France; and with Syria, you know,
he has an old affront to wipe out. Then come `Pontus and Galatia,
Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,' the fine countries on the Euphrates
and Tigris, the Oxus and Indus, and all beyond the Hyphasis, which
bounded the glories of his Macedonian rival; with the invitations of
his new British subjects on the banks of the Ganges, whom, after
receiving under his protection the mother country, he cannot refuse
to visit. When all this is done and settled, and nothing of the old
world remains unsubdued, he may turn to the new one. But will he
attack us first, from whom he will get but hard knocks and no money?
Or will he first lay hold of the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru,
and the diamonds of Brazil? A _republican_ Emperor, from his
affection to republics, independent of motives of expediency, must
grant to ours the Cyclop's boon of being the last devoured. While
all this is doing, we are to suppose the chapter of accidents read
out, and that nothing can happen to cut short or to disturb his
enterprises.
But the Anglomen, it seems, have found out a much safer
dependance, than all these chances of death or disappointment. That
is, that we should first let England plunder us, as she has been
doing for years, for fear Buonaparte should do it; and then ally
ourselves with her, and enter into the war. A conqueror, whose
career England could not arrest when aided by Russia, Austria,
Prussia, Sweden, Spain and Portugal, she is now to destroy, with all
these on his side, by the aid of the United States alone. This,
indeed, is making us a mighty people. And what is to be our
security, that when embarked for her in the war, she will not make a
separate peace, and leave us in the lurch? Her good faith! The
faith of a nation of merchants! The _Punica fides_ of modern
Carthage! Of the friend and protectress of Copenhagen! Of the
nation who never admitted a chapter of morality into her political
code! And is now boldly avowing, that whatever power can make hers,
is hers of right. Money, and not morality, is the principle of
commerce and commercial nations. But, in addition to this, the
nature of the English government forbids, of itself, reliance on her
engagements; and it is well known she has been the least faithful to
her alliances of any nation of Europe, since the period of her
history wherein she has been distinguished for her commerce and
corruption, that is to say, under the houses of Stuart and Brunswick.
To Portugal alone she has steadily adhered, because, by her Methuin
treaty she had made it a colony, and one of the most valuable to her.
It may be asked, what, in the nature of her government, unfits
England for the observation of moral duties? In the first place, her
King is a cypher; his only function being to name the oligarchy which
is to govern her. The parliament is, by corruption, the mere
instrument of the will of the administration. The real power and
property in the government is in the great aristocratical families of
the nation. The nest of office being too small for all of them to
cuddle into at once, the contest is eternal, which shall crowd the
other out. For this purpose, they are divided into two parties, the
Ins and the Outs, so equal in weight that a small matter turns the
balance. To keep themselves in, when they are in, every stratagem
must be practised, every artifice used which may flatter thepride,
the passions or power of the nation. Justice, honor, faith, must
yield to the necessity of keeping themselves in place. The question
whether a measure is moral, is never asked; but whether it will
nourish the avarice of their merchants, or the piratical spirit of
their navy, or produce any other effect which may strengthen them in
their places. As to engagements, however positive, entered into by
the predecessors of the Ins, why, they were their enemies; they did
every thing which was wrong; and to reverse every thing they did,
must, therefore, be right. This is the true character of the English
government in practice, however different its theory; and it presents
the singular phenomenon of a nation, the individuals of which are as
faithful to their private engagements and duties, as honorable, as
worthy, as those of any nation on earth, and whose government is yet
the most unprincipled at this day known. In an absolute government
there can be no such equiponderant parties. The despot is the
government. His power suppressing all opposition, maintains his
ministers firm in their places. What he has contracted, therefore,
through them, he has the power to observe with good faith; and he
identifies his own honor and faith with that of his nation.
When I observed, however, that the King of England was a
cypher, I did not mean to confine the observation to the mere
individual now on that throne. The practice of Kings marrying only
into the families of Kings, has been that of Europe for some
centuries. Now, take any race of animals, confine them in idleness
and inaction, whether in a stye, a stable, or a state room, pamper
them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites, immerse them
in sensualities, nourish their passions, let every thing bend before
them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few
generations they become all body and no mind: and this, too, by a law
of nature, by that very law by which we are in the constant practice
of changing the characters and propensities of the animals we raise
for our own purposes. Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in
this way they have gone on for centuries. While in Europe, I often
amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning
sovereigns of Europe. Louis the XVI. was a fool, of my own
knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his trial.
The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed
their lives in hunting, and despatched two couriers a week, one
thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the
preceding days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were
Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature.
And so was the King of Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised
the powers of government. The King of Prussia, successor to the
great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus
of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of
England you know was in a straight waistcoat. There remained, then,
none but old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have
lost her common sense. In this state Buonaparte found Europe; and it
was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle.
These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will
every hereditary monarch be after a few generations. Alexander, the
grandson of Catherine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold
his own. But he is only of the third generation. His race is not
yet worn out. And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the
Lord deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all such good men and
true, in his holy keeping.
"AN ACADEMICAL VILLAGE"
_To Messrs. Hugh L. White and Others_
_Monticello, May 6, 1810_
GENTLEMEN, -- I received, some time ago, your letter of
February 28th, covering a printed scheme of a lottery for the benefit
of the East Tennessee College, and proposing to send tickets to me to
be disposed of. It would be impossible for them to come to a more
inefficient hand. I rarely go from home, and consequently see but a
few neighbors and friends, who occasionally call on me. And having
myself made it a rule never to engage in a lottery or any other
adventure of mere chance, I can, with the less candor or effect, urge
it on others, however laudable or desirable its object may be. No
one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind
than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards
supporting free and good government. I am sincerely rejoiced,
therefore, to find that so excellent a fund has been provided for
this noble purpose in Tennessee. Fifty-thousand dollars placed in a
safe bank, will give four thousand dollars a year, and even without
other aid, must soon accomplish buildings sufficient for the object
in its early stage. I consider the common plan followed in this
country, but not in others, of making one large and expensive
building, as unfortunately erroneous. It is infinitely better to
erect a small and separate lodge for each separate professorship,
with only a hall below for his class, and two chambers above for
himself; joining these lodges by barracks for a certain portion of
the students, opening into a covered way to give a dry communication
between all the schools. The whole of these arranged around an open
square of grass and trees, would make it, what it should be in fact,
an academical village, instead of a large and common den of noise, of
filth and of fetid air. It would afford that quiet retirement so
friendly to study, and lessen the dangers of fire, infection and
tumult. Every professor would be the police officer of the students
adjacent to his own lodge, which should include those of his own
class of preference, and might be at the head of their table, if, as
I suppose, it can be reconciled with the necessary economy to dine
them in smaller and separate parties, rather than in a large and
common mess. These separate buildings, too, might be erected
successively and occasionally, as the number of professorships and
students should be increased, or the funds become competent.
I pray you to pardon me if I have stepped aside into the
province of counsel; but much observation and reflection on these
institutions have long convinced me that the large and crowded
buildings in which youths are pent up, are equally unfriendly to
health, to study, to manners, morals and order; and, believing the
plan I suggest to be more promotive of these, and peculiarly adapted
to the slender beginnings and progressive growth of our institutions,
I hoped you would pardon the presumption, in consideration of the
motive which was suggested by the difficulty expressed in your
letter, of procuring funds for erecting the building. But, on
whatever plan you proceed, I wish it every possible success, and to
yourselves the reward of esteem, respect and gratitude due to those
who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every
successive age fit governors for the next. To these accept, in
addition, the assurances of mine.
A PLAN FOR THE MERINOS
_To the President of the United States_
(James Madison)
_Monticello, May 13, 1810_
DEAR SIR, -- I thank you for your promised attention to my
portion of the Merinos, and if there be any expenses of
transportation, &c., and you will be so good as to advance my portion
of them with yours and notify the amount, it shall be promptly
remitted. What shall we do with them? I have been so disgusted with
the scandalous extortions lately practised in the sale of these
animals, and with the description of patriotism and praise to the
sellers, as if the thousands of dollars apiece they have not been
ashamed to receive were not reward enough, that I am disposed to
consider as right, whatever is the reverse of what they have done.
Since fortune has put the occasion upon us, is it not incumbent upon
us so to dispense this benefit to the farmers of our country, as to
put to shame those who, forgetting their own wealth and the honest
simplicity of the farmers, have thought them fit objects of the
shaving art, and to excite, by a better example, the condemnation due
to theirs? No sentiment is more acknowledged in the family of
Agriculturists than that the few who can afford it should incur the
risk and expense of all new improvements, and give the benefit freely
to the many of more restricted circumstances. The question then
recurs, What are we to do with them? I shall be willing to concur
with you in any plan you shall approve, and in order that we may have
some proposition to begin upon, I will throw out a first idea, to be
modified or postponed to whatever you shall think better.
Give all the full-blooded males we can raise to the different
counties of our State, one to each, as fast as we can furnish them.
And as there must be some rule of priority for the distribution, let
us begin with our own counties, which are contiguous and nearly
central to the State, and proceed, circle after circle, till we have
given a ram to every county. This will take about seven years, if we
add to the full descendants those which will have past to the fourth
generation from common ewes, to make the benefit of a single male as
general as practicable to the county, we may ask some known character
in each county to have a small society formed which shall receive the
animal and prescribe rules for his care and government. We should
retain ourselves all the full-blooded ewes, that they may enable us
the sooner to furnish a male to every county. When all shall have
been provided with rams, we may, in a year or two more, be in a
condition to give an ewe also to every county, if it be thought
necessary. But I suppose it will not, as four generations from their
full-blooded ram will give them the pure race from common ewes.
In the meantime we shall not be without a profit indemnifying
our trouble and expense. For if of our present stock of common ewes,
we place with the ram as many as he may be competent to, suppose
fifty, we may sell the male lambs of every year for such reasonable
price as in addition to the wool, will pay for the maintenance of the
flock. The first year they will be half bloods, the second
three-quarters, the third seven-eights, and the fourth full-blooded,
if we take care in selling annually half the ewes also, to keep those
of highest blood, this will be a fund for kindnesses to our friends,
as well as for indemnification to ourselves; and our whole State may
thus, from this small stock, so dispersed, be filled in a very few
years with this valuable race, and more satisfaction result to
ourselves than money ever administered to the bosom of a shaver.
There will be danger that what is here proposed, though but an act of
ordinary duty, may be perverted into one of ostentation, but malice
will always find bad motives for good actions. Shall we therefore
never do good? It may also be used to commit us with those on whose
example it will truly be a reproof. We may guard against this
perhaps by a proper reserve, developing our purpose only by its
execution.
Vive, vale, et siquid novisti rectius istis
Candidus imperti sinon, his ulere mecum.
SCHOOLS AND "LITTLE REPUBLICS"
_To John Tyler_
_Monticello, May 26, 1810_
DEAR SIR, -- Your friendly letter of the 12th has been duly
received. Although I have laid it down as a law to myself, never to
embarrass the President with my solicitations, and have not till now
broken through it, yet I have made a part of yourletter the subject
of one to him, and have done it with all my heart, and in the full
belief that I serve him and the public in urging that appointment.
We have long enough suffered under the base prostitution of law to
party passions in one judge, and the imbecility of another. In the
hands of one the law is nothing more than an ambiguous text, to be
explained by his sophistry into any meaning which may subserve his
personal malice. Nor can any milk-and-water associate maintain his
own dependance, and by a firm pursuance of what the law really is,
extend its protection to the citizens or the public. I believe you
will do it, and where you cannot induce your colleague to do what is
right, you will be firm enough to hinder him from doing what is
wrong, and by opposing sense to sophistry, leave the juries free to
follow their own judgment.
I have long lamented with you the depreciation of law science.
The opinion seems to be that Blackstone is to us what the Alcoran is
to the Mahometans, that everything which is necessary is in him, and
what is not in him is not necessary. I still lend my counsel and
books to such young students as will fix themselves in the
neighborhood. Coke's institutes and reports are their first, and
Blackstone their last book, after an intermediate course of two or
three years. It is nothing more than an elegant digest of what they
will then have acquired from the real fountains of the law. Now men
are born scholars, lawyers, doctors; in our day this was confined to
poets. You wish to see me again in the legislature, but this is
impossible; my mind is now so dissolved in tranquillity, that it can
never again encounter a contentious assembly; the habits of thinking
and speaking off-hand, after a disuse of five and twenty years, have
given place to the slower process of the pen. I have indeed two
great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain
itself in strength. 1. That of general education, to enable every
man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.
2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the
children of each will be within reach of a central school in it. But
this division looks to many other fundamental provisions. Every
hundred, besides a school, should have a justice of the peace, a
constable and a captain of militia. These officers, or some others
within the hundred, should be a corporation to manage all its
concerns, to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by
patrols, &c., (as the select men of the Eastern townships.) Every
hundred should elect one or two jurors to serve where requisite, and
all other elections should be made in the hundreds separately, and
the votes of all the hundreds be brought together. Our present
Captaincies might be declared hundreds for the present, with a power
to the courts to alter them occasionally. These little republics
would be the main strength of the great one. We owe to them the
vigor given to our revolution in its commencement in the Eastern
States, and by them the Eastern States were enabled to repeal the
embargo in opposition to the Middle, Southern and Western States, and
their large and lubberly division into counties which can never be
assembled. General orders are given out from a centre to the foreman
of every hundred, as to the sergeants of an army, and the whole
nation is thrown into energetic action, in the same direction in one
instant and as one man, and becomes absolutely irresistible. Could I
once see this I should consider it as the dawn of the salvation of
the republic, and say with old Simeon, "nunc dimittas Domine." But
our children will be as wise as we are, and will establish in the
fulness of time those things not yet ripe for establishment. So be
it, and to yourself health, happiness and long life.
HUME AND MONTESQUIEU
_To William Duane_
_Monticello, August 12, 1810_
SIR, -- Your letter of July 16th has been duly received, with
the paper it enclosed, for which accept my thanks, and especially for
the kind sentiments expressed towards myself. These testimonies of
approbation, and friendly remembrance, are the highest gratifications
I can receive from any, and especially from those in whose principles
and zeal for the public good I have confidence. Of that confidence
in yourself the military appointment to which you allude was
sufficient proof, as it was made, not on the recommendations of
others, but on our own knowledge of your principles and
qualifications. While I cherish with feeling the recollections of my
friends, I banish from my mind all political animosities which might
disturb its tranquillity, or the happiness I derive from my present
pursuits. I have thought it among the most fortunate circumstances
of my late administration that, during its eight years continuance,
it was conducted with a cordiality and harmony among all the members,
which never were ruffled on any, the greatest or smallest occasion.
I left my brethren with sentiments of sincere affection and
friendship, so rooted in the uniform tenor of a long and intimate
intercourse, that the evidence of my own senses alone ought to be
permitted to shake them. Anxious, in my retirement, to enjoy
undisturbed repose, my knowledge of my successor and late coadjutors,
and my entire confidence in their wisdom and integrity, were
assurances to me that I might sleep in security with such watchmen at
the helm, and that whatever difficulties and dangers should assail
our course, they would do what could be done to avoid or surmount
them. In this confidence I envelope myself, and hope to slumber on
to my last sleep. And should difficulties occur which they cannot
avert, if we follow them in phalanx, we shall surmount them without
danger.
I have been long intending to write to you as one of the
associated company for printing useful works.
Our laws, language, religion, politics and manners are so
deeply laid in English foundations, that we shall never cease to
consider their history as a part of ours, and to study ours in that
as its origin. Every one knows that judicious matter and charms of
style have rendered Hume's history the manual of every student. I
remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured it when young, and
the length of time, the research and reflection which were necessary
to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind. It was
unfortunate that he first took up the history of the Stuarts, became
their apologist, and advocated all their enormities. To support his
work, when done, he went back to the Tudors, and so selected and
arranged the materials of their history as to present their arbitrary
acts only, as the genuine samples of the constitutional power of the
crown, and, still writing backwards, he then reverted to the early
history, and wrote the Saxon and Norman periods with the same
perverted view. Although all this is known, he still continues to be
put into the hands of all our young people, and to infect them with
the poison of his own principles of government. It is this book
which has undermined the free principles of the English government,
has persuaded readers of all classes that these were usurpations on
the legitimate and salutary rights of the crown, and has spread
universal toryism over the land. And the book will still continue to
be read here as well as there. Baxter, one of Horne Tooke's
associates in persecution, has hit on the only remedy the evil
admits. He has taken Hume's work, corrected in the text his
misrepresentations, supplied the truths which he suppressed, and yet
has given the mass of the work in Hume's own words. And it is
wonderful how little interpolation has been necessary to make it a
sound history, and to justify what should have been its title, to
wit, "Hume's history of England abridged and rendered faithful to
fact and principle." I cannot say that his amendments are either in
matter or manner in the fine style of Hume. Yet they are often
unperceived, and occupy so little of the whole work as not to
depreciate it. Unfortunately he has _abridged_ Hume, by leaving out
all the less important details. It is thus reduced to about one half
its original size. He has also continued the history, but very
summarily, to 1801. The whole work is of 834 quarto pages, printed
close, of which the continuation occupies 283. I have read but
little of this part. As far as I can judge from that little, it is a
mere chronicle, offering nothing profound. This work is so
unpopular, so distasteful to the present Tory palates and principles
of England, that I believe it has never reached a second edition. I
have often inquired for it in our book shops, but never could find a
copy in them, and I think it possible the one I imported may be the
only one in America. Can we not have it re-printed here? It would
be about four volumes 8vo.
I have another enterprise to propose for some good printer. I
have in my possession a MS. work in French, confided to me by a
friend, whose name alone would give it celebrity were it permitted to
be mentioned. But considerations insuperable forbid that. It is a
Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws. The history
of that work is well known. He had been a great reader, and had
commonplaced everything he read. At length he wished to undertake
some work into which he could bring his whole commonplace book in a
digested form. He fixed on the subject of his Spirit of Laws, and
wrote the book. He consulted his friend Helvetius about publishing
it, who strongly dissuaded it. He published it, however, and the
world did not confirm Helvetius' opinion. Still, every man who
reflects as he reads, has considered it as a book of paradoxes;
having, indeed, much of truth and sound principle, but abounding also
with inconsistencies, apochryphal facts and false inferences. It is
a correction of these which has been executed in the work I mention,
by way of commentary and review; not by criticising words or
sentences, but by taking a book at a time, considering its general
scope, and proceeding to confirm or confute it. And much of
confutation there is, and of substitution of true for false
principle, and the true principle is ever that of republicanism. I
will not venture to say that every sentiment in the book will be
approved, because, being in manuscript, and the French characters, I
have not read the whole, but so much only as might enable me to
estimate the soundness of the author's way of viewing his subject;
and, judging from that which I have read, I infer with confidence
that we shall find the work generally worthy of our high approbation,
and that it everywhere maintains the preeminence of representative
government, by showing that its foundations are laid in reason, in
right, and in general good. I had expected this from my knowledge of
the other writings of the author, which have always a precision
rarely to be met with. But to give you an idea of the manner of its
execution, I translate and enclose his commentary on Montesquieu's
eleventh book, which contains the division of the work. I wish I
could have added his review at the close of the twelve first books,
as this would give a more complete idea of the extraordinary merit of
the work. But it is too long to be copied. I add from it, however,
a few extracts of his reviews of some of the books, as specimens of
his plan and principles. If printed in French, it would be of about
180 pages 8vo, or 23 sheets. If any one will undertake to have it
translated and printed on their own account, I will send on the MS.
by post, and they can take the copyright as of an original work,
which it ought to be understood to be. I am anxious it should be
ably translated by some one who possesses style as well as capacity
to do justice to abstruse conceptions. I would even undertake to
revise the translation if required. The original sheets must be
returned to me, and I should wish the work to be executed with as
little delay as possible.
I close this long letter with assurances of my great esteem and
respect.
A LAW BEYOND THE CONSTITUTION
_To John B. Colvin_
_Monticello, September 20, 1810_
SIR, -- Your favor of the 14th has been duly received, and I
have to thank you for the many obliging things respecting myself
which are said in it. If I have left in the breasts of my fellow
citizens a sentiment of satisfaction with my conduct in the
transaction of their business, it will soften the pillow of my repose
through the residue of life.
The question you propose, whether circumstances do not
sometimes occur, which make it a duty in officers of high trust, to
assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle,
but sometimes embarrassing in practice. A strict observance of the
written laws is doubtless _one_ of the high duties of a good citizen,
but it is not _the highest_. The laws of necessity, of
self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of
higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to
written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty,
property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly
sacrificing the end to the means. When, in the battle of Germantown,
General Washington's army was annoyed from Chew's house, he did not
hesitate to plant his cannon against it, although the property of a
citizen. When he besieged Yorktown, he leveled the suburbs, feeling
that the laws of property must be postponed to the safety of the
nation. While the army was before York, the Governor of Virginia
took horses, carriages, provisions and even men by force, to enable
that army to stay together till it could master the public enemy; and
he was justified. A ship at sea in distress for provisions, meets
another having abundance, yet refusing a supply; the law of
self-preservation authorizes the distressed to take a supply by
force. In all these cases, the unwritten laws of necessity, of
self-preservation, and of the public safety, control the written laws
of _meum_ and _tuum_. Further to exemplify the principle, I will
state an hypothetical case. Suppose it had been made known to the
Executive of the Union in the autumn of 1805, that we might have the
Floridas for a reasonable sum, that that sum had not indeed been so
appropriated by law, but that Congress were to meet within three
weeks, and might appropriate it on the first or second day of their
session. Ought he, for so great an advantage to his country, to have
risked himself by transcending the law and making the purchase? The
public advantage offered, in this supposed case, was indeed immense;
but a reverence for law, and the probability that the advantage might
still be _legally_ accomplished by a delay of only three weeks, were
powerful reasons against hazarding the act. But suppose it foreseen
that a John Randolph would find means to protract the proceeding on
it by Congress, until the ensuing spring, by which time new
circumstances would change the mind of the other party. Ought the
Executive, in that case, and with that foreknowledge, to have secured
the good to his country, and to have trusted to their justice for the
transgression of the law? I think he ought, and that the act would
have been approved. After the affair of the Chesapeake, we thought
war a very possible result. Our magazineswere illy provided with
some necessary articles, nor had any appropriations been made for
their purchase. We ventured, however, to provide them, and to place
our country in safety; and stating the case to Congress, they
sanctioned the act.
To proceed to the conspiracy of Burr, and particularly to
General Wilkinson's situation in New Orleans. In judging this case,
we are bound to consider the state of the information, correct and
incorrect, which he then possessed. He expected Burr and his band
from above, a British fleet from below, and he knew there was a
formidable conspiracy within the city.Under these circumstances, was
he justifiable, 1st, in seizing notorious conspirators? On this there
can be but two opinions; one, of the guilty and their accomplices;
the other, that of all honest men. 2d. In sending them to the seat
of government, when the written law gave them a right to trial in the
territory? The danger of their rescue, of their continuing their
machinations, the tardiness and weakness of the law, apathy of the
judges, active patronage of the whole tribe of lawyers, unknown
disposition of the juries, an hourly expectation of the enemy,
salvation of the city, and of the Union itself, which would have been
convulsed to its centre, had that conspiracy succeeded; all these
constituted a law of necessity and self-preservation, and rendered
the _salus populi_ supreme over the written law. The officer who is
called to act on this superior ground, does indeed risk himself on
the justice of the controlling powers of the constitution, and his
station makes it his duty to incur that risk. But those controlling
powers, and his fellow citizens generally, are bound to judge
according to the circumstances under which he acted. They are not to
transfer the information of this place or moment to the time and
place of his action; but to put themselves into his situation. We
knew here that there never was danger of a British fleet from below,
and that Burr's band was crushed before it reached the Mississippi.
But General Wilkinson's information was very different, and he could
act on no other.
From these examples and principles you may see what I think on
the question proposed. They do not go to the case of persons charged
with petty duties, where consequences are trifling, and time allowed
for a legal course, nor to authorize them to take such cases out of
the written law. In these, the example of overleaping the law is of
greater evil than a strict adherence to its imperfect provisions. It
is incumbent on those only who accept of great charges, to risk
themselves on great occasions, when the safety of the nation, or some
of its very high interests are at stake. An officer is bound to obey
orders; yet he would be a bad one who should do it in cases for which
they were not intended, and which involved the most important
consequences. The line of discrimination between cases may be
difficult; but the good officer is bound to draw it at his own peril,
and throw himself on the justice of his country and the rectitude of
his motives.
I have indulged freer views on this question, on your
assurances that they are for your own eye only, and that they will
not get into the hands of newswriters. I met their scurrilities
without concern, while in pursuit of the great interests with which I
was charged. But in my present retirement, no duty forbids my wish
for quiet.
Accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.
RELATIONS WITH ADAMS
_To Dr. Benjamin Rush_
_Monticello, January 16, 1811_
DEAR SIR, -- I had been considering for some days, whether it
was not time by a letter, to bring myself to your recollection, when
I received your welcome favor of the 2d instant. I had before heard
of the heart-rending calamity you mention, and had sincerely
sympathized with your afflictions. But I had not made it the subject
of a letter, because I knew that condolences were but renewals of
grief. Yet I thought, and still think, this is one of the cases
wherein we should "not sorrow, even as others who have no hope." I
have myself known so many cases of recovery from confirmed insanity,
as to reckon it ever among the recoverable diseases. One of them was
that of a near relative and namesake of mine, who, after many years
of madness of the first degree, became entirely sane, and amused
himself to a good old age in keeping school; was an excellent teacher
and much valued citizen.
You ask if I have read Hartley? I have not. My present course
of life admits less reading than I wish. From breakfast, or noon at
latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, attending to my farm or
other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind and affairs;
and the few hours I can pass in my cabinet, are devoured by
correspondences; not those with my intimate friends, with whom I
delight to interchange sentiments, but with others, who, writing to
me on concerns of their own in which I have had an agency, or from
motives of mere respect and approbation, are entitled to be answered
with respect and a return of good will. My hope is that this
obstacle to the delights of retirement, will wear away with the
oblivion which follows that, and that I may at length be indulged in
those studious pursuits, from which nothing but revolutionary duties
would ever have called me.
I shall receive your proposed publication and read it with the
pleasure which everything gives me from your pen. Although much of a
sceptic in the practice of medicine, I read with pleasure its
ingenious theories.
I receive with sensibility your observations on the
discontinuance of friendly correspondence between Mr. Adams and
myself, and the concern you take in its restoration. This
discontinuance has not proceeded from me, nor from the want of
sincere desire and of effort on my part, to renew our intercourse.
You know the perfect coincidence of principle and of action, in the
early part of the Revolution, which produced a high degree of mutual
respect and esteem between Mr. Adams and myself. Certainly no man
was ever truer than he was, in that day, to those principles of
rational republicanism which, after the necessity of throwing off our
monarchy, dictated all our efforts in the establishment of a new
government. And although he swerved, afterwards, towards the
principles of the English constitution, our friendship did not abate
on that account. While he was Vice President, and I Secretary of
State, I received a letter from President Washington, then at Mount
Vernon, desiring me to call together the Heads of departments, and to
invite Mr. Adams to join us (which, by-the-bye, was the only instance
of that being done) in order to determine on some measure which
required despatch; and he desired me to act on it, as decided,
without again recurring to him. I invited them to dine with me, and
after dinner, sitting at our wine, having settled our question, other
conversation came on, in which a collision of opinion arose between
Mr. Adams and Colonel Hamilton, on the merits of the British
constitution, Mr. Adams giving it as his opinion, that, if some of
its defects and abuses were corrected, it would be the most perfect
constitution of government ever devised by man. Hamilton, on the
contrary, asserted, that with its existing vices, it was the most
perfect model of government that could be formed; and that the
correction of its vices would render it an impracticable government.
And this you may be assured was the real line of difference between
the political principles of these two gentlemen. Another incident
took place on the same occasion, which will further delineate Mr.
Hamilton's political principles. The room being hung around with a
collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those
of Bacon, Newton and Locke, Hamilton asked me who they were. I told
him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever
produced, naming them. He paused for some time: "the greatest man,"
said he, "that ever lived, was Julius Caesar." Mr. Adams was honest
as a politician, as well as a man; Hamilton honest as a man, but, as
a politician, believing in the necessity of either force or
corruption to govern men.
You remember the machinery which the federalists played off,
about that time, to beat down the friends to the real principles of
our constitution, to silence by terror every expression in their
favor, to bring us into war with France and alliance with England,
and finally to homologize our constitution with that of England. Mr.
Adams, you know, was overwhelmed with feverish addresses, dictated by
the fear, and often by the pen, of the _bloody buoy_, and was seduced
by them into some open indications of his new principles of
government, and in fact, was so elated as to mix with his kindness a
little superciliousness towards me. Even Mrs. Adams, with all her
good sense and prudence, was sensibly flushed. And you recollect the
short suspension of our intercourse, and the circumstance which gave
rise to it, which you were so good as to bring to an early
explanation, and have set to rights, to the cordial satisfaction of
us all. The nation at length passed condemnation on the political
principles of the federalists, by refusing to continue Mr. Adams in
the Presidency. On the day on which we learned in Philadelphia the
vote of the city of New York, which it was well known would decide
the vote of the State, and that, again, the vote of the Union, I
called on Mr. Adams on some official business. He was very sensibly
affected, and accosted me with these words: "Well, I understand that
you are to beat me in this contest, and I will only say that I will
be as faithful a subject as any you will have." "Mr. Adams," said I,
"this is no personal contest between you and me. Two systems of
principles on the subject of government divide our fellow citizens
into two parties. With one of these you concur, and I with the
other. As we have been longer on the public stage than most of those
now living, our names happen to be more generally known. One of
these parties, therefore, has put your name at its head, the other
mine. Were we both to die to-day, to-morrow two other names would be
in the place of ours, without any change in the motion of the
machinery. Its motion is from its principle, not from you or
myself." "I believe you are right," said he, "that we are but passive
instruments, and should not suffer this matter to affect our personal
dispositions." But he did not long retain this just view of the
subject. I have always believed that the thousand calumnies which
the federalists, in bitterness of heart, and mortification at their
ejection, daily invented against me, were carried to him by their
busy intriguers, and made some impression. When the election between
Burr and myself was kept in suspense by the federalists, and they
were mediating to place the President of the Senate at the head of
the government, I called on Mr. Adams with a view to have this
desperate measure prevented by his negative. He grew warm in an
instant, and said with a vehemence he had not used towards me before,
"Sir, the event of the election is within your own power. You have
only to say you will do justice to the public creditors, maintain the
navy, and not disturb those holding offices, and the government will
instantly be put into your hands. We know it is the wish of the
people it should be so." "Mr. Adams," said I, "I know not what part
of my conduct, in either public or private life, can have authorized
a doubt of my fidelity to the public engagements. I say, however, I
will not come into the government by capitulation. I will not enter
on it, but in perfect freedom to follow the dictates of my own
judgment." I had before given the same answer to the same intimation
from Gouverneur Morris. "Then," said he, "things must take their
course." I turned the conversation to something else, and soon took
my leave. It was the first time in our lives we had ever parted with
anything like dissatisfaction. And then followed those scenes of
midnight appointment, which have been condemned by all men. The last
day of his political power, the last hours, and even beyond the
midnight, were employed in filling all offices, and especially
permanent ones, with the bitterest federalists, and providing for me
the alternative, either to execute the government by my enemies,
whose study it would be to thwart and defeat all my measures, or to
incur the odium of such numerous removals from office, as might bear
me down. A little time and reflection effaced in my mind this
temporary dissatisfaction with Mr. Adams, and restored me to that
just estimate of his virtues and passions, which a long acquaintance
had enabled me to fix. And my first wish became that of making his
retirement easy by any means in my power; for it was understood he
was not rich. I suggested to some republican members of the
delegation from his State, the giving him, either directly or
indirectly, an office, the most lucrative in that State, and then
offered to be resigned, if they thought he would not deem it
affrontive. They were of opinion he would take great offence at the
offer; and moreover, that the body of republicans would consider such
a step in the outset as arguing very ill of the course I meant to
pursue. I dropped the idea, therefore, but did not cease to wish for
some opportunity of renewing our friendly understanding.
Two or three years after, having had the misfortune to lose a
daughter, between whom and Mrs. Adams there had been a considerable
attachment, she made it the occasion of writing me a letter, in
which, with the tenderest expressions of concern at this event, she
carefully avoided a single one of friendship towards myself, and even
concluded it with the wishes "of her who _once_ took pleasure in
subscribing herself your friend, Abigail Adams." Unpromising as was
the complexion of this letter, I determined to make an effort towards
removing the cloud from between us. This brought on a correspondence
which I now enclose for your perusal, after which be so good as to
return it to me, as I have never communicated it to any mortal
breathing, before. I send it to you, to convince you I have not been
wanting either in the desire, or the endeavor to remove this
misunderstanding. Indeed, I thoughtit highly disgraceful to us both,
as indicating minds notsufficiently elevated to prevent a public
competition fromaffecting our personal friendship. I soon found from
thecorrespondence that conciliation was desperate, and yielding to an
intimation in her last letter, I ceased from further explanation. I
have the same good opinion of Mr. Adams which I ever had. I know him
to be an honest man, an able one with his pen, and he was a powerful
advocate on the floor of Congress. He has been alienated from me, by
belief in the lying suggestions contrived for electioneering
purposes, that I perhaps mixed in the activity and intrigues of the
occasion. My most intimate friends can testify that I was perfectly
passive. They would sometimes, indeed, tell me what was going on;
but no man ever heard me take part in such conversations; and none
ever misrepresented Mr. Adams in my presence, without my asserting
his just character. With very confidential persons I have doubtless
disapproved of the principles and practices of his administration.
This was unavoidable. But never with those with whom it could do him
any injury. Decency would have required this conduct from me, if
disposition had not; and I am satisfied Mr. Adams' conduct was
equally honorable towards me. But I think it part of his character
to suspect foul play in those of whom he is jealous, and not easily
to relinquish his suspicions.
I have gone, my dear friend, into these details, that you might
know everything which had passed between us, might be fully possessed
of the state of facts and dispositions, and judge for yourself
whether they admit a revival of that friendly intercourse for which
you are so kindly solicitous. I shall certainly not be wanting in
anything on my part which may second your efforts, which will be the
easier with me, inasmuch as I do not entertain a sentiment of Mr.
Adams, the expression of which could give him reasonable offence.
And I submit the whole to yourself, with the assurance, that whatever
be the issue, my friendship and respect for yourself will remain
unaltered and unalterable.
"THE SEEDS OF CIVILIZATION"
_To John Lynch_
_Monticello, January 21, 1811_
SIR, -- You have asked my opinion on the proposition of Mrs.
Mifflin, to take measures for procuring, on the coast of Africa, an
establishment to which the people of color of these States might,
from time to time, be colonized, under the auspices of different
governments. Having long ago made up my mind on this subject, I have
no hesitation in saying that I have ever thought it the most
desirable measure which could be adopted, for gradually drawing off
this part of our population, most advantageously for themselves as
well as for us. Going from a country possessing all the useful arts,
they might be the means of transplanting them among the inhabitants
of Africa, and would thus carry back to the country of their origin,
the seeds of civilization which might render their sojournment and
sufferings here a blessing in the end to that country.
I received, in the first year of my coming into the
administration of the General Government, a letter from the Governor
of Virginia, (Colonel Monroe,) consulting me, at the request of the
Legislature of the State, on the means of procuring some such asylum,
to which these people might be occasionally sent. I proposed to him
the establishment of Sierra Leone, to which a private company in
England had already colonized a number of negroes, and particularly
the fugitives from these States during the Revolutionary War; and at
the same time suggested, if this could not be obtained, some of the
Portuguese possessions in South America, as next most desirable. The
subsequent Legislature approving these ideas, I wrote, the ensuing
year, 1802, to Mr. King, our Minister in London, to endeavor to
negotiate with the Sierra Leone company a reception of such of these
people as might be colonized thither. He opened a correspondence
with Mr. Wedderburne and Mr. Thornton, secretaries of the company, on
the subject, and in 1803 I received through Mr. King the result,
which was that the colony was going on, but in a languishing
condition; that the funds of the company were likely to fail, as they
received no returns of profit to keep them up; that they were
therefore in treaty with their government to take the establishment
off their hands; but that in no event should they be willing to
receive more of these people from the United States, as it was
exactly that portion of their settlers which had gone from hence,
which, by their idleness and turbulence, had kept the settlement in
constant danger of dissolution, which could not have been prevented
but for the aid of the Maroon negroes from the West Indies, who were
more industrious and orderly than the others, and supported the
authority of the government and its laws. I think I learned
afterwards that the British Government had taken the colony into its
own hands, and I believe it still exists. The effort which I made
with Portugal, to obtain an establishment for them within their
claims in South America, proved also abortive.
You inquire further, whether I would use my endeavors to
procure for such an establishment security against violence from
other powers, and particularly from France? Certainly, I shall be
willing to do anything I can to give it effect and safety. But I am
but a private individual, and could only use endeavors with private
individuals; whereas, the National Government can address themselves
at once to those of Europe to obtain the desired security, and will
unquestionably be ready to exert its influence with those nations for
an object so benevolent in itself, and so important to a great
portion of its constituents. Indeed, nothing is more to be wished
than that the United States would themselves undertake to make such
an establishment on the coast of Africa. Exclusive of motives of
humanity, the commercial advantages to be derived from it might repay
all its expenses. But for this, the national mind is not yet
prepared. It may perhaps be doubted whether many of these people
would voluntarily consent to such an exchange of situation, and very
certain that few of those advanced to a certain age in habits of
slavery, would be capable of self-government. This should not,
however, discourage the experiment, nor the early trial of it; and
the proposition should be made with all the prudent cautions and
attentions requisite to reconcile it to the interests, the safety and
the prejudices of all parties.
Accept the assurances of my respect and esteem.
THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE
_To A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy_
_Monticello, January 26, 1811_
SIR, -- The length of time your favor of June the 12th, 1809,
was on its way to me, and my absence from home the greater part of
the autumn, delayed very much the pleasure which awaited me of
reading the packet which accompanied it. I cannot express to you the
satisfaction which I received from its perusal. I had, with the
world, deemed Montesquieu's work of much merit; but saw in it, with
every thinking man, so much of paradox, of false principle and
misapplied fact, as to render its value equivocal on the whole.
Williams and others had nibbled only at its errors. A radical
correction of them, therefore, was a great desideratum. This want is
now supplied, and with a depth of thought, precision of idea, of
language and of logic, which will force conviction into every mind.
I declare to you, Sir, in the spirit of truth and sincerity, that I
consider it the most precious gift the present age has received. But
what would it have been, had the author, or would the author, take up
the whole scheme of Montesquieu's work, and following the correct
analysis he has here developed, fill up all its parts according to
his sound views of them? Montesquieu's celebrity would be but a
small portion of that which would immortalize the author. And with
whom? With the rational and high-minded spirits of the present and
all future ages. With those whose approbation is both incitement and
reward to virtue and ambition. Is then the hope desperate? To what
object can the occupation of his future life be devoted so usefully
to the world, so splendidly to himself? But I must leave to others
who have higher claims on his attention, to press these
considerations.
My situation, far in the interior of the country, was not
favorable to the object of getting this work translated and printed.
Philadelphia is the least distant of the great towns of our States,
where there exists any enterprise in this way; and it was not till
the spring following the receipt of your letter, that I obtained an
arrangement for its execution. The translation is just now
completed. The sheets came to me by post, from time to time, for
revisal; but not being accompanied by the original, I could not judge
of verbal accuracies. I think, however, it is substantially correct,
without being an adequate representation of the excellences of the
original; as indeed no translation can be. I found it impossible to
give it the appearance of an original composition in our language. I
therefore think it best to divert inquiries after the author towards
a quarter where he will not be found; and with this view, propose to
prefix the prefatory epistle, now enclosed. As soon as a copy of the
work can be had, I will send it to you by duplicate. The secret of
the author will be faithfully preserved during his and my joint
lives; and those into whose hands my papers will fall at my death,
will be equally worthy of confidence. When the death of the author,
or his living consent shall permit the world to know their
benefactor, both his and my papers will furnish the evidence. In the
meantime, the many important truths the work so solidly establishes,
will, I hope, make it the political rudiment of the young, and manual
of our older citizens.
One of its doctrines, indeed, the preference of a plural over a
singular executive, will probably not be assented to here. When our
present government was first established, we had many doubts on this
question, and many leanings towards a supreme executive council. It
happened that at that time the experiment of such an one was
commenced in France, while the single executive was under trial here.
We watched the motions and effects of these two rival plans, with an
interest and anxiety proportioned to the importance of a choice
between them. The experiment in France failed after a short course,
and not from any circumstance peculiar to the times or nation, but
from those internal jealousies and dissensions in the Directory,
which will ever arise among men equal in power, without a principal
to decide and control their differences. We had tried a similar
experiment in 1784, by establishing a committee of the States,
composed of a member from every State, then thirteen, to exercise the
executive functions during the recess of Congress. They fell
immediately into schisms and dissensions, which became at length so
inveterate as to render all co-operation among them impracticable:
they dissolved themselves, abandoning the helm of government, and it
continued without a head, until Congress met the ensuing winter.
This was then imputed to the temper of two or three individuals; but
the wise ascribed it to the nature of man. The failure of the French
Directory, and from the same cause, seems to have authorized a belief
that the form of a plurality, however promising in theory, is
impracticable with men constituted with the ordinary passions. While
the tranquil and steady tenor of our single executive, during a
course of twenty-two years of the most tempestuous times the history
of the world has ever presented, gives a rational hope that this
important problem is at length solved. Aided by the counsels of a
cabinet of heads of departments, originally four, but now five, with
whom the President consults, either singly or altogether, he has the
benefit of their wisdom and information, brings their views to one
centre, and produces an unity of action and direction in all the
branches of the government. The excellence of this construction of
the executive power has already manifested itself here under very
opposite circumstances. During the administration of our first
President, his cabinet of four members was equally divided by as
marked an opposition of principle as monarchism and republicanism
could bring into conflict. Had that cabinet been a directory, like
positive and negative quantities in algebra, the opposing wills would
have balanced each other and produceda state of absolute inaction.
But the President heard with calmness the opinions and reasons of
each, decided the course to be pursued, and kept the government
steadily in it, unaffected by the agitation. The public knew well
the dissensions of the cabinet, but never had an uneasy thought on
their account, because they knew also they had provided a regulating
power which would keep the machine in steady movement. I speak with
an intimate knowledge of these scenes, _quorum pars fui_; as I may of
others of a character entirely opposite. The third administration,
which was of eight years, presented an example of harmony in a
cabinet of six person, to which perhaps history has furnished no
parallel. There never arose, during the whole time, an instance of
an unpleasant thought or word between the members. We sometimes met
under differences of opinion, but scarcely ever failed, by conversing
and reasoning, so to modify each other's ideas, as to produce an
unanimous result. Yet, able and amicable as these members were, I am
not certain this would have been the case, had each possessed equal
and independent powers. Ill-defined limits of their respective
departments, jealousies, trifling at first, but nourished and
strengthened by repetition of occasions, intrigues without doors of
designing persons to build an importance to themselves on the
divisions of others, might, from small beginnings, have produced
persevering oppositions. But the power of decision in the President
left no object for internal dissension, and external intrigue was
stifled in embryo by the knowledge which incendiaries possessed, that
no division they could foment would change the course of the
executive power. I am not conscious that my participations in
executive authority have produced any bias in favor of the single
executive; because the parts I have acted have been in the
subordinate, as well as superior stations, and because, if I know
myself, what I have felt, and what I have wished, I know that I have
never been so well pleased, as when I could shift power from my own,
on the shoulders of others; nor have I ever been able to conceive how
any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the
exercise of power over others.
I am still, however, sensible of the solidity of your
principle, that, to insure the safety of the public liberty, its
depository should be subject to be changed with the greatest ease
possible, and without suspending or disturbing for a moment the
movements of the machine of government. You apprehend that a single
executive, with eminence of talent, and destitution of principle,
equal to the object, might, by usurpation, render his powers
hereditary. Yet I think history furnishes as many examples of a
single usurper arising out of a government by a plurality, as of
temporary trusts of power in a single hand rendered permanent by
usurpation. I do not believe, therefore, that this danger is
lessened in the hands of a plural executive. Perhaps it is greatly
increased, by the state of inefficiency to which they are liable from
feuds and divisions among themselves. The conservative body you
propose might be so constituted, as, while it would be an admirable
sedative in a variety of smaller cases, might also be a valuable
sentinel and check on the liberticide views of an ambitious
individual. I am friendly to this idea. But the true barriers of
our liberty in this country are our State governments; and the wisest
conservative power ever contrived by man, is that of which our
Revolution and present government found us possessed. Seventeen
distinct States, amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns,
but single and independent as to their internal administration,
regularly organized with legislature and governor resting on the
choice of the people, and enlightened by a free press, can never be
so fascinated by the arts of one man, as to submit voluntarily to his
usurpation. Nor can they be constrained to it by any force he can
possess. While that may paralyze the single State in which it
happens to be encamped, sixteen others, spread over a country of two
thousand miles diameter, rise up on every side, ready organized for
deliberation by a constitutional legislature, and for action by their
governor, constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State,
that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms; and that
militia, too, regularly formed into regiments and battalions, into
infantry, cavalry and artillery, trained under officers general and
subordinate, legally appointed, always in readiness, and to whom they
are already in habits of obedience. The republican government of
France was lost without a struggle, because the party of _"un et
indivisible"_ had prevailed; no provincial organizations existed to
which the people might rally under authority of the laws, the seats
of the directory were virtually vacant, and a small force sufficed to
turn the legislature out of their chamber, and to salute its leader
chief of the nation. But with us, sixteen out of seventeen States
rising in mass, under regular organization, and legal commanders,
united in object and action by their Congress, or, if that be in
_duresse_, by a special convention, present such obstacles to an
usurper as forever to stifle ambition in the first conception of that
object.
Dangers of another kind might more reasonably be apprehended
from this perfect and distinct organization, civil and military, of
the States; to wit, that certain States from local and occasional
discontents, might attempt to secede from the Union. This is
certainly possible; and would be befriended by this regular
organization. But it is not probable that local discontents can
spread to such an extent, as to be able to face the sound parts of so
extensive an Union; and if ever they should reach the majority, they
would then become the regular government, acquire the ascendency in
Congress, and be able to redress their own grievances by laws
peaceably and constitutionally passed. And even the States in which
local discontents might engender a commencement of fermentation,
would be paralyzed and self-checked by that very division into
parties into which we have fallen, into which all States must fall
wherein men are at liberty to think, speak, and act freely, according
to the diversities of their individual conformations, and which are,
perhaps, essential to preserve the purity of the government, by the
censorship which these parties habitually exercise over each other.
You will read, I am sure, with indulgence, the explanations of
the grounds on which I have ventured to form an opinion differing
from yours. They prove my respect for your judgment, and diffidence
in my own, which have forbidden me to retain, without examination, an
opinion questioned by you. Permit me now to render my portion of the
general debt of gratitude, by acknowledgements in advance for the
singular benefaction which is the subject of this letter, to tender
my wishes for the continuance of a life so usefully employed, and to
add the assurances of my perfect esteem and respect.
THE LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTION
_To Alexander von Humboldt_
_Monticello, April 14, 1811_
MY DEAR BARON, -- The interruption of our intercourse with
France for some time past, has prevented my writing to you. A
conveyance now occurs, by Mr. Barlow or Mr. Warden, both of them
going in a public capacity. It is the first safe opportunity offered
of acknowledging your favor of September 23d, and the receipt at
different times of the IIId part of your valuable work, 2d, 3d, 4th
and 5th livraisons, and the IVth part, 2d, 3d, and 4th livraisons,
with the _Tableaux de la nature_, and an interesting map of New
Spain. For these magnificent and much esteemed favors, accept my
sincere thanks. They give us a knowledge of that country more
accurate than I believe we possess of Europe, the seat of the science
of a thousand years. It comes out, too, at a moment when those
countries are beginning to be interesting to the whole world. They
are now becoming the scenes of political revolution, to take their
stations as integral members of the great family of nations. All are
now in insurrection. In several, the Independents are already
triumphant, and they will undoubtedly be so in all. What kind of
government will they establish? How much liberty can they bear
without intoxication? Are their chiefs sufficiently enlightened to
form a well-guarded government, and their people to watch their
chiefs? Have they mind enough to place their domesticated Indians on
a footing with the whites? All these questions you can answer better
than any other. I imagine they will copy our outlines of
confederation and elective government, abolish distinction of ranks,
bow the neck to their priests, and persevere in intolerantism. Their
greatest difficulty will be in the construction of their executive.
I suspect that, regardless of the experiment of France, and of that
of the United States in 1784, they will begin with a directory, and
when the unavoidable schisms in that kind of executive shall drive
them to something else, their great question will come on whether to
substitute an executive elective for years, for life, or an
hereditary one. But unless instruction can be spread among them more
rapidly than experience promises, despotism may come upon them before
they are qualified to save the ground they will have gained. Could
Napoleon obtain, at the close of the present war, the independence of
all the West India islands, and their establishment in a separate
confederacy, our quarter of the globe would exhibit an enrapturing
prospect into futurity. You will live to see much of this. I shall
follow, however, cheerfully my fellow laborers, contented with having
borne a part in beginning this beatific reformation.
I fear, from some expressions in your letter, that your
personal interests have not been duly protected, while you were
devoting your time, talents and labor for the information of mankind.
I should sincerely regret it for the honor of the governing powers,
as well as from affectionate attachment to yourself and the sincerest
wishes for your felicity, fortunes and fame.
In sending you a copy of my Notes on Virginia, I do but obey
the desire you have expressed. They must appear chetif enough to the
author of the great work on South America. But from the widow her
mite was welcome, and you will add to this indulgence the acceptance
of my sincere assurances of constant friendship and respect.
"A YOUNG GARDENER"
_To Charles Willson Peale_
_Poplar Forest, August 20, 1811_
It is long, my dear Sir, since we have exchanged a letter. Our
former correspondence had always some little matter of business
interspersed; but this being at an end, I shall still be anxious to
hear from you sometimes, and to know that you are well and happy. I
know indeed that your system is that of contentment under any
situation. I have heard that you have retired from the city to a
farm, and that you give your whole time to that. Does not the museum
suffer? And is the farm as interesting? Here, as you know, we are
all farmers, but not in a pleasing style. We have so little labor in
proportion to our land that, although perhaps we make more profit
from the same labor, we cannot give to our grounds that style of
beauty which satisfies the eye of the amateur. Our rotations are
corn, wheat, and clover, or corn, wheat, clover and clover, or wheat,
corn, wheat, clover and clover; preceding the clover by a plastering.
But some, instead of clover substitute mere rest, and all are
slovenly enough. We are adding the care of Merino sheep. I have
often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and
calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered,
and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No
occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no
culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of
subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one
thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest
a continued one through the year. Under a total want of demand
except for our family table, I am still devoted to the garden. But
though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
Your application to whatever you are engaged in I know to be
incessant. But Sundays and rainy days are always days of writing for
the farmer. Think of me sometimes when you have your pen in hand,
and give me information of your health and occupations; and be always
assured of my great esteem and respect.
REPRISE: WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND COINS
_To Dr. Robert Patterson_
_Monticello, November 10, 1811_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of September 23d came to hand in due
time, and I thank you for the nautical almanac it covered for the
year 1813. I learn with pleasure that the Philosophical Society has
concluded to take into consideration the subject of a fixed standard
of measures, weights and coins, and you ask my ideas on it; insulated
as my situation is, I am sure I can offer nothing but what will occur
to the committee engaged on it, with the advantage on their part of
correction by an interchange of sentiments and observations among
themselves. I will, however, hazard some general ideas because you
desire it, and if a single one be useful, the labor will not be lost.
The subject to be referred to as a standard, whether it be
matter or motion, should be fixed by nature, invariable and
accessible to all nations, independently of others, and with a
convenience not disproportioned to its utility. What subject in
nature fulfils best these conditions? What system shall we propose
on this, embracing measures, weights and coins? and in what form
shall we present it to the world? These are the questions before the
committee.
Some other subjects have, at different times, been proposed as
standards, but two only have divided the opinions of men: first, a
direct admeasurement of a line on the earth's surface, or second, a
measure derived from its motion on its axis. To measure directly
such a portion of the earth as would furnish an element of measure,
which might be found again with certainty in all future times, would
be too far beyond the competence of our means to be taken into
consideration. I am free, at the same time, to say that if these
were within our power in the most ample degree, this element would
not meet my preference. The admeasurement would of course be of a
portion of some great circle of the earth. If of the equator, the
countries over which that passes, their character and remoteness,
render the undertaking arduous, and we may say impracticable for most
nations. If of some meridian, the varying measures of its degrees
from the equator to the pole, require a mean to be sought, of which
some aliquot part may furnish what is desired. For this purpose the
45th degree has been recurred to, and such a length of line on both
sides of it terminating at each end in the ocean, as may furnish a
satisfactory law for a deduction of the unmeasured part of the
quadrant. The portion resorted to by the French philosophers, (and
there is no other on the globe under circumstances equally
satisfactory,) is the meridian passing through their country and a
portion of Spain, from Dunkirk to Barcelona. The objections to such
an admeasurement as an element of measure, are the labor, the time,
the number of highly-qualified agents, and the great expense
required. All this, too, is to be repeated whenever any accident
shall have destroyed the standard derived from it, or impaired its
dimensions. This portion of that particular meridian is accessible
of right to no one nation on earth. France, indeed, availing herself
of a moment of peculiar relation between Spain and herself, has
executed such an admeasurement. But how would it be at this moment,
as to either France or Spain? and how is it at all times as to other
nations, in point either of right or of practice? Must these go
through the same operation, or take their measures from the standard
prepared by France? Neither case bears that character of
independence which the problem requires, and which neither the
equality nor convenience of nations can dispense with. How would it
now be, were England the deposit of a standard for the world? At war
with all the world, the standard would be inaccessible to all other
nations. Against this, too, are the inaccuracies of admeasurements
over hills and valleys, mountains and waters, inaccuracies often
unobserved by the agent himself, and always unknown to the world.
The various results of the different measures heretofore attempted,
sufficiently prove the inadequacy of human means to make such an
admeasurement with the exactness requisite.
Let us now see under what circumstances the pendulum offers
itself as an element of measure. The motion of the earth on its axis
from noon to noon of a mean solar day, has been divided from time
immemorial, and by very general consent, into 86,400 portions of time
called seconds. The length of a pendulum vibrating in one of these
portions, is determined by the laws of nature, is invariable under
the same parallel, and accessible independently to all men. Like a
degree of the meridian, indeed, it varies in its length from the
equator to the pole, and like it, too, requires to be reduced to a
mean. In seeking a mean in the first case, the 45th degree occurs
with unrivalled preferences. It is the mid-way of the celestial ark
from the equator to the pole. It is a mean between the two extreme
degrees of the terrestrial ark, or between any two equi-distant from
it, and it is also a mean value of all its degrees. In like manner,
when seeking a mean for the pendulum, the same 45th degree offers
itself on the same grounds, its increments being governed by the same
laws which determine those of the different degrees of the meridian.
In a pendulum loaded with a Bob, some difficulty occurs in
finding the centre of oscillation; and consequently the distance
between that and the point of suspension. To lessen this, it has
been proposed to substitute for the pendulum, a cylindrical rod of
small diameter, in which the displacement of the centre of
oscillation would be lessened. It has also been proposed to prolong
the suspending wire of the pendulum below the Bob, until their
centres of oscillation shall coincide. But these propositions not
appearing to have received general approbation, we recur to the
pendulum, suspended and charged as has been usual. And the rather as
the the laws which determine the centre of oscillation leave no room
for error in finding it, other than that minimum in practice to which
all operations are subject in their execution. The other sources of
inaccuracy in the length of the pendulum need not be mentioned,
because easily guarded against. But the great and decisive
superiority of the pendulum, as a standard of measure, is in its
accessibility to all men, at all times and in all places. To obtain
the second pendulum for 45 degrees it is not necessary to go actually
to that latitude. Having ascertained its length in our own parallel,
both theory and observation give us a law for ascertaining the
difference between that and the pendulum of any other. To make a new
measure therefore, or verify an old one, nothing is necessary in any
place but a well-regulated time-piece, or a good meridian, and such a
knowledge of the subject as is common in all civilized nations.
Those indeed who have preferred the other element, do justice
to the certainty, as well as superior facilities of the pendulum, by
proposing to recur to one of the length of their standard, and to
ascertain its number of vibrations in a day. These being once known,
if any accident impair their standard it is to be recoved by means of
a pendulum which shall make the requisite number of vibrations in a
day. And among the several commissions established by the Academy of
Sciences for the execution of the several branches of their work on
measures and weights, that respecting the pendulum was assigned to
Messrs. Borda, Coulomb & Cassini, the result of whose labors,
however, I have not learned.
Let our unit of measures then be a pendulum of such length as
in the latitude of 45 degrees, in the level of the ocean, and in a
given temperature, shall perform its vibrations, in small and equal
arcs, in one second of mean time.
What ratio shall we adopt for the parts and multiples of this
unit? The decimal without a doubt. Our arithmatic being founded in
a decimal numeration, the same numeration in a system of measures,
weights and coins, tallies at once with that. On this question, I
believe, there has been no difference of opinion.
In measures of length, then, the pendulum is our unit. It is a
little more than our yard and less than the ell. Its tenth or dime,
will not be quite .4 inches. Its hundredth, or cent, not quite .4 of
an inch; its thousandth, or mill, not quite .04 of an inch, and so
on. The traveller will count his road by a longer measure. 1,000
units, or a kiliad, will not be quite two-thirds of our present mile,
and more nearly a thousand paces than that.
For measures of surface, the square unit, equal to about ten
square feet, or one-ninth more than a square yard, will be generally
convenient. But for those of lands a larger measure will be wanted.
A kiliad would be not quite a rood, or quarter of an acre; a myriad
not quite 2 1/2 acres.
For measures of capacity, wet and dry,
The cubic Unit = .1 would be about .35 cubic feet, .28 bushels
dry, or 7/8 of a ton liquid.
Dime = .1 would be about 3.5 cubic feet, 2.8 bushels, or about
7/8 of a barrel liquid.
Cent = .01 about 50 cubic inches, or 7/8 of a quart.
Mill = .001 = .5 of a cubic inch, or 2/3 of a gill.
To incorporate into the same system our weights and coins, we
must recur to some natural substance, to be found everywhere, and of
a composition sufficiently uniform. Water has been considered as the
most eligible substance, and rain-water more nearly uniform than any
other kind found in nature. That circumstance renders it preferable
to distilled water, and its variations in weight may be called
insensible.
The cubic unit of this = .1 would weigh about 2,165 lbs. or a
ton between the long and short.
The Dime = .1 a little more than 2. kentals.
Cent = .01 a little more than 20 lb.
Mill = .001 a little more than 2 lb.
Decimmil = .0001 about 3 1/2 oz. avoirdupoise.
Centimmil = .00001 a little more than 6 dwt.
Millionth = .000001 about 15 grains.
Decimmillionth = .0000001 about 1 1/2 grains.
Centimmillionth = .00000001 about .14 of a grain.
Billionth = .000000001 about .014 of a grain.
With respect to our coins, the pure silver in a dollar being
fixed by law at 347 1/4 grains, and all debts and contracts being
bottomed on that value, we can only state the pure silver in the
dollar, which would be very nearly 23 millionths.
I have used loose and round numbers (the exact unit being yet
undetermined) merely to give a general idea of the measures and
weights proposed, when compared with those we now use. And in the
names of the subdivisions I have followed the metrology of the
ordinance of Congress of 1786, which for their series below unit
adopted the Roman numerals. For that above unit the Grecian is
convenient, and has been adopted in the new French system.
We come now to our last question, in what form shall we offer
this metrical system to the world? In some one which shall be
altogether unassuming; which shall not have the appearance of taking
the lead among our sister institutions in making a general
proposition. So jealous is the spirit of equality in the republic of
letters, that the smallest excitement of that would mar our views,
however salutary for all. We are in habits of correspondence with
some of these institutions, and identity of character and of object,
authorize our entering into correspondence with all. Let us then
mature our system as far as can be done at present, by ascertaining
the length of the second pendulum of 45 degrees by forming two
tables, one of which shall give the equivalent of every different
denomination of measures, weights and coins in these States, in the
unit of that pendulum, its decimals and multiples; and the other
stating the equivalent of all the decimal parts and multiples of that
pendulum, in the several denominations of measures, weights and coins
of our existing system. This done, we might communicate to one or
more of these institutions in every civilized country a copy of those
tables, stating as our motive, the difficulty we had experienced, and
often the impossibility of ascertaining the value of the measures,
weights and coins of other countries, expressed in any standard which
we possess; that desirous of being relieved from this, and of
obtaining information which could be relied on for the purposes of
science, as well as of business, we had concluded to ask it from the
learned societies of other nations, who are especially qualified to
give it with the requisite accuracy; that in making this request we
had thought it our duty first to do ourselves, and to offer to
others, what we meant to ask from them, by stating the value of our
own measures, weights and coins, in some unit of measure already
possessed, or easily obtainable, by all nations; that the pendulum
vibrating seconds of mean time, presents itself as such an unit; its
length being determined by the laws of nature, and easily
ascertainable at all times and places; that we have thought that of
45 degrees would be the most unexceptionable, as being a mean of all
other parallels, and open to actual trial in both hemispheres. In
this, therefore, as an unit, and in its parts and multiples in the
decimal ratio, we have expressed, in the tables communicated, the
value of all the measures, weights and coins used in the United
States, and we ask in return from their body a table of the weights,
measures and coins in use within their country, expressed in the
parts and multiples of the same unit. Having requested the same
favor from the learned societies of other nations, our object is,
with their assistance, to place within the reach of our fellow
citizens at large a perfect knowledge of the measures, weights and
coins of the countries with which they have commercial or friendly
intercourse; and should the societies of other countries interchange
their respective tables, the learned will be in possession of an
uniform language in measures, weights and coins, which may with time
become useful to other descriptions of their citizens, and even to
their governments. This, however, will rest with their pleasure, not
presuming, in the present proposition, to extend our views beyond the
limits of our own nation. I offer this sketch merely as the outline
of the kind of communication which I should hope would excite no
jealousy or repugnance.
Peculiar circumstances, however, would require letters of a
more special character to the Institute of France, and the Royal
Society of England. The magnificent work which France has executed
in the admeasurement of so large a portion of the meridian, has a
claim to great respect in our reference to it. We should only ask a
communication of their metrical system, expressed in equivalent
values of the second pendulum of 45 degrees as ascertained by Messrs.
Borda, Coulomb and Cassini, adding, perhaps, the request of an actual
rod of the length of that pendulum.
With England, our explanations will be much more delicate.
They are the older country, the mother country, more advanced in the
arts and sciences, possessing more wealth and leisure for their
improvement, and animated by a pride more than laudable (*). It is
their measures, too, which we undertake to ascertain and communicate
to themselves. The subject should therefore be opened to them with
infinite tenderness and respect, and in some way which might give
them due place in its agency. The parallel of 45 degrees being
within our latitude and not within theirs, the actual experiments
under that would be of course assignable to us. But as a corrective,
I would propose that they should ascertain the length of the pendulum
vibrating seconds in the city of London, or at the observatory of
Greenwich, while we should do the same in an equi-distant parallel to
the south of 45 degrees, suppose in 38 degrees 29'.We might ask of
them, too, as they are in possession of thestandards of Guildhall, of
which we can have but an unauthentic account, to make the actual
application of those standards to the pendulum when ascertained. The
operation we should undertake under the 45th parallel, (about
Passama-quoddy,) would give us a happy occasion, too, of engaging our
sister society of Boston in our views, by referring to them the
execution of that part of the work. For that of 38 degrees 29' we
should be at a loss. It crosses the tide waters of the Potomac,
about Dumfries, and I do not know what our resources there would be
unless we borrow them from Washington, where there are competent
persons.
(*) We are all occupied in industrious pursuits. They abound
with persons living on the industry of their fathers, or on the
earnings of their fellow citizens, given away by their rulers in
sinecures and pensions. Some of these, desirous of laudable
distinction, devote their time and means to the pursuits of science,
and become profitable members of society by an industry of a higher
order.
Although I have not mentioned Philadelphia in these operations,
I by no means propose to relinquish the benefit of observations to be
made there. Her science and perfection in the arts would be a
valuable corrective to the less perfect state of them in the other
places of observation. Indeed, it is to be wished that Philadelphia
could be made the point of observation south of 45 degrees, and that
the Royal Society would undertake the counterpoint on the north,
which would be somewhere between the Lizard and Falmouth. The actual
pendulums from both of our points of observation, and not merely the
measures of them, should be delivered to the Philosophical Society,
to be measured under their eye and direction.
As this is really a work of common and equal interest to
England and the United States, perhaps it would be still more
respectful to make our proposition to her Royal Society in the
outset, and to agree with them on a partition of the work. In this
case, any commencement of actual experiments on our part should be
provisional only, and preparatory to the ultimate results. We might,
in the meantime, provisionally also, form a table adapted to the
length of the pendulum of 45 degrees, according to the most approved
estimates, including those of the French commissioners. This would
serve to introduce the subject to the foreign societies, in the way
before proposed, reserving to ourselves the charge of communicating
to them a more perfect one, when that shall have been completed.
We may even go a step further, and make a general table of the
measures, weights and coins of all nations, taking their value
hypothetically for the present, from the tables in the commercial
dictionary of the encyclopedia methodique, which are very extensive,
and have the appearance of being made with great labor and exactness.
To these I expect we must in the end recur, as a supplement for the
measures which we may fail to obtain from other countries directly.
Their reference is to the foot or inch of Paris, as a standard, which
we may convert into parts of the second pendulum of 45 degrees.
I have thus, my dear sir, committed to writing my general ideas
on this subject, the more freely as they are intended merely as
suggestions for consideration. It is not probable they offer
anything which would not have occurred to the committee itself. My
apology on offering them must be found in your request. My
confidence in the committee, of which I take for granted you are one,
is too entire to have intruded a single idea but on that ground.
Be assured of my affectionate and high esteem and respect.
RECONCILIATION
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Jan. 21, 1812_
DEAR SIR -- I thank you before hand (for they are not yet
arrived) for the specimens of homespun you have been so kind as to
forward me by post. I doubt not their excellence, knowing how far
you are advanced in these things in your quarter. Here we do little
in the fine way, but in coarse and midling goods a great deal. Every
family in the country is a manufactory within itself, and is very
generally able to make within itself all the stouter and midling
stuffs for it's own cloathing and household use. We consider a sheep
for every person in the family as sufficient to clothe it, in
addition to the cottom, hemp and flax which we raise ourselves. For
fine stuff we shall depend on your Northern manufactures. Of these,
that is to say, of company establishments, we have none. We use
little machinery. The Spinning Jenny and loom with the flying
shuttle can be managed in a family; but nothing more complicated.
The economy and thriftiness resulting from our household manufactures
are such that they will never again be laid aside; and nothing more
salutary for us has ever happened than the British obstructions to
our demands for their manufactures. Restore free intercourse when
they will, their commerce with us will have totally changed it's
form, and the articles we shall in future want from them will not
exceed their own consumption of our produce.
A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind.
It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and
dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for
what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government. Laboring
always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to
overwhelm us and yet passing harmless under our bark, we knew not
how, we rode through the storm with heart and hand, and made a happy
port. Still we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties;
and we have had them. First the detention of the Western posts: then
the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with France, and the
British enforcement of the outlawry. In your day French
depredations: in mine English, and the Berlin and Milan decrees: now
the English orders of council, and the piracies they authorise: when
these shall be over, it will be the impressment of our seamen, or
something else: and so we have gone on, and so we shall go on,
puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man. And I
do believe we shall continue to growl, [i.e., grow] to multiply and
prosper until we exhibit an association, powerful, wise and happy,
beyond what has yet been seen by men. As for France and England,
with all their pre-eminence in science, the one is a den of robbers,
and the other of pirates. And if science produces no better fruits
than tyranny, murder, rapine and destitution of national morality, I
would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable as
our neighboring savages are.
But whither is senile garrulity leading me? Into politics, of
which I have taken final leave. I think little of them, and say
less. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and
Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the
happier. Sometimes indeed I look back to former occurrences, in
remembrance of our old friends and fellow laborers, who have fallen
before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of Independance I see
now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomak,
and, on this side, myself alone. You and I have been wonderfully
spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a considerable
activity of body and mind. I am on horseback 3. or 4. hours of every
day; visit 3. or 4. times a year a possession I have 90 miles
distance, performing the winter journey on horseback. I walk little
however; a single mile being too much for me; and I live in the midst
of my grandchildren, one of whom has lately promoted me to be a great
grandfather. I have heard with pleasure that you also retain good
health, and a greater power of exercise in walking than I do. But I
would rather have heard this from yourself, and that, writing a
letter, like mine, full of egotisms, and of details of your health,
your habits, occupations and enjoyments, I should have the pleasure
of knowing that, in the race of life, you do not keep, in it's
physical decline, the same distance ahead of me which you have done
in political honors and atchievements. No circumstances have
lessened the interest I feel in these particulars respecting
yourself; none have suspended for one moment my sincere esteem for
you; and I now salute you with unchanged affections and respect.
CONCERNING THE INDIANS
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, June 11, 1812_
DEAR SIR -- By our post preceding that which brought your
letter of May 21, I had recieved one from Mr. Malcolm on the same
subject with yours, and by the return of the post had stated to the
President my recollections of him. But both of your letters were
probably too late; as the appointment had been already made, if we
may credit the newspapers.
You ask if there is any book that pretends to give any account
of the traditions of the Indians, or how one can acquire an idea of
them? Some scanty accounts of their traditions, but fuller of their
customs and characters are given us by most of the early travellers
among them. These you know were chiefly French. Lafitau, among
them, and Adair an Englishman, have written on this subject; the
former two volumes, the latter one, all in 4to [quarto]. But
unluckily Lafitau had in his head a preconcieved theory on the
mythology, manners, institutions and government of the antient
nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and seems to have entered on
those of America only to fit them into the same frame, and to draw
from them a confirmation of his general theory. He keeps up a
perpetual parallel, in all those articles, between the Indians of
America, and the antients of the other quarters of the globe. He
selects therefore all the facts, and adopts all the falsehoods which
favor his theory, and very gravely retails such absurdities as zeal
for a theory could alone swallow. He was a man of much classical and
scriptural reading, and has rendered his book not unentertaining. He
resided five years among the Northern Indians, as a Missionary, but
collects his matter much more from the writings of others, than from
his own observation.
Adair too had his kink. He believed all the Indians of
American to be descended from the Jews: the same laws, usages; rites
and ceremonies, the same sacrifices, priests, prophets, fasts and
festivals, almost the same religion, and that they all spoke Hebrew.
For altho he writes particularly of the Southern Indians only, the
Catawbas, Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws, with whom alone
he was personally acquainted, yet he generalises whatever he found
among them, and brings himself to believe that the hundred languages
of America, differing fundamentally every one from every other, as
much as Greek from Gothic, have yet all one common prototype. He was
a trader, a man of learning, a self-taught Hebraist, a strong
religionist, and of as sound a mind as Don Quixot in whatever did not
touch his religious chivalry. His book contains a great deal of real
instruction on it's subject, only requiring the reader to be
constantly on his guard against the wonderful obliquities of his
theory.
The scope of your enquiry would scarcely, I suppose, take in
the three folio volumes of Latin by De Bry. In these fact and fable
are mingled together, without regard to any favorite system. They
are less suspicious therefore in their complexion, more original and
authentic, than those of Lafitau and Adair. This is a work of great
curiosity, extremely rare, so as never to be bought in Europe, but on
the breaking up, and selling some antient library. On one of these
occasions a bookseller procured me a copy, which, unless you have
one, is probably the only one in America.
You ask further, if the Indians have any order of priesthood
among them, like the Druids, Bards or Minstrels of the Celtic
nations? Adair alone, determined to see what he wished to see in
every object, metamorphoses their Conjurers into an order of priests,
and describes their sorceries as if they were the great religious
ceremonies of the nation. Lafitau calls them by their proper names,
Jongleurs, Devins, Sortileges; De Bry praestigiatores, Adair himself
sometimes Magi, Archimagi, cunning men, Seers, rain makers, and the
modern Indian interpreters, call them Conjurers and Witches. They
are persons pretending to have communications with the devil and
other evil spirits, to foretel future events, bring down rain, find
stolen goods, raise the dead, destroy some, and heal others by
enchantment, lay spells etc. And Adair, without departing from his
parallel of the Jews and Indians, might have found their counterpart,
much more aptly, among the Soothsayers, sorcerers and wizards of the
Jews, their Jannes and Jambres, their Simon Magus, witch of Endor,
and the young damsel whose sorceries disturbed Paul so much; instead
of placing them in a line with their High-priest, their Chief
priests, and their magnificent hierarchy generally. In the solemn
ceremonies of the Indians, the persons who direct or officiate, are
their chiefs, elders and warriors, in civil ceremonies or in those of
war; it is the Head of the Cabin, in their private or particular
feasts or ceremonies; and sometimes the Matrons, as in their Corn
feasts. And, even here, Adair might have kept up his parallel, with
ennobling his Conjurers. For the antient Patriarchs, the Noahs, the
Abrahams, Isaacs and Jacobs, and, even after the consecration of
Aaron, the Samuels and Elijahs, and we may say further every one for
himself, offered sacrifices on the altars. The true line of
distinction seems to be, that solemn ceremonies, whether public or
private, addressed to the Great Spirit, are conducted by the worthies
of the nation, Men, or Matrons, while Conjurers are resorted to only
for the invocation of evil spirits. The present state of the several
Indian tribes, without any public order of priests, is proof
sufficient that they never had such an order. Their steady habits
permit no innovations, not even those which the progress of science
offers to increase the comforts, enlarge the understanding, and
improve the morality of mankind. Indeed so little idea have they of
a regular order of priests, that they mistake ours for their
Conjurers, and call them by that name.
So much in answer to your enquiries concerning Indians, a
people with whom, in the very early part of my life, I was very
familiar, and acquired impressions of attachment and commiseration
for them which have never been obliterated. Before the revolution
they were in the habit of coming often, and in great numbers to the
seat of our government, where I was very much with them. I knew much
the great Outassete [i.e., Outacity], the warrior and orator of the
Cherokees. He was always the guest of my father, on his journeys to
and from Williamsburg. I was in his camp when he made his great
farewell oration to his people, the evening before his departure for
England. The moon was in full splendor, and to her he seemed to
address himself in his prayers for his own safety on the voyage, and
that of his people during his absence. His sounding voice, distinct
articulation, animated actions, and the solemn silence of his people
at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, altho' I
did not understand a word he uttered. That nation, consisting now of
about 2000. wariors, and the Creeks of about 3000. are far advanced
in civilisation. They have good Cabins, inclosed fields, large herds
of cattle and hogs, spin and weave their own clothes of cotton, have
smiths and other of the most necessary tradesmen, write and read, are
on the increase in numbers, and a branch of the Cherokees is now
instituting a regular representative government. Some other tribes
were advancing in the same line. On those who have made any
progress, English seductions will have no effect. But the backward
will yeild, and be thrown further back. These will relapse into
barbarism and misery, lose numbers by war and want, and we shall be
obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forest into the Stony
mountains. They will be conquered however in Canada. The possession
of that country secures our women and children for ever from the
tomahawk and scalping knife, by removing those who excite them: and
for this possession, orders I presume are issued by this time; taking
for granted that the doors of Congress will re-open with a
Declaration of war. That this may end in indemnity for the past,
security for thefuture, and compleat emancipation from Anglomany,
Gallomany, and all the manias of demoralized Europe, and that you may
live in health and happiness to see all this, is the sincere prayer
of Yours affectionately.
WAR WITH ENGLAND
_To General Thaddeus Kosciusko_
_Monticello, June 28, 1812_
Nous voila donc, mon cher ami, en guerre avec l'Angleterre.
This was declared on the 18th instant, thirty years after the
signature of our peace in 1782. Within these thirty years what a
vast course of growth and prosperity we have had! It is not ten
years since Great Britain began a series of insults and injuries
which would have been met with war in the threshold by any European
power. This course has been unremittingly followed up by increasing
wrongs, with glimmerings indeed of peaceable redress, just sufficient
to keep us quiet, till she has had the impudence at length to
extinguish even these glimmerings by open avowal. This would not
have been borne so long, but that France has kept pace with England
in iniquity of principle, although not in the power of inflicting
wrongs on us. The difficulty of selecting a foe between them has
spared us many years of war, and enabled us to enter into it with
less debt, more strength and preparation. Our present enemy will
have the sea to herself, while we shall be equally predominant at
land, and shall strip her of all her possessions on this continent.
She may burn New York, indeed, by her ships and congreve rockets, in
which case we must burn the city of London by hired incendiaries, of
which her starving manufacturers will furnish abundance. A people in
such desperation as to demand of their government _autparcem, aut
furcam_, either bread or the gallows, will not reject the same
alternative when offered by a foreign hand. Hunger will make them
brave every risk for bread. The partisans of England here have
endeavored much to goad us into the folly of choosing the ocean
instead of the land, for the theatre of war. That would be to meet
their strength with our own weakness, instead of their weakness with
our strength. I hope we shall confine ourselves to the conquest of
their possessions, and defence of our harbors, leaving the war on the
ocean to our privateers. These will immediately swarm in every sea,
and do more injury to British commerce than the regular fleets of all
Europe would do. The government of France may discontinue their
license trade. Our privateers will furnish them much more abundantly
with colonial produce, and whatever the license trade has given them.
Some have apprehended we should be overwhelmed by the new
improvements of war, which have not yet reached us. But the British
possess them very imperfectly, and what are these improvements?
Chiefly in the management of artillery, of which our country admits
little use. We have nothing to fear from their armies, and shall put
nothing in prize to their fleets. Upon the whole, I have known no
war entered into under more favorable auspices.
Our manufacturers are now very nearly on a footing with those
of England. She has not a single improvement which we do not
possess, and many of them better adapted by ourselves to our ordinary
use. We have reduced the large and expensive machinery for most
things to the compass of a private family, and every family of any
size is now getting machines on a small scale for their household
purposes. Quoting myself as an example, and I am much behind many
others in this business, my household manufactures are just getting
into operation on the scale of a carding machine costing 60 only,
which may be worked by a girl of twelve years old, a spinning
machine, which may be made for $10, carrying 6 spindles for wool, to
be worked by a girl also, another which can be made for $25, carrying
12 spindles for cotton, and a loom, with a flying shuttle, weaving
its twenty yards a day. I need 2,000 yards of linen, cotton and
woollen yearly, to clothe my family, which this machinery, costing
$150 only, and worked by two women and two girls, will more than
furnish. For fine goods there are numerous establishments at work in
the large cities, and many more daily growing up; and of merinos we
have some thousands, and these multiplying fast. We consider a sheep
for every person as sufficient for their woollen clothing, and this
State and all to the north have fully that, and those to the south
and west will soon be up to it. In other articles we are equally
advanced, so that nothing is more certain than that, come peace when
it will, we shall never again go to England for a shilling where we
have gone for a dollar's worth. Instead of applying to her
manufacturers there, they must starve or come here to be employed. I
give you these details of peaceable operations, because they are
within my present sphere. Those of war are in better hands, who know
how to keep their own secrets. Because, too, although a soldier
yourself, I am sure you contemplate the peaceable employment of man
in the improvement of his condition, with more pleasure than his
murders, rapine and devastations.
Mr. Barnes, some time ago, forwarded you a bill of exchange for
5,500 francs, of which the enclosed is a duplicate. Apprehending
that a war with England would subject the remittances to you to more
casualties, I proposed to Mr. Morson, of Bordeaux, to become the
intermediate for making remittances to you, which he readily acceded
to on liberal ideas arising from his personal esteem for you, and his
desire to be useful to you. If you approve of this medium I am in
hopes it will shield you from the effect of the accidents to which
the increased dangers of the seas may give birth. It would give me
great pleasure to hear from you oftener. I feel great interest in
your health and happiness. I know your feelings on the present state
of the world, and hope they will be cheered by the successful course
of our war, and the addition of Canada to our confederacy. The
infamous intrigues of Great Britain to destroy our government (of
which Henry's is but one sample), and with the Indians to tomahawk
our women and children, prove that the cession of Canada, their
fulcrum for these Machiavelian levers, must be a _sine qua non_ at a
treaty of peace. God bless you, and give you to see all these
things, and many and long years of health and happiness.
"A RADICAL DIFFERENCE OF POLITICAL PRINCIPLE"
_To John Melish_
_Monticello, January 13, 1813_
DEAR SIR, -- I received duly your favor of December the 15th,
and with it the copies of your map and travels, for which be pleased
to accept my thanks. The book I have read with extreme satisfaction
and information. As to the western States, particularly, it has
greatly edified me: for of the actual condition of that interesting
portion of our country, I had not an adequate idea. I feel myself
now as familiar with it as with the condition of the maritime States.
I had no conception that manufactures had made such progress there,
and particularly of the number of carding and spinning machines
dispersed through the whole country. We are but beginning here to
have them in our private families. Small spinning jennies of from
half a dozen to twenty spindles, will soon, however, make their way
into the humblest cottages, as well as the richest houses; and
nothing is more certain, than that the coarse and middling clothing
for our families, will forever hereafter continue to be made within
ourselves. I have hitherto myself depended entirely on foreign
manufactures; but I have now thirty-five spindles agoing, a hand
carding machine, and looms with the flying shuttle, for the supply of
my own farms, which will never be relinquished in my time. The
continuance of the war will fix the habit generally, and out of the
evils of impressment and of the orders of council, a great blessing
for us will grow. I have not formerly been an advocate for great
manufactories. I doubted whether our labor, employed in agriculture,
and aided by the spontaneous energies of the earth, would not procure
us more than we could make ourselves of other necessaries. But other
considerations entering into the question, have settled my doubts.
The candor with which you have viewed the manners and condition
of our citizens, is so unlike the narrow prejudices of the French and
English travellers preceding you, who, considering each the manners
and habits of their own people as the only orthodox, have viewed
everything differing from that test as boorish and barbarous, that
your work will be read here extensively, and operate great good.
Amidst this mass of approbation which is given to every other
part of the work, there is a single sentiment which I cannot help
wishing to bring to what I think the correct one; and, on a point so
interesting, I value your opinion too highly not to ambition its
concurrence with my own. Stating in volume one, page sixty-three,
the principle of difference between the two great political parties
here, you conclude it to be, `whether the controlling power shall be
vested in this or that set of men.' That each party endeavors to get
into the administration of the government, and exclude the other from
power, is true, and may be stated as a motive of action: but this is
only secondary; the primary motive being a real and radical
difference of political principle. I sincerely wish our differences
were but personally who should govern, and that the principles of our
constitution were those of both parties. Unfortunately, it is
otherwise; and the question of preference between monarchy and
republicanism, which has so long divided mankind elsewhere, threatens
a permanent division here.
Among that section of our citizens called federalists, there
are three shades of opinion. Distinguishing between the _leaders_
and _people_ who compose it, the _leaders_ consider the English
constitution as a model of perfection, some, with a correction of its
vices, others, with all its corruptions and abuses. This last was
Alexander Hamilton's opinion, which others, as well as myself, have
often heard him declare, and that a correction of what are called its
vices, would render the English an impracticable government. This
government they wished to have established here, and only accepted
and held fast, _at first_, to the present constitution, as a
stepping-stone to the final establishment of their favorite model.
This party therefore always clung to England as their prototype, and
great auxiliary in promoting and effecting this change. A weighty
MINORITY, however, of these _leaders_, considering the voluntary
conversion of our government into a monarchy as too distant, if not
desperate, wish to break off from our Union its eastern fragment, as
being, in truth, the hot-bed of American monarchism, with a view to a
commencement of their favorite government, from whence the other
States may gangrene by degrees, and the whole be thus brought finally
to the desired point. For Massachusetts, the prime mover in this
enterprise, is the last State in the Union to mean a _final_
separation, as being of all the most dependent on the others. Not
raising bread for the sustenance of her own inhabitants, not having a
stick of timber for the construction of vessels, her principal
occupation, nor an article to export in them, where would she be,
excluded from the ports of the other States, and thrown into
dependence on England, her direct and natural, but now insidious
rival? At the head of this MINORITY is what is called the Essex
Junto of Massachusetts. But the MAJORITY of these _leaders_ do not
aim at separation. In this, they adhere to the known principle of
General Hamilton, never, under any views, to break the Union.
Anglomany, monarchy, and separation, then, are the principles of the
Essex federalists. Anglomany and monarchy, those of the
Hamiltonians, and Anglomany alone, that of the portion among the
_people_ who call themselves federalists. These last are as good
republicans as the brethren whom they oppose, and differ from them
only in their devotion to England and hatred of France which they
have imbibed from their leaders. The moment that these leaders
should avowedly propose a separation of the Union, or the
establishment of regal government, their popular adherents would quit
them to a man, and join the republican standard; and the partisans of
this change, even in Massachusetts, would thus find themselves an
army of officers without a soldier.
The party called republican is steadily for the support of the
present constitution. They obtained at its commencement, all the
amendments to it they desired. These reconciled them to it
perfectly, and if they have any ulterior view, it is only, perhaps,
to popularize it further, by shortening the Senatorial term, and
devising a process for the responsibility of judges, more practical
than that of impeachment. They esteem the people of England and
France equally, and equally detest the governing powers of both.
This I verily believe, after an intimacy of forty years with
the public councils and characters, is a true statement of the
grounds on which they are at present divided, and that it is not
merely an ambition for power. An honest man can feel no pleasure in
the exercise of power over his fellow citizens. And considering as
the only offices of power those conferred by the people directly,
that is to say, the executive and legislative functions of the
General and State governments, the common refusal of these and
multiplied resignations, are proofs sufficient that power is not
alluring to pure minds, and is not, with them, the primary principle
of contest. This is my belief of it; it is that on which I have
acted; and had it been a mere contest who should be permitted to
administer the government according to its genuine republican
principles, there has never been a moment of my life in which I
should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm,
my friends and books.
You expected to discover the difference of our party principles
in General Washington's valedictory, and my inaugural address. Not
at all. General Washington did not harbor one principle of
federalism. He was neither an Angloman, a monarchist, nor a
separatist. He sincerely wished the people to have as much
self-government as they were competent to exercise themselves. The
only point on which he and I ever differed in opinion, was, that I
had more confidence than he had in the natural integrity and
discretion of the people, and in the safety and extent to which they
might trust themselves with a control over their government. He has
asseverated to me a thousand times his determination that the
existing government should have a fair trial, and that in support of
it he would spend the last drop of his blood. He did this the more
repeatedly, because he knew General Hamilton's political bias, and my
apprehensions from it. It is a mere calumny, therefore, in the
monarchists, to associate General Washington with their principles.
But that may have happened in this case which has been often seen in
ordinary cases, that, by oft repeating an untruth, men come to
believe it themselves. It is a mere artifice in this party to
bolster themselves up on the revered name of that first of our
worthies. If I have dwelt longer on this subject than was necessary,
it proves the estimation in which I hold your ultimate opinions, and
my desire of placing the subject truly before them. In so doing, I
am certain I risk no use of the communication which may draw me into
contention before the public. Tranquillity is the _summum bonum_ of
a Septagenaire.
To return to the merits of your work: I consider it as so
lively a picture of the real state of our country, that if I can
possibly obtain opportunities of conveyance, I propose to send a copy
to a friend in France, and another to one in Italy, who, I know, will
translate and circulate it as an antidote to the misrepresentations
of former travellers. But whatever effect my profession of political
faith may have on your general opinion, a part of my object will be
obtained, if it satisfies you as to the principles of my own action,
and of the high respect and consideration with which I tender you my
salutations.
TYRANTS OF LAND AND SEA
_To Madame de Stael_
_United States of America, May 24, 1813_
I received with great pleasure, my dear Madam and friend, your
letter of November the 10th, from Stockholm, and am sincerely
gratified by the occasion it gives me of expressing to you the
sentiments of high respect and esteem which I entertain for you. It
recalls to my remembrance a happy portion of my life, passed in your
native city; then the seat of the most amiable and polished society
of the world, and of which yourself and your venerable father were
such distinguished members. But of what scenes has it since been the
theatre, and with what havoc has it overspread the earth! Robespiere
met the fate, and his memory the execration, he so justly merited.
The rich were his victims, and perished by thousands. It is by
millions that Buonaparte destroys the poor, and he is eulogised and
deified by the sycophants even of science. These merit more than the
mere oblivion to which they will be consigned; and the day will come
when a just posterity will give to their hero the only pre-eminence
he has earned, that of having been the greatest of the destroyers of
the human race. What year of his military life has not consigned a
million of human beings to death, to poverty and wretchedness! What
field in Europe may not raise a monument of the murders, the
burnings, the desolations, the famines and miseries it has witnessed
from him! And all this to acquire a reputation, which Cartouche
attained with less injury to mankind, of being fearless of God or
man.
To complete and universalise the desolation of the globe, it
has been the will of Providence to raise up, at the same time, a
tyrant as unprincipled and as overwhelming, for the ocean. Not in
the poor maniac George, but in his government and nation. Buonaparte
will die, and his tyrannies with him. But a nation never dies. The
English government and its piratical principles and practices, have
no fixed term of duration. Europe feels, and is writhing under the
scorpion whips of Buonaparte. We are assailed by those of England.
The one continent thus placed under the gripe of England, and the
other of Buonaparte, each has to grapple with the enemy immediately
pressing on itself. We must extinguish the fire kindled in our own
house, and leave to our friends beyond the water that which is
consuming theirs. It was not till England had taken one thousand of
our ships, and impressed into her service more than six thousand of
our citizens; till she had declared, by the proclamation of her
Prince Regent, that she would not repeal her aggressive orders _as to
us_, until Buonaparte should have repealed his _as to all nations_;
till her minister, in formal conference with ours, declared, that no
proposition for protecting our seamen from being impressed, under
color of taking their own, was practicable or admissible; that, the
door to justice and to all amicable arrangement being closed, and
negotiation become both desperate and dishonorable, we concluded that
the war she had been for years waging against us, might as well
become a war on both sides. She takes fewer vessels from us since
the declaration of war than before, because they venture more
cautiously; and we now make full reprisals where before we made none.
England is, in principle, the enemy of all maritime nations, as
Buonaparte is of the continental; and I place in the same line of
insult to the human understanding, the pretension of conquering the
ocean, to establish continental rights, as that of conquering the
continent, to restore maritime rights. No, my dear Madam; the object
of England is the _permanent dominion of the ocean_, and the
_monopoly of the trade of the world_. To secure this, she must keep
a larger fleet than her own resources will maintain. The resources
of other nations, then, must be impressed to supply the deficiency of
her own. This is sufficiently developed and evidenced by her
successive strides towards the usurpation of the sea. Mark them,
from her first war after William Pitt the little, came into her
administration. She first forbade to neutrals all trade with her
enemies in time of war, which they had not in time of peace. This
deprived them of their trade from port to port of the same nation.
Then she forbade them to trade from the port of one nation to that of
any other at war with her, although a right fully exercised in time
of peace. Next, instead of taking vessels only _entering_ a
blockaded port, she took them over the whole ocean, if destined to
that port, although ignorant of the blockade, and without intention
to violate it. Then she took them returning from that port, as if
infected by previous infraction of blockade. Then came her paper
blockades, by which she might shut up the whole world without sending
a ship to sea, except to take all those sailing on it, as they must,
of course, be bound to some port. And these were followed by her
orders of council, forbidding every nation to go to the port of any
other, without coming first to some port of Great Britain, there
paying a tribute to her, regulated by the cargo, and taking from her
a license to proceed to the port of destination; which operation the
vessel was to repeat with the return cargo on its way home.
According to these orders, we could not send a vessel from St. Mary's
to St. Augustine, distant six hours' sail, on our own coast, without
crossing the Atlantic four times, twice with the outward cargo, and
twice with the inward. She found this too daring and outrageous for
a single step, retracted as to certain articles of commerce, but left
it in force as to others which constitute important branches of our
exports. And finally, that her views may no longer rest on
inference, in a recent debate, her minister declared in open
parliament, that the object of the present war is a _monopoly of
commerce_.
In some of these atrocities, France kept pace with her fully in
speculative wrong, which her impotence only shortened in practical
execution. This was called retaliation by both; each charging the
other with the initiation of the outrage. As if two combatants might
retaliate on an innocent bystander, the blows they received from each
other. To make war on both would have been ridiculous. In order,
therefore, to single out any enemy, we offered to both, that if
either would revoke its hostile decrees, and the other should refuse,
we would interdict all intercourse whatever with that other; which
would be war of course, as being an avowed departure from neutrality.
France accepted the offer, and revoked her decrees as to us. England
not only refused, but declared by a solemn proclamation of her Prince
Regent, that she would not revoke her orders _even as to us_, until
those of France should be annulled _as to the whole world_. We
thereon declared war, and with abundant additional cause.
In the mean time, an examination before parliament of the
ruinous effects of these orders on her own manufacturers, exposing
them to the nation and to the world, their Prince issued a palinodial
proclamation, _suspending_ the orders on certain conditions, but
claiming to renew them at pleasure, as a matter of right. Even this
might have prevented the war, if done and known here before its
declaration. But the sword being once drawn, the expense of arming
incurred, and hostilities in full course, it would have been unwise
to discontinue them, until effectual provision should be agreed to by
England, for protecting our citizens on the high seas from
impressment by her naval commanders, through error, voluntary or
involuntary; the fact being notorious, that these officers, entering
our ships at sea under pretext of searching for their seamen, (which
they have no right to do by the law or usage of nations, which they
neither do, nor ever did, as to any other nation but ours, and which
no nation ever before pretended to do in any case,) entering our
ships, I say, under pretext of searching for and taking out their
seamen, they took ours, native as well as naturalised, knowing them
to be ours, merely because they wanted them; insomuch, that no
American could safely cross the ocean, or venture to pass by sea from
one to another of our own ports. It is not long since they impressed
at sea two nephews of General Washington, returning from Europe, and
put them, as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of their
ships of war. There are certainly other wrongs to be settled between
England and us; but of a minor character, and such as a proper spirt
of conciliation on both sides would not permit to continue them at
war. The sword, however, can never again be sheathed, until the
personal safety of an American on the ocean, among the most important
and most vital of the rights we possess, is completely provided for.
As soon as we heard of her partial repeal of her orders of
council, we offered instantly to suspend hostilities by an armistice,
if she would suspend her impressments, and meet us in arrangements
for securing our citizens against them. She refused to do it,
because impracticable by any arrangement, as she pretends; but, in
truth, because a body of sixty to eighty thousand of the finest
seamen in the world, which we possess, is too great a resource for
manning her exaggerated navy, to be relinquished, as long as she can
keep it open. Peace is in her hand, whenever she will renounce the
practice of aggression on the persons of our citizens. If she thinks
it worth eternal war, eternal war we must have. She alleges that the
sameness of language, of manners, of appearance, renders it
impossible to distinguish us from her subjects. But because we speak
English, and look like them, are we to be punished? Are free and
independent men to be submitted to their bondage?
England has misrepresented to all Europe this ground of the
war. She has called it a new pretension, set up since the repeal of
her orders of council. She knows there has never been a moment of
suspension of our reclamations against it, from General Washington's
time inclusive, to the present day: and that it is distinctly stated
in our declaration of war, as one of its principal causes. She has
pretended we have entered into the war to establish the principle of
`free bottoms, free goods,' or to protect her seamen against her own
right over them. We contend for neither of these. She pretends we
are partial to France; that we have observed a fraudulent and
unfaithful neutrality between her and her enemy. She knows this to
be false, and that if there has been any inequality in our
proceedings towards the belligerents, it has been in her favor. Her
ministers are in possession of full proofs of this. Our accepting at
once, and sincerely, the mediation of the virtuous Alexander, their
greatest friend, and the most aggravated enemy of Buonaparte,
sufficiently proves whether we have partialities on the side of her
enemy. I sincerely pray that this mediation may produce a just
peace. It will prove that the immortal character, which has first
stopped by war the career of the destroyer of mankind, is the friend
of peace, of justice, of human happiness, and the patron of
unoffending and injured nations. He is too honest and impartial to
countenance propositions of peace derogatory to the freedom of the
seas.
Shall I apologise to you, my dear Madam, for this long
political letter? But yours justifies the subject, and my feelings
must plead for the unreserved expression of them; and they have been
the less reserved, as being from a private citizen, retired from all
connection with the government of his country, and whose ideas,
expressed without communication with any one, are neither known, nor
imputable to them.
The dangers of the sea are now so great, and the possibilities
of interception by sea and land such, that I shall subscribe no name
to this letter. You will know from whom it comes, by its reference
to the date of time and place of yours, as well as by its subject in
answer to that. This omission must not lessen in your view the
assurances of my great esteem, of my sincere sympathies for the share
which you bear in the afflictions of your country, and the
deprivations to which a lawless will has subjected you. In return,
you enjoy the dignified satisfaction of having met them, rather than
be yoked with the abject, to his car; and that, in withdrawing from
oppression, you have followed the virtuous example of a father, whose
name will ever be dear to your country and to mankind. With my
prayers that you may be restored to it, that you may see it
re-established in that temperate portion of liberty which does not
infer either anarchy or licentiousness, in that high degree of
prosperity which would be the consequence of such a government, in
that, in short, which the constitution of 1789 would have insured it,
if wisdom could have stayed at that point the fervid but imprudent
zeal of men, who did not know the character of their own countrymen,
and that you may long live in health and happiness under it, and
leave to the world a well educated and virtuous representative and
descendant of your honored father, is the ardent prayer of the
sincere and respectful friend who writes this letter.
LIGHT AND LIBERTY AND THE PARTIES
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, June 15, 1813_
DEAR SIR -- I wrote you a letter on the 27th. of May, which
probably would reach you about the 3d. inst. and on the 9th. I
recieved yours of the 29th. of May. Of Lindsay's Memoirs I had never
before heard, and scarcely indeed of himself. It could not therefore
but be unexpected that two letters of mine should have any thing to
do with his life. The name of his editor was new to me, and
certainly presents itself, for the first time, under unfavorable
circumstances. Religion, I suppose, is the scope of his book: and
that a writer on that subject should usher himself to the world in
the very act of the grossest abuse of confidence, by publishing
private letters which passed between two friends, with no views to
their ever being made public, is an instance of inconsistency, as
well as of infidelity of which I would rather be the victim than the
author. By your kind quotation of the dates of my two letters I have
been enabled to turn to them. They had compleatly evanished from my
memory. The last is on the subject of religion, and by it's
publication will gratify the priesthood with new occasion of
repeating their Comminations against me. They wish it to be believed
that he can have no religion who advocates it's freedom. This was
not the doctrine of Priestley, and I honored him for the example of
liberality he set to his order. The first letter is political. It
recalls to our recollection the gloomy transactions of the times, the
doctrines they witnessed, and the sensibilities they excited. It was
a confidential communication of reflections on these from one friend
to another, deposited in his bosom, and never meant to trouble the
public mind. Whether the character of the times is justly portrayed
or not, posterity will decide. But on one feature of them they can
never decide, the sensations excited in free yet firm minds, by the
terrorism of the day. None can concieve who did not witness them,
and they were felt by one party only. This letter exhibits their
side of the medal. The Federalists no doubt have presented the
other, in their private correspondences, as well as open action. If
these correspondencies should ever be laid open to the public eye,
they will probably be found not models of comity towards their
adversaries. The readers of my letter should be cautioned not to
confine it's view to this country alone. England and it's alarmists
were equally under consideration. Still less must they consider it
as looking personally towards you. You happen indeed to be quoted
because you happened to express, more pithily than had been done by
themselves, one of the mottos of the party. This was in your answer
to the address of the young men of Philadelphia. [See Selection of
patriotic addresses. pa. 198.] One of the questions you know on which
our parties took different sides, was on the improvability of the
human mind, in science, in ethics, in government etc. Those who
advocated reformation of institutions, pari passu, with the progress
of science, maintained that no definite limits could be assigned to
that progress. The enemies of reform, on the other hand, denied
improvement, and advocated steady adherence to the principles,
practices and institutions of our fathers, which they represented as
the consummation of wisdom, and akme of excellence, beyond which the
human mind could never advance. Altho' in the passage of your answer
alluded to, you expressly disclaim the wish to influence the freedom
of enquiry, you predict that that will produce nothing more worthy of
transmission to posterity, than the principles, institutions, and
systems of education recieved from their ancestors. I do not
consider this as your deliberate opinion. You possess, yourself, too
much science, not to see how much is still ahead of you, unexplained
and unexplored. Your own consciousness must place you as far before
our ancestors, as in the rear of our posterity. I consider it as an
expression lent to the prejudices of your friends; and altho' I
happened to cite it from you, the whole letter shews I had them only
in view. In truth, my dear Sir, we were far from considering you as
the author of all the measures we blamed. They were placed under the
protection of your name, but we were satisfied they wanted much of
your approbation. We ascribed them to their real authors, the
Pickerings, the Wolcotts, the Tracys, the Sedgwicks, et id genus omne
["and all of their kind"], with whom we supposed you in a state of
Duresse. I well remember a conversation with you, in the morning of
the day on which you nominated to the Senate a substitute for
Pickering, in which you expressed a just impatience under `the legacy
of Secretaries which Gen. Washington had left you' and whom you
seemed therefore to consider as under public protection. Many other
incidents shewed how differently you would have acted with less
impassioned advisers; and subsequent events have proved that your
minds were not together. You would do me great injustice therefore
by taking to yourself what was intended for men who were then your
secret, as they are now your open enemies. Should you write on the
subject, as you propose, I am sure we shall see you place yourself
farther from them than from us.
As to myself, I shall take no part in any discussions. I leave
others to judge of what I have done, and to give me exactly that
place which they shall think I have occupied. Marshall has written
libels on one side; others, I suppose, will be written on the other
side; and the world will sift both, and separate the truth as well as
they can. I should see with reluctance the passions of that day
rekindled in this, while so many of the actors are living, and all
are too near the scene not to participate in sympathies with them.
About facts, you and I cannot differ; because truth is our mutual
guide. And if any opinions you may express should be different from
mine, I shall recieve them with the liberality and indulgence which I
ask for my own, and still cherish with warmth the sentiments of
affectionate respect of which I can with so much truth tender you the
assurance.
DEBT, TAXES, BANKS, AND PAPER
_To John Wayles Eppes_
_Monticello, June 24, 1813_
DEAR SIR, -- This letter will be on politics only. For
although I do not often permit myself to think on that subject, it
sometimes obtrudes itself, and suggests ideas which I am tempted to
pursue. Some of these relating to the business of finance, I will
hazard to you, as being at the head of that committee, but intended
for yourself individually, or such as you trust, but certainly not
for a mixed committee.
It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government
disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the
use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a
dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the
interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to
consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith."
On such a pledge as this, sacredly observed, a government may always
command, on a _reasonable interest_, all the lendable money of their
citizens, while the necessity of an equivalent tax is a salutary
warning to them and their constituents against oppressions,
bankruptcy, and its inevitable consequence, revolution. But the term
of redemption must be moderate, and at any rate within the limits of
their rightful powers. But what limits, it will be asked, does this
prescribe to their powers? What is to hinder them from creating a
perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I answer. The earth belongs to
the living, not to the dead. The will and the power of man expire
with his life, by nature's law. Some societies give it an artificial
continuance, for the encouragement of industry; some refuse it, as
our aboriginal neighbors, whom we call barbarians. The generations
of men may be considered as bodies or corporations. Each generation
has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance.
When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the succeeding
generation, free and unincumbered, and so on, successively, from one
generation to another forever. We may consider each generation as a
distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind
themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the
inhabitants of another country. Or the case may be likened to the
ordinary one of a tenant for life, who may hypothecate the land for
his debts, during the continuance of his usufruct; but at his death,
the reversioner (who is also for life only) receives it exonerated
from all burthen. The period of a generation, or the term of its
life, is determined by the laws of mortality, which, varying a little
only in different climates, offer a general average, to be found by
observation. I turn, for instance, to Buffon's tables, of
twenty-three thousand nine hundred and ninety-four deaths, and the
ages at which they happened, and I find that of the numbers of all
ages living at one moment, half will be dead in twenty-four years and
eight months. But (leaving out minors, who have not the power of
self-government) of the adults (of twenty-one years of age) living at
one moment, a majority of whom act for the society, one half will be
dead in eighteen years and eight months. At nineteen years then from
the date of a contract, the majority of the contractors are dead, and
their contract with them. Let this general theory be applied to a
particular case. Suppose the annual births of the State of New York
to be twenty-three thousand nine hundred and ninety-four, the whole
number of its inhabitants, according to Buffon, will be six hundred
and seventeen thousand seven hundred and three, of all ages. Of
these there would constantly be two hundred and sixty-nine thousand
two hundred and eighty-six minors, and three hundred and forty-eight
thousand four hundred and seventeen adults, of which last, one
hundred and seventy-four thousand two hundred and nine will be a
majority. Suppose that majority, on the first day of the year 1794,
had borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee-simple value of the
State, and to have consumed it in eating, drinking and making merry
in their day; or, if your please, in quarrelling and fighting with
their unoffending neighbors. Within eighteen years and eight months,
one half of the adult citizens were dead. Till then, being the
majority, they might rightfully levy the interest of their debt
annually on themselves and their fellow-revellers, or
fellow-champions. But at that period, say at this moment, a new
majority have come into place, in their own right, and not under the
rights, the conditions, or laws of their predecessors. Are they
bound to acknowledge the debt, to consider the preceding generation
as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country, in
the course of a life, to alienate it from them, (for it would be an
alienation to the creditors,) and would they think themselves either
legally or morally bound to give up their country and emigrate to
another for subsistence? Every one will say no; that the soil is the
gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased
generation; and that the laws of nature impose no obligation on them
to pay this debt. And although, like some other natural rights, this
has not yet entered into any declaration of rights, it is no less a
law, and ought to be acted on by honest governments. It is, at the
same time, a salutary curb on the spirit of war and indebtment,
which, since the modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has
drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under
burthens ever accumulating. Had this principle been declared in the
British bill of rights, England would have been placed under the
happy disability of waging eternal war, and of contracting her
thousand millions of public debt. In seeking, then, for an ultimate
term for the redemption of our debts, let us rally to this principle,
and provide for their payment within the term of nineteen years at
the farthest. Our government has not, as yet, begun to act on the
rule of loans and taxation going hand in hand. Had any loan taken
place in my time, I should have strongly urged a redeeming tax. For
the loan which has been made since the last session of Congress, we
should now set the example of appropriating some particular tax,
sufficient to pay the interest annually, and the principal within a
fixed term, less than nineteen years. And I hope yourself and your
committee will render the immortal service of introducing this
practice. Not that it is expected that Congress should formally
declare such a principle. They wisely enough avoid deciding on
abstract questions. But they may be induced to keep themselves
within its limits.
I am sorry to see our loans begin at so exorbitant an interest.
And yet, even at that you will soon be at the bottom of the loan-bag.
We are an agricultural nation. Such an one employs its sparings in
the purchase or improvement of land or stocks. The lendable money
among them is chiefly that of orphans and wards in the hands of
executors and guardians, and that which the farmer lays by till he
has enough for the purchase in view. In such a nation there is one
and one only resource for loans, sufficient to carry them through the
expense of war; and that will always be sufficient, and in the power
of an honest government, punctual in the preservation of its faith.
The fund I mean, is _the mass of circulating coin_. Every one knows,
that although not literally, it is nearly true, that every paper
dollar emitted banishes a silver one from the circulation. A nation,
therefore, making its purchases and payments with bills fitted for
circulation, thrusts an equal sum of coin out of circulation. This
is equivalent to borrowing that sum, and yet the vendor receiving
payment in a medium as effectual as coin for his purchases or
payments, has no claim to interest. And so the nation may continue
to issue its bills as far as its wants require, and the limits of the
circulation will admit. Those limits are understood to extend with
us at present, to two hundred millions of dollars, a greater sum than
would be necessary for any war. But this, the only resource which
the government could command with certainty, the States have
unfortunately fooled away, nay corruptly alienated to swindlers and
shavers, under the cover of private banks. Say, too, as an
additional evil, that the disposal funds of individuals, to this
great amount, have thus been withdrawn from improvement and useful
enterprise, and employed in the useless, usurious and demoralizing
practices of bank directors and their accomplices. In the war of
1755, our State availed itself of this fund by issuing a paper money,
bottomed on a specific tax for its redemption, and, to insure its
credit, bearing an interest of five per cent. Within a very short
time, not a bill of this emission was to be found in circulation. It
was locked up in the chests of executors, guardians, widows, farmers,
&c. We then issued bills bottomed on a redeeming tax, but bearing no
interest. These were readily received, and never depreciated a
single farthing. In the revolutionary war, the old Congress and the
States issued bills without interest, and without tax. They occupied
the channels of circulation very freely, till those channels were
overflowed by an excess beyond all the calls of circulation. But
although we have so improvidently suffered the field of circulating
medium to be filched from us by private individuals, yet I think we
may recover it in part, and even in the whole, if the States will
co-operate with us. If treasury bills are emitted on a tax
appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure
preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest
of six per cent. there is no one who would not take them in
preference to the bank paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism
as well as interest; and they would be withdrawn from circulation
into private hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once
established, others might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not
bearing interest; and if ever their credit faltered, open public
loans, on which these bills alone should be received as specie.
These, operating as a sinking fund, would reduce the quantity in
circulation, so as to maintain that in an equilibrium with specie.
It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which, in the beginning, we
should encounter in ousting the banks from their possession of the
circulation; but a steady and judicious alternation of emissions and
loans, would reduce them in time. But while this is going on,
another measure should be pressed, to recover ultimately our right to
the circulation. The States should be applied to, to transfer the
right of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively, _in
perpetuum_, if possible, but during the war at least, with a saving
of charter rights. I believe that every State west and South of
Connecticut river, except Delaware, would immediately do it; and the
others would follow in time. Congress would, of course, begin by
obliging unchartered banks to wind up their affairs within a short
time, and the others as their charters expired, forbidding the
subsequent circulation of their paper. This they would supply with
their own, bottomed, every emission, on an adequate tax, and bearing
or not bearing interest, as the state of the public pulse should
indicate. Even in the non-complying States, these bills would make
their way, and supplant the unfunded paper of their banks, by their
solidity, by the universality of their currency, and by their
receivability for customs and taxes. It would be in their power,
too, to curtail those banks to the amount of their actual specie, by
gathering up their paper, and running it constantly on them. The
national paper might thus take place even in the non-complying
States. In this way, I am not without a hope, that this great, this
sole resource for loans in an agricultural country, might yet be
recovered for the use of the nation during war; and, if obtained _in
perpetuum_, it would always be sufficient to carry us through any
war; provided, that in the interval between war and war, all the
outstanding paper should be called in, coin be permitted to flow in
again, and to hold the field of circulation until another war should
require its yielding place again to the national medium.
But it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants
and others to be deprived of the resource of short accommodations,
found so convenient? I answer, let us have banks; but let them be
such as are alone to be found in any country on earth, except Great
Britain. There is not a bank of discount on the continent of Europe,
(at least there was not one when I was there,) which offers anything
but cash in exchange for discounted bills. No one has a natural
right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to
lend. Let those then among us, who have a monied capital, and who
prefer employing it in loans rather than otherwise, set up banks, and
give cash or national bills for the notes they discount. Perhaps, to
encourage them, a larger interest than is legal in the other cases
might be allowed them, on the condition of their lending for short
periods only. It is from Great Britain we copy the idea of giving
paper in exchange for discounted bills; and while we have derived
from that country some good principles of government and legislation,
we unfortunately run into the most servile imitation of all her
practices, ruinous as they prove to her, and with the gulph yawning
before us into which these very practices are precipitating her. The
unlimited emission of bank paper has banished all her specie, and is
now, by a depreciation acknowledged by her own statesmen, carrying
her rapidly to bankruptcy, as it did France, as it did us, and will
do us again, and every country permitting paper to be circulated,
other than that by public authority, rigorously limited to the just
measure for circulation. Private fortunes, in the present state of
our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money
lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which
their avarice deluges us. He who lent his money to the public or to
an individual, before the institution of the United States Bank,
twenty years ago, when wheat was well sold at a dollar the bushel,
and receives now his nominal sum when it sells at two dollars, is
cheated of half his fortune; and by whom? By the banks, which, since
that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars of their nominal money
where was one at that time.
Reflect, if you please, on these ideas, and use them or not as
they appear to merit. They comfort me in the belief, that they point
out a resource ample enough, without overwhelming war taxes, for the
expense of the war, and possibly still recoverable; and that they
hold up to all future time a resource within ourselves, ever at the
command of government, and competent to any wars into which we may be
forced. Nor is it a slight object to equalize taxes through peace
and war.
I was in Bedford a fortnight in the month of May, and did not
know that Francis and his cousin Baker were within 10. miles of me at
Lynchburg. I learnt it by letters from themselves after I had
returned home. I shall go there early in August and hope their
master will permit them to pass their Saturdays & Sundays with me.
Ever affectionately yours.
NO PATENTS ON IDEAS
_To Isaac McPherson_
_Monticello, August 13, 1813_
SIR, -- Your letter of August 3d asking information on the
subject of Mr. Oliver Evans' exclusive right to the use of what he
calls his Elevators, Conveyers, and Hopper-boys, has been duly
received. My wish to see new inventions encouraged, and old ones
brought again into useful notice, has made me regret the
circumstances which have followed the expiration of his first patent.
I did not expect the retrospection which has been given to the
reviving law. For although the second proviso seemed not so clear as
it ought to have been, yet it appeared susceptible of a just
construction; and the retrospective one being contrary to natural
right, it was understood to be a rule of law that where the words of
a statute admit of two constructions, the one just and the other
unjust, the former is to be given them. The first proviso takes care
of those who had lawfully used Evans' improvements under the first
patent; the second was meant for those who had lawfully erected and
used them after that patent expired, declaring they "should not be
liable to damages therefor." These words may indeed be restrained to
uses already past, but as there is parity of reason for those to
come, there should be parity of law. Every man should be protected
in his lawful acts, and be certain that no _ex post facto_ law shall
punish or endamage him for them. But he is endamaged, if forbidden
to use a machine lawfully erected, at considerable expense, unless he
will pay a new and unexpected price for it. The proviso says that he
who erected and used lawfully should not be liable to pay damages.
But if the proviso had been omitted, would not the law, construed by
natural equity, have said the same thing. In truth both provisos are
useless. And shall useless provisos, inserted _pro majori cautela_
only, authorize inferences against justice? The sentiment that _ex
post facto_ laws are against natural right, is so strong in the
United States, that few, if any, of the State constitutions have
failed to proscribe them. The federal constitution indeed interdicts
them in criminal cases only; but they are equally unjust in civil as
in criminal cases, and the omission of a caution which would have
been right, does not justify the doing what is wrong. Nor ought it
to be presumed that the legislature meant to use a phrase in an
unjustifiable sense, if by rules of construction it can be ever
strained to what is just. The law books abound with similar
instances of the care the judges take of the public integrity. Laws,
moreover, abridging the natural right of the citizen, should be
restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.
Your letter, however, points to a much broader question,
whether what have received from Mr. Evans the new and proper name of
Elevators, are of his invention. Because, if they are not, his
patent gives him no right to obstruct others in the use of what they
possessed before. I assume it is a Lemma, that it is the invention
of the machine itself, which is to give a patent right, and not the
application of it to any particular purpose, of which it is
susceptible. If one person invents a knife convenient for pointing
our pens, another cannot have a patent right for the same knife to
point our pencils. A compass was invented for navigating the sea;
another could not have a patent right for using it to survey land. A
machine for threshing _wheat_ has been invented in Scotland; a second
person cannot get a patent right for the same machine to thresh
_oats_, a third _rye_, a fourth _peas_, a fifth _clover_, &c. A
string of buckets is invented and used for raising water, ore, &c.,
can a second have a patent right to the same machine for raising
wheat, a third oats, a fourth rye, a fifth peas, &c? The question
then whether such a string of buckets was invented first by Oliver
Evans, is a mere question of fact in mathematical history. Now,
turning to such books only as I happen to possess, I find abundant
proof that this simple machinery has been in use from time
immemorial. Doctor Shaw, who visited Egypt and the Barbary coast in
the years 1727-8-9, in the margin of his map of Egypt, gives us the
figure of what he calls a Persian wheel, which is a string of round
cups or buckets hanging on a pully, over which they revolved,
bringing up water from a well and delivering it into a trough above.
He found this used at Cairo, in a well 264 feet deep, which the
inhabitants believe to have been the work of the patriarch Joseph.
Shaw's travels, 341, Oxford edition of 1738 in folio, and the
Universal History, I. 416, speaking of the manner of watering the
higher lands of Egypt, says, "formerly they made use of Archimedes's
screw, thence named the Egyptian pump, but they now generally use
wheels (wallowers) which carry a rope or chain of earthen pots
holding about seven or eight quarts apiece, and draw the water from
the canals. There are besides a vast number of wells in Egypt, from
which the water is drawn in the same manner to water the gardens and
fruit trees; so that it is no exaggeration to say, that there are in
Egypt above 200,000 oxen daily employed in this labor." Shaw's name
of Persian wheel has been since given more particularly to a wheel
with buckets, either fixed or suspended on pins, at its periphery.
Mortimer's husbandry, I. 18, Duhamel III. II., Ferguson's Mechanic's
plate, XIII; but his figure, and the verbal description of the
Universal History, prove that the string of buckets is meant under
that name. His figure differs from Evans' construction in the
circumstances of the buckets being round, and strung through their
bottom on a chain. But it is the principle, to wit, a string of
buckets, which constitutes the invention, not the form of the
buckets, round, square, or hexagon; nor the manner of attaching them,
nor the material of the connecting band, whether chain, rope, or
leather. Vitruvius, L. x. c. 9, describes this machinery as a
windlass, on which is a chain descending to the water, with vessels
of copper attached to it; the windlass being turned, the chain moving
on it will raise the vessel, which in passing over the windlass will
empty the water they have brought up into a reservoir. And Perrault,
in his edition of Vitruvius, Paris, 1684, fol. plates 61, 62, gives
us three forms of these water elevators, in one of which the buckets
are square, as Mr. Evans' are. Bossut, Histoire de Mathematiques, i.
86, says, "the drum wheel, the wheel with buckets and the
_Chapelets_, are hydraulic machines which come to us from the
ancients. But we are ignorant of the time when they began to be put
into use." The _Chapelets_ are the revolving bands of the buckets
which Shaw calls the Persian wheel, the moderns a chain-pump, and Mr.
Evans elevators. The next of my books in which I find these
elevators is Wolf's Cours de Mathematiques, i. 370, and plate 1,
Paris 1747, 8vo; here are two forms. In one of them the buckets are
square, attached to two chains, passing over a cylinder or wallower
at top, and under another at bottom, by which they are made to
revolve. It is a nearly exact representation of Evans' Elevators.
But a more exact one is to be seen in Desagulier's Experimental
Philosophy, ii. plate 34; in the Encyclopedie de Diderot et
D'Alembert, 8vo edition of Lansanne, 1st volume of plates in the four
subscribed Hydraulique. Norie, is one where round eastern pots are
tied by their collars between two endless ropes suspended on a
revolving lantern or wallower. This is said to have been used for
raising ore out of a mine. In a book which I do not possess,
L'Architecture Hidraulique de Belidor, the 2d volume of which is said
[De la Lande's continuation of Montuclas' Historie de Mathematiques,
iii. 711] to contain a detail of all the pumps, ancient and modern,
hydraulic machines, fountains, wells, &c, I have no doubt this
Persian wheel, chain pump, chapelets, elevators, by whichever name
you choose to call it, will be found in various forms. The last book
I have to quote for it is Prony's Architecture Hydraulique i.,
Avertissement vii., and 648, 649, 650. In the latter of which
passages he observes that the first idea which occurs for raising
water is to lift it in a bucket by hand. When the water lies too
deep to be reached by hand, the bucket is suspended by a chain and
let down over a pulley or windlass. If it be desired to raise a
continued stream of water, the simplest means which offers itself to
the mind is to attach to an endless chain or cord a number of pots or
buckets, so disposed that, the chain being suspended on a lanthorn or
wallower above, and plunged in water below, the buckets may descend
and ascend alternately, filling themselves at bottom and emptying at
a certain height above, so as to give a constant stream. Some years
before the date of Mr. Evans' patent, a Mr. Martin of Caroline county
in this State, constructed a drill-plough, in which he used the band
of buckets for elevating the grain from the box into the funnel,
which let them down into the furrow. He had bands with different
sets of buckets adapted to the size of peas, of turnip seed, &c. I
have used this machine for sowing Benni seed also, and propose to
have a band of buckets for drilling Indian Corn, and another for
wheat. Is it possible that in doing this I shall infringe Mr. Evans'
patent? That I can be debarred of any use to which I might have
applied my drill, when I bought it, by a patent issued after I bought
it?
These verbal descriptions, applying so exactly to Mr. Evans'
elevators, and the drawings exhibited to the eye, flash conviction
both on reason and the senses that there is nothing new in these
elevators but their being strung together on a strap of leather. If
this strap of leather be an invention, entitling the inventor to a
patent right, it can only extend to the strap, and the use of the
string of buckets must remain free to be connected by chains, ropes,
a strap of hempen girthing, or any other substance except leather.
But, indeed, Mr. Martin had before used the strap of leather.
The screw of Archimedes is as ancient, at least, as the age of
that mathematician, who died more than 2,000 years ago. Diodorus
Siculus speaks of it, L. i., p. 21, and L. v., p. 217, of Stevens'
edition of 1559, folio; and Vitruvius, xii. The cutting of its
spiral worm into sections for conveying flour or grain, seems to have
been an invention of Mr. Evans, and to be a fair subject of a patent
right. But it cannot take away from others the use of Archimedes'
screw with its perpetual spiral, for any purposes of which it is
susceptible.
The hopper-boy is an useful machine, and so far as I know,
original.
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,)
that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their
inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to
their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of
any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be
singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to
inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the
subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate
property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law,
indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men
equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who
occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property
goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is
given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if
an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of
natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If
nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into
the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses
the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man,
and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire,
expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our
physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society
may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an
encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of
the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly,
it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until
wecopied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law,
gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other
countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and
personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought
that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to
society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse
monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful
devices.
Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of
natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the
difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to
the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which
are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while
the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with
what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured. Some,
however, were established by that board. One of these was, that a
machine of which we were possessed, might be applied by every man to
any use of which it is susceptible, and that this right ought not to
be taken from him and given to a monopolist, because the first
perhaps had occasion so to apply it. Thus a screw for crushing
plaster might be employed for crushing corn-cobs. And a chain-pump
for raising water might be used for raising wheat: this being merely
a change of application. Another rule was that a change of material
should not give title to a patent. As the making a ploughshare of
cast rather than of wrought iron; a comb of iron instead of horn or
of ivory, or the connecting buckets by a band of leather rather than
of hemp or iron. A third was that a mere change of form should give
no right to a patent, as a high-quartered shoe instead of a low one;
a round hat instead of a three-square; or a square bucket instead of
a round one. But for this rule, all the changes of fashion in dress
would have been under the tax of patentees. These were among the
rules which the uniform decisions of the board had already
established, and under each of them Mr. Evans' patent would have been
refused. First, because it was a mere change of application of the
chain-pump, from raising water to raise wheat. Secondly, because the
using a leathern instead of a hempen band, was a mere change of
material; and thirdly, square buckets instead of round, are only a
change of form, and the ancient forms, too, appear to have been
indifferently square or round. But there were still abundance of
cases which could not be brought under rule, until they should have
presented themselves under all their aspects; and these
investigations occupying more time of the members of the board than
they could spare from higher duties, the whole was turned over to the
judiciary, to be matured into a system, under which every one might
know when his actions were safe and lawful. Instead of refusing a
patent in the first instance, as the board was authorized to do, the
patent now issues of course, subject to be declared void on such
principles as should be established by the courts of law. This
business, however, is but little analogous to their course of
reading, since we might in vain turn over all the lubberly volumes of
the law to find a single ray which would lighten the path of the
mechanic or the mathematician. It is more within the information of
a board of academical professors, and a previous refusal of patent
would better guard our citizens against harrassment by law-suits.
But England had given it to her judges, and the usual predominancy of
her examples carried it to ours.
It happened that I had myself a mill built in the interval
between Mr. Evans' first and second patents. I was living in
Washington, and left the construction to the mill-wright. I did not
even know he had erected elevators, conveyers and hopper-boys, until
I learnt it by an application from Mr. Evans' agent for the patent
price. Although I had no idea he had a right to it by law, (for no
judicial decision had then been given,) yet I did not hesitate to
remit to Mr. Evans the old and moderate patent price, which was what
he then asked, from a wish to encourage even the useful revival of
ancient inventions. But I then expressed my opinion of the law in a
letter, either to Mr. Evans or to his agent.
I have thus, Sir, at your request, given you the facts and
ideas which occur to me on this subject. I have done it without
reserve, although I have not the pleasure of knowing you personally.
In thus frankly committing myself to you, I trust you will feel it as
a point of honor and candor, to make no use of my letter which might
bring disquietude on myself. And particularly, I should be unwilling
to be brought into any difference with Mr. Evans, whom, however, I
believe too reasonable to take offence at an honest difference of
opinion. I esteem him much, and sincerely wish him wealth and honor.
I deem him a valuable citizen, of uncommon ingenuity and usefulness.
And had I not esteemed still more the establishment of sound
principles, I should now have been silent. If any of the matter I
have offered can promote that object, I have no objection to its
being so used; if it offers nothing new, it will of course not be
used at all. I have gone with some minuteness into the mathematical
history of the elevator, because it belongs to a branch of science in
which, as I have before observed, it is not incumbent on lawyers to
be learned; and it is possible, therefore, that some of the proofs I
have quoted may have escaped on their former arguments. On the law
of the subject I should not have touched, because more familiar to
those who have already discussed it; but I wished to state my own
view of it merely in justification of myself, my name and approbation
being subscribed to the act. With these explanations, accept the
assurance of my respect.
A "DUCTILE AND COPIOUS" LANGUAGE
_To John Waldo_
_Monticello, August 16, 1813_
SIR, -- Your favor of March 27th came during my absence on a
journey of some length. It covered your "Rudiments of English
Grammar," for which I pray you to accept my thanks. This
acknowledgment of it has been delayed, until I could have time to
give the work such a perusal as the avocations to which I am subject
would permit. In the rare and short intervals which these have
allotted me, I have gone over with pleasure a considerable part,
although not yet the whole of it. But I am entirely unqualified to
give that critical opinion of it which you do me the favor to ask.
Mine has been a life of business, of that kind which appeals to a
man's conscience, as well as his industry, not to let it suffer, and
the few moments allowed me from labor have been devoted to more
attractive studies, that of grammar having never been a favorite with
me. The scanty foundation, laid in at school, has carried me through
a life of much hasty writing, more indebted for styleto reading and
memory, than to rules of grammar. I have been pleased to see that in
all cases you appeal to usage, as the arbiter of language; and justly
consider that as giving law to grammar, and not grammar to usage. I
concur entirely with you in opposition to Purists, who would destroy
all strength and beauty of style, by subjecting it to a rigorous
compliance with their rules. Fill up all the ellipses and syllepses
of Tacitus, Sallust, Livy, &c., and the elegance and force of their
sententious brevity are extinguished.
"Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus, imperium
appellant." "Deorum injurias, diis curae." "Allieni appetens, sui
profusus; ardens in cupiditatibus; satis loquentiae, sapientiae
parum." "Annibal peto pacem." "Per diem Sol non _uret_ te, neque Luna
per noctem." Wire-draw these expressions by filling up the whole
syntax and sense, and they become dull paraphrases on rich
sentiments. We may say then truly with Quinctilian, "Aliud est
Grammatice, aliud Latine loqui." I am no friend, therefore, to what
is called _Purism_, but a zealous one to the _Neology_ which has
introduced these two words without the authority of any dictionary.
I consider the one as destroying the nerve and beauty of language,
while the otherimproves both, and adds to its copiousness. I have
been not a little disappointed, and made suspicious of my own
judgment, on seeing the Edinburgh Reviews, the ablest critics of the
age, set their faces against the introduction of new words into the
English language; they are particularly apprehensive that the writers
of the United States will adulterate it. Certainly so great growing
a population, spread over such an extent of country, with such a
variety of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their
language, to make it answer its purpose of expressing all ideas, the
new as well as the old. The new circumstances under which we are
placed, call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old
words to new objects. An American dialect will therefore be formed;
so will a West-Indian and Asiatic, as a Scotch and an Irish are
already formed. But whether will these adulterate, or enrich the
English language? Has the beautiful poetry of Burns, or his Scottish
dialect, disfigured it? Did the Athenians consider the Doric, the
Ionian, the Aeolic, and other dialects, as disfiguring or as
beautifying their language? Did they fastidiously disavow Herodotus,
Pindar, Theocritus, Sappho, Alcaeus, or Grecian writers? On the
contrary, they were sensible that the variety of dialects, still
infinitely varied by poetical license, constituted the riches of
their language, and made the Grecian Homer the first of poets, as he
must ever remain, until a language equally ductile and copious shall
again be spoken.
Every language has a set of terminations, which make a part of
its peculiar idiom. Every root among the Greeks was permitted to
vary its termination, so as to express its radical idea in the form
of any one of the parts of speech; to wit, as a noun, an adjective, a
verb, participle, or adverb; and each of these parts of speech again,
by still varying the termination,could vary the shade of idea
existing in the mind.
* * *
It was not, then, the number of Grecian roots (for some other
languages may have as many) which made it the most copious of the
ancient languages; but the infinite diversification which each of
these admitted. Let the same license be allowed in English, the
roots of which, native and adopted, are perhaps more numerous, and
its idiomatic terminations more various than of the Greek, and see
what the language would become. Its idiomatic terminations are: --
_Subst._ Gener-ation--ator; degener-acy;
gener-osity--ousness--alship--alissimo; king-dom--ling; joy-ance;
enjoy-er--ment; herb-age--alist; sanct-uary--imony--itude; royal-ism;
lamb-kin; child-hood; bishop-ric; proceed-ure; horseman-ship;
worthi-ness.
_Adj_. Gener-ant--ative--ic--ical--able--ous--al;
joy-ful--less--some; herb-y; accous-escent--ulent; child-ish;
wheat-en.
_Verb_. Gener-ate--alize.
_Part_. Gener-ating--ated.
_Adv_. Gener-al--ly.
I do not pretend that this is a complete list of all the
terminations of the two languages. It is as much so as a hasty
recollection suggests, and the omissions are as likely to be to the
disadvantage of the one as the other. If it be a full, or equally
fair enumeration, the English are the double of the Greek
terminations.
But there is still another source of copiousness more abundant
than that of termination. It is the composition of the root, and of
every member of its family, 1, with prepositions, and 2, with other
words. The prepositions used in the composition of Greek words are:
--
* * *
Now multiply each termination of a family into every
preposition, and how prolific does it make each root! But the
English language, besides its own prepositions, about twenty in
number, which it compounds with English roots, uses those of the
Greek for adopted Greek roots, and of the Latin for Latin roots. The
English prepositions, with examples of their use, are a, as in
a-long, a-board, a-thirst, a-clock; be, as in be-lie; mis, as in
mis-hap; these being inseparable. The separable, with examples, are
above-cited, after-thought, gain-say, before-hand, fore-thought,
behind-hand, by-law, for-give, fro-ward, in-born, on-set, over-go,
out-go, thorough-go, under-take, up-lift, with-stand. Now let us see
what copiousness this would produce, were it allowed to compound
every root and its family with every preposition, where both sense
and sound would be in its favor. Try it on an English root, the verb
"to place," Anglo Saxon _plaece_, (*) for instance, and the Greek and
Latin roots, of kindred meaning, adopted in English, to wit, {thesis}
and locatio, with their prepositions.
(*) Johnson derives "place" from the French "place," an open
square in a town. But its northern parentage is visible in its
syno-nime _platz_, Teutonic, and _plattse_, Belgic, both of which
signify locus, and the Anglo-Saxon _plaece, platea, vicus_.
mis-place amphi-thesis a-location inter-location
after-place ana-thesis ab-location intro-location
gain-place anti-thesis abs-location juxta-location
fore-place apo-thesis al-location ob-location
hind-place dia-thesis anti-location per-location
by-place ek-thesis circum-location post-location
for-place en-thesis cis-location pre-location
fro-place epi-thesis col-location preter-location
in-place cata-thesis contra-location pro-location
on-place para-thesis de-location retro-location
over-place peri-thesis di-location re-location
out-place pro-thesis dis-location se-location
thorough-place pros-thesis e-location sub-location
under-place syn-thesis ex-location super-location
up-place hyper-thesis extra-location trans-location
with-place hypo-thesis il-location ultra-location
Some of these compounds would be new; but all present distinct
meanings, and the synonisms of the three languages offer a choice of
sounds to express the same meaning; add to this, that in some
instances, usage has authorized the compounding an English root with
a Latin preposition, as in de-place, dis-place, re-place. This
example may suffice to show what the language would become, in
strength, beauty, variety, and every circumstance which gives
perfection to language, were it permitted freely to draw from all its
legitimate sources.
The second source of composition is of one family of roots with
another. The Greek avails itself of this most abundantly, and
beautifully. The English once did it freely, while in its
Anglo-Saxon form, _e. g. boc-craeft_, book-craft, learning,
_riht-Zeleaf-full_, right-belief-ful, orthodox. But it has lost by
desuetude much of this branch of composition, which it is desirable
however to resume.
If we wish to be assured from experiment of the effect of a
judicious spirit of Neology, look at the French language. Even
before the revolution, it was deemed much more copious than the
English; at a time, too, when they had an academy which endeavored to
arrest the progress of their language, by fixing it to a Dictionary,
out of which no word was ever to be sought, used, or tolerated. The
institution of parliamentary assemblies in 1789, for which their
language had no opposite terms or phrases, as having never before
needed them, first obliged them to adopt the Parliamentary vocabulary
of England; and other new circumstances called for corresponding new
words; until by the number of these adopted, and by the analogies for
adoption which they have legitimated, I think we may say with truth
that a Dictionaire Neologique of these would be half as large as the
dictionary of the academy; and that at this time it is the language
in which every shade of idea, distinctly perceived by the mind, may
be more exactly expressed, than in any language at this day spoken by
man. Yet I have no hesitation in saying that the English language is
founded on a broader base, native and adopted, and capable, with the
like freedom of employing its materials, of becoming superior to that
in copiousness and euphony. Not indeed by holding fast to Johnson's
Dictionary; not by raising a hue and cry against every word he has
not licensed; but by encouraging and welcoming new compositions of
its elements. Learn from Lye and Benson what the language would now
have been if restrained to their vocabularies. Its enlargement must
be the consequence, to a certain degree, of its transplantation from
the latitude of London into every climate of the globe; and the
greater the degree the more precious will it become as the organ of
the development of the human mind.
These are my visions on the improvement of the English language
by a free use of its faculties. To realize them would require a
course of time. The example of good writers, the approbation of men
of letters, the judgment of sound critics, and of none more than of
the Edinburgh Reviewers, would give it a beginning, and once begun,
its progress might be as rapid as it has been in France, where we see
what a period of only twenty years has effected. Under the auspices
of British science and example it might commence with hope. But the
dread of innovation there, and especially of any example set by
France, has, I fear, palsied the spirit of improvement.Here, where
all is new, no innovation is feared which offersgood. But we have no
distinct class of literati in our country. Every man is engaged in
some industrious pursuit, and science is but a secondary occupation,
always subordinate to the main business of his life. Few therefore
of those who are qualified, have leisure to write. In time it will
be otherwise. In the meanwhile, necessity obliges us to neologize.
And should the language of England continue stationary, we shall
probably enlarge our employment of it, until its new character may
separate it in name as well as in power, from the mother-tongue.
Although the copiousness of a language may not in strictness
make a part of its grammar, yet it cannot be deemed foreign to a
general course of lectures on its structure and character; and the
subject having been presented to my mind by the occasion of your
letter, I have indulged myself in its speculation, and hazarded to
you what has occurred, with the assurance of my great respect.
THE CODE OF JESUS
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Oct. 12, 1813_
DEAR SIR -- Since mine of Aug. 22. I have recieved your favors
of Aug. 16. Sep. 2. 14. 15. and -- and Mrs. Adams's of Sep. 20. I
now send you, according to your request a copy of the Syllabus. To
fill up this skeleton with arteries, with veins, with nerves, muscles
and flesh, is really beyond my time and information. Whoever could
undertake it would find great aid in Enfield's judicious abridgment
of Brucker's history of Philosophy, in which he has reduced 5. or 6.
quarto vols. of 1000. pages each of Latin closely printed, to two
moderate 8 vos. of English, open, type.
To compare the morals of the old, with those of the new
testament, would require an attentive study of the former, a search
thro' all it's books for it's precepts, and through all it's history
for it's practices, and the principles they prove. Ascommentaries
too on these, the philosophy of the Hebrews must be enquired into,
their Mishna, their Gemara, Cabbala, Jezirah, Sohar, Cosri, and their
Talmud must be examined and understood, in order to do them full
justice. Brucker, it should seem, has gone deeply into these
Repositories of their ethics, and Enfield, his epitomiser, concludes
in these words. `Ethics were so little studied among the Jews, that,
in their whole compilation called the Talmud, there is only one
treatise on moral subjects. Their books of Morals chiefly consisted
in a minute enumeration of duties. From the law of Moses were
deduced 613. precepts, which were divided into two classes,
affirmative and negative, 248 in the former, and 365 in the latter.
It may serve to give the reader some idea of the low state of moral
philosophy among the Jews in the Middle age, to add, that of the 248.
affirmative precepts, only 3. were considered as obligatory upon
women; and that, in order to obtain salvation, it was judged
sufficient to fulfill any one single law in the hour of death; the
observance of the rest being deemed necessary, only to increase the
felicity of the future life. What a wretched depravity of sentiment
and manners must have prevailed before such corrupt maxims could have
obtained credit! It is impossible to collect from these writings a
consistent series of moral Doctrine.' Enfield, B. 4. chap. 3. It was
the reformation of this `wretched depravity' of morals which Jesus
undertook. In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we
should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have
been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms,
as instruments of riches and power to them. We must dismiss the
Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the
Eclectics the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and
emanations, their Logos and Demi-urgos, Aeons and Daemons male and
female, with a long train of Etc. Etc. Etc. or, shall I say at once,
of Nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists,
select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the
Amphibologisms into which they have been led by forgetting often, or
not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own
misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others
what they had not understood themselves. There will be found
remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has
ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own
use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and
arranging, the matter which is evidently his, andwhich is as easily
distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.The result is an 8 vo. of
46. pages of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were
professed and acted on by the _unlettered_ apostles, the Apostolic
fathers, and the Christians of the 1st. century. Their Platonising
successors indeed, in after times, in order to legitimate the
corruptions which they had incorporated into the doctrines of Jesus,
found it necessary to disavow the primitive Christians, who had taken
their principles from the mouth of Jesus himself, of his Apostles,
and the Fathers cotemporary with them. They excommunicated their
followers as heretics, branding them with the opprobrious name of
Ebionites or Beggars.
For a comparison of the Graecian philosophy with that of Jesus,
materials might be largely drawn from the same source. Enfield gives
a history, and detailed account of the opinions and principles of the
different sects. These relate to
the gods, their natures, grades, places and powers;
the demi-gods and daemons, and their agency with man;
the Universe, it's structure, extent, production and duration;
the origin of things from the elements of fire, water, air and
earth;
the human soul, it's essence and derivation;
the summum bonum and finis bonorum; with a thousand idle dreams
and fancies on these and other subjects the knolege of which is
withheld from man, leaving but a short chapter for his moral duties,
and the principal section of that given to what he owes himself, to
precepts for rendering him impassible, and unassailable by the evils
of life, and for preserving his mind in a state of constant serenity.
Such a canvas is too broad for the age of seventy, and
especially of one whose chief occupations have been in the practical
business of life. We must leave therefore to others, younger and
more learned than we are, to prepare this euthanasia for Platonic
Christianity, and it's restoration to the primitive simplicity of
it's founder. I think you give a just outline of the theism of the
three religions when you say that the principle of the Hebrew was the
fear, of the Gentile the honor, and of the Christian the love of God.
An expression in your letter of Sep. 14. that `the human
understanding is a revelation from it's maker' gives the best
solution, that I believe can be given, of the question, What did
Socrates mean by his Daemon? He was too wise to believe, and too
honest to pretend that he had real and familiar converse with a
superior and invisible being. He probably considered the suggestions
of his conscience, or reason, as revelations, or inspirations from
the Supreme mind, bestowed, on important occasions, by a special
superintending providence.
I acknolege all the merit of the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter,
which you ascribe to it. It is as highly sublime as a chaste and
correct imagination can permit itself to go. Yet in the
contemplation of a being so superlative, the hyperbolic flights of
the Psalmist may often be followed with approbation, even with
rapture; and I have no hesitation in giving him the palm over all the
Hymnists of every language, and of every time. Turn to the 148th.
psalm, in Brady and Tate's version. Have such conceptions been ever
before expressed? Their version of the 15th. psalm is more to be
esteemed for it's pithiness, than it's poetry. Even Sternhold, the
leaden Sternhold, kindles, in a single instance, with the sublimity
of his original, and expresses the majesty of God descending on the
earth, in terms not unworthy of the subject.
'The Lord descended from And bowed the heav'ns most
above high;
And underneath his feet he cast The darkness of the sky.
On Cherubim and Seraphim Full royally he rode;
And on the wings of mighty Came flying all abroad.'
winds Psalm xviii. 9. 10.
The Latin versions of this passage by Buchanan and by Johnston,
are but mediocres. But the Greek of Duport is worthy of quotation.
{Oyranon agklinas katebe ypo possi d' eoisin
Achlys amphi melaina chythe kai nyx erebenne.
Rimpha potato Cheroybo ocheymenos, osper eph' ippo.
Iptato de pterygessi polyplagktoy anemoio.}
The best collection of these psalms is that of the Octagonian
dissenters of Liverpool, in their printed Form of prayer; but they
are not always the best versions. Indeed bad is the best of the
English versions; not a ray of poetical genius having ever been
employed on them. And how much depends on this may be seen by
comparing Brady and Tate's XVth. psalm with Blacklock's Justum et
tenacem propositi virum ["a man just and steadfast of purpose"] of
Horace, quoted in Hume's history, Car. 2. ch. 65. A translation of
David in this style, or in that of Pompei's Cleanthes, might give us
some idea of the merit of the original. The character too of the
poetry of these hymns is singular to us. Written in monostichs, each
divided into strophe and antistrophe, the sentiment of the 1st.
member responded with amplification or antithesis in the second.
On the subject of the Postscript of yours of Aug. 16. and of
Mrs. Adams's letter, I am silent. I know the depth of the affliction
it has caused, and can sympathise with it the more sensibly, inasmuch
as there is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those
dear to us, which experience has not taught me to estimate. I have
ever found time and silence the only medecine, and these but assuage,
they never can suppress, the deep-drawn sigh which recollection for
ever brings up, until recollection and life are extinguished
together. Ever affectionately yours
P. S. Your's of Sep -- just recieved
THE NATURAL ARISTOCRACY
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Oct. 28, 1813_
DEAR SIR -- According to the reservation between us, of taking
up one of the subjects of our correspondence at a time, I turn to
your letters of Aug. 16. and Sep. 2.
The passage you quote from Theognis, I think has an Ethical,
rather than a political object. The whole piece is a moral
_exhortation_, {parainesis}, and this passage particularly seems to
be a reproof to man, who, while with his domestic animals he is
curious to improve the race by employing always the finest male, pays
no attention to the improvement of his own race, but intermarries
with the vicious, the ugly, or the old, for considerations of wealth
or ambition. It is in conformity with the principle adopted
afterwards by the Pythagoreans, and expressed by Ocellus in another
form. {Peri de tes ek ton allelon anthropon geneseos} etc. -- {oych
edones eneka e} {mixis}. Which, as literally as intelligibility will
admit, may be thus translated. `Concerning the interprocreation of
men, how, and of whom it shall be, in a perfect manner, and according
to the laws of modesty and sanctity, conjointly, this is what I think
right. First to lay it down that we do not commix for the sake of
pleasure, but of the procreation of children. For the powers, the
organs and desires for coition have not been given by god to man for
the sake of pleasure, but for the procreation of the race. For as it
were incongruous for a mortal born to partake of divine life, the
immortality of the race being taken away, god fulfilled the purpose
by making the generations uninterrupted and continuous. This
therefore we are especially to lay down as a principle, that coition
is not for the sake of pleasure.' But Nature, not trusting to this
moral and abstract motive, seems to have provided more securely for
the perpetuation of the species by making it the effect of the
oestrum implanted in the constitution of both sexes. And not only
has the commerce of love been indulged on this unhallowed impulse,
but made subservient also to wealth and ambition by marriages without
regard to the beauty, the healthiness, the understanding, or virtue
of the subject from which we are to breed. The selecting the best
male for a Haram of well chosen females also, which Theognis seems to
recommend from the example of our sheep and asses, would doubtless
improve the human, as it does the brute animal, and produce a race of
veritable {aristoi} ["aristocrats"]. For experience proves that the
moral and physical qualities of man, whether good or evil, are
transmissible in a certain degree from father to son. But I suspect
that the equal rights of men will rise up against this privileged
Solomon, and oblige us to continue acquiescence under the {'Amayrosis
geneos aston} ["the degeneration of the race of men"] which Theognis
complains of, and to content ourselves with the accidental aristoi
produced by the fortuitous concourse of breeders. For I agree with
you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of
this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among
the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak
as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like
beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become
but an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is also an artificial
aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or
talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The
natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature
for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And
indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man
for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom
enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say
that that form of government is the best which provides the most
effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the
offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous
ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent
it's ascendancy. On the question, What is the best provision, you
and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free
exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging it's errors.
_You_ think it best to put the Pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber
of legislation where they may be hindered from doing mischief by
their coordinate branches, and where also they may be a protection to
wealth against the Agrarian and plundering enterprises of the
Majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to
prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and
increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the coordinate
branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the
coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively.
Of this a cabal in the Senate of the U.S. has furnished many proofs.
Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because
enough of these will find their way into every branch of the
legislation to protect themselves. From 15. to 20. legislatures of
our own, in action for 30. years past, have proved that no fears of
an equalisation of property are to be apprehended from them.
_I_ think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our
constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and
separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from
the chaff. In general they will elect the real good and wise. In
some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in
sufficient degree to endanger the society.
It is probable that our difference of opinion may in some
measure be produced by a difference of character in those among whom
we live. From what I have seen of Massachusets and Connecticut
myself, and still more from what I have heard, and the character
given of the former by yourself, [vol. 1. pa. 111.] who know them so
much better, there seems to be in those two states a traditionary
reverence for certain families, which has rendered the offices of the
government nearly hereditary in those families. I presume that from
an early period of your history, members of these families happening
to possess virtue and talents, have honestly exercised them for the
good of the people, and by their services have endeared their names
to them.
In coupling Connecticut with you, I mean it politically only,
not morally. For having made the Bible the Common law of their land
they seem to have modelled their morality on the story of Jacob and
Laban. But altho' this hereditary succession to office with you may
in some degree be founded in real family merit, yet in a much higher
degree it has proceeded from your strict alliance of church and
state. These families are canonised in the eyes of the people on the
common principle `you tickle me, and I will tickle you.' In Virginia
we have nothing of this. Our clergy, before the revolution, having
been secured against rivalship by fixed salaries, did not give
themselves the trouble of acquiring influence over the people. Of
wealth, there were great accumulations in particular families, handed
down from generation to generation under the English law of entails.
But the only object of ambition for the wealthy was a seat in the
king's council. All their court then was paid to the crown and it's
creatures; and they Philipised in all collisions between the king and
people. Hence they were unpopular; and that unpopularity continues
attached to their names. A Randolph, a Carter, or a Burwell must
have great personal superiority over a common competitor to be
elected by the people, even at this day.
At the first session of our legislature after the Declaration
of Independance, we passed a law abolishing entails. And this was
followed by one abolishing the privilege of Primogeniture, and
dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children, or
other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to
the root of Pseudo-aristocracy. And had another which I prepared
been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been compleat.
It was a Bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This
proposed to divide every county into wards of 5. or 6. miles square,
like your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for
reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual
selection of the best subjects from these schools who might recieve
at the public expence a higher degree of education at a district
school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of
the most promising subjects to be compleated at an University, where
all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would
thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and
compleatly prepared by education for defeating the competition of
wealth and birth for public trusts.
My proposition had for a further object to impart to these
wards those portions of self-government for which they are best
qualified, by confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads,
police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of
justice in small cases, elementary exercises of militia, in short, to
have made them little republics, with a Warden at the head of each,
for all those concerns which, being under their eye, they would
better manage than the larger republics of the county or state. A
general call of ward-meetings by their Wardens on the same day thro'
the state would at any time produce the genuine sense of the people
on any required point, and would enable the state to act in mass, as
your people have so often done, and with so much effect, by their
town meetings. The law for religious freedom, which made a part of
this system, having put down the aristocracy of the clergy, and
restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind, and those of entails
and descents nurturing an equality of condition among them, this on
Education would have raised the mass of the people to the high ground
of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly
government; and would have compleated the great object of qualifying
them to select the veritable aristoi, for the trusts of government,
to the exclusion of the Pseudalists: and the same Theognis who has
furnished the epigraphs of your two letters assures us that
{`oydemian po Kyrn agathoi polin olesan andres,} ["Curnis, good men
have never harmed any city"]'. Altho' this law has not yet been
acted on but in a small and inefficient degree, it is still
considered as before the legislature, with other bills of the revised
code, not yet taken up, and I have great hope that some patriotic
spirit will, at a favorable moment, call it up, and make it the
key-stone of the arch of our government.
With respect to Aristocracy, we should further consider that,
before the establishment of the American states, nothing was known to
History but the Man of the old world, crouded within limits either
small or overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that situation
generates. A government adapted to such men would be one thing; but
a very different one that for the Man of these states. Here every
one may have land to labor for himself if he chuses; or, preferring
the exercise of any other industry, may exact for it such
compensation as not only to afford a comfortable subsistence, but
where-with to provide for a cessation from labor in old age. Every
one, by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested
in the support of law and order. And such men maysafely and
advantageously reserve to themselves a wholsome controul over their
public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which in the hands of the
Canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the
demolition and destruction of every thing public and private. The
history of the last 25. years of France, and of the last 40. years in
America, nay of it's last 200. years, proves the truth of both parts
of this observation.
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the
mind of Man. Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and
reflect, and the American example had kindled feelings of right in
the people. An insurrection has consequently begun, of science,
talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into
contempt. It has failed in it's first effort, because the mobs of
the cities, the instrument used for it's accomplishment, debased by
ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational
action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first
catastrophe. Science is progressive, and talents and enterprize on
the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more
governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank,
and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into
insignificance, even there. This however we have no right to meddle
with. It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition of our
own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for the
direction of their government, with a recurrence of elections at such
short periods as will enable them to displace an unfaithful servant
before the mischief he meditates may be irremediable.
I have thus stated my opinion on a point on which we differ,
not with a view to controversy, for we are both too old to change
opinions which are the result of a long life of inquiry and
reflection; but on the suggestion of a former letter of yours, that
we ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.
We acted in perfect harmony thro' a long and perilous contest for our
liberty and independance. A constitution has been acquired which,
tho neither of us think perfect, yet both consider as competent to
render our fellow-citizens the happiest and the securest on whom the
sun has ever shone. If we do not think exactly alike as to it's
imperfections, it matters little to our country which, after devoting
to it long lives of disinterested labor, we have delivered over to
our successors in life, who will be able to take care of it, and of
themselves.
Of the pamphlet on aristocracy which has been sent to you, or
who may be it's author, I have heard nothing but thro' your letter.
If the person you suspect it may be known from the quaint, mystical
and hyperbolical ideas, involved in affected, new-fangled and
pedantic terms, which stamp his writings. Whatever it be, I hope
your quiet is not to be affected at this day by the rudeness of
intemperance of scribblers; but that you may continue in tranquility
to live and to rejoice in the prosperity of our country until it
shall be your own wish to take your seat among the Aristoi who have
gone beforeyou. Ever and affectionately yours.
P. S. Can you assist my memory on the enquiries of my letter of
Aug. 22.?
"A HEMISPHERE TO ITSELF"
_To Alexander von Humboldt_
_December 6, 1813_
MY DEAR FRIEND AND BARON, -- I have to acknowledge your two
letters of December 20 and 26, 1811, by Mr. Correa, and am first to
thank you for making me acquainted with that most excellent
character. He was so kind as to visit me at Monticello, and I found
him one of the most learned and amiable of men. It was a subject of
deep regret to separate from so much worth in the moment of its
becoming known to us.
The livraison of your astronomical observations, and the 6th
and 7th on the subject of New Spain, with the corresponding atlasses,
are duly received, as had been the preceding cahiers. For these
treasures of a learning so interesting to us, accept my sincere
thanks. I think it most fortunate that your travels in those
countries were so timed as to make them known to the world in the
moment they were about to become actors on its stage. That they will
throw off their European dependence I have no doubt; but in what kind
of government their revolution will end I am not so certain.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of
ignorance, of which their civil as well as religious leaders will
always avail themselves for their own purposes. The vicinity of New
Spain to the United States, and their consequent intercourse, may
furnish schools for the higher, and example for the lower classes of
their citizens. And Mexico, where we learn from you that men of
science are not wanting, may revolutionize itself under better
auspices than the Southern provinces. These last, I fear, must end
in military despotisms. The different casts of their inhabitants,
their mutual hatreds and jealousies, their profound ignorance and
bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the
instrument of enslaving others. But of all this you can best judge,
for in truth we have little knowledge of them to be depended on, but
through you. But in whatever governments they end they will be
_American_ governments, no longer to be involved in the never-ceasing
broils of Europe. The European nations constitute a separate
division of the globe; their localities make them part of a distinct
system; they have a set of interests of their own in which it is our
business never to engage ourselves. America has a hemisphere to
itself. It must have its separate system of interests, which must
not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which
nature has placed the American continent, should so far avail it that
no spark of war kindled in the other quarters of the globe should be
wafted across the wide oceans which separate us from them. And it
will be so. In fifty years more the United States alone will contain
fifty millions of inhabitants, and fifty years are soon gone over.
The peace of 1763 is within that period. I was then twenty years
old, and of course remember well all the transactions of the war
preceding it. And you will live to see the epoch now equally ahead
of us; and the numbers which will then be spread over the other parts
of the American hemisphere, catching long before that the principles
of our portion of it, and concurring with us in the maintenance of
the same system. You see how readily we run into ages beyond the
grave; and even those of us to whom that grave is already opening its
quiet bosom. I am anticipating events of which you will be the
bearer to me in the Elsyian fields fifty years hence.
You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here
for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities.
We spared nothing to keep them at peace with one another. To teach
them agriculture and the rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to
encourage industry by establishing among them separate property. In
this way they would have been enabled to subsist and multiply on a
moderate scale of landed possession. They would have mixed their
blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within
no distant period of time. On the commencement of our present war,
we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the
interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our
labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have
seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to
take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have
committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by
surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or
drive them to new seats beyond our reach. Already we have driven
their patrons and seducers into Montreal, and the opening season will
force them to their last refuge, the walls of Quebec. We have cut
off all possibility of intercourse and of mutual aid, and may pursue
at our leisure whatever plan we find necessary to secure ourselves
against the future effects of their savage and ruthless warfare. The
confirmed brutalization, if not the extermination of this race in our
America, is therefore to form an additional chapter in the English
history of the same colored man in Asia, and of the brethren of their
own color in Ireland, and wherever else Anglo-mercantile cupidity can
find a two-penny interest in deluging the earth with human blood.
But let us turn from the loathsome contemplation of the degrading
effects of commercial avarice.
That their Arrowsmith should have stolen your Map of Mexico,
was in the piratical spirit of his country. But I should be
sincerely sorry if our Pike has made an ungenerous use of your candid
communications here; and the more so as he died in the arms of
victory gained over the enemies of his country. Whatever he did was
on a principle of enlarging knowledge, and not for filthy shillings
and pence of which he made none from that work. If what he has
borrowed has any effect it will be to excite an appeal in his readers
from his defective information to the copious volumes of it with
which you have enriched the world. I am sorry he omitted even to
acknowledge the source of his information. It has been an oversight,
and not at all in the spirit of his generous nature. Let me solicit
your forgiveness then of a deceased hero, of an honest and zealous
patriot, who lived and died for his country.
You will find it inconceivable that Lewis's journey to the
Pacific should not yet have appeared; nor is it in my power to tell
you the reason. The measures taken by his surviving companion,
Clarke, for the publication, have not answered our wishes in point of
despatch. I think, however, from what I have heard, that the mere
journal will be out within a few weeks in two volumes 8vo. These I
will take care to send you with the tobacco seed you desired, if it
be possible for them to escape the thousand ships of our enemies
spread over the ocean. The botanical and zoological discoveries of
Lewis will probably experience greater delay, and become known to the
world through other channels before that volume will be ready. The
Atlas, I believe, waits on the leisure of the engraver.
Although I do not know whether you are now at Paris or ranging
the regions of Asia to acquire more knowledge for the use of men, I
cannot deny myself the gratification of an endeavor to recall myself
to your recollection, and of assuring you of my constant attachment,
and of renewing to you the just tribute of my affectionate esteem and
high respect and consideration.
WAR AND BOTANICAL EXCHANGES
_To Madame de Tesse_
_December 8, 1813_
While at war, my dear Madam and friend, with the leviathan of
the ocean, there is little hope of a letter escaping his thousand
ships; yet I cannot permit myself longer to withhold the
acknowledgment of your letter of June 28 of the last year, with which
came the memoirs of the Margrave of Bareuth. I am much indebted to
you for this singular morsel of history which has given us a certain
view of kings, queens and princes, disrobed of their formalities. It
is a peep into the state of the Egyptian god Apis. It would not be
easy to find grosser manners, coarser vices, or more meanness in the
poorest huts of our peasantry. The princess shows herself the
legitimate sister of Frederic, cynical, selfish, and without a heart.
Notwithstanding your wars with England, I presume you get the
publications of that country. The memoirs of Mrs. Clarke and of her
_darling_ prince, and the book emphatically so called, because it is
the Biblia Sacra Deorum et Dearum sub-coelestium, the Prince Regent,
his Princess and the minor deities of his sphere, form a worthy
sequel to the memoirs of Bareuth; instead of the vulgarity and penury
of the court of Berlin, giving us the vulgarity and profusion of that
of London, and the gross stupidity and profligacy of the latter, in
lieu of the genius and misanthropism of the former. The whole might
be published as a supplement of M. de Buffon, under the title of the
"Natural History of Kings and Princes," or as a separate work and
called "Medicine for Monarchists." The "Intercepted Letters," a later
English publication of great wit and humor, has put them to their
proper use by holding them up as butts for the ridicule and contempt
of mankind. Yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be
governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only a
fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them
a great and flourishing empire, added nine hundred millions sterling
to their debt, for which the fee simple of the whole island would not
sell, if offered farm by farm at public auction, and increased their
annual taxes from eight to seventy millions sterling, more than the
whole rent-roll of the island. What must be the dreary prospect from
the son when such a father is deplored as a national loss. But let
us drop these odious beings and pass to those of an higher order, the
plants of the field. I am afraid I have given you a great deal more
trouble than I intended by my inquiries for the Maronnier or Castanea
Sativa, of which I wished to possess my own country, without knowing
how rare its culture was even in yours. The two plants which your
researches have placed in your own garden, it will be all but
impossible to remove hither. The war renders their safe passage
across the Atlantic extremely precarious, and, if landed anywhere but
in the Chesapeake, the risk of the additional voyage along the coast
to Virginia, is still greater. Under these circumstances it is
better they should retain their present station, and compensate to
you the trouble they have cost you.
I learn with great pleasure the success of your new gardens at
Auenay. No occupation can be more delightful or useful. They will
have the merit of inducing you to forget those of Chaville. With the
botanical riches which you mention to have been derived to England
from New Holland, we are as yet unacquainted. Lewis's journey across
our continent to the Pacific has added a number of new plants to our
former stock. Some of them are curious, some ornamental, some
useful, and some may by culture be made acceptable to our tables. I
have growing, which I destine for you, a very handsome little shrub
of the size of a currant bush. Its beauty consists in a great
produce of berries of the size of currants, and literally as white as
snow, which remain on the bush through the winter, after its leaves
have fallen, and make it an object as singular as it is beautiful.
We call it the snow-berry bush, no botanical name being yet given to
it, but I do not know why we might not call it Chionicoccos, or
Kallicoccos. All Lewis's plants are growing in the garden of Mr.
McMahon, a gardener of Philadelphia, to whom I consigned them, and
from whom I shall have great pleasure, when peace is restored, in
ordering for you any of these or of our other indigenous plants. The
port of Philadelphia has great intercourse with Bordeaux and Nantes,
and some little perhaps with Havre. I was mortified not long since
by receiving a letter from a merchant in Bordeaux, apologizing for
having suffered a box of plants addressed by me to you, to get
accidentally covered in his warehouse by other objects, and to remain
three years undiscovered, when every thing in it was found to be
rotten. I have learned occasionally that others rotted in the
warehouses of the English pirates. We are now settling that account
with them. We have taken their Upper Canada and shall add the Lower
to it when the season will admit; and hope to remove them fully and
finally from our continent. And what they will feel more, for they
value their colonies only for the bales of cloth they take from them,
we have established manufactures, not only sufficient to supersede
our demand from them, but to rivalize them in foreign markets. But
for the course of our war I will refer you to M. de La Fayette, to
whom I state it more particularly.
Our friend Mr. Short is well. He makes Philadelphia his winter
quarters, and New York or the country, those of the summer. In his
fortune he is perfectly independent and at ease, and does not trouble
himself with the party politics of our country. Will you permit me
to place here for M. de Tesse the testimony of my high esteem and
respect, and accept for yourself an assurance of the warm
recollections I retain of your many civilities and courtesies to me,
and the homage of my constant and affectionate attachment and
respect.
THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON
_To Dr. Walter Jones_
_Monticello, January 2, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of November the 25th reached this place
December the 21st, having been near a month on the way. How this
could happen I know not, as we have two mails a week both from
Fredericksburg and Richmond. It found me just returned from a long
journey and absence, during which so much business had accumulated,
commanding the first attentions, that another week has been added to
the delay.
I deplore, with you, the putrid state into which our newspapers
have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit
of those who write for them; and I enclose you a recent sample, the
production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of
degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly
depraving the public taste, and lessening its relish for sound food.
As vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries, they
have rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting all title to belief.
That this has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and
malignity of party spirit, I agree with you; and I have read with
great pleasure the paper you enclosed me on that subject, which I now
return. It is at the same time a perfect model of the style of
discussion which candor and decency should observe, of the tone which
renders difference of opinion even amiable, and a succinct, correct,
and dispassionate history of the origin and progress of party among
us. It might be incorporated as it stands, and without changing a
word, into the history of the present epoch, and would give to
posterity a fairer view of the times than they will probably derive
from other sources. In reading it with great satisfaction, there was
but a single passage where I wished a little more development of a
very sound and catholic idea; a single intercalation to rest it
solidly on true bottom. It is near the end of the first page, where
you make a statement of genuine republican maxims; saying, "that the
people ought to possess as much political power as can possibly exist
with the order and security of society." Instead of this, I would
say, "that the people, being the only safe depository of power,
should exercise in person every function which their qualifications
enable them to exercise, consistently with the order and security of
society; that we now find them equal to the election of those who
shall be invested with their executive and legislative powers, and to
act themselves in the judiciary, as judges in questions of fact; that
the range of their powers ought to be enlarged," &c. This gives both
the reason and exemplification of the maxim you express, "that they
ought to possess as much political power," &c. I see nothing to
correct either in your facts or principles.
You say that in taking General Washington on your shoulders, to
bear him harmless through the federal coalition, you encounter a
perilous topic. I do not think so. You have given the genuine
history of the course of his mind through the trying scenes in which
it was engaged, and of the seductions by which it was deceived, but
not depraved. I think I knew General Washington intimately and
thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character, it
should be in terms like these.
His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very
first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a
Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever
sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention
or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of
his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where
hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly
no General ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if
deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan
was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment.
The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely
against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable
of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern.
Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never
acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely
weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going
through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity
was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no
motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being
able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the
words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally
high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and
habitual ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds,
he was most tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was
honorable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised
utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects and
all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its
affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him
a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine,
his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect
and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure
that could be seen on horseback. Although in the circle of his
friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free
share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above
mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of
words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was
unready, short and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather
diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by
conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading,
writing and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later
day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and
that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence
became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing his agricultural
proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the
whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in
few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did
nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to
place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have
merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the
singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country
successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its
independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a
government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled
down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the
laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which
the history of the world furnishes no other example.
How, then, can it be perilous for you to take such a man on
your shoulders? I am satisfied the great body of republicans think
of him as I do. We were, indeed, dissatisfied with him on his
ratification of the British treaty. But this was short lived. We
knew his honesty, the wiles with which he was encompassed, and that
age had already begun to relax the firmness of his purposes; and I am
convinced he is more deeply seated in the love and gratitude of the
republicans, than in the Pharisaical homage of the federal
monarchists. For he was no monarchist from preference of his
judgment. The soundness of that gave him correct views of the rights
of man, and his severe justice devoted him to them. He has often
declared to me that he considered our new constitution as an
experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with
what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he
was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would
lose the last drop of his blood in support of it. And these
declarations he repeated to me the oftener and more pointedly,
because he knew my suspicions of Colonel Hamilton's views, and
probably had heard from him the same declarations which I had, to
wit, "that the British constitution, with its unequal representation,
corruption and other existing abuses, was the most perfect government
which had ever been established on earth, and that a reformation of
those abuses would make it an impracticable government." I do believe
that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability
of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined
to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that
we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had
some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birth-days,
pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same
character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he
believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as
might be to the public mind.
These are my opinions of General Washington, which I would
vouch at the judgment seat of God, having been formed on an
acquaintance of thirty years. I served with him in the Virginia
legislature from 1769 to the Revolutionary war, and again, a short
time in Congress, until he left us to take command of the army.
During the war and after it we corresponded occasionally, and in the
four years of my continuance in the office of Secretary of State, our
intercourse was daily, confidential and cordial. After I retired
from that office, great and malignant pains were taken by our federal
monarchists, and not entirely without effect, to make him view me as
a theorist, holding French principles of government, which would lead
infallibly to licentiousness and anarchy. And to this he listened
the more easily, from my known disapprobation of the British treaty.
I never saw him afterwards, or these malignant insinuations should
have been dissipated before his just judgment, as mists before the
sun. I felt on his death, with my countrymen, that "verily a great
man hath fallen this day in Israel."
More time and recollection would enable me to add many other
traits of his character; but why add them to you who knew him well?
And I cannot justify to myself a longer detention of your paper.
_Vale, proprieque tuum, me esse tibi persuadeas_.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE COMMON LAW
_To Dr. Thomas Cooper_
_Monticello, February 10, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- In my letter of January 16, I promised you a
sample from my common-place book, of the pious disposition of the
English judges, to connive at the frauds of the clergy, a disposition
which has even rendered them faithful allies in practice. When I was
a student of the law, now half a century ago, after getting through
Coke Littleton, whose matter cannot be abridged, I was in the habit
of abridging and common-placing what I read meriting it, and of
sometimes mixing my own reflections on the subject. I now enclose
you the extract from these entries which I promised. They were
written at a time of life when I was bold in the pursuit of
knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever
results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their
way. This must be the apology, if you find the conclusions bolder
than historical facts and principles will warrant. Accept with them
the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
_Common-place Book._
873. In Quare imp. in C. B. 34, H. 6, fo. 38, the def. Br. of
Lincoln pleads that the church of the pl. became void by the death of
the incumbent, that the pl. and J. S. each pretending a right,
presented two several clerks; that the church being thus rendered
litigious, he was not obliged, by the _Ecclesiastical law_ to admit
either, until an inquisition de jure patronatus, in the
ecclesiastical court: that, by the same law, this inquisition was to
be at the suit of either claimant, and was not _ex-officio_ to be
instituted by the bishop, and at his proper costs; that neither party
had desired such an inquisition; that six months passed whereon it
belonged to him of right to present as on a lapse, which he had done.
The pl. demurred. A question was, How far the _Ecclesiastical law_
was to be respected in this matter by the common law court? and
Prisot C. 3, in the course of his argument uses this expression, "A
tiels leis que ils de seint eglise ont en _ancien scripture_, covient
a nous a donner credence, car ces common ley sur quel touts manners
leis sont fondes: et auxy, sin, nous sumus obliges de conustre nostre
ley; et, sin, si poit apperer or a nous que lievesque ad fait comme
un ordinary fera en tiel cas, adong nous devons ces adjuger bon
autrement nemy," &c. It does not appear that judgment was given. Y.
B. ubi supra. S. C. Fitzh. abr. Qu. imp. 89. Bro. abr. Qu. imp. 12.
Finch mistakes this in the following manner: "To such laws of the
church as have warrant in _Holy Scripture_, our law giveth credence,"
and cites the above case, and the words of Prisot on the margin.
Finch's law. B. 1, ch. 3, published 1613. Here we find "ancien
scripture" converted into "Holy Scripture," whereas it can only mean
the _ancient written_ laws of the church. It cannot mean the
Scriptures, 1, because the "ancien scripture" must then be understood
to mean the "Old Testament" or Bible, in opposition to the "New
Testament," and to the exclusion of that, which would be absurd and
contrary to the wish of those |P1323|p1 who cite this passage to
prove that the Scriptures, or Christianity, is a part of the common
law. 2. Because Prisot says, "Ceo [est] common ley, sur quel touts
manners leis sont fondes." Now, it is true that the ecclesiastical
law, so far as admitted in England, derives its authority from the
common law. But it would not be true that the Scriptures so derive
their authority. 3. The whole case and arguments show that the
question was how far the Ecclesiastical law in general should be
respected in a common law court. And in Bro. abr. of this case,
Littleton says, "Les juges del common ley prendra conusans quid est
_lax ecclesiae_, vel admiralitatis, et trujus modi." 4. Because the
particular part of the Ecclesiastical law then in question, to wit,
the right of the patron to present to his advowson, was not founded
on the law of God, but subject to the modification of the lawgiver,
and so could not introduce any such general position as Finch
pretends. Yet Wingate [in 1658] thinks proper to erect this false
quotation into a maxim of the common law, expressing it in the very
words of Finch, but citing Prisot, wing. max. 3. Next comes
Sheppard, [in 1675,] who states it in the same words of Finch, and
quotes the Year-Book, Finch and Wingate. 3. Shepp. abr. tit.
Religion. In the case of the King _v_. Taylor, Sir Matthew Hale lays
it down in these words, "Christianity is parcel of the laws of
England." 1 Ventr. 293, 3 Keb. 607. But he quotes no authority,
resting it on his own, which was good in all cases in which his mind
received no bias from his bigotry, his superstitions, his visions
above sorceries, demons, &c. The power of these over him is
exemplified in his hanging of the witches. So strong was this
doctrine become in 1728, by additions and repetitions from one
another, that in the case of the King _v_. Woolston, the court would
not suffer it to be debated, whether to write against Christianity
was punishable in the temporal courts at common law, saying it had
been so settled in Taylor's case, ante 2, stra. 834; therefore, Wood,
in his Institute, lays it down that all blasphemy and profaneness are
offences by the _common law_, and cites Strange ubi supra. Wood 409.
And Blackstone [about 1763] repeats, in the words of Sir Matthew
Hale, that "Christianity is part of the laws of England," citing
Ventris and Strange ubi supra. 4. Blackst. 59. Lord Mansfield
qualifies it a little by saying that "The essential |P1324|p1
principles of revealed religion are part of the common law." In the
case of the Chamberlain of London _v_. Evans, 1767. But he cities no
authority, and leaves us at our peril to find out what, in the
opinion of the judge, and according to the measure of his foot or his
faith, are those essential principles of revealed religion obligatory
on us as a part of the common law.
Thus we find this string of authorities, when examined to the
beginning, all hanging on the same hook, a perverted expression of
Prisot's, or on one another, or nobody. Thus Finch quotes Prisot;
Wingate also; Sheppard quotes Prisot, Finch and Wingate; Hale cites
nobody; the court in Woolston's case cite Hale; Wood cites Woolston's
case; Blackstone that and Hale; and Lord Mansfield, like Hale,
ventures it on his own authority. In the earlier ages of the law, as
in the year-books, for instance, we do not expect much recurrence to
authorities by the judges, because in those days there were few or
none such made public. But in latter times we take no judge's word
for what the law is, further than he is warranted by the authorities
he appeals to. His decision may bind the unfortunate individual who
happens to be the particular subject of it; but it cannot alter the
law. Though the common law may be termed "Lex non Scripta," yet the
same Hale tells us "when I call those parts of our laws Leges non
Scriptae, I do not mean as if those laws were only oral, or
communicated from the former ages to the latter merely by word. For
all those laws have their several monuments in writing, whereby they
are transferred from one age to another, and without which they would
soon lose all kind of certainty. They are for the most part extant
in records of pleas, proceedings, and judgments, in books of reports
and judicial decisions, in tractates of learned men's arguments and
opinions, preserved from ancient times and still extant in writing."
Hale's H. c. d. 22. Authorities for what is common law may therefore
be as well cited, as for any part of the Lex Scripta, and there is no
better instance of the necessity of holding the judges and writers to
a declaration of their authorities than the present; where we detect
them endeavoring to make law where they found none, and to submit us
at one stroke to a whole system, no particle of which has its
foundation in the common law. For we know that the common law is
that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their
settlement in England, and altered from time to time by proper
legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna Charta,
which terminates the period of the common law, or lex non scripta,
and commences that of the statute law, or Lex Scripta. This
settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But
Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the
conversion of the first christian king of the Heptarchy having taken
place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here,
then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law
was in existence, and Christianity no part of it. If it ever was
adopted, therefore, into the common law, it must have been between
the introduction of Christianity and the date of the Magna Charta.
But of the laws of this period we have a tolerable collection by
Lambard and Wilkins, probably not perfect, but neither very
defective; and if any one chooses to build a doctrine on any law of
that period, supposed to have been lost, it is incumbent on him to
prove it to have existed, and what were its contents. These were so
far alterations of the common law, and became themselves a part of
it. But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the common
law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the
introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion
could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet
Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close
of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of
adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges
and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a
part of the common law. Another cogent proof of this truth is drawn
from the silence of certain writers on the common law. Bracton gives
us a very complete and scientific treatise of the whole body of the
common law. He wrote this about the close of the reign of Henry
III., a very few years after the date of the Magna Charta. We
consider this book as the more valuable, as it was written about fore
gives us the former in its ultimate state. Bracton, too, was an
ecclesiastic, and would certainly not have failed to inform us of the
adoption of Christianity as a part of the common law, had any such
adoption ever taken place. But no word of his, which intimates
anything like it, has ever been cited. Fleta and Britton, who wrote
in the succeeding reign (of Edward I.), are equally silent. So also
is Glanvil, an earlier writer than any of them, (viz.: temp. H. 2,)
but his subject perhaps might not have led him to mention it.
Justice Fortescue Aland, who possessed more Saxon learning than all
the judges and writers before mentioned put together, places this
subject on more limited ground. Speaking of the laws of the Saxon
kings, he says, "the ten commandments were made part of their laws,
and consequently were _once_ part of the law of England; so that to
break any of the ten commandments was then esteemed a breach of the
common law, of England; and why it is not so now, perhaps it may be
difficult to give a good reason." Preface to Fortescue Aland's
reports, xvii. Had he proposed to state with more minuteness how
much of the scriptures had been made a part of the common law, he
might have added that in the laws of Alfred, where he found the ten
commandments, two or three other chapters of Exodus are copied almost
verbatim. But the adoption of a part proves rather a rejection of
the rest, as municipal law. We might as well say that the Newtonian
system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the
Christian religion is. The truth is that Christianity and
Newtonianism being reason and verity itself, in the opinion of all
but infidels and Cartesians, they are protected under the wings of
the common law from the dominion of other sects, but not erected into
dominion over them. An eminent Spanish physician affirmed that the
lancet had slain more men than the sword. Doctor Sangrado, on the
contrary, affirmed that with plentiful bleedings, and draughts of
warm water, every disease was to be cured. The common law protects
both opinions, but enacts neither into law. See post. 879.
879. Howard, in his Contumes Anglo-Normandes, 1.87, notices the
falsification of the laws of Alfred, by prefixing to them four
chapters of the Jewish law, to wit: the 20th, 21st, 22d and 23d
chapters of Exodus, to which he might have added the 15th chapter of
the Acts of the Apostles, v. 23, and precepts from other parts of the
scripture. These he calls a _hors d'oeuvre_ of some pious copyist.
This awkward monkish fabrication makes the preface to Alfred's
genuine laws stand in the body of the work, and the very words of
Alfred himself prove the fraud; for he declares, in that preface,
that he has collected these laws from those of Ina, of Offa,
Aethelbert and his ancestors, saying nothing of any of them being
taken from the Scriptures. It is still more certainly proved by the
inconsistencies it occasions. For example, the Jewish legislator
Exodus xxi. 12, 13, 14, (copied by the Pseudo Alfred [symbol omitted]
13,) makes murder, with the Jews, death. But Alfred himself, Le.
xxvi., punishes it by a fine only, called a Weregild, proportioned to
the condition of the person killed. It is remarkable that Hume
(append. 1 to his History) examining this article of the laws of
Alfred, without perceiving the fraud, puzzles himself with accounting
for the inconsistency it had introduced. To strike a pregnant woman
so that she die is death by Exodus, xxi. 22, 23, and Pseud. Alfr. 18;
but by the laws of Alfred ix., pays a Weregild for both woman and
child. To smite out an eye, or a tooth, Exod. xxi. 24-27. Pseud.
Alfr. 19, 20, if of a servant by his master, is freedom to the
servant; in every other case retaliation. But by Alfr. Le. xl. a
fixed indemnification is paid. Theft of an ox, or a sheep, by the
Jewish law, Exod. xxii. 1, was repaid five-fold for the ox and
four-fold for the sheep; by the Pseudograph 24, the ox double, the
sheep four-fold; but by Alfred Le. xvi., he who stole a cow and a
calf was to repay the worth of the cow and 401 for the calf. Goring
by an ox was the death of the ox, and the flesh not to be eaten.
Exod. xxi. 28. Pseud. Alfr. 21 by Alfred Le. xxiv., the wounded
person had the ox. The Pseudograph makes municipal laws of the ten
commandments, 1-10, regulates concubinage, 12, makes it death to
strike or to curse father or mother, 14, 15, gives an eye for an eye,
tooth for a tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning,
wound for wound, strife for strife, 19; sells the thief to repay his
theft, 24; obliges the fornicator to marry the woman he has lain
with, 29; forbids interest on money, 35; makes the laws of bailment,
28, very different from what Lord Holt delivers in Coggs _v_.
Bernard, ante 92, and what Sir William Jones tells us they were; and
punishes witchcraft with death, 30, which Sir Matthew Hale, 1 H. P.
C. B. 1, ch. 33, declares was not a felony before the Stat. 1, Jac.
12. It was under that statute, and not this forgery, that he hung
Rose Cullendar and Amy Duny, 16 Car. 2, (1662,) on whose trial he
declared "that there were such creatures as witches he made no doubt
at all; for first the Scripture had affirmed so much, secondly the
wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons, and
such hath been the judgment of this kingdom, as appears by that act
of Parliament which hath provided punishment proportionable to the
quality of the offence." And we must certainly allow greater weight
to this position that "it was no felony till James' Statute," laid
down deliberately in his H. P. C., a work which he wrote to be
printed, finished, and transcribed for the press in his life time,
than to the hasty scripture that "at _common law_ witchcraft was
punished with death as heresy, by writ de Heretico Comburendo" in his
Methodical Summary of the P. C. p. 6, a work "not intended for the
press, not fitted for it, and which he declared himself he had never
read over since it was written;" Pref. Unless we understand his
meaning in that to be that witchcraft could not be punished at common
law as witchcraft, but as heresy. In either sense, however, it is a
denial of this pretended law of Alfred. Now, all men of reading know
that these pretended laws of homicide, concubinage, theft,
retaliation, compulsory marriage, usury, bailment, and others which
might have been cited, from the Pseudograph, were never the laws of
England, not even in Alfred's time; and of course that it is a
forgery. Yet palpable as it must be to every lawyer, the English
judges have piously avoided lifting the veil under which it was
shrouded. In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England
has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy;
and even bolder than they are. For instead of being contented with
these four surreptitious chapters of Exodus, they have taken the
whole leap, and declared at once that the whole Bible and Testament
in a lump, make a part of the common law; ante 873: the first
judicial declaration of which was by this same Sir Matthew Hale. And
thus they incorporate into the English code laws made for the Jews
alone, and the precepts of the gospel, intended by their benevolent
author as obligatory only in _foro concientiae_; and they arm the
whole with the coercions of municipal law. In doing this, too, they
have not even used the Connecticut caution of declaring, as is done
in their blue laws, that the laws of God shall be the laws of their
land, except where their own contradict them; but they swallow the
yea and nay together. Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's
question why the ten commandments should not now be a part of the
common law of England? we may say they are not because they never
were made so by legislative authority, the document which has imposed
that doubt on him being a manifest forgery.
CLASSIFICATION IN NATURAL HISTORY
_To Dr. John Manners_
_Monticello, February 22, 1814_
SIR, -- The opinion which, in your letter of January 24, you
are pleased to ask of me, on the comparative merits of the different
methods of classification adopted by different writers on Natural
History, is one which I could not have given satisfactorily, even at
the earlier period at which the subject was more familiar; still
less, after a life of continued occupation in civil concerns has so
much withdrawn me from studies of that kind. I can, therefore,
answer but in a very general way. And the text of this answer will
be found in an observation in your letter, where, speaking of
nosological systems, you say that disease has been found to be an
unit. Nature has, in truth, produced units only through all her
works. Classes, orders, genera, species, are not of her work. Her
creation is of individuals. No two animals are exactly alike; no two
plants, nor even two leaves or blades of grass; no two
crystallizations. And if we may venture from what is within the
cognizance of such organs as ours, to conclude on that beyond their
powers, we must believe that no two particles of matter are of exact
resemblance. This infinitude of units or individuals being far
beyond the capacity of our memory, we are obliged, in aid of that, to
distribute them into masses, throwing into each of these all the
individuals which have a certain degree of resemblance; to subdivide
these again into smaller groups, according to certain points of
dissimilitude observable in them, and so on until we have formed what
we call a system of classes, orders, genera and species. In doing
this, we fix arbitrarily on such characteristic resemblances and
differences as seem to us most prominent and invariable in the
several subjects, and most likely to take a strong hold in our
memories. Thus Ray formed one classification on such lines of
division as struck him most favorably; Klein adopted another; Brisson
a third, and other naturalists other designations, till Linnaeus
appeared. Fortunately for science, he conceived in the three
kingdoms of nature, modes of classification which obtained the
approbation of the learned of all nations. His system was
accordingly adopted by all, and united all in a general language. It
offered the three great desiderata: First, of aiding the memory to
retain a knowledge of the productions of nature. Secondly, of
rallying all to the same names for the same objects, so that they
could communicate understandingly on them. And Thirdly, of enabling
them, when a subject was first presented, to trace it by its
character up to the conventional name by which it was agreed to be
called. This classification was indeed liable to the imperfection of
bringing into the same group individuals which, though resembling in
the characteristics adopted by the author for his classification, yet
have strong marks of dissimilitude in other respects. But to this
objection every mode of classification must be liable, because the
plan of creation is inscrutable to our limited faculties. Nature has
not arranged her productions on a single and direct line. They
branch at every step, and in every direction, and he who attempts to
reduce them into departments, is left to do it by the lines of his
own fancy. The objection of bringing together what are disparata in
nature, lies against the classifications of Blumenbach and of Cuvier,
as well as that of Linnaeus, and must forever lie against all.
Perhaps not in equal degree; on this I do not pronounce. But neither
is this so important a consideration as that of uniting all nations
under one language in Natural History. This had been happily
effected by Linnaeus, and can scarcely be hoped for a second time.
Nothing indeed is so desperate as to make all mankind agree in giving
up a language they possess, for one which they have to learn. The
attempt leads directly to the confusion of the tongues of Babel.
Disciples of Linnaeus, of Blumenbach, and of Cuvier, exclusively
possessing their own nomenclatures, can no longer communicate
intelligibly with one another. However much, therefore, we are
indebted to both these naturalists, and to Cuvier especially, for the
valuable additions they have made to the sciences of nature, I cannot
say they have rendered her a service in this attempt to innovate in
the settled nomenclature of her productions; on the contrary, I think
it will be a check on the progress of science, greater or less, in
proportion as their schemes shall more or less prevail. They would
have rendered greater service by holding fast to the system on which
we had once all agreed, and by inserting into that such new genera,
orders, or even classes, as new discoveries should call for. Their
systems, too, and especially that of Blumenbach, are liable to the
objection of giving too much into the province of anatomy. It may be
said, indeed, that anatomy is a part of natural history. In the
broad sense of the word, it certainly is. In that sense, however, it
would comprehend all the natural sciences, every created thing being
a subject of natural history in extenso. But in the subdivisions of
general science, as has been observed in the particular one of
natural history, it has been necessary to draw arbitrary lines, in
order to accommodate our limited views. According to these, as soon
as the structure of any natural production is destroyed by art, it
ceases to be a subject of natural history, and enters into the domain
ascribed to chemistry, to pharmacy, to anatomy, &c. Linnaeus' method
was liable to this objection so far as it required the aid of
anatomical dissection, as of the heart, for instance, to ascertain
the place of any animal, or of a chemical process for that of a
mineral substance. It would certainly be better to adopt as much as
possible such exterior and visible characteristics as every traveller
is competent to observe, to ascertain and to relate. But with this
objection, lying but in a small degree, Linnaeus' method was
received, understood, and conventionally settled among the learned,
and was even getting into common use. To disturb it then was
unfortunate. The new system attempted in botany, by Jussieu, in
mineralogy, by Hauiy, are subjects of the same regret, and so also
the no-system of Buffon, the great advocate of individualism in
opposition to classification. He would carry us back to the days and
to the confusion of Aristotle and Pliny, give up the improvements of
twenty centuries, and co-operate with the neologists in rendering the
science of one generation useless to the next by perpetual changes of
its language. In botany, Wildenow and Persoon have incorporated into
Linnaeus the new discovered plants. I do not know whether any one
has rendered us the same service as to his natural history. It would
be a very acceptable one. The materials furnished by Humboldt, and
those from New Holland particularly, require to be digested into the
Catholic system. Among these, the Ornithorhyncus mentioned by you,
is an amusing example of the anomalies by which nature sports with
our schemes of classification. Although with out mammae, naturalists
are obliged to place it in the class of mammiferae; and Blumenbach,
particularly, arranges it in his order of Palmipeds and toothless
genus, with the walrus and manatie. In Linnaeus' system it might be
inserted as a new genus between the anteater and manis, in the order
of Bruta. It seems, in truth, to have stronger relations with that
class than any other in the construction of the heart, its red and
warm blood, hairy integuments, in being quadruped and viviparous, and
may we not say, in its _tout ensemble_, which Buffon makes his sole
principle of arrangement? The mandible, as you observe, would draw
it towards the birds, were not this characteristic overbalanced by
the weightier ones before mentioned. That of the Cloaca is
equivocal, because although a character of birds, yet some mammalia,
as the beaver and sloth, have the rectum and urinary passage
terminating at a common opening. Its ribs also, by their number and
structure, are nearer those of the bird than of the mammalia. It is
possible that further opportunities of examination may discover the
mammae. Those of the Opossum are asserted, by the Chevalier
d'Aboville, from his own observations on that animal, made while here
with the French army, to be not discoverable until pregnancy, and to
disappear as soon as the young are weaned. The Duckbill has many
additional particularities which liken it to other genera, and some
entirely peculiar. Its description and history needs yet further
information.
In what I have said on the method of classing, I have not at
all meant to insinuate that that of Linnaeus is intrinsically
preferable to those of Blumenbach and Cuvier. I adhere to the
Linnean because it is sufficient as a ground-work, admits of
supplementary insertions as new productions are discovered, and
mainly because it has got into so general use that it will not be
easy to displace it, and still less to find another which shall have
the same singular fortune of obtaining the general consent. During
the attempt we shall become unintelligible to one another, and
science will be really retarded by efforts to advance it made by its
most favorite sons. I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations
recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests
or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science. My
reluctance is to give up an universal language of which we are in
possession, without an assurnace of general consent to receive
another. And the higher the character of the authors recommending
it, and the more excellent what they offer, the greater the danger of
producing schism.
I should seem to need apology for these long remarks to you who
are so much more recent in these studies, but I find it in your
particular request and my own respect for it, and with that be
pleased to accept the assurance of my esteem and consideration.
THE CENSORSHIP OF BOOKS
_To N. G. Dufief_
_Monticello, April 19, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 6th instant is just received,
and I shall with equal willingness and truth, state the degree of
agency you had, respecting the copy of M. de Becourt's book, which
came to my hands. That gentleman informed me, by letter, that he was
about to publish a volume in French, "Sur la Creation du Monde, un
Systeme d'Organisation Primitive," which, its title promised to be,
either a geological or astronomical work. I subscribed; and, when
published, he sent me a copy; and as you were my correspondent in the
book line in Philadelphia, I took the liberty of desiring him to call
on you for the price, which, he afterwards informed me, you were so
kind as to pay him for me, being, I believe, two dollars. But the
sole copy which came to me was from himself directly, and, as far as
I know, was never seen by you.
I am really mortified to be told that, _in the United States of
America_, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of
criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question
about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate.
Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor
whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may
buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our
citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to
be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a
layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what
we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our
citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and
blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of
truth and reason. If M. de Becourt's book be false in its facts,
disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's
sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose. I know little of
its contents, having barely glanced over here and there a passage,
and over the table of contents. From this, the Newtonian philosophy
seemed the chief object of attack, the issue of which might be
trusted to the strength of the two combatants; Newton certainly not
needing the auxiliary arm of the government, and still less the holy
author of our religion, as to what in it concerns him. I thought the
work would be very innocent, and one which might be confided to the
reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but, if
persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United
States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his
right to buy, and to read what he pleases. I have been just reading
the new constitution of Spain. One of its fundamental basis is
expressed in these words: "The _Roman Catholic_ religion, the only
true one, is, and always shall be, that of the Spanish nation. The
government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the
exercise of any other whatever." Now I wish this presented to those
who question what you may sell, or we may buy, with a request to
strike out the words, "Roman Catholic," and to insert the
denomination of their own religion. This would ascertain the code of
dogmas which each wishes should domineer over the opinions of all
others, and be taken, like the Spanish religion, under the
"protection of wise and just laws." It would shew to what they wish
to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life
and happiness. It would present our boasted freedom of religion as a
thing of theory only, and not of practice, as what would be a poor
exchange for the theoretic thraldom, but practical freedom of Europe.
But it is impossible that the laws of Pennsylvania, which set us the
first example of the wholesome and happy effects of religious
freedom, can permit the inquisitorial functions to be proposed to
their courts. Under them you are surely safe.
At the date of yours of the 6th, you had not received mine of
the 3d inst., asking a copy of an edition of Newton's Principia,
which I had seen advertised. When the cost of that shall be known,
it shall be added to the balance of $4.93, and incorporated with a
larger remittance I have to make to Philadelphia. Accept the
assurance of my great esteem and respect.
THE MORAL SENSE
_To Thomas Law_
_Poplar Forest, June 13, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- The copy of your Second Thoughts on Instinctive
Impulses, with the letter accompanying it, was received just as I was
setting out on a journey to this place, two or three days' distant
from Monticello. I brought it with me and read it with great
satisfaction, and with the more as it contained exactly my own creed
on the foundation of morality in man. It is really curious that on a
quesion so fundamental, such a variety of opinions should have
prevailed among men, and those, too, of the most exemplary virtue and
first order of understanding. It shows how necessary was the care of
the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our
constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might
lead us astray from its observance in practice. Of all the theories
on this question, the most whimsical seems to have been that of
Wollaston, who considers _truth_ as the foundation of morality. The
thief who steals your guinea does wrong only inasmuch as he acts a
lie in using your guinea as if it were his own. Truth is certainly a
branch of morality, and a very important one to society. But
presented as its foundation, it is as if a tree taken up by the
roots, had its stem reversed in the air, and one of its branches
planted in the ground. Some have made the _love of God_ the
foundation of morality. This, too, is but a branch of our moral
duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and duties to
man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief
that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the
Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists.
We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on,
to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of
them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant
countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the
priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism.
Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been
among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had
some other foundation than the love of God.
The {To chylon} of others is founded in a different faculty,
that of taste, which is not even a branch of morality. We have
indeed an innate sense of what we call beautiful, but that is
exercised chiefly on subjects addressed to the fancy, whether through
the eye in visible forms, as landscape, animal figure, dress,
drapery, architecture, the composition of colors, &c., or to the
imagination directly, as imagery, style, or measure in prose or
poetry, or whatever else constitutes the domain of criticism or
taste, a faculty entirely distinct from the moral one.
Self-interest, or rather self-love, or _egoism_, has been more
plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our
relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality.
With ourselves we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation,
which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a
single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties,
obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no
part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the
sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities
to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.
Accordingly, it is against this enemy that are erected the batteries
of moralists and religionists, as the only obstacle to the practice
of morality. Take from man his selfish propensities, and he can have
nothing to seduce him from the practice of virtue. Or subdue those
propensities by education, instruction or restraint, and virtue
remains without a competitor. Egoism, in a broader sense, has been
thus presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that
we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man
beaten by thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set him on our own
beast and bring him to the inn, because we receive ourselves pleasure
from these acts. So Helvetius, one of the best men on earth, and the
most ingenious advocate of this principle, after defining "interest"
to mean not merely that which is pecuniary, but whatever may procure
us pleasure or withdraw us from pain, [_de l'esprit_ 2, 1,] says,
[ib. 2, 2,] "the humane man is he to whom the sight of misfortune is
insupportable, and who to rescue himself from this spectacle, is
forced to succor the unfortunate object." This indeed is true. But
it is one step short of the ultimate question. These good acts give
us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us pleasure? Because
nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of
duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us
irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses, and protests
against the language of Helvetius, [ib. 2, 5,] "what other motive
than self-interest could determine a man to generous actions? It is
as impossible for him to love what is good for the sake of good, as
to love evil for the sake of evil." The Creator would indeed have
been a bungling artist, had he intended man for a social animal,
without planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not
planted in every man, because there is no rule without exceptions;
but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general
rule. Some men are born without the organs of sight, or of hearing,
or without hands. Yet it would be wrong to say that man is born
without these faculties, and sight, hearing, and hands may with truth
enter into the general definition of man. The want or imperfection
of the moral sense in some men, like the want or imperfection of the
senses of sight and hearing in others, is no proof that it is a
general characteristic of the species. When it is wanting, we
endeavor to supply the defect by education, by appeals to reason and
calculation, by presenting to the being so unhappily conformed, other
motives to do good and to eschew evil, such as the love, or the
hatred, or rejection of those among whom he lives, and whose society
is necessary to his happiness and even existence; demonstrations by
sound calculation that honesty promotes interest in the long run; the
rewards and penalties established by the laws; and ultimately the
prospects of a future state of retribution for the evil as well as
the good done while here. These are the correctives which are
supplied by education, and which exercise the functions of the
moralist, the preacher, and legislator; and they lead into a course
of correct action all those whose disparity is not too profound to be
eradicated. Some have argued against the existence of a moral sense,
by saying that if nature had given us such a sense, impelling us to
virtuous actions, and warning us against those which are vicious,
then nature would also have designated, by some particular ear-marks,
the two sets of actions which are, in themselves, the one virtuous
and the other vicious. Whereas, we find, in fact, that the same
actions are deemed virtuous in one country and vicious in another.
The answer is that nature has constituted _utility_ to man the
standard and best of virtue. Men living in different countries,
under different circumstances, different habits and regimens, may
have different utilities; the same act, therefore, may be useful, and
consequently virtuous in one country which is injurious and vicious
in another differently circumstanced. I sincerely, then, believe
with you in the general existence of a moral instinct. I think it
the brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the
want of it as more degrading than the most hideous of the bodily
deformities. I am happy in reviewing the roll of associates in this
principle which you present in your second letter, some of which I
had not before met with. To these might be added Lord Kaims, one of
the ablest of our advocates, who goes so far as to say, in his
Principles of Natural Religion, that a man owes no duty to which he
is not urged by some impulsive feeling. This is correct, if referred
to the standard of general feeling in the given case, and not to the
feeling of a single individual. Perhaps I may misquote him, it being
fifty years since I read his book.
The leisure and solitude of my situation here has led me to the
indiscretion of taxing you with a long letter on a subject whereon
nothing new can be offered you. I will indulge myself no farther
than to repeat the assurances of my continued esteem and respect.
BONAPARTE AND PLATO
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, July 5, 1814_
DEAR SIR -- Since mine of Jan. 24. yours of Mar. 14. was
recieved. It was not acknoleged in the short one of May 18. by Mr.
Rives, the only object of that having been to enable one of our most
promising young men to have the advantage of making his bow to you.
I learned with great regret the serious illness mentioned in your
letter: and I hope Mr. Rives will be able to tell me you are entirely
restored. But our machines have now been running for 70. or 80.
years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there
a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring, will be giving way: and however
we may tinker them up for awhile, all will at length surcease motion.
Our watches, with works of brass and steel, wear out within that
period. Shall you and I last to see the course the seven-fold
wonders of the times will take? The Attila of the age dethroned, the
ruthless destroyer of 10. millions of the human race, whose thirst
for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights
and liberties of the world, shut up within the circuit of a little
island of the Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition of an
humble and degraded pensioner on the bounty of those he had most
injured. How miserably, how meanly, has he closed his inflated
career! What a sample of the Bathos will his history present! He
should have perished on the swords of his enemies, under the walls of
Paris.
`Leon piagato a morte Cosi fra l'ire estrema
Sente mancar la vita, rugge, minaccia, e freme,
Guarda la sua ferita, Che fa tremar morendo
Ne s'avilisce ancor. Tal volta il cacciator.'
Metast Adriano.
But Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life a
cold-blooded, calculating unprincipled Usurper, without a virtue, no
statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil
government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. I had
supposed him a great man until his entrance into the Assembly des
cinq cens, 18. Brumaire (an. 8.) From that date however I set him
down as a great scoundrel only. To the wonders of his rise and fall,
we may add that of a Czar of Muscovy dictating, _in Paris_, laws and
limits to all the successors of the Caesars, and holding even the
balance in which the fortunes of this new world are suspended. I own
that, while I rejoice, for the good of mankind, to the deliverance of
Europe from the havoc which would have never ceased while Bonaparte
should have lived in power, I see with anxiety the tyrant of the
ocean remaining in vigor, and even participating in the merit of
crushing his brother tyrant. While the world is thus turned up side
down, on which side of it are we? All the strong reasons indeed
place us on the side of peace; the interests of the continent, their
friendly dispositions, and even the interests of England. Her
passions alone are opposed to it. Peace would seem now to be an easy
work, the causes of the war being removed. Her orders of council
will no doubt be taken care of by the allied powers, and, war
ceasing, her impressment of our seamen ceases of course. But I fear
there is foundation for the design intimated in the public papers, of
demanding a cession of our right in the fisheries. What will
Massachusets say to this? I mean her majority, which must be
considered as speaking, thro' the organs it has appointed itself, as
the Index of it's will. She chose to sacrifice the liberty of our
seafaring citizens, in which we were all interested, and with them
her obligations to the Co-states; rather than war with England. Will
she now sacrifice the fisheries to the same partialities? This
question is interesting to her alone: for to the middle, the Southern
and Western States they are of no direct concern; of no more than the
culture of tobacco, rice and cotton to Massachusets. I am really at
a loss to conjecture what our refractory sister will say on this
occasion. I know what, as a citizen of the Union, I would say to
her. `Take this question ad referendum. It concerns you alone. If
you would rather give up the fisheries than war with England, we give
them up. If you had rather fight for them, we will defend your
interests to the last drop of our blood, chusing rather to set a good
example than follow a bad one.' And I hope she will determine to
fight for them. With this however you and I shall have nothing to
do; ours being truly the case wherein `non tali auxilio, nec
defensoribus istis Tempus eget.' Quitting this subject therefore I
will turn over another leaf.
I am just returned from one of my long absences, having been at
my other home for five weeks past. Having more leisure there than
here for reading, I amused myself with reading seriously Plato's
republic. I am wrong however in calling it amusement, for it was the
heaviest task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before
taken up some of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to
go through a whole dialogue. While wading thro' the whimsies, the
puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down
often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have
so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this? How
the soi-disant Christian world indeed should have done it, is a piece
of historical curiosity. But how could the Roman good sense do it?
And particularly how could Cicero bestow such eulogies on Plato?
Altho' Cicero did not wield the dense logic of Demosthenes, yet he
was able, learned, laborious, practised in the business of the world,
and honest. He could not be the dupe of mere style, of which he was
himself the first master in the world. With the Moderns, I think, it
is rather a matter of fashion and authority. Education is chiefly in
the hands of persons who, from their profession, have an interest in
the reputation and the dreams of Plato. They give the tone while at
school, and few, in their after-years, have occasion to revise their
college opinions. But fashion and authority apart, and bringing
Plato to the test of reason, take from him his sophisms, futilities,
and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? In truth, he is one of
the race of genuine Sophists, who has escaped the oblivion of his
brethren, first by the elegance of his diction, but chiefly by the
adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body of
artificial Christianity. His foggy mind, is forever presenting the
semblances of objects which, half seen thro' a mist, can be defined
neither in form or dimension. Yet this which should have consigned
him to early oblivion really procured him immortality of fame and
reverence. The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ
levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation,
saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might
build up an artificial system which might, from it's indistinctness,
admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and
introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which
flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of
a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the
Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that
nonsense can never be explained. Their purposes however are
answered. Plato is canonized; and it is now deemed as impious to
question his merits as those of an Apostle of Jesus. He is
peculiarly appealed to as an advocate of the immortality of the soul;
and yet I will venture to say that were there no better arguments
than his in proof of it, not a man in the world would believe it. It
is fortunate for us that Platonic republicanism has not obtained the
same favor as Platonic Christianity; or we should now have been all
living, men, women and children, pell mell together, like beasts of
the field or forest. Yet `Plato is a great Philosopher,' said La
Fontaine. But says Fontenelle `do you find his ideas very clear'?
`Oh no! he is of an obscurity impenetrable.' `Do you not find him
full of contradictions?' `Certainly,' replied La Fontaine, `he is
but a Sophist.' Yet immediately after, he exclaims again, `Oh Plato
was a great Philosopher.' Socrates had reason indeed to complain of
the misrepresentations of Plato; for in truth his dialogues are
libels on Socrates.
But why am I dosing you with these Ante-diluvian topics?
Because I am glad to have some one to whom they are familiar, and who
will not recieve them as if dropped from the moon. Our
post-revolutionary youth are born under happier stars than you and I
were. They acquire all learning in their mothers' womb, and bring it
into the world ready-made. The information of books is no longer
necessary; and all knolege which is not innate, is in contempt, or
neglect at least. Every folly must run it's round; and so, I
suppose, must that of self-learning, and self sufficiency; of
rejecting the knolege acquired in past ages, and starting on the new
ground of intuition. When sobered by experience I hope our
successors will turn their attention to the advantages of education.
I mean of education on the broad scale, and not that of the petty
_academies_, as they call themselves, which are starting up in every
neighborhood, and where one or two men, possessing Latin, and
sometimes Greek, a knolege of the globes, and the first six books of
Euclid, imagine and communicate this as the sum of science. They
commit their pupils to the theatre of the world with just taste
enough of learning to be alienated from industrious pursuits, and not
enough to do service in the ranks of science. We have some
exceptions indeed. I presented one to you lately, and we have some
others. But the terms I use are general truths. I hope the
necessity will at length be seen of establishing institutions, here
as in Europe, where every branch of science, useful at this day, may
be taught in it's highest degrees. Have you ever turned your
thoughts to the plan of such an institution? I mean to a
specification of the particular sciences of real use in human
affairs, and how they might be so grouped as to require so many
professors only as might bring them within the views of a just but
enlightened economy? I should be happy in a communication of your
ideas on this problem, either loose or digested. But to avoid my
being run away with by another subject, and adding to the length and
ennui of the present letter, I will here present to Mrs. Adams and
yourself the assurance of my constant and sincere friendship and
respect.
EMANCIPATION AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION
_To Edward Coles_
_Monticello, August 25, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favour of July 31, was duly received, and was
read with peculiar pleasure. The sentiments breathed through the
whole do honor to both the head and heart of the writer. Mine on the
subject of slavery of negroes have long since been in possession of
the public, and time has only served to give them stronger root. The
love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of
these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have
pleaded it so long in vain, and should have produced not a single
effort, nay I fear not much serious willingness to relieve them &
ourselves from our present condition of moral & political
reprobation. From those of the former generation who were in the
fulness of age when I came into public life, which was while our
controversy with England was on paper only, I soon saw that nothing
was to be hoped. Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing
the degraded condition, both bodily and mental, of those unfortunate
beings, not reflecting that that degradation was very much the work
of themselves & their fathers, few minds have yet doubted but that
they were as legitimate subjects of property as their horses and
cattle. The quiet and monotonous course of colonial life has been
disturbed by no alarm, and little reflection on the value of liberty.
And when alarm was taken at an enterprize on their own, it was not
easy to carry them to the whole length of the principles which they
invoked for themselves. In the first or second session of the
Legislature after I became a member, I drew to this subject the
attention of Col. Bland, one of the oldest, ablest, & most respected
members, and he undertook to move for certain moderate extensions of
the protection of the laws to these people. I seconded his motion,
and, as a younger member, was more spared in the debate; but he was
denounced as an enemy of his country, & was treated with the grossest
indecorum. From an early stage of our revolution other & more
distant duties were assigned to me, so that from that time till my
return from Europe in 1789, and I may say till I returned to reside
at home in 1809, I had little opportunity of knowing the progress of
public sentiment here on this subject. I had always hoped that the
younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame
of liberty had been kindled in every breast, & had become as it were
the vital spirit of every American, that the generous temperament of
youth, analogous to the motion of their blood, and above the
suggestions of avarice, would have sympathized with oppression
wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own
share of it. But my intercourse with them, since my return has not
been sufficient to ascertain that they had made towards this point
the progress I had hoped. Your solitary but welcome voice is the
first which has brought this sound to my ear; and I have considered
the general silence which prevails on this subject as indicating an
apathy unfavorable to every hope. Yet the hour of emancipation is
advancing, in the march of time. It will come; and whether brought
on by the generous energy of our own minds; or by the bloody process
of St Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our present
enemy, if once stationed permanently within our Country, and offering
asylum & arms to the oppressed, is a leaf of our history not yet
turned over. As to the method by which this difficult work is to be
effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no
proposition so expedient on the whole, as that as emancipation of
those born after a given day, and of their education and expatriation
after a given age. This would give time for a gradual extinction of
that species of labour & substitution of another, and lessen the
severity of the shock which an operation so fundamental cannot fail
to produce. For men probably of any color, but of this color we
know, brought from their infancy without necessity for thought or
forecast, are by their habits rendered as incapable as children of
taking care of themselves, and are extinguished promptly wherever
industry is necessary for raising young. In the mean time they are
pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which
this leads them. Their amalgamation with the other color produces a
degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence
in the human character can innocently consent. I am sensible of the
partialities with which you have looked towards me as the person who
should undertake this salutary but arduous work. But this, my dear
sir, is like bidding old Priam to buckle the armour of Hector
"trementibus aequo humeris et inutile ferruncingi." No, I have
overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat
mutual confidence and influence. This enterprise is for the young;
for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its
consummation. It shall have all my prayers, & these are the only
weapons of an old man. But in the mean time are you right in
abandoning this property, and your country with it? I think not. My
opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we
should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to
feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill usage, require
such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, &
be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them.
The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if that were for their
good: and to commute them for other property is to commit them to
those whose usage of them we cannot control. I hope then, my dear
sir, you will reconcile yourself to your country and its unfortunate
condition; that you will not lessen its stock of sound disposition by
withdrawing your portion from the mass. That, on the contrary you
will come forward in the public councils, become the missionary of
this doctrine truly christian; insinuate & inculcate it softly but
steadily, through the medium of writing and conversation; associate
others in your labors, and when the phalanx is formed, bring on and
press the proposition perseveringly until its accomplishment. It is
an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed,
which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end. We have proof
of this in the history of the endeavors in the English parliament to
suppress that very trade which brought this evil on us. And you will
be supported by the religious precept, "be not weary in well-doing."
That your success may be as speedy & complete, as it will be of
honorable & immortal consolation to yourself, I shall as fervently
and sincerely pray as I assure you of my great friendship and
respect.
A SYSTEM OF EDUCATION
_To Peter Carr_
_Monticello, September 7, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- On the subject of the academy or college proposed
to be established in our neighborhood, I promised the trustees that I
would prepare for them a plan, adapted, in the first instance, to our
slender funds, but susceptible of being enlarged, either by their own
growth or by accession from other quarters.
I have long entertained the hope that this, our native State,
would take up the subject of education, and make an establishment,
either with or without incorporation into that of William and Mary,
where every branch of science, deemed useful at this day, should be
taught in its highest degree. With this view, I have lost no
occasion of making myself acquainted with the organization of the
best seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions of the most
enlightened individuals, on the subject of the sciences worthy of a
place in such an institution. In order to prepare what I have
promised our trustees, I have lately revised these several plans with
attention; and I am struck with the diversity of arrangement
observable in them -- no two alike: Yet, I have no doubt that these
several arrangements have been the subject of mature reflection, by
wise and learned men, who, contemplating local circumstances, have
adapted them to the conditions of the section of society for which
they have been framed. I am strengthened in this conclusion by an
examination of each separately, and a conviction that no one of them,
if adopted without change, would be suited to the circumstances and
pursuit of our country. The example they set, then, is authority for
us to select from their different institutions the materials which
are good for us, and, with them, to erect a structure, whose
arrangement shall correspond with our own social condition, and shall
admit of enlargement in proportion to the encouragement it may merit
and receive. As I may not be able to attend the meetings of the
trustees, I will make you the depository of my ideas on the subject,
which may be corrected, as you proceed, by the better view of others,
and adapted, from time to time, to the prospects which open upon us,
and which cannot be specifically seen and provided for.
In the first place, we must ascertain with precision the object
of our institution, by taking a survey of the general field of
science, and marking out the portion we mean to occupy at first, and
the ultimate extension of our views beyond that, should we be enabled
to render it, in the end, as comprehensive as we would wish.
1. Elementary schools.
It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of
its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive
an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life.
The mass of our citizens may be divided into two classes -- the
laboring and the learned. The laboring will need the first grade of
education to qualify them for their pursuits and duties; the learned
will need it as a foundation for further acquirements. A plan was
formerly proposed to the legislature of this State for laying off
every county into hundreds or wards of five or six miles square,
within each of which should be a school for the education of the
children of the ward, wherein they should receive three years'
instruction gratis, in reading, writing, arithmetic as far as
fractions, the roots and ratios, and geography. The Legislature at
one time tried an ineffectual expedient for introducing this plan,
which having failed, it is hoped they will some day resume it in a
more promising form.
2. General schools.
At the discharging of the pupils from the elementary schools,
the two classes separate -- those destined for labor will engage in
the business of agriculture, or enter into apprenticeships to such
handicraft art as may be their choice; their companions, destined to
the pursuits of science, will proceed to the college, which will
consist, 1st of general schools; and, 2d, of professional schools.
The general schools will constitute the second grade of education.
The learned class may still be subdivided into two sections: 1,
Those who are destined for learned professions, as means of
livelihood; and, 2, The wealthy, who, possessing independent
fortunes, may aspire to share in conducting the affairs of the
nation, or to live with usefulness and respect in the private ranks
of life. Both of these sections will require instruction in all the
higher branches of science; the wealthy to qualify them for either
public or private life; the professional section will need those
branches, especially, which are the basis of their future profession,
and a general knowledge of the others, as auxiliary to that, and
necessary to their standing and association with the scientific
class. All the branches, then, of useful science, ought to be taught
in the general schools, to a competent degree, in the first instance.
These sciences may be arranged into three departments, not rigorously
scientific, indeed, but sufficiently so for our purposes. These are,
I. Language; II. Mathematics; III. Philosophy.
I. Language. In the first department, I would arrange a
distinct science. 1, Languages and History, ancient and modern; 2,
Grammar; 3, Belles Lettres; 4, Rhetoric and Oratory; 5, A school for
the deaf, dumb and blind. History is here associated with languages,
not as a kindred subject, but on the principle of economy, because
both may be attained by the same course of reading, if books are
selected with that view.
II. Mathematics. In the department of Mathematics, I should
give place distinctly: 1, Mathematics pure; 2, Physico-Mathematics;
3, Physic; 4, Chemistry; 5, Natural History, to wit: Mineralogy; 6,
Botany; and 7, Zoology; 8, Anatomy; 9, the Theory of Medicine.
III. Philosophy. In the Philosophical department, I should
distinguish: 1, Ideology; 2, Ethics; 3, the Law of Nature and
Nations; 4, Government; 5, Political Economy.
But, some of these terms being used by different writers, in
different degrees of extension, I shall define exactly what I mean to
comprehend in each of them.
I. 3. Within the term of Belles Lettres I include poetry and
composition generally, and criticism.
II. 1. I consider pure mathematics as the science of, 1,
Numbers, and 2, Measure in the abstract; that of numbers
comprehending Arithmetic, Algebra and Fluxions; that of Measure
(under the general appellation of Geometry), comprehending
Trigonometry, plane and spherical, conic sections, and transcendental
curves.
II. 2. Physico-Mathematics treat of physical subjects by the
aid of mathematical calculation. These are Mechanics, Statics,
Hydrostatics, Hydrodynamics, Navigation, Astronomy, Geography,
Optics, Pneumatics, Acoustics.
II. 3. Physics, or Natural Philosophy (not entering the limits
of Chemistry) treat of natural substances, their properties, mutual
relations and action. They particularly examine the subjects of
motion, action, magnetism, electricity, galvanism, light,
meteorology, with an etc. not easily enumerated. These definitions
and specifications render immaterial the question whether I use the
generic terms in the exact degree of comprehension in which others
use them; to be understood is all that is necessary to the present
object.
3. Professional Schools.
At the close of this course the students separate; the wealthy
retiring, with a sufficient stock of knowledge, to improve themselves
to any degree to which their views may lead them, and the
professional section to the professional schools, constituting the
third grade of education, and teaching the particular sciences which
the individuals of this section mean to pursue, with more minuteness
and detail than was within the scope of the general schools for the
second grade of instruction. In these professional schools each
science is to be taught in the highest degree it has yet attained.
They are to be the
1st Department, the fine arts, to wit: Civil Architecture,
Gardening, Painting, Sculpture, and the Theory of Music; the
2nd Department, Architecture, Military and Naval; Projectiles,
Rural Economy (comprehending Agriculture, Horticulture and
Veterinary), Technical Philosophy, the Practice of Medicine, Materia
Medica, Pharmacy and Surgery. In the
3rd Department, Theology and Ecclesiastical History; Law,
Municipal and Foreign.
To these professional schools will come those who separated at
the close of their first elementary course, to wit:
The lawyer to the law school.
The ecclesiastic to that of theology and ecclesiastical
history.
The physican to those of medicine, materia medica, pharmacy and
surgery.
The military man to that of military and naval architecture and
projectiles.
The agricultor to that of rural economy.
The gentleman, the architect, the pleasure gardener, painter
and musician to the school of fine arts.
And to that of technical philosophy will come the mariner,
carpenter, shipwright, pumpmaker, clockmaker, machinist, optician,
metallurgist, founder, cutler, druggist, brewer, vintner, distiller,
dyer, painter, bleacher, soapmaker, tanner, powdermaker, saltmaker,
glassmaker, to learn as much as shall be necessary to pursue their
art understandingly, of the sciences of geometry, mechanics, statics,
hydrostatics, hydraulics, hydrodynamics, navigation, astronomy,
geography, optics, pneumatics, physics, chemistry, natural history,
botany, mineralogy and pharmacy.
The school of technical philosophy will differ essentially in
its functions from the other professional schools. The others are
instituted to ramify and dilate the particular sciences taught in the
schools of the second grade on a general scale only. The technical
school is to abridge those which were taught there too much _in
extenso_ for the limited wants of the artificer or practical man.
These artificers must be grouped together, according to the
particular branch of science in which they need elementary and
practical instruction; and a special lecture or lectures should be
prepared for each group. And these lectures should be given in the
evening, so as not to interrupt the labors of the day. The school,
particularly, should be maintained wholly at the public expense, on
the same principles with that of the ward schools. Through the whole
of the collegiate course, at the hours of recreation on certain days,
all the students should be taught the manual exercise; military
evolutions and man;oeuvers should be under a standing organization as
a military corps, and with proper officers to train and command them,
A tabular statement of this distribution of the sciences will
place the system of instruction more particularly in view:
1st or Elementary Grade in the Ward Schools.
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Geography.
2d, or General Grade.
1. Language and History, ancient and modern.
2. Mathematics, viz: Mathematics pure,
Physico-Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Anatomy, Theory of Medicine,
Zoology, Botany and Mineralogy. |P1352|p1
3. Philosophy, viz: Ideology, and Ethics, Law of Nature
and Nations, Government, Political Economy.
3d, or Professional Grades.
Theology and Ecclesiastical History; Law, Municipal and
Foreign; Practice of Medicine; Materia Medica and Pharmacy; Surgery;
Architecture, Military and Naval, and Projectiles; Technical
Philosophy; Rural Economy; Fine Arts.
On this survey of the field of science, I recur to the
question, what portion of it we mark out for the occupation of our
institution? With the first grade of education we shall have nothing
to do. The sciences of the second grade are our first object; and,
to adapt them to our slender beginnings, we must separate them into
groups, comprehending many sciences each, and greatly more, in the
first instance, than ought to be imposed on, or can be competently
conducted by a single professor permanently. They must be subdivided
from time to time, as our means increase, until each professor shall
have no more under his care than he can attend to with advantage to
his pupils and ease to himself. For the present, we may group the
sciences into professorships, as follows, subject, however, to be
changed, according to the qualifications of the persons we may be
able to engage.
I. Professorship.
Languages and History, ancient and modern.
Belles-Lettres, Rhetoric and Oratory.
II. Professorship.
Mathematics pure, Physico-Mathematics.
Physics, Anatomy, Medicine, Theory.
III. Professorship.
Chemistry, Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy.
IV. Professorship.
Philosophy.
The organization of the branch of the institution which
respects its government, police and economy, depending on principles
which have no affinity with those of its institution, may be the
subject of separate and subsequent consideration.
With this tribute of duty to the board of trustees, accept
assurances of my great esteem and consideration.
A LIBRARY FOR CONGRESS
_To Samuel H. Smith_
_Monticello, September 21, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- I learn from the newspapers that the Vandalism of
our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the
arts, by the destruction of the public library with the noble edifice
in which it was deposited. Of this transaction, as of that of
Copenhagen, the world will entertain but one sentiment. They will
see a nation suddenly withdrawn from a great war, full armed and full
handed, taking advantage of another whom they had recently forced
into it, unarmed, and unprepared, to indulge themselves in acts of
barbarism which do not belong to a civilized age. When Van Ghent
destroyed their shipping at Chatham, and De Ruyter rode triumphantly
up the Thames, he might in like manner, by the acknowledgment of
their own historians, have forced all their ships up to London
bridge, and there have burnt them, the tower, and city, had these
examples been then set. London, when thus menaced, was near a
thousand years old, Washington is but in its teens.
I presume it will be among the early objects of Congress to
re-commence their collection. This will be difficult while the war
continues, and intercourse with Europe is attended with so much risk.
You know my collection, its condition and extent. I have been fifty
years making it, and have spared no pains, opportunity or expense, to
make it what it is. While residing in Paris, I devoted every
afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two, in examining all the
principal book-stores, turning over every book with my own hand, and
putting by everything which related to America, and indeed whatever
was rare and valuable in every science. Besides this, I had standing
orders during the whole time I was in Europe, on its principal
book-marts, particularly Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid and London, for
such works relating to America as could not be found in Paris. So
that in that department particularly, such a collection was made as
probably can never again be effected, because it is hardly probable
that the same opportunities, the same time, industry, perseverance
and expense, with some knowledge of the bibliography of the subject,
would again happen to be in concurrence. During the same period, and
after my return to America, I was led to procure, also, whatever
related to the duties of those in the high concerns of the nation.
So that the collection, which I suppose is of between nine and ten
thousand volumes, while it includes what is chiefly valuable in
science and literature generally, extends more particularly to
whatever belongs to the American statesman. In the diplomatic and
parliamentary branches, it is particularly full. It is long since I
have been sensible it ought not to continue private property, and had
provided that at my death, Congress should have the refusal of it at
their own price. But the loss they have now incurred, makes the
present the proper moment for their accommodation, without regard to
the small remnant of time and the barren use of my enjoying it. I
ask of your friendship, therefore, to make for me the tender of it to
the library committee of Congress, not knowing myself of whom the
committee consists. I enclose you the catalogue, which will enable
them to judge of its contents. Nearly the whole are well bound,
abundance of them elegantly, and of the choicest editions existing.
They may be valued by persons named by themselves, and the payment
made convenient to the public. It may be, for instance, in such
annual instalments as the law of Congress has left at their disposal,
or in stock of any of their late loans, or of any loan they may
institute at this session, so as to spare the present calls of our
country, and await its days of peace and prosperity. They may enter,
nevertheless, into immediate use of it, as eighteen or twenty wagons
would place it in Washington in a single trip of a fortnight. I
should be willing indeed, to retain a few of the books, to amuse the
time I have yet to pass, which might be valued with the rest, but not
included in the sum of valuation until they should be restored at my
death, which I would carefully provide for, so that the whole library
as it stands in the catalogue at this moment should be theirs without
any garbling. Those I should like to retain would be chiefly
classical and mathematical. Some few in other branches, and
particularly one of the five encyclopedias in the catalogue. But
this, if not acceptable, would not be urged. I must add, that I have
not revised the library since I came home to live, so that it is
probable some of the books may be missing, except in the chapters of
Law and Divinity, which have been revised and stand exactly as in the
catalogue. The return of the catalogue will of course be needed,
whether the tender be accepted or not. I do not know that it
contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude
from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a
member of Congress may not have occasion to refer. But such a wish
would not correspond with my views of preventing its dismemberment.
My desire is either to place it in their hands entire, or to preserve
it so here. I am engaged in making an alphabetical index of the
author's names, to be annexed to the catalogue, which I will forward
to you as soon as completed. Any agreement you shall be so good as
to take the trouble of entering into with the committee, I hereby
confirm. Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
A JUST BUT SAD WAR
_To William Short_
_Monticello, November 28, 1814_
DEAR SIR, -- Yours of October 28th came to hand on the 15th
instant only. The settlement of your boundary with Colonel Monroe,
is protracted by circumstances which seem foreign to it. One would
hardly have expected that the hostile expedition to Washington could
have had any connection with an operation one hundred miles distant.
Yet preventing his attendance, nothing could be done. I am satisfied
there is no unwillingness on his part, but on the contrary a desire
to have it settled; and therefore, if he should think it
indispensable to be present at the investigation, as is possible, the
very first time he comes here I will press him to give a day to the
decision, without regarding Mr. Carter's absence. Such an occasion
must certainly offer soon after the fourth of March, when Congress
rises of necessity, and be assured I will not lose one possible
moment in effecting it.
Although withdrawn from all anxious attention to political
concerns, yet I will state my impressions as to the present war,
because your letter leads to the subject. The essential grounds of
the war were, 1st, the orders of council; and 2d, the impressment of
our citizens; (for I put out of sight from the love of peace the
multiplied insults on our government and aggressions on our commerce,
with which our pouch, like the Indian's, had long been filled to the
mouth.) What immediately produced the declaration was, 1st, the
proclamation of the Prince Regent that he would never repeal the
orders of council as to us, until Bonaparte should have revoked his
decrees as to all other nations as well as ours; and 2d, the
declaration of his minister to ours that no arrangement whatever
could be devised admissible in lieu of impressment. It was certainly
a misfortune that _they_ did not know themselves at the date of this
silly and insolent proclamation, that within one month they would
repeal the orders, and that _we_, at the date of our declaration,
could not know of the repeal which was then going on one thousand
leagues distant. Their determinations, as declared by themselves,
could alone guide us, and they shut the door on all further
negotiation, throwing down to us the gauntlet of war or submission as
the only alternatives. We cannot blame the government for choosing
that of war, because certainly the great majority of the nation
thought it ought to be chosen, not that they were to gain by it in
dollars and cents; all men know that war is a losing game to both
parties. But they know also that if they do not resist encroachment
at some point, all will be taken from them, and that more would then
be lost even in dollars and cents by submission than resistance. It
is the case of giving a part to save the whole, a limb to save life.
It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled sometimes
to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater; to deter their
neighbors from rapine by making it cost them more than honest gains.
The enemy are accordingly now disgorging what they had so ravenously
swallowed. The orders of council had taken from us near one thousand
vessels. Our list of captures from them is now one thousand three
hundred, and, just become sensible that it is small and not large
ships which gall them most, we shall probably add one thousand prizes
a year to their past losses. Again, supposing that, according to the
confession of their own minister in parliament, the Americans they
had impressed were something short of two thousand, the war against
us alone cannot cost them less than twenty millions of dollars a
year, so that each American impressed has already cost them ten
thousand dollars, and every year will add five thousand dollars more
to his price. We, I suppose, expend more; but had we adopted the
other alternative of submission, no mortal can tell what the cost
would have been. I consider the war then as entirely justifiable on
our part, although I am still sensible it is a deplorable misfortune
to us. It has arrested the course of the most remarkable tide of
prosperity any nation ever experienced, and has closed such prospects
of future improvement as were never before in the view of any people.
Farewell all hopes of extinguishing public debt! farewell all visions
of applying surpluses of revenue to the improvements of peace rather
than the ravages of war. Our enemy has indeed the consolation of
Satan on removing our first parents from Paradise: from a peaceable
and agricultural nation, he makes us a military and manufacturing
one. We shall indeed survive the conflict. Breeders enough will
remain to carry on population. We shall retain our country, and
rapid advances in the art of war will soon enable us to beat our
enemy, and probably drive him from the continent. We have men
enough, and I am in hopes the present session of Congress will
provide the means of commanding their services. But I wish I could
see them get into a better train of finance. Their banking projects
are like dosing dropsy with more water. If anything could revolt our
citizens against the war, it would be the extravagance with which
they are about to be taxed. It is strange indeed that at this day,
and in a country where English proceedings are so familiar, the
principles and advantages of funding should be neglected, and
expedients resorted to. Their new bank, if not abortive at its
birth, will not last through one campaign; and the taxes proposed
cannot be paid. How can a people who cannot get fifty cents a bushel
for their wheat, while they pay twelve dollars a bushel for their
salt, pay five times the amount of taxes they ever paid before? Yet
that will be the case in all the States south of the Potomac. Our
resources are competent to the maintenance of the war if duly
economized and skillfuly employed in the way of anticipation.
However, we must suffer, I suppose, from our ignorance in funding, as
we did from that of fighting, until necessity teaches us both; and,
fortunately, our stamina are so vigorous as to rise superior to great
mismanagement. This year I think we shall have learnt how to call
forth our force, and by the next I hope our funds, and even if the
state of Europe should not by that time give the enemy employment
enough nearer home, we shall leave him nothing to fight for here.
These are my views of the war. They embrace a great deal of
sufferance, trying privations, and no benefit but that of teaching
our enemy that he is never to gain by wanton injuries on us. To me
this state of things brings a sacrifice of all tranquillity and
comfort through the residue of life. For although the debility of
age disables me from the services and sufferings of the field, yet,
by the total annihilation in value of the produce which was to give
me subsistence and independence, I shall be like Tantalus, up to the
shoulders in water, yet dying with thirst. We can make indeed enough
to eat, drink and clothe ourselves; but nothing for our salt, iron,
groceries and taxes, which must be paid in money. For what can we
raise for the market? Wheat? we can only give it to our horses, as
we have been doing ever since harvest. Tobacco? it is not worth the
pipe it is smoked in. Some say Whiskey; but all mankind must become
drunkards to consume it. But although we feel, we shall not flinch.
We must consider now, as in the revolutionary war, that although the
evils of resistance are great, those of submission would be greater.
We must meet, therefore, the former as the casualties of tempests and
earthquakes, and like them necessarily resulting from the
constitution of the world. Your situation, my dear friend, is much
better. For, although I do not know with certainty the nature of
your investments, yet I presume they are not in banks, insurance
companies, or any other of those gossamer castles. If in
ground-rents, they are solid; if in stock of the United States, they
are equally so. I once thought that in the event of a war we should
be obliged to suspend paying the interest of the public debt. But a
dozen years more of experience and observation on our people and
government, have satisfied me it will never be done. The sense of
the necessity of public credit is so universal and so deeply rooted,
that no other necessity will prevail against it; and I am glad to see
that while the former eight millions are steadfastly applied to the
sinking of the old debt, the Senate have lately insisted on a sinking
fund for the new. This is the dawn of that improvement in the
management of our finances which I look to for salvation; and I trust
that the light will continue to advance, and point out their way to
our legislators. They will soon see that instead of taxes for the
whole year's expenses, which the people cannot pay, a tax to the
amount of the interest and a reasonable portion of the principal will
command the whole sum, and throw a part of the burthens of war on
times of peace and prosperity. A sacred payment of interest is the
only way to make the most of their resources, and a sense of that
renders your income from our funds more certain than mine from lands.
Some apprehend danger from the defection of Massachusetts. It is a
disagreeable circumstance, but not a dangerous one. If they become
neutral, we are sufficient for one enemy without them, and in fact we
get no aid from them now. If their administration determines to join
the enemy, their force will be annihilated by equality of division
among themselves. Their federalists will then call in the English
army, the republicans ours, and it will only be a transfer of the
scene of war from Canada to Massachusetts; and we can get ten men to
go to Massachusetts for one who will go to Canada. Every one, too,
must know that we can at any moment make peace with England at the
expense of the navigation and fisheries of Massachusetts. But it
will not come to this. Their own people will put down these
factionists as soon as they see the real object of their opposition;
and of this Vermont, New Hampshire, and even Connecticut itself,
furnish proofs.
You intimate a possibility of your return to France, now that
Bonaparte is put down. I do not wonder at it, France, freed from
that monster, must again become the most agreeable country on earth.
It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune
gives a preference to some other one, and the first of all not under
those ties. Yet I doubt if the tranquillity of France is entirely
settled. If her Pretorian bands are not furnished with employment on
her external enemies, I fear they will recall the old, or set up some
new cause.
God bless you and preserve you in bodily health. Tranquillity
of mind depends much on ourselves, and greatly on due reflection "how
much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened."
Affectionately adieu.
WAR, REVOLUTION, AND RESTORATION
_To Lafayette_
_Monticello, February 14, 1815_
MY DEAR FRIEND, -- Your letter of August the 14th has been
received and read again, and again, with extraordinary pleasure. It
is the first glimpse which has been furnished me of the interior
workings of the late unexpected but fortunate revolution of your
country. The newspapers told us only that the great beast was
fallen; but what part in this the patriots acted, and what the
egotists, whether the former slept while the latter were awake to
their own interests only, the hireling scribblers of the English
press said little and knew less. I see now the mortifying
alternative under which the patriot there is placed, of being either
silent, or disgraced by an association in opposition with the remains
of Bonapartism. A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to be
expected by your nation, nor am I confident they are prepared to
preserve it. More than a generation will be requisite, under the
administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge
in the general mass of the people, and their habituation to an
independent security of person and property, before they will be
capable of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of a
sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests for
preservation. Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in
the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it
becomes, with an unprepared people, a tyranny still, of the many, the
few, or the one. Possibly you may remember, at the date of the _jeu
de paume_, how earnestly I urged yourself and the patriots of my
acquaintance, to enter then into a compact with the king, securing
freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, _habeas
corpus_, and a national legislature, all of which it was known he
would then yield, to go home, and let these work on the amelioration
of the condition of the people, until they should have rendered them
capable of more, when occasions would not fail to arise for
communicating to them more. This was as much as I then thought them
able to bear, soberly and usefully for themselves. You thought
otherwise, and that the dose might still be larger. And I found you
were right; for subsequent events proved they were equal to the
constitution of 1791. Unfortunately, some of the most honest and
enlightened of our patriotic friends, (but closet politicians merely,
unpractised in the knowledge of man,) thought more could still be
obtained and borne. They did not weigh the hazards of a transition
from one form of government to another, the value of what they had
already rescued from those hazards, and might hold in security if
they pleased, nor the imprudence of giving up the certainty of such a
degree of liberty, under a limited monarch, for the uncertainty of a
little more under the form of a republic. You differed from them.
You were for stopping there, and for securing the constitution which
the National Assembly had obtained. Here, too, you were right; and
from this fatal error of the republicans, from their separation from
yourself and the constitutionalists, in their councils, flowed all
the subsequent sufferings and crimes of the French nation. The
hazards of a second change fell upon them by the way. The foreigner
gained time to anarchise by gold the government he could not
overthrow by arms, to crush in their own councils the genuine
republicans, by the fraternal embraces of exaggerated and hired
pretenders, and to turn the machine of Jacobinism from the change to
the destruction of order; and, in the end, the limited monarchy they
had secured was exchanged for the unprincipled and bloody tyranny of
Robespierre, and the equally unprincipled and maniac tyranny of
Bonaparte. You are now rid of him, and I sincerely wish you may
continue so. But this may depend on the wisdom and moderation of the
restored dynasty. It is for them now to read a lesson in the fatal
errors of the republicans; to be contented with a certain portion of
power, secured by formal compact with the nation, rather than,
grasping at more, hazard all upon uncertainty, and risk meeting the
fate of their predecessor, or a renewal of their own exile. We are
just informed, too, of an example which merits, if true, their most
profound contemplation. The gazettes say that Ferdinand of Spain is
dethroned, and his father re-established on the basis of their new
constitution. This order of magistrates must, therefore, see, that
although the attempts at reformation have not succeeded in their
whole length, and some secession from the ultimate point has taken
place, yet that men have by no means fallen back to their former
passiveness, but on the contrary, that a sense of their rights, and a
restlessness to obtain them, remain deeply impressed on every mind,
and, if not quieted by reasonable relaxations of power, will break
out like a volcano on the first occasion, and overwhelm everything
again in its way. I always thought the present king an honest and
moderate man; and having no issue, he is under a motive the less for
yielding to personal considerations. I cannot, therefore, but hope,
that the patriots in and out of your legislature, acting in phalanx,
but temperately and wisely, pressing unremittingly the principles
omitted in the late capitulation of the king, and watching the
occasions which the course of events will create, may get those
principles engrafted into it, and sanctioned by the solemnity of a
national act.
With us the affairs of war have taken the most favorable turn
which was to be expected. Our thirty years of peace had taken off,
or superannuated, all our revolutionary officers of experience and
grade; and our first draught in the lottery of un-tried characters
had been most unfortunate. The delivery of the fort and army of
Detroit by the traitor Hull; the disgrace at Queenstown, under Van
Rensellaer; the massacre at Frenchtown under Winchester; and
surrender of Boerstler in an open field to one-third of his own
numbers, were the inauspicious beginnings of the first year of our
warfare. The second witnessed but the single miscarriage occasioned
by the disagreement of Wilkinson and Hampton, mentioned in my letter
to you of November the 30th, 1813, while it gave us the capture of
York by Dearborne and Pike; the capture of Fort George by Dearborne
also; the capture of Proctor's army on the Thames by Harrison, Shelby
and Johnson, and that of the whole British fleet on Lake Erie by
Perry. The third year has been a continued series of victories,
to-wit: of Brown and Scott at Chippewa, of the same at Niagara; of
Gaines over Drummond at Fort Erie; that of Brown over Drummond at the
same place; the capture of another fleet on Lake Champlain by
M'Donough; the entire defeat of their army under Prevost, on the same
day, by M'Comb, and recently their defeats at New Orleans by Jackson,
Coffee and Carroll, with the loss of four thousand men out of nine
thousand and six hundred, with their two Generals, Packingham and
Gibbs killed, and a third, Keane, wounded, mortally, as is said.
This series of successes has been tarnished only by the
conflagration at Washington, a _coup de main_ differing from that at
Richmond, which you remember, in the revolutionary war, in the
circumstance only, that we had, in that case, but forty-eight hours'
notice that an enemy had arrived within our capes; whereas, at
Washington, there was abundant previous notice. The force designated
by the President was double of what was necessary; but failed, as is
the general opinion, through the insubordination of Armstrong, who
would never believe the attack intended until it was actually made,
and the sluggishness of Winder before the occasion, and his
indecision during it. Still, in the end, the transaction has helped
rather than hurt us, by arousing the general indignation of our
country, and by marking to the world of Europe the Vandalism and
brutal character of the English government. It has merely served to
immortalize their infamy. And add further, that through the whole
period of the war, we have beaten them single-handed at sea, and so
thoroughly established our superiority over them with equal force,
that they retire from that kind of contest, and never suffer their
frigates to cruize singly. The Endymion would never have engaged the
frigate President, but knowing herself backed by three frigates and a
razee, who, though somewhat slower sailers, would get up before she
could be taken. The disclosure to the world of the fatal secret that
they can be beaten at sea with an equal force, the evidence furnished
by the military operations of the last year that experience is
rearing us officers who, when our means shall be fully under way,
will plant our standard on the walls of Quebec and Halifax, their
recent and signal disaster at New Orleans, and the evaporation of
their hopes from the Hartford convention, will probably raise a
clamor in the British nation, which will force their ministry into
peace. I say _force_ them, because, willingly, they would never be
at peace. The British ministers find in a state of war rather than
of peace, by riding the various contractors, and receiving _douceurs_
on the vast expenditures of the war supplies, that they recruit their
broken fortunes, or make new ones, and therefore will not make peace
as long as by any delusions they can keep the temper of the nation up
to the war point. They found some hopes on the state of our
finances. It is true that the excess of our banking institutions,
and their present discredit, have shut us out from the best source of
credit we could ever command with certainty. But the foundations of
credit still remain to us, and need but skill which experience will
soon produce, to marshal them into an order which may carry us
through any length of war. But they have hoped more in their
Hartford convention. Their fears of republican France being now done
away, they are directed to republican America, and they are playing
the same game for disorganization here, which they played in your
country. The Marats, the Dantons and Robespierres of Massachusetts
are in the same pay, under the same orders, and making the same
efforts to anarchise us, that their prototypes in France did there.
I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same
motives of money, nor were those of France. Some of them are Outs,
and wish to be Inns; some the mere dupes of the agitators, or of
their own party passions, while the Maratists alone are in the real
secret; but they have very different materials to work on. The
yeomanry of the United States are not the _canaille_ of Paris. We
might safely give them leave to go through the United States
recruiting their ranks, and I am satisfied they could not raise one
single regiment (gambling merchants and silk-stocking clerks
excepted) who would support them in any effort to separate from the
Union. The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every
American. I do not believe there is on earth a government
established on so immovable a basis. Let them, in any State, even in
Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation, and its
citizens will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own
incendiaries. If they could have induced the government to some
effort of suppression, or even to enter into discussion with them, it
would have given them some importance, have brought them into some
notice. But they have not been able to make themselves even a
subject of conversation, either of public or private societies. A
silent contempt has been the sole notice they excite; consoled,
indeed, some of them, by the _palpable_ favors of Philip. Have then
no fears for us, my friend. The grounds of these exist only in
English newspapers, endited or endowed by the Castlereaghs or the
Cannings, or some other such models of pure and uncorrupted virtue.
Their military heroes, by land and sea, may sink our oyster boats,
rob our hen roosts, burn our negro huts, and run off. But a campaign
or two more will relieve them from further trouble or expense in
defending their American possessions.
You once gave me a copy of the journal of your campaign in
Virginia, in 1781, which I must have lent to some one of the
undertakers to write the history of the revolutionary war, and forgot
to reclaim. I conclude this, because it is no longer among my
papers, which I have very diligently searched for it, but in vain.
An author of real ability is now writing that part of the history of
Virginia. He does it in my neighborhood, and I lay open to him all
my papers. But I possess none, nor has he any, which can enable him
to do justice to your faithful and able services in that campaign.
If you could be so good as to send me another copy, by the very first
vessel bound to any port in the United States, it might be here in
time; for although he expects to begin to print within a month or
two, yet you know the delays of these undertakings. At any rate it
might be got in as a supplement. The old Count Rochambeau gave me
also his _memoire_ of the operations at York, which is gone in the
same way, and I have no means of applying to his family for it.
Perhaps you could render them as well as us, the service of procuring
another copy.
I learn, with real sorrow, the deaths of Monsieur and Madame de
Tesse. They made an interesting part in the idle reveries in which I
have sometimes indulged myself, of seeing all my friends of Paris
once more, for a month or two; a thing impossible, which, however, I
never permitted myself to despair of. The regrets, however, of
seventy-three at the loss of friends, may be the less, as the time is
shorter within which we are to meet again, according to the creed of
our education.
This letter will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young
gentleman of Boston, of great erudition, indefatigable industry, and
preparation for a life of distinction in his own country. He passed
a few days with me here, brought high recommendations from Mr. Adams
and others, and appeared in every respect to merit them. He is well
worthy of those attentions which you so kindly bestow on our
countrymen, and for those he may receive I shall join him in
acknowledging personal obligations.
I salute you with assurances of my constant and affectionate
friendship and respect.
P. S. February 26th. My letter had not yet been sealed, when I
received news of our peace. I am glad of it, and especially that we
closed our war with the eclat of the action at New Orleans. But I
consider it as an armistice only, because no security is provided
against the impressment of our seamen. While this is unsettled we
are in hostility of mind with England, although actual deeds of arms
may be suspended by a truce. If she thinks the exercise of this
outrage is worth eternal war, eternal war it must be, or
extermination of the one or the other party. The first act of
impressment she commits on an American, will be answered by reprisal,
or by a declaration of war here; and the interval must be merely a
state of preparation for it. In this we have much to do, in further
fortifying our seaport towns, providing military stores, classing and
disciplining our militia, arranging our financial system, and above
all, pushing our domestic manufactures, which have taken such root as
never again can be shaken. Once more, God bless you.
LIBRARY CLASSIFICATION
_To George Watterston_
_Monticello, May 7, 1815_
SIR, -- I have duly received your favor of April 26th, in which
you are pleased to ask my opinion on the subject of the arrangement
of libraries. I shall communicate with pleasure what occurs to me on
it. Two methods offer themselves, the one alphabetical, the other
according to the subject of the book. The former is very
unsatisfactory, because of the medley it presents to the mind, the
difficulty sometimes of recalling an author's name, and the greater
difficulty, where the name is not given, of selecting the word in the
title, which shall determine its alphabetical place. The arrangement
according to subject is far preferable, although sometimes presenting
difficulty also, for it is often doubtful to what particular subject
a book should be ascribed. This is remarkably the case with books of
travels, which often blend together the geography, natural history,
civil history, agriculture, manufactures, commerce, arts,
occupations, manners, &c., of a country, so as to render it difficult
to say to which they chiefly relate. Others again, are polygraphical
in their nature, as Encyclopedias, magazines, etc. Yet on the whole
I have preferred arrangement according to subject, because of the
peculiar satisfaction, when we wish to consider a particular one, of
seeing at a glance the books which have been written on it, and
selecting those from which we effect most readily the information we
seek. On this principle the arrangement of my library was formed,
and I took the basis of its distribution from Lord Bacon's table of
science, modifying it to the changes in scientific pursuits which
have taken place since his time, and to the greater or less extent of
reading in the science which I proposed to myself. Thus the law
having been my profession, and politics the occupation to which the
circumstances of the times in which I have lived called my particular
attention, my provision of books in these lines, and in those most
nearly connected with them was more copious, and required in
particular instances subdivisions into sections and paragraphs, while
other subjects of which general views only were contemplated are
thrown into masses. A physician or theologist would have modified
differently, the chapters, sections, and paragraphs of a library
adapted to their particular pursuits.
You will receive my library arranged very perfectly in the
order observed in the catalogue, which I have sent with it. In
placing the books on their shelves, I have generally, but not always,
collocated distinctly the folios, quarto, octavo, and duodecimo,
placing with the last all smaller sizes. On every book is a label,
indicating the chapter of the catalogue to which it belongs, and the
other it holds among those of the same format. So that, although the
numbers seem confused on the catalogue, they are consecutive on the
volumes as they stand on their shelves, and indicate at once the
place they occupy there. Mr. Milligan in packing them has preserved
their arrangement so exactly, in their respective presses, that on
setting the presses up on end, he will be able readily to replace
them in the order corresponding with the catalogue, and thus save you
the immense labor which their rearrangement would otherwise require.
To give to my catalogue the convenience of the alphabetical
arrangement I have made at the end an alphabet of authors' names and
have noted the chapter or chapters, in which the name will be found;
where it occurs several times in the same chapter, it is indicated,
by one or more perpendicular scores, thus according to the number of
times it will be found in the chapter. Where a book bears no
author's name, I have selected in its title some leading word for
denoting it alphabetically. This member of the catalogue would be
more perfect if, instead of the score, the number on the book were
particularly noted. This could not be done when I made the
catalogue, because no label of numbers had then been put on the
books. That alteration can now be readily made, and would add
greatly to the convenient use of the catalogue. I gave to Mr.
Milligan a note of three folio volumes of the laws of Virginia
belonging to the library, which being in known hands, will be
certainly recovered, and shall be forwarded to you. One is a MS.
volume from which a printed copy is now preparing for publication.
This statement meets, I believe, all the enquiries of your
letter, and where it is not sufficiently minute, Mr. Milligan, from
his necessary acquaintance with the arrangement, will be able to
supply the smaller details. Accept the assurances of my respect and
consideration.
MANUFACTURES
_To Benjamin Austin_
_Monticello, January 9, 1816_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of December 21st has been received, and
I am first to thank you for the pamphlet it covered. The same
description of persons which is the subject of that is so much
multiplied here too, as to be almost a grievance, and by their
numbers in the public councils, have wrested from the public hand the
direction of the pruning knife. But with us as a body, they are
republican, and mostly moderate in their views; so far, therefore,
less objects of jealousy than with you. Your opinions on the events
which have taken place in France, are entirely just, so far as these
events are yet developed. But they have not reached their ultimate
termination. There is still an awful void between the present and
what is to be the last chapter of that history; and I fear it is to
be filled with abominations as frightful as those which have already
disgraced it. That nation is too high-minded, has too much innate
force, intelligence and elasticity, to remain under its present
compression. Samson will arise in his strength, as of old, and as of
old will burst asunder the withes and the cords, and the webs of the
Philistines. But what are to be the scenes of havoc and horror, and
how widely they may spread between brethren of the same house, our
ignorance of the interior feuds and antipathies of the country places
beyond our ken. It will end, nevertheless, in a representative
government, in a government in which the will of the people will be
an effective ingredient. This important element has taken root in
the European mind, and will have its growth; their despots, sensible
of this, are already offering this modification of their governments,
as if on their own accord. Instead of the parricide treason of
Bonaparte, in perverting the means confided to him as a republican
magistrate, to the subversion of that republic and erection of a
military despotism for himself and his family, had he used it
honestly for the establishment and support of a free government in
his own country, France would now have been in freedom and rest; and
her example operating in a contrary direction, every nation in Europe
would have had a government over which the will of the people would
have had some control. His atrocious egotism has checked the
salutary progress of principle, and deluged it with rivers of blood
which are not yet run out. To the vast sum of devastation and of
human misery, of which he has been the guilty cause, much is still to
be added. But the object is fixed in the eye of nations, and they
will press on to its accomplishment and to the general amelioration
of the condition of man. What a germ have we planted, and how
faithfully should we cherish the parent tree at home!
You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to continue our
dependence on England for manufactures. There was a time when I
might have been so quoted with more candor, but within the thirty
years which have since elapsed, how are circumstances changed! We
were then in peace. Our independent place among nations was
acknowledged. A commerce which offered the raw material in exchange
for the same material after receiving the last touch of industry, was
worthy of welcome to all nations. It was expected that those
especially to whom manufacturing industry was important, would
cherish the friendship of such customers by every favor, by every
inducement, and particularly cultivate their peace by every act of
justice and friendship. Under this prospect the question seemed
legitimate, whether, with such an immensity of unimproved land,
courting the hand of husbandry, the industry of agriculture, or that
of manufactures, would add most to the national wealth? And the
doubt was entertained on this consideration chiefly, that to the
labor of the husbandman a vast addition is made by the spontaneous
energies of the earth on which it is employed: for one grain of wheat
committed to the earth, she renders twenty, thirty, and even fifty
fold, whereas to the labor of the manufacturer nothing is added.
Pounds of flax, in his hands, yield, on the contrary, but
penny-weights of lace. This exchange, too, laborious as it might
seem, what a field did it promise for the occupations of the ocean;
what a nursery for that class of citizens who were to exercise and
maintain our equal rights on that element? This was the state of
things in 1785, when the "Notes on Virginia" were first printed;
when, the ocean being open to all nations, and their common right in
it acknowledged and exercised under regulations sanctioned by the
assent and usage of all, it was thought that the doubt might claim
some consideration. But who in 1785 could foresee the rapid
depravity which was to render the close of that century the disgrace
of the history of man? Who could have imagined that the two most
distinguished in the rank of nations, for science and civilization,
would have suddenly descended from that honorable eminence, and
setting at defiance all those moral laws established by the Author of
nature between nation and nation, as between man and man, would cover
earth and sea with robberies and piracies, merely because strong
enough to do it with temporal impunity; and that under this
disbandment of nations from social order, we should have been
despoiled of a thousand ships, and have thousands of our citizens
reduced to Algerine slavery. Yet all this has taken place. One of
these nations interdicted to our vessels all harbors of the globe
without having first proceeded to some one of hers, there paid a
tribute proportioned to the cargo, and obtained her license to
proceed to the port of destination. The other declared them to be
lawful prize if they had touched at the port, or been visited by a
ship of the enemy nation. Thus were we completely excluded from the
ocean. Compare this state of things with that of '85, and say
whether an opinion founded in the circumstances of that day can be
fairly applied to those of the present. We have experienced what we
did not then believe, that there exists both profligacy and power
enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other
nations: that to be independent for the comforts of life we must
fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the
side of the agriculturist. The former question is suppressed, or
rather assumes a new form. Shall we make our own comforts, or go
without them, at the will of a foreign nation? He, therefore, who is
now against domestic manufacture, must be for reducing us either to
dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to
live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these;
experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to
our independence as to our comfort; and if those who quote me as of a
different opinion, will keep pace with me in purchasing nothing
foreign where an equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained,
without regard to difference of price, it will not be our fault if we
do not soon have a supply at home equal to our demand, and wrest that
weapon of distress from the hand which has wielded it. If it shall
be proposed to go beyond our own supply, the question of '85 will
then recur, will our _surplus_ labor be then most beneficially
employed in the culture of the earth, or in the fabrications of art?
We have time yet for consideration, before that question will press
upon us; and the maxim to be applied will depend on the circumstances
which shall then exist; for in so complicated a science as political
economy, no one axiom can be laid down as wise and expedient for all
times and circumstances, and for their contraries. Inattention to
this is what has called for this explanation, which reflection would
have rendered unnecessary with the candid, while nothing will do it
with those who use the former opinion only as a stalking horse, to
cover their disloyal propensities to keep us in eternal vassalage to
a foreign and unfriendly people.
I salute you with assurances of great respect and esteem.
"A REAL CHRISTIAN"
_To Charles Thomson_
_Monticello, January 9, 1816_
MY DEAR AND ANCIENT FRIEND, -- An acquaintance of fifty-two
years, for I think ours dates from 1764, calls for an interchange of
notice now and then, that we remain in existence, the monuments of
another age, and examples of a friendship unaffected by the jarring
elements by which we have been surrounded, of revolutions of
government, of party and of opinion. I am reminded of this duty by
the receipt, through our friend Dr. Patterson, of your synopsis of
the four Evangelists. I had procured it as soon as I saw it
advertised, and had become familiar with its use; but this copy is
the more valued as it comes from your hand. This work bears the
stamp of that accuracy which marks everything from you, and will be
useful to those who, not taking things on trust, recur for themselves
to the fountain of pure morals. I, too, have made a wee-little book
from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is
a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the
book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain
order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of
ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that _I_ am a
_real Christian_, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of
Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call _me_ infidel and
_themselves_ Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw
all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor
saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond
the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious
ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not
recognize one feature. If I had time I would add to my little book
the Greek, Latin and French texts, in columns side by side. And I
wish I could subjoin a translation of Gosindi's Syntagma of the
doctrines of Epicurus, which, notwithstanding the calumnies of the
Stoics and caricatures of Cicero, is the most rational system
remaining of the philosophy of the ancients, as frugal of vicious
indulgence, and fruitful of virtue as the hyperbolical extravagances
of his rival sects.
I retain good health, am rather feeble to walk much, but ride
with ease, passing two or three hours a day on horseback, and every
three or four months taking in a carriage a journey of ninety miles
to a distant possession, where I pass a good deal of my time. My
eyes need the aid of glasses by night, and with small print in the
day also; my hearing is not quite so sensible as it used to be; no
tooth shaking yet, but shivering and shrinking in body from the cold
we now experience, my thermometer having been as low as 12 degrees
this morning. My greatest oppression is a correspondence
afflictingly laborious, the extent of which I have been long
endeavoring to curtail. This keeps me at the drudgery of the
writing-table all the prime hours of the day, leaving for the
gratification of my appetite for reading, only what I can steal from
the hours of sleep. Could I reduce this epistolary corvee within the
limits of my friends and affairs, and give the time redeemed from it
to reading and reflection, to history, ethics, mathematics, my life
would be as happy as the infirmities of age would admit, and I should
look on its consummation with the composure of one _"qui summum nec
me tuit diem nec optat."_
So much as to myself, and I have given you this string of
egotisms in the hope of drawing a similar one from yourself. I have
heard from others that you retain your health, a good degree of
activity, and all the vivacity and cheerfulness of your mind, but I
wish to learn it more minutely from yourself. How has time affected
your health and spirits? What are your amusements, literary and
social? Tell me everything about yourself, because all will be
interesting to me who retains for you ever the same constant and
affectionate friendship and respect.
YOUR PROPHECY AND MINE
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Jan. 11, 1816_
DEAR SIR -- Of the last five months I have past four at my
other domicil, for such it is in a considerable degree. No letters
are forwarded to me there, because the cross post to that place is
circuitous and uncertain. During my absence therefore they are
accumulating here, and awaiting acknolegments. This has been the
fate of your favor of Nov. 13.
I agree with you in all it's eulogies on the 18th. century. It
certainly witnessed the sciences and arts, manners and morals,
advanced to a higher degree than the world had ever before seen. And
might we not go back to the aera of the Borgias, by which time the
barbarous ages had reduced national morality to it's lowest point of
depravity, and observe that the arts and sciences, rising from that
point, advanced gradually thro' all the 16th. 17th. and 18th.
centuries, softening and correcting the manners and morals of man? I
think too we may add, to the great honor of science and the arts,
that their natural effect is, by illuminating public opinion, to
erect it into a Censor, before which the most exalted tremble for
their future, as well as present fame. With some exceptions only,
through the 17th. and 18th. centuries morality occupied an honorable
chapter in the political code of nations. You must have observed
while in Europe, as I thought I did, that those who administered the
governments of the greater powers at least, had a respect to faith,
and considered the dignity of their government as involved in it's
integrity. A wound indeed was inflicted on this character of honor
in the 18th. century by the partition of Poland. But this was the
atrocity of a barbarous government chiefly, in conjunction with a
smaller one still scrambling to become great, while one only of those
already great, and having character to lose, descended to the
baseness of an accomplice in the crime. France, England, Spain
shared in it only inasmuch as they stood aloof and permitted it's
perpetration. How then has it happened that these nations, France
especially and England, so great, so dignified, so distinguished by
science and the arts, plunged at once into all the depths of human
enormity, threw off suddenly and openly all the restraints of
morality, all sensation to character, and unblushingly avowed and
acted on the principle that power was right? Can this sudden
apostacy from national rectitude be accounted for? The treaty of
Pilnitz seems to have begun it, suggested perhaps by the baneful
precedent of Poland. Was it from the terror of monarchs, alarmed at
the light returning on them from the West, and kindling a Volcano
under their thrones? Was it a combination to extinguish that light,
and to bring back, as their best auxiliaries, those enumerated by
you, the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index expurgatorius, and the
knights of Loyola? Whatever it was, the close of the century saw the
moral world thrown back again to the age of the Borgias, to the point
from which it had departed 300. years before. France, after crushing
and punishing the conspiracy of Pilnitz, went herself deeper and
deeper into the crimes she had been chastising. I say France, and
not Bonaparte; for altho' he was the head and mouth, the nation
furnished the hands which executed his enormities. England, altho'
in opposition, kept full pace with France, not indeed by the manly
force of her own arms, but by oppressing the weak, and bribing the
strong. At length the whole choir joined and divided the weaker
nations among them. Your prophecies to Dr. Price proved truer than
mine; and yet fell short of the fact, for instead of a million, the
destruction of 8. or 10. millions of human beings has probably been
the effect of these convulsions. I did not, in 89. believe they
would have lasted so long, nor have cost so much blood. But altho'
your prophecy has proved true so far, I hope it does not preclude a
better final result. That same light from our West seems to have
spread and illuminated the very engines employed to extinguish it.
It has given them a glimmering of their rights and their power. The
idea of representative government has taken root and growth among
them. Their masters feel it, and are saving themselves by timely
offers of this modification of their own powers. Belguim, Prussia,
Poland, Lombardy etc. are now offered a representative organization:
illusive probably at first, but it will grow into power in the end.
Opinion is power, and that opinion will come. Even France will yet
attain representative government. You observe it makes the basis of
every constitution which has been demanded or offered: of that
demanded by their Senate; of that offered by Bonaparte; and of that
granted by Louis XVIII. The idea then is rooted, and will be
established, altho' rivers of blood may yet flow between them and
their object. The allied armies now couching upon them are first to
be destroyed, and destroyed they will surely be. A nation united can
never be conquered. We have seen what the ignorant bigotted and
unarmed Spaniards could do against the disciplined veterans of their
invaders. What then may we not expect from the power and character
of the French nation? The oppressors may cut off heads after heads,
but like those of the Hydra, they multiply at every stroke. The
recruits within a nation's own limits are prompt and without number;
while those of their invaders from a distance are slow, limited, and
must come to an end. I think too we percieve that all these allies
do not see the same interest in the annihilation of the power of
France. There are certainly some symptoms of foresight in Alexander
that France might produce a salutary diversion of force were Austria
and Prussia to become her enemies. France too is the natural ally of
the Turk, as having no interfering interests, and might be useful in
neutralizing and perhaps turning that power on Austria. That a
re-acting jealousy too exists with Austria and Prussia I think their
late strict alliance indicates; and I should not wonder if Spain
should discover a sympathy with them. Italy is so divided as to be
nothing. Here then we see new coalitions in embrio which after
France shall in turn have suffered a just punishment for her crimes,
will not only raise her from the earth on which she is prostrate, but
give her an opportunity to establish a government of as much liberty
as she can bear, enough to ensure her happiness and prosperity. When
insurrection begins, be it where it will, all the partitioned
countries will rush to arms, and Europe again become an Arena of
gladiators. And what is the definite object they will propose? A
restoration certainly of the status quo prius, of the state of
possession of 89. I see no other principle on which Europe can ever
again settle down in lasting peace. I hope your prophecies will go
thus far, as my wishes do, and that they, like the former, will prove
to have been the sober dictates of a superior understanding, and a
sound calculation of effects from causes well understood. Some
future Morgan will then have an opportunity of doing you justice, and
of counterbalancing the breach of confidence of which you so justly
complain, and in which no one has had more frequent occasion of
fellow-feeling than myself. Permit me to place here my affectionate
respects to Mrs. Adams, and to add for yourself the assurances of
cordial friendship and esteem.
THE WARD SYSTEM
_To Joseph C. Cabell_
_Monticello, February 2, 1816_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favors of the 23d and 24th ult., were a week
coming to us. I instantly enclosed to you the deeds of Capt. Miller,
but I understand that the Post Master, having locked his mail before
they got to the office, would not unlock it to give them a passage.
Having been prevented from retaining my collection of the acts
and journals of our legislature by the lumping manner in which the
Committee of Congress chose to take my library, it may be useful to
our public bodies to know what acts and journals I had, and where
they can now have access to them. I therefore enclose you a copy of
my catalogue, which I pray you to deposit in the council office for
public use. It is in the eighteenth and twenty-fourth chapters they
will find what is interesting to them. The form of the catalogue has
been much injured in the publication; for although they have
preserved my division into chapters, they have reduced the books in
each chapter to alphabetical order, instead of the chronological or
analytical arrangements I had given them. You will see sketches of
what were my arrangements at the heads of some of the chapters.
The bill on the obstructions in our navigable waters appears to
me proper; as do also the amendments proposed. I think the State
should reserve a right to the use of the waters for navigation, and
that where an individual landholder impedes that use, he shall remove
that impediment, and leave the subject in as good a state as nature
formed it. This I hold to be the true principle; and to this Colonel
Green's amendments go. All I ask in my own case is, that the
legislature will not take from me _my own works_. I am ready to cut
my dam in any place, and at any moment requisite, so as to remove
that impediment, if it be thought one, and to leave those interested
to make the most of the natural circumstances of the place. But I
hope they will never take from me my canal, made through the body of
my own lands, at an expense of twenty thousand dollars, and which is
no impediment to the navigation of the river. I have permitted the
riparian proprietors above (and they not more than a dozen or twenty)
to use it gratis, and shall not withdraw the permission unless they
so use it as to obstruct too much the operations of my mills, of
which there is some likelihood.
Doctor Smith, you say, asks what is the best elementary book on
the principles of government? None in the world equal to the Review
of Montesquieu, printed at Philadelphia a few years ago. It has the
advantage, too, of being equally sound and corrective of the
principles of political economy; and all within the compass of a thin
8vo. Chipman's and Priestley's Principles of Government, and the
Federalists, are excellent in many respects, but for fundamental
principles not comparable to the Review. I have no objections to the
printing my letter to Mr. Carr, if it will promote the interests of
science; although it was not written with a view to its publication.
My letter of the 24th ult. conveyed to you the grounds of the
two articles objected to the College bill. Your last presents one of
them in a new point of view, that of the commencement of the ward
schools as likely to render the law unpopular to the country. It
must be a very inconsiderate and rough process of execution that
would do this. My idea of the mode of carrying it into execution
would be this: Declare the county _ipso facto_ divided into wards for
the present, by the boundaries of the militia captaincies; somebody
attend the ordinary muster of each company, having first desired the
captain to call together a full one. There explain the object of the
law to the people of the company, put to their vote whether they will
have a school established, and the most central and convenient place
for it; get them to meet and build a log school-house; have a roll
taken of the children who would attend it, and of those of them able
to pay. These would probably be sufficient to support a common
teacher, instructing gratis the few unable to pay. If there should
be a deficiency, it would require too trifling a contribution from
the county to be complained of; and especially as the whole county
would participate, where necessary, in the same resource. Should the
company, by its vote, decide that it would have no school, let them
remain without one. The advantages of this proceeding would be that
it would become the duty of the alderman elected by the county, to
take an active part in pressing the introduction of schools, and to
look out for tutors. If, however, it is intended that the State
government shall take this business into its own hands, and provide
schools for every county, then by all means strike out this provision
of our bill. I would never wish that it should be placed on a worse
footing than the rest of the State. But if it is believed that these
elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and
council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general
authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it
is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one step
further, and amend the bill so as to commit to the governor and
council the management of all our farms, our mills, and merchants'
stores. No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is
not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many,
distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.
Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the
nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments
with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what
concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of
the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It
is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great
national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in
the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under
every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for
the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every
government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing
and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter
whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats
of a Venetian senate. And I do believe that if the Almighty has not
decreed that man shall never be free, (and it is a blasphemy to
believe it,) that the secret will be found to be in the making
himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he
is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his
competence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of
functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as
the trustees become more and more oligarchical. The elementary
republics of the wards, the county republics, the States republics,
and the republic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities,
standing each on the basis of law, holding every one its delegated
share of powers, and constituting truly a system of fundamental
balances and checks for the government. Where every man is a sharer
in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones,
and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not
merely at an election one day in the year, but every day; when there
shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some one
of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of
his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a
Bonaparte. How powerfully did we feel the energy of this
organization in the case of embargo? I felt the foundations of the
government shaken under my feet by the New England townships. There
was not an individual in their States whose body was not thrown with
all its momentum into action; and although the whole of the other
States were known to be in favor of the measure, yet the organization
of this little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the Union.
What would the unwieldy counties of the middle, the south, and the
west do? Call a county meeting, and the drunken loungers at and
about the court houses would have collected, the distances being too
great for the good people and the industrious generally to attend.
The character of those who really met would have been the measure of
the weight they would have had in the scale of public opinion. As
Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words, _"Carthago delenda
est,"_ so do I every opinion, with the injunction, "divide the
counties into wards." Begin them only for a single purpose; they will
soon show for what others they are the best instruments. God bless
you, and all our rulers, and give them the wisdom, as I am sure they
have the will, to fortify us against the degeneracy of one
government, and the concentration of all its powers in the hands of
the one, the few, the well-born or the many.
"HOPE IN THE HEAD . . . FEAR ASTERN"
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Apr. 8, 1816_
DEAR SIR -- I have to acknolege your two favors of Feb. 16. and
Mar. 2. and to join sincerely in the sentiment of Mrs. Adams, and
regret that distance separates us so widely. An hour of conversation
would be worth a volume of letters. But we must take things as they
come.
You ask if I would agree to live my 70. or rather 73. years
over again? To which I say Yea. I think with you that it is a good
world on the whole, that it has been framed on a principle of
benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us. There are
indeed (who might say Nay) gloomy and hypocondriac minds, inhabitants
of diseased bodies, disgusted with the present, and despairing of the
future; always counting that the worst will happen, because it may
happen. To these I say How much pain have cost us the evils which
have never happened? My temperament is sanguine. I steer my bark
with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. My hopes indeed
sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.
There are, I acknolege, even in the happiest life, some terrible
convulsions, heavy set-offs against the opposite page of the account.
I have often wondered for what good end the sensations of Grief could
be intended. All our other passions, within proper bounds, have an
useful object. And the perfection of the moral character is, not in
a Stoical apathy, so hypocritically vaunted, and so untruly too,
because impossible, but in a just equilibrium of all the passions. I
wish the pathologists then would tell us what is the use of grief in
the economy, and of what good it is the cause, proximate or remote.
Did I know Baron Grimm while at Paris? Yes, most intimately.
He was the pleasantest, and most conversible member of the diplomatic
corps while I was there: a man of good fancy, acuteness, irony,
cunning, and egoism: no heart, not much of any science, yet enough of
every one to speak it's language. His fort was Belles-lettres,
painting and sculpture. In these he was the oracle of the society,
and as such was the empress Catharine's private correspondent and
factor in all things not diplomatic. It was thro' him I got her
permission for poor Ledyard to go to Kamschatka, and cross over
thence to the Western coast of America, in order to penetrate across
our continent in the opposite direction to that afterwards adopted
for Lewis and Clarke: which permission she withdrew after he had got
within 200. miles of Kamschatska, had him siesed, brought back and
set down in Poland. Altho' I never heard Grimm express the opinion,
directly, yet I always supposed him to be of the school of Diderot,
D'Alembert, D'Holbach, the first of whom committed their system of
atheism to writing in `Le bon sens,' and the last in his `Systeme de
la Nature.' It was a numerous school in the Catholic countries, while
the infidelity of the Protestant took generally the form of Theism.
The former always insisted that it was a mere question of definition
between them, the hypostasis of which on both sides was `Nature' or
`the Universe:' that both agreed in the order of the existing system,
but the one supposed it from eternity, the other as having begun in
time. And when the atheist descanted on the unceasing motion and
circulation of matter thro' the animal vegetable and mineral
kingdoms, never resting, never annihilated, always changing form, and
under all forms gifted with the power of reproduction; the Theist
pointing `to the heavens above, and to the earth beneath, and to the
waters under the earth,' asked if these did not proclaim a first
cause, possessing intelligence and power; power in the production,
and intelligence in the design and constant preservation of the
system; urged the palpable existence of final causes, that the eye
was made to see, and the ear to hear, and not that we see because we
have eyes, and hear because we have ears; an answer obvious to the
senses, as that of walking across the room was to the philosopher
demonstrating the nonexistence of motion. It was in D'Holbach's
conventicles that Rousseau imagined all the machinations against him
were contrived; and he left, in his Confessions the most biting
anecdotes of Grimm. These appeared after I left France; but I have
heard that poor Grimm was so much afflicted by them, that he kept his
bed several weeks. I have never seen these Memoirs of Grimm. Their
volume has kept them out of our market.
I have been lately amusing myself with Levi's book in answer to
Dr. Priestley. It is a curious and tough work. His style is
inelegant and incorrect, harsh and petulent to his adversary, and his
reasoning flimsey enough. Some of his doctrines were new to me,
particularly that of his two resurrections: the first a particular
one of all the dead, in body as well as soul, who are to live over
again, the Jews in a state of perfect obedience to god, the other
nations in a state of corporeal punishment for the sufferings they
have inflicted on the Jews. And he explains this resurrection of
bodies to be only of the original stamen of Leibnitz, or the
homunculus in semine masculino, considering that as a mathematical
point, insusceptible of separation, or division. The second
resurrection a general one of souls and bodies, eternally to enjoy
divine glory in the presence of the supreme being. He alledges that
the Jews alone preserve the doctrine of the unity of god. Yet their
god would be deemed a very indifferent man with us: and it was to
correct their Anamorphosis of the deity that Jesus preached, as well
as to establish the doctrine of a future state. However Levi insists
that that was taught in the old testament, and even by Moses himself
and the prophets. He agrees that an anointed prince was prophecied
and promised: but denies that the character and history of Jesus has
any analogy with that of the person promised. He must be fearfully
embarrassing to the Hierophants of fabricated Christianity; because
it is their own armour in which he clothes himself for the attack.
For example, he takes passages of Scripture from their context (which
would give them a very different meaning) strings them together, and
makes them point towards what object he pleases; he interprets them
figuratively, typically, analogically, hyperbolically; he calls in
the aid of emendation, transposition, ellipsis, metonymy, and every
other figure of rhetoric; the name of one man is taken for another,
one place for another, days and weeks for months and years; and
finally avails himself of all his advantage over his adversaries by
his superior knolege of the Hebrew, speaking in the very language of
the divine communication, while they can only fumble on with
conflicting and disputed translations. Such is this war of giants.
And how can such pigmies as you and I decide between them? For
myself I confess that my head is not formed tantas componere lites.
And as you began your Mar. 2. with a declaration that you were about
to write me the most frivolous letter I had ever read, so I will
close mine by saying I have written you a full match for it, and by
adding my affectionate respects to Mrs. Adams, and the assurance of
my constant attachment and consideration for yourself.
"CONSTITUTIONALLY AND CONSCIENTIOUSLY DEMOCRATS"
_To P. S. Dupont de Nemours_
_Poplar Forest, April 24, 1816_
I received, my dear friend, your letter covering the
constitution for your Equinoctial republsetting out for this place.
I brought it with me, and have read it with great satisfaction. I
suppose it well formed for those for whom it was intended, and the
excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of
those to be governed by it. For us it would not do. Distinguishing
between the structure of the government and the moral principles on
which you prescribe its administration, with the latter we concur
cordially, with the former we should not. We of the United States,
you know, are constitutionally and conscientiously democrats. We
consider society as one of the natural wants with which man has been
created; that he has been endowed with faculties and qualities to
effect its satisfaction by concurrence of others having the same
want; that when, by the exercise of these faculties, he has procured
a state of society, it is one of his acquisitions which he has a
right to regulate and control, jointly indeed with all those who have
concurred in the procurement, whom he cannot exclude from its use or
direction more than they him. We think experience has proved it
safer, for the mass of individuals composing the society, to reserve
to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which
they are competent, and to delegate those to which they are not
competent to deputies named, and removable for unfaithful conduct, by
themselves immediately. Hence, with us, the people (by which is
meant the mass of individuals composing the society) being competent
to judge of the facts occurring in ordinary life, they have retained
the functions of judges of facts, under the name of jurors; but being
unqualified for the management of affairs requiring intelligence
above the common level, yet competent judges of human character, they
chose, for their management, representatives, some by themselves
immediately, others by electors chosen by themselves. Thus our
President is chosen by ourselves, directly in _practice_, for we vote
for A as elector only on the condition he will vote for B, our
representatives by ourselves immediately, our Senate and judges of
law through electors chosen by ourselves. And we believe that this
proximate choice and power of removal is the best security which
experience has sanctioned for ensuring an honest conduct in the
functionaries of society. Your three or four alembications have
indeed a seducing appearance. We should conceive _prima facie_, that
the last extract would be the pure alcohol of the substance, three or
four times rectified. But in proportion as they are more and more
sublimated, they are also farther and farther removed from the
control of the society; and the human character, we believe, requires
in general constant and immediate control, to prevent its being
biased from right by the seductions of self-love. Your process
produces therefore a structure of government from which the
fundamental principle of ours is excluded. You first set down as
zeros all individuals not having lands, which are the greater number
in every society of long standing. Those holding lands are permitted
to manage in person the small affairs of their commune or
corporation, and to elect a deputy for the canton; in which election,
too, every one's vote is to be an unit, a plurality, or a fraction,
in proportion to his landed possessions. The assemblies of cantons,
then, elect for the districts; those of districts for circles; and
those of circles for the national assemblies. Some of these highest
councils, too, are in a considerable degree self-elected, the regency
partially, the judiciary entirely, and some are for life. Whenever,
therefore, an _esprit de corps_, or of party, gets possession of
them, which experience shows to be inevitable, there are no means of
breaking it up, for they will never elect but those of their own
spirit. Juries are allowed in criminal cases only. I acknowledge
myself strong in affection to our own form, yet both of us act and
think from the same motive, we both consider the people as our
children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them
as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as
adults whom I freely leave to self-government. And you are right in
the case referred to you; my criticism being built on a state of
society not under your contemplation. It is, in fact, like a critic
on Homer by the laws of the Drama.
But when we come to the moral principles on which the
government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all
conditions of society. I meet you there in all the benevolence and
rectitude of your native character; and I love myself always most
where I concur most with you. Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are
declared to be the four cardinal principles of your society. I
believe with you that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate
elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right
independent of force; that a right to property is founded in our
natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy
these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without
violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one
has a right to obstruct another, exercising his faculties innocently
for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature; that
justice is the fundamental law of society; that the majority,
oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength,
and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations
of society; that action by the citizens in person, in affairs within
their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives,
chosen immediately, and removable by themselves, constitutes the
essence of a republic; that all governments are more or less
republican in proportion as this principle enters more or less into
their composition; and that a government by representation is capable
of extension over a greater surface of country than one of any other
form. These, my friend, are the essentials in which you and I agree;
however, in our zeal for their maintenance, we may be perplexed and
divaricate, as to the structure of society most likely to secure
them.
In the constitution of Spain, as proposed by the late Cortes,
there was a principle entirely new to me, and not noticed in yours,
that no person, born after that day, should ever acquire the rights
of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible
sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those
which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the
administration of the government, constant ralliance to the
principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the
progressive advances of the human mind, or changes in human affairs,
it is the most effectual. Enlighten the people generally, and
tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil
spirits at the dawn of day. Although I do not, with some
enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to
such a state of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or
vice in the world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement,
and most of all, in matters of government and religion; and that the
diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by
which it is to be effected. The constitution of the Cortes had
defects enough; but when I saw in it this amendatory provision, I was
satisfied all would come right in time, under its salutary operation.
No people have more need of a similar provision than those for whom
you have felt so much interest. No mortal wishes them more success
than I do. But if what I have heard of the ignorance and bigotry of
the mass be true, I doubt their capacity to understand and to support
a free government; and fear that their emancipation from the foreign
tyranny of Spain, will result in a military despotism at home.
Palacios may be great; others may be great; but it is the multitude
which possess force: and wisdom must yield to that. For such a
condition of society, the constitution you have devised is probably
the best imaginable. It is certainly calculated to elicit the best
talents; although perhaps not well guarded against the egoism of its
functionaries. But that egoism will be light in comparison with the
pressure of a military despot, and his army of Janissaries. Like
Solon to the Athenians, you have given to your Columbians, not the
best possible government, but the best they can bear. By-the-bye, I
wish you had called them the Columbian republics, to distinguish them
from our American republics. Theirs would be the most honorable
name, and they best entitled to it; for Columbus discovered their
continent, but never saw ours.
To them liberty and happiness; to you the meed of wisdom and
goodness in teaching them how to attain them, with the affectionate
respect and friendship of,
CAPTAIN LEWIS'S PAPERS
_To Correa da Serra_
_Poplar Forest, April 26, 1816_
DEAR SIR -- Your favor of Mar. 29. was recieved just as I was
setting out for this place. I brought it with me to be answered
hence. Since you are so kind as to interest yourself for Capt.
Lewis's papers, I will give you a full statement of them.
1. Ten or twelve such pocket volumes, Morocco bound, as that
you describe, in which, in his own hand writing, he had journalised
all occurences, day by day, as he travelled. They were small 8vos
and opened at the end for more convenient writing. Every one had
been put into a separate tin case, cemented to prevent injury from
wet. But on his return the cases, I presume, had been taken from
them, as he delivered me the books uncased. There were in them the
figures of some animals drawn with the pen while on his journey. The
gentlemen who published his travels must have had these Ms. volumes,
and perhaps now have them, or can give some account of them.
2. Descriptions of animals and plants. I do not recollect
whether there was such a book or collection of papers, distinct from
his journal; altho' I am inclined to think there was one: because his
travels as published, do not contain all the new animals of which he
had either descriptions or specimens. Mr. Peale, I think, must know
something of this, as he drew figures of some of the animals for
engraving, and some were actually engraved. Perhaps Conrad, his
bookseller, who was to have published the work, can give an account
of these.
3. Vocabularies. I had myself made a collection of about 40.
vocabularies of the Indians on this side of the Missisipi, and Capt.
Lewis was instructed to take those of every tribe beyond, which he
possibly could: the intention was to publish the whole, and leave the
world to search for affinities between these and the languages of
Europe and Asia. He was furnished with a number of printed
vocabularies of the same words and form I had used, with blank spaces
for the Indian words. He was very attentive to this instruction,
never missing an opportunity of taking a vocabulary. After his
return, he asked me if I should have any objection to the printing
his separately, as mine were not yet arranged as I intended. I
assured him I had not the least; and I am certain he contemplated
their publication. But whether he had put the papers out of his own
hand or not, I do not know. I imagine he had not: and it is probable
that Doctr. Barton, who was particularly curious on this subject, and
published on it occasionally, would willingly recieve and take care
of these papers after Capt. Lewis's death, and that they are now
among his papers.
4. His observations of longitude and latitude. He was
instructed to send these to the war-office, that measures might be
taken to have the calculations made. Whether he delivered them to
the war-office, or to Dr. Patterson, I do not know; but I think he
communicated with Dr. Patterson concerning them. These are
all-important: because altho', having with him the Nautical almanacs,
he could & did calculate some of his latitudes, yet the longitudes
were taken merely from estimates by the log-line, time and course.
So that it is only as to latitudes that his map may be considered as
tolerably correct; not as to its longitudes.
5. His Map. This was drawn on sheets of paper, not put
together, but so marked that they could be joined together with the
utmost accuracy; not as one great square map, but ramifying with the
courses of the rivers. The scale was very large, and the sheets
numerous, but in perfect preservation. This was to await
publication, until corrected by the calculations of longitude and
latitude. I examined these sheets myself minutely, as spread on the
floor, and the originals must be in existence, as the Map published
with his travels must have been taken from them.
These constitute the whole. They are the property of the
government, the fruits of the expedition undertaken at such expense
of money and risk of valuable lives. They contain exactly the whole
of the information which it was our object to obtain for the benefit
of our own country and of the world. But we were willing to give to
Lewis and Clarke whatever pecuniary benefits might be derived from
the publication, and therefore left the papers in their hands, taking
for granted that their interests would produce a speedy publication,
which would be better if done under their direction. But the death
of Capt. Lewis, the distance and occupations of General Clarke, and
the bankruptcy of their bookseller, have retarded the publication,
and rendered necessary that the government should attend to the
reclamation & security of their papers. Their recovery is now become
an imperious duty. Their safest deposit as fast as they can be
collected, will be the Philosophical Society, who no doubt will be so
kind as to receive and preserve them, subject to the orders of
government; and their publication, once effected in any way, the
originals will probably be left in the same deposit. As soon as I
can learn their present situation, I will lay the matter before the
government to take such order as they think proper. As to any claims
of individuals to these papers, it is to be observed that, as being
the property of the public, we are certain neither Lewis nor Clarke
would undertake to convey away the right to them, and that they could
not convey them, had they been capable of intending it. Yet no
interest of that kind is meant to be disturbed, if the individual can
give satisfactory assurance that he will promptly & properly publish
them. Otherwise they must be restored to the government, & the
claimant left to settle with those on whom he has any claim. My
interference will, I trust, be excused, not only from the portion
which every citizen has in whatever is public, but from the peculiar
part I have had in the design and execution of this expedition.
To you, my friend, apology is due for involving you in the
trouble of this inquiry. It must be found in the interest you take
in whatever belongs to science, and in your own kind offers to me of
aid in this research. Be assured always of my affectionate
friendship and respect.
THE TEST OF REPUBLICANISM
_To John Taylor_
_Monticello, May 28, 1816_
DEAR SIR, -- On my return from a long journey and considerable
absence from home, I found here the copy of your "Enquiry into the
principles of our government," which you had been so kind as to send
me; and for which I pray you to accept my thanks. The difficulties
of getting new works in our situation, inland and without a single
bookstore, are such as had prevented my obtaining a copy before; and
letters which had accumulated during my absence, and were calling for
answers, have not yet permitted me to give to the whole a thorough
reading; yet certain that you and I could not think differently on
the fundamentals of rightful government, I was impatient, and availed
myself of the intervals of repose from the writing table, to obtain a
cursory idea of the body of the work.
I see in it much matter for profound reflection; much which
should confirm our adhesion, in practice, to the good principles of
our constitution, and fix our attention on what is yet to be made
good. The sixth section on the good moral principles of our
government, I found so interesting and replete with sound principles,
as to postpone my letter-writing to its thorough perusal and
consideration. Besides much other good matter, it settles
unanswerably the right of instructing representatives, and their duty
to obey. The system of banking we have both equally and ever
reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our
constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction,
which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping
away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.
Funding I consider as limited, rightfully, to a redemption of the
debt within the lives of a majority of the generation contracting it;
every generation coming equally, by the laws of the Creator of the
world, to the free possession of the earth he made for their
subsistence, unincumbered by their predecessors, who, like them, were
but tenants for life. You have successfully and completely
pulverized Mr. Adams' system of orders, and his opening the mantle of
republicanism to every government of laws, whether consistent or not
with natural right. Indeed, it must be acknowledged, that the term
_republic_ is of very vague application in every language. Witness
the self-styled republics of Holland, Switzerland, Genoa, Venice,
Poland. Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I
would say, purely and simply, it means a government by its citizens
in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules
established by the majority; and that every other government is more
or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more
or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens.
Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of
space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the
extent of a New England township. The first shade from this pure
element, which, like that of pure vital air, cannot sustain life of
itself, would be where the powers of the government, being divided,
should be exercised each by representatives chosen either _pro hac
vice_, or for such short terms as should render secure the duty of
expressing the will of their constituents. This I should consider as
the nearest approach to a pure republic, which is practicable on a
large scale of country or population. And we have examples of it in
some of our States constitutions, which, if not poisoned by
priest-craft, would prove its excellence over all mixtures with other
elements; and, with only equal doses of poison, would still be the
best. Other shades of republicanism may be found in other forms of
government, where the executive, judiciary and legislative functions,
and the different branches of the latter, are chosen by the people
more or less directly, for longer terms of years or for life, or made
hereditary; or where there are mixtures of authorities, some
dependent on, and others independent of the people. The further the
departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less
has the government of the ingredient of republicanism; evidently none
where the authorities are hereditary, as in France, Venice, &c., or
self-chosen, as in Holland; and little, where for life, in proportion
as the life continues in being after the act of election.
The purest republican feature in the government of our own
State, is the House of Representatives. The Senate is equally so the
first year, less the second, and so on. The Executive still less,
because not chosen by the people directly. The Judiciary seriously
anti-republican, because for life; and the national arm wielded, as
you observe, by military leaders irresponsible but to themselves.
Add to this the vicious constitution of our county courts (to whom
the justice, the executive administration, the taxation, police, the
military appointments of the county, and nearly all our daily
concerns are confided), self-appointed, self-continued, holding their
authorities for life, and with an impossibility of breaking in on the
perpetual succession of any faction once possessed of the bench.
They are in truth, the executive, the judiciary, and the military of
their respective counties, and the sum of the counties makes the
State. And add, also, that one half of our brethren who fight and
pay taxes, are excluded, like Helots, from the rights of
representation, as if society were instituted for the soil, and not
for the men inhabiting it; or one half of these could dispose of the
rights and the will of the other half, without their consent.
"What constitutes a State?
Not high-raised battlements, or labor'd mound,
Thick wall, or moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd;
No: men, high minded men;
Men, who their duties know;
But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain.
These constitute a State."
In the General Government, the House of Representatives is
mainly republican; the Senate scarcely so at all, as not elected by
the people directly, and so long secured even against those who do
elect them; the Executive more republican than the Senate, from its
shorter term, its election by the people, in _practice_, (for they
vote for A only on an assurance that he will vote for B,) and
because, _in practice also_, a principle of rotation seems to be in a
course of establishment; the judiciary independent of the nation,
their coercion by impeachment being found nugatory.
If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their
government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know
no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much
less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other
words, that the people have less regular control over their agents,
than their rights and their interests require. And this I ascribe,
not to any want of republican dispositions in those who formed these
constitutions, but to a submission of true principle to European
authorities, to speculators on government, whose fears of the people
have been inspired by the populace of their own great cities, and
were unjustly entertained against the independent, the happy, and
therefore orderly citizens of the United States. Much I apprehend
that the golden moment is past for reforming these heresies. The
functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions
to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not
likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it. We are
always told that things are going on well; why change them? _"Chi
sta bene, non si muove,"_ said the Italian, "let him who stands well,
stand still." This is true; and I verily believe they would go on
well with us under an absolute monarch, while our present character
remains, of order, industry and love of peace, and restrained, as he
would be, by the proper spirit of the people. But it is while it
remains such, we should provide against the consequences of its
deterioration. And let us rest in the hope that it will yet be done,
and spare ourselves the pain of evils which may never happen.
On this view of the import of the term _republic_, instead of
saying, as has been said, "that it may mean anything or nothing," we
may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less
republican as they have more or less of the element of popular
election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do,
that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own
rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of
the people, are less injurious than those from the egoism of their
agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in
it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you,
that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies;
and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity,
under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large
scale.
I salute you with constant friendship and respect.
REFORM OF THE VIRGINIA CONSTITUTION
_To Samuel Kercheval_
_Monticello, July 12, 1816_
SIR, -- I duly received your favor of June the 13th, with the
copy of the letters on the calling a convention, on which you are
pleased to ask my opinion. I have not been in the habit of
mysterious reserve on any subject, nor of buttoning up my opinions
within my own doublet. On the contrary, while in public service
especially, I thought the public entitled to frankness, and
intimately to know whom they employed. But I am now retired: I
resign myself, as a passenger, with confidence to those at present at
the helm, and ask but for rest, peace and good will. The question
you propose, on equal representation, has become a party one, in
which I wish to take no public share. Yet, if it be asked for your
own satisfaction only, and not to be quoted before the public, I have
no motive to withhold it, and the less from you, as it coincides with
your own. At the birth of our republic, I committed that opinion to
the world, in the draught of a constitution annexed to the "Notes on
Virginia," in which a provision was inserted for a representation
permanently equal. The infancy of the subject at that moment, and
our inexperience of self-government, occasioned gross departures in
that draught from genuine republican canons. In truth, the abuses of
monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation,
that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We
had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that "governments are
republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their
people, and execute it." Hence, our first constitutions had really no
leading principles in them. But experience and reflection have but
more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal
representation then proposed. On that point, then, I am entirely in
sentiment with your letters; and only lament that a copy-right of
your pamphlet prevents their appearance in the newspapers, where
alone they would be generally read, and produce general effect. The
present vacancy too, of other matter, would give them place in every
paper, and bring the question home to every man's conscience.
But inequality of representation in both Houses of our
legislature, is not the only republican heresy in this first essay of
our revolutionary patriots at forming a constitution. For let it be
agreed that a government is republican in proportion as every member
composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns
(not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits
of a city, or small township, but) by representatives chosen by
himself, and responsible to him at short periods, and let us bring to
the test of this canon every branch of our constitution.
In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by
less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who
do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long
terms of irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is
entirely independent of the choice of the people, and of their
control; his Council equally so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a
wagon. In the Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are
dependent on none but themselves. In England, where judges were
named and removable at the will of an hereditary executive, from
which branch most misrule was feared, and has flowed, it was a great
point gained, by fixing them for life, to make them independent of
that executive. But in a government founded on the public will, this
principle operates in an opposite direction, and against that will.
There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the
executive and legislative branches. But we have made them
independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by their
own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own body
for the imbecilities of dotage. The justices of the inferior courts
are self-chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in
succession forever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of
the bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county
in chains, forever indissoluble. Yet these justices are the real
executive as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary
concerns. They tax us at will; fill the office of sheriff, the most
important of all the executive officers of the county; name nearly
all our military leaders, which leaders, once named, are removable
but by themselves. The juries, our judges of all fact, and of law
when they choose it, are not selected by the people, nor amenable to
them. They are chosen by an officer named by the court and
executive. Chosen, did I say? Picked up by the sheriff from the
loungings of the court yard, after everything respectable has retired
from it. Where then is our republicanism to be found? Not in our
constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people. That
would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly. Owing to this
spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution, all things
have gone well. But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the
enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but has
prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because
generally honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it.
But it will be said, it is easier to find faults than to amend
them. I do not think their amendment so difficult as is pretended.
Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not
be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the
croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people. If
experience be called for, appeal to that of our fifteen or twenty
governments for forty years, and show me where the people have done
half the mischief in these forty years, that a single despot would
have done in a single year; or show half the riots and rebellions,
the crimes and the punishments, which have taken place in any single
nation, under kingly government, during the same period. The true
foundation of republican government is the equal right of every
citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by
this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it
hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to
a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man
who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their
election. Submit them to approbation or rejection at short
intervals. Let the executive be chosen in the same way, and for the
same term, by those whose agent he is to be; and leave no screen of a
council behind which to skulk from responsibility. It has been
thought that the people are not competent electors of judges _learned
in the law_. But I do not know that this is true, and, if doubtful,
we should follow principle. In this, as in many other elections,
they would be guided by reputation, which would not err oftener,
perhaps, than the present mode of appointment. In one State of the
Union, at least, it has long been tried, and with the most
satisfactory success. The judges of Connecticut have been chosen by
the people every six months, for nearly two centuries, and I believe
there has hardly ever been an instance of change; so powerful is the
curb of incessant responsibility. If prejudice, however, derived
from a monarchical institution, is still to prevail against the vital
elective principle of our own, and if the existing example among
ourselves of periodical election of judges by the people be still
mistrusted, let us at least not adopt the evil, and reject the good,
of the English precedent; let us retain amovability on the
concurrence of the executive and legislative branches, and nomination
by the executive alone. Nomination to office is an executive
function. To give it to the legislature, as we do, is a violation of
the principle of the separation of powers. It swerves the members
from correctness, by temptations to intrigue for office themselves,
and to a corrupt barter of votes; and destroys responsibility by
dividing it among a multitude. By leaving nomination in its proper
place, among executive functions, the principle of the distribution
of power is preserved, and responsibility weighs with its heaviest
force on a single head.
The organization of our county administrations may be thought
more difficult. But follow principle, and the knot unties itself.
Divide the counties into wards of such size as that every citizen can
attend, when called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them the
government of their wards in all things relating to themselves
exclusively. A justice, chosen by themselves, in each, a constable,
a military company, a patrol, a school, the care of their own poor,
their own portion of the public roads, the choice of one or more
jurors to serve in some court, and the delivery, within their own
wards, of their own votes for all elective officers of higher sphere,
will relieve the county administration of nearly all its business,
will have it better done, and by making every citizen an acting
member of the government, and in the offices nearest and most
interesting to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings to the
independence of his country, and its republican constitution. The
justices thus chosen by every ward, would constitute the county
court, would do its judiciary business, direct roads and bridges,
levy county and poor rates, and administer all the matters of common
interest to the whole country. These wards, called townships in New
England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have
proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man
for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its
preservation. We should thus marshal our government into, 1, the
general federal republic, for all concerns foreign and federal; 2,
that of the State, for what relates to our own citizens exclusively;
3, the county republics, for the duties and concerns of the county;
and 4, the ward republics, for the small, and yet numerous and
interesting concerns of the neighborhood; and in government, as well
as in every other business of life, it is by division and subdivision
of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to
perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen,
personally, a part in the administration of the public affairs.
The sum of these amendments is, 1. General Suffrage. 2. Equal
representation in the legislature. 3. An executive chosen by the
people. 4. Judges elective or amovable. 5. Justices, jurors, and
sheriffs elective. 6. Ward divisions. And 7. Periodical amendments
of the constitution.
I have thrown out these as loose heads of amendment, for
consideration and correction; and their object is to secure
self-government by the republicanism of our constitution, as well as
by the spirit of the people; and to nourish and perpetuate that
spirit. I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the
rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve
their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual
debt. We must make our election between _economy and liberty_, or
_profusion and servitude_. If we run into such debts, as that we
must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and
our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and
our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must
come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of
fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily
expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we
must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to
think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to
obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the
necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs,
retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs,
but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs,
in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile,
and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary
lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by
private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human
governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a
precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the
bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and
to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then
begins, indeed, the _bellum omnium in omnia_, which some philosophers
observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the
natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of
this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in
its train wretchedness and oppression.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence,
and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.
They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than
human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that
age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of
its country. It was very like the present, but without the
experience of the present; and forty years of experience in
government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would
say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not
an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and
constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne
with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and
find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know
also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the
progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more
enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and
manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances,
institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We
might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him
when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of
their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has
lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely
yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring
progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to
old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged
their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous
innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful
deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put
into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples,
nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another
of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs. Let us,
as our sister States have done, avail ourselves of our reason and
experience, to correct the crude essays of our first and
unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils.
And lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at
stated periods. What these periods should be, nature herself
indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living
at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen
years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into
place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as
independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone
before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the
form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness;
consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds
itself, that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace
and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every
nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the constitution; so
that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to
generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure.
It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia was formed.
The same tables inform us, that, within that period, two-thirds of
the adults then living are now dead. Have then the remaining third,
even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their
will, and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds, who,
with themselves, compose the present mass of adults? If they have
not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are
nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no
substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and
everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants,
during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is
the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that
direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority.
That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a
convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the
best for themselves. But how collect their voice? This is the real
difficulty. If invited by private authority, or county or district
meetings, these divisions are so large that few will attend; and
their voice will be imperfectly, or falsely pronounced. Here, then,
would be one of the advantages of the ward divisions I have proposed.
The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call
his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members, convey
these to the county court, who would hand on those of all its wards
to the proper general authority; and the voice of the whole people
would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed, discussed, and
decided by the common reason of the society. If this avenue be shut
to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of
force, and we shall go on, as other nations are doing, in the endless
circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation; and oppression,
rebellion, reformation, again; and so on forever.
These, Sir, are my opinions of the governments we see among
men, and of the principles by which alone we may prevent our own from
falling into the same dreadful track. I have given them at greater
length than your letter called for. But I cannot say things by
halves; and I confide them to your honor, so to use them as to
preserve me from the gridiron of the public papers. If you shall
approve and enforce them, as you have done that of equal
representation, they may do some good. If not, keep them to yourself
as the effusions of withered age and useless time. I shall, with not
the less truth, assure you of my great respect and consideration.
"NEVER AN INFIDEL, IF NEVER A PRIEST"
_To Mrs. Samuel H. Smith_
_Monticello, August 6, 1816_
I have received, dear Madam, your very friendly letter of July
21st, and assure you that I feel with deep sensibility its kind
expressions towards myself, and the more as from a person than whom
no others could be more in sympathy with my own affections. I often
call to mind the occasions of knowing your worth, which the societies
of Washington furnished; and none more than those derived from your
much valued visit to Monticello. I recognize the same motives of
goodness in the solicitude you express on the rumor supposed to
proceed from a letter of mine to Charles Thomson, on the subject of
the Christian religion. It is true that, in writing to the
translator of the Bible and Testament, that subject was mentioned;
but equally so that no adherence to any particular mode of
Christianity was there expressed, nor any change of opinions
suggested. A change from what? the priests indeed have heretofore
thought proper to ascribe to me religious, or rather anti-religious
sentiments, of their own fabric, but such as soothed their
resentments against the act of Virginia for establishing religious
freedom. They wished him to be thought atheist, deist, or devil, who
could advocate freedom from their religious dictations. But I have
ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our
consciences, for which we were accountable to him, and not to the
priests. I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of
another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change
another's creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by
their lives, and by this test, my dear Madam, I have been satisfied
yours must be an excellent one, to have produced a life of such
exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not
from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the
world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They
must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested
absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an
infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures
they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose
of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for
themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
These, therefore, they brand with such nick-names as their enmity
chooses gratuitously to impute. I have left the world, in silence,
to judge of causes from their effects; and I am consoled in this
course, my dear friend, when I perceive the candor with which I am
judged by your justice and discernment; and that, notwithstanding the
slanders of the saints, my fellow citizens have thought me worthy of
trusts. The imputations of irreligion having spent their force; they
think an imputation of change might now be turned to account as a
holster for their duperies. I shall leave them, as heretofore, to
grope on in the dark.
Our family at Monticello is all in good health; Ellen speaking
of you with affection, and Mrs. Randolph always regretting the
accident which so far deprived her of the happiness of your former
visit. She still cherishes the hope of some future renewal of that
kindness; in which we all join her, as in the assurances of
affectionate attachment and respect.
HORIZONTAL PLOUGHING
_To Tristam Dalton_
_Monticello, May 2, 1817_
DEAR SIR, -- I am indebted to you for your favor of Apr. 22,
and for the copy of the Agricultural magazine it covered, which is
indeed a very useful work. While I was an amateur in Agricultural
science (for practical knolege my course of life never permitted me)
I was very partial to the drilled husbandry of Tull, and thought
still better of it when reformed by Young to 12 rows. But I had not
time to try it while young, and now grown old I have not the
requisite activity either of body or mind.
With respect to field culture of vegetables for cattle, instead
of the carrot and potato recommended by yourself and the magazine, &
the best of others, we find the Jerusalem artichoke best for winter,
& the Succory for Summer use. This last was brought over from France
to England by Arthur Young, as you will see in his travels thro'
France, & some of the seed sent by him to Genl. Washington, who
spared me a part of it. It is as productive as the Lucerne, without
its laborious culture, & indeed without any culture except the
keeping it clean the first year. The Jerusalem artichoke far exceeds
the potato in produce, and remains in the ground thro' the winter to
be dug as wanted. A method of ploughing over hill sides
horizontally, introduced into the most hilly part of our country by
Colo. T. M. Randolph, my son in law, may be worth mentioning to you.
He has practised it a dozen or 15 years, and it's advantages were so
immediately observed that it has already become very general, and has
entirely changed and renovated the face of our country. Every rain,
before that, while it gave a temporary refreshment, did permanent
evil by carrying off our soil: and fields were no sooner cleared than
wasted. At present we may say that we lose none of our soil, the
rain not absorbed in the moment of it's fall being retained in the
hollows between the beds until it can be absorbed. Our practice is
when we first enter on this process, with a rafter level of 10 f.
span, to lay off guide lines conducted horizontally around the hill
or valley from one end to the other of the field, and about 30 yards
apart. The steps of the level on the ground are marked by a stroke
of a hoe, and immediately followed by a plough to preserve the trace.
A man or a lad, with the level, and two small boys, the one with
sticks, the other with the hoe, will do an acre of this in an hour,
and when once done it is forever done. We generally level a field
the year it is put into Indian corn laying it into beds of 6 ft.
wide, with a large water furrow between the beds, until all the
fields have been once leveled. The intermediate furrows are run by
the eye of the ploughman governed by these guide lines, & occasion
gores which are thrown into short beds. As in ploughing very steep
hill sides horizontally the common ploughman can scarcely throw the
furrow uphill, Colo. Randolph has contrived a very simple alteration
of the share, which throws the furrow down hill both going and
coming. It is as if two shares were welded together at their
straight side, and at a right angle with each other. This turns on
it's bar as on a pivot, so as to lay either share horizontal, when
the other becoming verticle acts as a mould board. This is done by
the ploughman in an instant by a single motion of the hand, at the
end of every furrow. I enclose a bit of paper cut into the form of
the double share, which being opened at the fold to a right angle,
will give an idea of it's general principle. Horizontal and deep
ploughing, with the use of plaister and clover, which are but
beginning to be used here will, as we believe, restore this part of
our country to it's original fertility, which was exceeded by no
upland in the state. Believing that some of these things might be
acceptable to you I have hazarded them as testimonials of my great
esteem & respect.
ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS
_To Lafayette_
_Monticello, May 14, 1817_
Although, dear Sir, much retired from the world, and meddling
little in its concerns, yet I think it almost a religious duty to
salute at times my old friends, were it only to say and to know that
"all's well." Our hobby has been politics; but all here is so quiet,
and with you so desperate, that little matter is furnished us for
active attention. With you too, it has long been forbidden ground,
and therefore imprudent for a foreign friend to tread, in writing to
you. But although our speculations might be intrusive, our prayers
cannot but be acceptable, and mine are sincerely offered for the
well-being of France. What government she can bear, depends not on
the state of science, however exalted, in a select band of
enlightened men, but on the condition of the general mind. That, I
am sure, is advanced and will advance; and the last change of
government was fortunate, inasmuch as the new will be less
obstructive to the effects of that advancement. For I consider your
foreign military oppressions as an ephemeral obstacle only.
Here all is quiet. The British war has left us in debt; but
that is a cheap price for the good it has done us. The establishment
of the necessary manufactures among ourselves, the proof that our
government is solid, can stand the shock of war, and is superior even
to civil schism, are precious facts for us; and of these the
strongest proofs were furnished, when, with four eastern States tied
to us, as dead to living bodies, all doubt was removed as to the
achievements of the war, had it continued. But its best effect has
been the complete suppression of party. The federalists who were
truly American, and their great mass was so, have separated from
their brethren who were mere Anglomen, and are received with
cordiality into the republican ranks. Even Connecticut, as a State,
and the last one expected to yield its steady habits (which were
essentially bigoted in politics as well as religion), has chosen a
republican governor, and republican legislature. Massachusetts
indeed still lags; because most deeply involved in the parricide
crimes and treasons of the war. But her gangrene is contracting, the
sound flesh advancing on it, and all there will be well. I mentioned
Connecticut as the most hopeless of our States. Little Delaware had
escaped my attention. That is essentially a Quaker State, the
fragment of a religious sect which, there, in the other States, in
England, are a homogeneous mass, acting with one mind, and that
directed by the mother society in England. Dispersed, as the Jews,
they still form, as those do, one nation, foreign to the land they
live in. They are Protestant Jesuits, implicitly devoted to the will
of their superior, and forgetting all duties to their country in the
execution of the policy of their order. When war is proposed with
England, they have religious scruples; but when with France, these
are laid by, and they become clamorous for it. They are, however,
silent, passive, and give no other trouble than of whipping them
along. Nor is the election of Monroe an inefficient circumstance in
our felicities. Four and twenty years, which he will accomplish, of
administration in republican forms and principles, will so consecrate
them in the eyes of the people as to secure them against the danger
of change. The evanition of party dissensions has harmonized
intercourse, and sweetened society beyond imagination. The war then
has done us all this good, and the further one of assuring the world,
that although attached to peace from a sense of its blessings, we
will meet war when it is made necessary.
I wish I could give better hopes of our southern brethren. The
achievement of their independence of Spain is no longer a question.
But it is a very serious one, what will then become of them?
Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of
self-government. They will fall under military despotism, and become
the murderous tools of the ambition of their respective Bonapartes;
and whether this will be for their greater happiness, the rule of one
only has taught you to judge. No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to
see them and all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of
exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is
practicable? As their sincere friend and brother then, I do believe
the best thing for them, would be for themselves to come to an accord
with Spain, under the guarantee of France, Russia, Holland, and the
United States, allowing to Spain a nominal supremacy, with authority
only to keep the peace among them, leaving them otherwise all the
powers of self-government, until their experience in them, their
emancipation from their priests, and advancement in information,
shall prepare them for complete independence. I exclude England from
this confederacy, because her selfish principles render her incapable
of honorable patronage or disinterested co-operation; unless, indeed,
what seems now probable, a revolution should restore to her an honest
government, one which will permit the world to live in peace.
Portugal, grasping at an extension of her dominion in the south, has
lost her great northern province of Pernambuco, and I shall not
wonder if Brazil should revolt in mass, and send their royal family
back to Portugal. Brazil is more populous, more wealthy, more
energetic, and as wise as Portugal. I have been insensibly led, my
dear friend, while writing to you, to indulge in that line of
sentiment in which we have been always associated, forgetting that
these are matters not belonging to my time. Not so with you, who
have still many years to be a spectator of these events. That these
years may indeed be many and happy, is the sincere prayer of your
affectionate friend.
"THE FLATTERIES OF HOPE"
_To Fransois de Marbois_
_Monticello, June 14, 1817_
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy of the interesting
narrative of the Complet d'Arnold, which you have been so kind as to
send me. It throws light on that incident of history which we did
not possess before. An incident which merits to be known as a lesson
to mankind, in all its details. This mark of your attention recalls
to my mind the earlier period of life at which I had the pleasure of
your personal acquaintance, and renews the sentiments of high respect
and esteem with which that acquaintance inspired me. I had not
failed to accompany your personal sufferings during the civil
convulsions of your country, and had sincerely sympathized with them.
An awful period, indeed, has passed in Europe since our first
acquaintance. When I left France at the close of '89, your
revolution was, as I thought, under the direction of able and honest
men. But the madness of some of their successors, the vices of
others, the malicious intrigues of an envious and corrupting
neighbor, the tracasserie of the Directory, the usurpations, the
havoc, and devastations of your Attila, and the equal usurpations,
depredations and oppressions of your hypocritical deliverers, will
form a mournful period in the history of man, a period of which the
last chapter will not be seen in your day or mine, and one which I
still fear is to be written in characters of blood. Had Bonaparte
reflected that such is the moral construction of the world, that no
national crime passes unpunished in the long run, he would not now be
in the cage of St. Helena; and were your present oppressors to
reflect on the same truth, they would spare to their own countries
the penalties on their present wrongs which will be inflicted on them
on future times. The seeds of hatred and revenge which they are now
sowing with a large hand, will not fail to produce their fruits in
time. Like their brother robbers on the highway, they suppose the
escape of the moment a final escape, and deem infamy and future risk
countervailed by present gain. Our lot has been happier. When you
witnessed our first struggles in the war of independence, you little
calculated, more than we did, on the rapid growth and prosperity of
this country; on the practical demonstration it was about to exhibit,
of the happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only
rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced
on him by the wicked acts of his tyrants.
I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for
ages to come, and that, contrary to the principle of Montesquieu, it
will be seen that the larger the extent of country, the more firm its
republican structure, if founded, not on conquest, but in principles
of compact and equality. My hope of its duration is built much on
the enlargement of the resources of life going hand in hand with the
enlargement of territory, and the belief that men are disposed to
live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them. With the
consolation of this belief in the future result of our labors, I have
that of other prophets who foretell distant events, that I shall not
live to see it falsified. My theory has always been, that if we are
to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter than
the gloom of despair. I wish to yourself a long life of honors,
health and happiness.
FEMALE EDUCATION
_To Nathaniel Burwell_
_Monticello, March 14, 1818_
DEAR SIR, -- Your letter of February 17th found me suffering
under an attack of rheumatism, which has but now left me at
sufficient ease to attend to the letters I have received. A plan of
female education has never been a subject of systematic contemplation
with me. It has occupied my attention so far only as the education
of my own daughters occasionally required. Considering that they
would be placed in a country situation, where little aid could be
obtained from abroad, I thought it essential to give them a solid
education, which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate
their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should
their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive. My surviving
daughter accordingly, the mother of many daughters as well as sons,
has made their education the object of her life, and being a better
judge of the practical part than myself, it is with her aid and that
of one of her eleves that I shall subjoin a catalogue of the books
for such a course of reading as we have practiced.
A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion
prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should
be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it
destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason
and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage
attention unless dressed in all the figments of fancy, and nothing so
bedecked comes amiss. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly
judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life. This
mass of trash, however, is not without some distinction; some few
modelling their narratives, although fictitious, on the incidents of
real life, have been able to make them interesting and useful
vehicles of sound morality. Such, I think, are Marmontel's new moral
tales, but not his old ones, which are really immoral. Such are the
writings of Miss Edgeworth, and some of those of Madame Genlis. For
a like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged. Some is
useful for forming style and taste. Pope, Dryden, Thompson,
Shakspeare, and of the French, Moliere, Racine, the Corneilles, may
be read with pleasure and improvement.
The French language, become that of the general intercourse of
nations, and from their extraordinary advances, now the depository of
all science, is an indispensable part of education for both sexes.
In the subjoined catalogue, therefore, I have placed the books of
both languages indifferently, according as the one or the other
offers what is best.
The ornaments too, and the amusements of life, are entitled to
their portion of attention. These, for a female, are dancing,
drawing, and music. The first is a healthy exercise, elegant and
very attractive for young people. Every affectionate parent would be
pleased to see his daughter qualified to participate with her
companions, and without awkwardness at least, in the circles of
festivity, of which she occasionally becomes a part. It is a
necessary accomplishment, therefore, although of short use, for the
French rule is wise, that no lady dances after marriage. This is
founded in solid physical reasons, gestation and nursing leaving
little time to a married lady when this exercise can be either safe
or innocent. Drawing is thought less of in this country than in
Europe. It is an innocent and engaging amusement, often useful, and
a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother
and an instructor. Music is invaluable where a person has an ear.
Where they have not, it should not be attempted. It furnishes a
delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the
day, and lasts us through life. The taste of this country, too,
calls for this accomplishment more strongly than for either of the
others.
I need say nothing of household economy, in which the mothers
of our country are generally skilled, and generally careful to
instruct their daughters. We all know its value, and that diligence
and dexterity in all its processes are inestimable treasures. The
order and economy of a house are as honorable to the mistress as
those of the farm to the master, and if either be neglected, ruin
follows, and children destitute of the means of living.
This, Sir, is offered as a summary sketch on a subject on which
I have not thought much. It probably contains nothing but what has
already occurred to yourself, and claims your acceptance on no other
ground than as a testimony of my respect for your wishes, and of my
great esteem and respect.
THE CLASSICAL PRESS
_To Wells and Lilly_
_Monticello, April 1, 1818_
You must have thought me very tardy in acknoleging the receipt
of your letter of Jan. 13. and in returning my thanks, which I now
do, for the very handsome copy of Cicero's works from your press,
which you have been so kind as to present me. I waited first the
receipt of that and the books accompanying it, but I happened at the
time of their arrival to be reading the 5th book of Cicero's
Tusculans, which I followed by that of his Offices, and concluded to
lay aside the variorum edition, and to use yours, after which I might
write more understandingly on the subject. having been extremely
disgusted with the Philadelphia and New York Delphin editions, some
of which I had read, and altho executed with a good type on good
paper, yet so full of errors of the press as not to be worth the
paper they were printed on, I wished to see the state of the
classical press with you. their editions had on an average about one
error for every page. I read therefore the portions of your's above
mentioned with a pretty sharp eye, and in something upwards of 200.
pages I found the errors noted on the paper inclosed, being an
average of one for every 13. pages. this is a good advance on the
presses of N.Y. and Philada., and gives hopes of rapid improvements.
the errors in the Variorum editions however are fewer than these, the
Elzevirs still fewer: but the perfection of accuracy is to be found
in the folio edition of Homer by the Foulis of Glasgow. I have
understood they offered 1000 guineas for the discovery of any error
in it, even of an accent, and that the reward was never claimed. I
am glad to find you are thinking of printing Livy. there should be
no hesitation between that and Quinctilian. this last is little
wanting. we have Blair's and Adams's books which give us the
rhetoric of our own language and that of a foreign and a dead one
will interest few readers. but of Livy there is not, nor ever has
been an edition meriting the name of an editio optima. the Delphin
edition might have been, but for it's numerous errors of the press,
and unmanageable size in 4to. it's notes are valuable, and it has
the whole of Freinsheim's supplement with the marginal references to
his authorities. Clerk's edition is of a handy size, has the whole
of Freinsheim, but without the references, which we often wish to
turn to, and it is without notes. the late Paris edition of La Malle
has only the supplement of the 2d decad and no notes. I possess
these two last mentioned editions, but would gladly become a
subscriber to such a one as I describe, that is to say, an 8vo
edition with the Delphin notes and all Freinsheim's supplements and
references. if correctly executed it would be the editio optima, be
called for in Europe and do us honor there. since consigning my
library to Congress I have supplied myself from Europe with most of
the classics, and of the best editions, in which I have been much
aided by mr. Ticknor, your most learned and valuable countryman.
I make you my acknolegement for the sermon on the Unity of God,
and am glad to see our countrymen looking that question in the face.
it must end in a return to primitive christianity, and the
disbandment of the unintelligible Athanasian jargon of 3. being 1.
and 1. being 3. this sermon is one of the strongest pieces against
it. I observe you are about printing a work of Belsham's on the same
subject, for which I wish to be a subscriber, and inclose you a 5 D.
bill, there being none of fractional denominations. the surplus
therefore may stand as I shall be calling for other things. Accept
the assurance of my great respect.
INFLATION AND DEMORALIZATION
_To Nathaniel Macon_
_Monticello, January 12, 1819_
DEAR SIR, -- The problem you had wished to propose to me was
one which I could not have solved; for I knew nothing of the facts.
I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the
advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a
newspaper. I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed
two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read
nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy, of the wars of
Lacedaemon and Athens, of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too, the
Bonaparte and parricide scoundrel of that day. I have had, and still
have, such entire confidence in the late and present Presidents, that
I willingly put both soul and body into their pockets. While such
men as yourself and your worthy colleagues of the legislature, and
such characters as compose the executive administration, are watching
for us all, I slumber without fear, and review in my dreams the
visions of antiquity. There is, indeed, one evil which awakens me at
times, because it jostles me at every turn. It is that we have now
no measure of value. I am asked eighteen dollars for a yard of
broadcloth, which, when we had dollars, I used to get for eighteen
shillings; from this I can only understand that a dollar is now worth
but two inches of broadcloth, but broadcloth is no standard of
measure or value. I do not know, therefore, whereabouts I stand in
the scale of property, nor what to ask, or what to give for it. I
saw, indeed, the like machinery in action in the years '80 and '81,
and without dissatisfaction; because in wearing out, it was working
out our salvation. But I see nothing in this renewal of the game of
"Robin's alive" but a general demoralization of the nation, a
filching from industry its honest earnings, wherewith to build up
palaces, and raise gambling stock for swindlers and shavers, who are
to close too their career of piracies by fraudulent bankruptcies. My
dependence for a remedy, however, is with the wisdom which grows with
time and suffering. Whether the succeeding generation is to be more
virtuous than their predecessors, I cannot say; but I am sure they
will have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that
honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. I have made a
great exertion to write you thus much; my antipathy to taking up a
pen being so intense that I have never given you a stronger proof,
than in the effort of writing a letter, how much I value you, and of
the superlative respect and friendship with which I salute you.
HABITS OF "A HARD STUDENT"
_To Dr. Vine Utley_
_Monticello, March 21, 1819_
SIR, -- Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the
1st instant; and the request of the history of my physical habits
would have puzzled me not a little, had it not been for the model
with which you accompanied it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar
inquiry. I live so much like other people, that I might refer to
ordinary life as the history of my own. Like my friend the Doctor, I
have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an
aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute
my principal diet. I double, however, the Doctor's glass and a half
of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but halve its effects by
drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor
do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and cider are my
table drinks, and my breakfast, like that also of my friend, is of
tea and coffee. I have been blest with organs of digestion which
accept and concoct, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate
chooses to consign to them, and I have not yet lost a tooth by age.
I was a hard student until I entered on the business of life, the
duties of which leave no idle time to those disposed to fulfil them;
and now, retired, and at the age of seventy-six, I am again a hard
student. Indeed, my fondness for reading and study revolts me from
the drudgery of letter writing. And a stiff wrist, the consequence
of an early dislocation, makes writing both slow and painful. I am
not so regular in my sleep as the Doctor says he was, devoting to it
from five to eight hours, according as my company or the book I am
reading interests me; and I never go to bed without an hour, or half
hour's previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in
the intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to bed early or late, I
rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but not necessarily in
the day, unless in reading small print. My hearing is distinct in
particular conversation, but confused when several voices cross each
other, which unfits me for the society of the table. I have been
more fortunate than my friend in the article of health. So free from
catarrhs that I have not had one, (in the breast, I mean) on an
average of eight or ten years through life. I ascribe this exemption
partly to the habit of bathing my feet in cold water every morning,
for sixty years past. A fever of more than twenty-four hours I have
not had above two or three times in my life. A periodical headache
has afflicted me occasionally, once, perhaps, in six or eight years,
for two or three weeks at a time, which seems now to have left me;
and except on a late occasion of indisposition, I enjoy good health;
too feeble, indeed, to walk much, but riding without fatigue six or
eight miles a day, and sometimes thirty or forty. I may end these
egotisms, therefore, as I began, by saying that my life has been so
much like that of other people, that I might say with Horace, to
every one _"nomine mutato, narratur fabula de te."_ I must not end,
however, without due thanks for the kind sentiments of regard you are
so good as to express towards myself; and with my acknowledgments for
these, be pleased to accept the assurances of my respect and esteem.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
_To Samuel Adams Wells_
_Monticello, May 12, 1819_
SIR, -- An absence of some time at an occasional and distant
residence must apologize for the delay in acknowledging the receipt
of your favor of April 12th. And candor obliges me to add that it
has been somewhat extended by an aversion to writing, as well as to
calls on my memory for facts so much obliterated from it by time as
to lessen my confidence in the traces which seem to remain. One of
the inquiries in your letter, however, may be answered without an
appeal to the memory. It is that respecting the question whether
committees of correspondence originated in Virginia or Massachusetts?
On which you suppose me to have claimed it for Virginia. But
certainly I have never made such a claim. The idea, I suppose, has
been taken up from what is said in Wirt's history of Mr. Henry, p.
87, and from an inexact attention to its precise term. It is there
said "this house [of burgesses of Virginia] had the merit of
originating that powerful engine of resistance, corresponding
committees _between the legislatures_ of the _different colonies_."
That the fact as here expressed is true, your letter bears witness
when it says that the resolutions of Virginia for this purpose were
transmitted to the speakers of the different Assemblies, and by that
of Massachusetts was laid at the next session before that body, who
appointed a committee for the specified object: adding, "thus in
Massachusetts there were two committees of correspondence, one chosen
by the people, the other appointed by the House of Assembly; in the
former, Massachusetts preceded Virginia; in the latter, Virginia
preceded Massachusetts." To the origination of committees for the
interior correspondence between the counties and towns of a State, I
know of no claim on the part of Virginia; but certainly none was ever
made by myself. I perceive, however, one error into which memory had
led me. Our committee for national correspondence was appointed in
March, '73, and I well remember that going to Williamsburg in the
month of June following, Peyton Randolph, our chairman, told me that
messengers, bearing despatches between the two States, had crossed
each other by the way; that of Virginia carrying our propositions for
a committee of national correspondence, and that of Massachusetts
bringing, as my memory suggested, a similar proposition. But here I
must have misremembered; and the resolutions brought us from
Massachusetts were probably those you mention of the town meeting of
Boston, on the motion of Mr. Samuel Adams, appointing a committee "to
state the rights of the colonists, and of that province in
particular, and the infringements of them, to communicate them to the
several towns, as the sense of the town of Boston, and to request of
each town a free communication of its sentiments on this subject"? I
suppose, therefore, that these resolutions were not received, as you
think, while the House of Burgesses was in session in March, 1773;
but a few days after we rose, and were probably what was sent by the
messenger who crossed ours by the way. They may, however, have been
still different. I must therefore have been mistaken in supposing
and stating to Mr. Wirt, that the proposition of a committee for
national correspondence was nearly simultaneous in Virginia and
Massachusetts.
A similar misapprehension of another passage in Mr. Wirt's
book, for which I am also quoted, has produced a similar reclamation
of the part of Massachusetts by some of her most distinguished and
estimable citizens. I had been applied to by Mr. Wirt for such facts
respecting Mr. Henry, as my intimacy with him, and participation in
the transactions of the day, might have placed within my knowledge.
I accordingly committed them to paper, and Virginia being the theatre
of his action, was the only subject within my contemplation, while
speaking of him. Of the resolutions and measures here, in which he
had the acknowledged lead, I used the expression that "Mr. Henry
certainly gave the first impulse to the ball of revolution." [Wirt,
p. 41.] The expression is indeed general, and in all its extension
would comprehend all the sister States. But indulgent construction
would restrain it, as was really meant, to the subject matter under
contemplation, which was Virginia alone; according to the rule of the
lawyers, and a fair canon of general criticism, that every expression
should be construed _secundum subjectam materiem_. Where the first
attack was made, there must have been of course, the first act of
resistance, and that was of Massachusetts. Our first overt act of
war was Mr. Henry's embodying a force of militia from several
counties, regularly armed and organized, marching them in military
array, and making reprisal on the King's treasury at the seat of
government for the public powder taken away by his Governor. This
was on the last days of April, 1775. Your formal battle of Lexington
was ten or twelve days before that, which greatly overshadowed in
importance, as it preceded in time our little affray, which merely
amounted to a levying of arms against the King, and very possibly you
had had military affrays before the regular battle of Lexington.
These explanations will, I hope, assure you, Sir, that so far
as either facts or opinions have been truly quoted from me they have
never been meant to intercept the just fame of Massachusetts, for the
promptitude and perseverance of her early resistance. We willingly
cede to her the laud of having been (although not exclusively) "the
cradle of sound principles," and if some of us believe she has
deflected from them in her course, we retain full confidence in her
ultimate return to them.
I will now proceed to your quotation from Mr. Galloway's
statements of what passed in Congress on their declaration of
independence, in which statement there is not one word of truth, and
where, bearing some resemblance to truth, it is an entire perversion
of it. I do not charge this on Mr. Galloway himself; his desertion
having taken place long before these measures, he doubtless received
his information from some of the loyal friends whom he left behind
him. But as yourself, as well as others, appear embarrassed by
inconsistent accounts of the proceedings on that memorable occasion,
and as those who have endeavored to restore the truth have themselves
committed some errors, I will give you some extracts from a written
document on that subject, for the truth of which I pledge myself to
heaven and earth; having, while the question of independence was
under consideration before Congress, taken written notes, in my seat,
of what was passing, and reduced them to form on the final
conclusion. I have now before me that paper, from which the
following are extracts: * * *
Governor McKean, in his letter to McCorkle of July 16th, 1817,
has thrown some lights on the transactions of that day, but trusting
to his memory chiefly at an age when our memories are not to be
trusted, he has confounded two questions, and ascribed proceedings to
one which belonged to the other. These two questions were, 1. The
Virginia motion of June 7th to declare independence, and 2. The
actual declaration, its matter and form. Thus he states the question
on the declaration itself as decided on the 1st of July. But it was
the Virginia motion which was voted on that day in committee of the
whole; South Carolina, as well as Pennsylvania, then voting against
it. But the ultimate decision in _the House_ on the report of the
committee being by request postponed to the next morning, all the
States voted for it, except New York, whose vote was delayed for the
reason before stated. It was not till the 2d of July that the
declaration itself was taken up, nor till the 4th that it was
decided; and it was signed by every member present, except Mr.
Dickinson.
The subsequent signatures of members who were not then present,
and some of them not yet in office, is easily explained, if we
observe who they were; to wit, that they were of New York and
Pennsylvania. New York did not sign till the 15th, because it was
not till the 9th, (five days after the general signature,) that their
convention authorized them to do so. The convention of Pennsylvania,
learning that it had been signed by a minority only of their
delegates, named a new delegation on the 20th, leaving out Mr.
Dickinson, who had refused to sign, Willing and Humphreys who had
withdrawn, reappointing the three members who had signed, Morris who
had not been present, and five new ones, to wit, Rush, Clymer, Smith,
Taylor and Ross; and Morris and the five new members were permitted
to sign, because it manifested the assent of their full delegation,
and the express will of their convention, which might have been
doubted on the former signature of a minority only. Why the
signature of Thornton of New Hampshire was permitted so late as the
4th of November, I cannot now say; but undoubtedly for some
particular reason which we should find to have been good, had it been
expressed. These were the only post-signers, and you see, Sir, that
there were solid reasons for receiving those of New York and
Pennsylvania, and that this circumstance in no wise affects the faith
of this declaratory charter of our rights and of the rights of man.
With a view to correct errors of fact before they become
inveterate by repetition, I have stated what I find essentially
material in my papers; but with that brevity which the labor of
writing constrains me to use.
On the fourth particular articles of inquiry in your letter,
respecting your grandfather, the venerable Samuel Adams, neither
memory nor memorandums enable me to give any information. I can say
that he was truly a great man, wise in council, fertile in resources,
immovable in his purposes, and had, I think, a greater share than any
other member, in advising and directing our measures, in the northern
war especially. As a speaker he could not be compared with his
living colleague and namesake, whose deep conceptions, nervous style,
and undaunted firmness, made him truly our bulwark in debate. But
Mr. Samuel Adams, although not of fluent elocution, was so rigorously
logical, so clear in his views, abundant in good sense, and master
always of his subject, that he commanded the most profound attention
whenever he rose in an assembly by which the froth of declamation was
heard with the most sovereign contempt. I sincerely rejoice that the
record of his worth is to be undertaken by one so much disposed as
you will be to hand him down fairly to that posterity for whose
liberty and happiness he was so zealous a laborer.
With sentiments of sincere veneration for his memory, accept
yourself this tribute to it with the assurances of my great respect.
P. S. August 6th, 1822, since the date of this letter, to wit,
this day, August 6th, '22, I received the new publication of the
secret Journals of Congress, wherein is stated a resolution, July
19th, 1776, that the declaration passed on the 4th be fairly
engrossed on parchment, and when engrossed, be signed by every
member; and another of August 2d, that being engrossed and compared
at the table, was signed by the members. That is to say the copy
engrossed on parchment (for durability) was signed by the members
after being compared at the table with the original one, signed on
paper as before stated. I add this P.S. to the copy of my letter to
Mr. Wells, to prevent confounding the signature of the original with
that of the copy engrossed on parchment.
THE VALUE OF CLASSICAL LEARNING
_To John Brazier_
_Poplar Forest, August 24, 1819_
SIR, -- The acknowledgment of your favor of July 15th, and
thanks for the Review which it covered of Mr. Pickering's Memoir on
the Modern Greek, have been delayed by a visit to an occasional but
distant residence from Monticello, and to an attack here of
rheumatism which is just now moderating. I had been much pleased
with the memoir, and was much also with your review of it. I have
little hope indeed of the recovery of the ancient pronunciation of
that finest of human languages, but still I rejoice at the attention
the subject seems to excite with you, because it is an evidence that
our country begins to have a taste for something more than merely as
much Greek as will pass a candidate for clerical ordination.
You ask my opinion on the extent to which classical learning
should be carried in our country. A sickly condition permits me to
think, and a rheumatic hand to write too briefly on this litigated
question. The utilities we derive from the remains of the Greek and
Latin languages are, first, as models of pure taste in writing. To
these we are certainly indebted for the national and chaste style of
modern composition which so much distinguishes the nations to whom
these languages ae familiar. Without these models we should probably
have continued the inflated style of our northern ancestors, or the
hyperbolical and vague one of the east. Second. Among the values of
classical learning, I estimate the luxury of reading the Greek and
Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals. And why should
not this innocent and elegant luxury take its preeminent stand ahead
of all those addressed merely to the senses? I think myself more
indebted to my father for this than for all the other luxuries his
cares and affections have placed within my reach; and more now than
when younger, and more susceptible of delights from other sources.
When the decays of age have enfeebled the useful energies of the
mind, the classic pages fill up the vacuum of _ennui_, and become
sweet composers to that rest of the grave into which we are all
sooner or later to descend. Third. A third value is in the stores
of real science deposited and transmitted us in these languages,
to-wit: in history, ethics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, natural
history, &c.
But to whom are these things useful? Certainly not to all men.
There are conditions of life to which they must be forever estranged,
and there are epochs of life too, after which the endeavor to attain
them would be a great misemployment of time. Their acquisition
should be the occupation of our early years only, when the memory is
susceptible of deep and lasting impressions, and reason and judgment
not yet strong enough for abstract speculations. To the moralist
they are valuable, because they furnish ethical writings highly and
justly esteemed: although in my own opinion, the moderns are far
advanced beyond them in this line of science, the divine finds in the
Greek language a translation of his primary code, of more importance
to him than the original because better understood; and, in the same
language, the newer code, with the doctrines of the earliest fathers,
who lived and wrote before the simple precepts of the founder of this
most benign and pure of all systems of morality became frittered into
subtleties and mysteries, and hidden under jargons incomprehensible
to the human mind. To these original sources he must now, therefore,
return, to recover the virgin purity of his religion. The lawyer
finds in the Latin language the system of civil law most conformable
with the principles of justice of any which has ever yet been
established among men, and from which much has been incorporated into
our own. The physician as good a code of his art as has been given
us to this day. Theories and systems of medicine, indeed, have been
in perpetual change from the days of the good Hippocrates to the days
of the good Rush, but which of them is the true one? the present, to
be sure, as long as it is the present, but to yield its place in turn
to the next novelty, which is then to become the true system, and is
to mark the vast advance of medicine since the days of Hippocrates.
Our situation is certainly benefited by the discovery of some new and
very valuable medicines; and substituting those for some of his with
the treasure of facts, and of sound observations recorded by him
(mixed to be sure with anilities of his day) and we shall have nearly
the present sum of the healing art. The statesman will find in these
languages history, politics, mathematics, ethics, eloquence, love of
country, to which he must add the sciences of his own day, for which
of them should be unknown to him? And all the sciences must recur to
the classical languages for the etymon, and sound understanding of
their fundamental terms. For the merchant I should not say that the
languages are a necessary. Ethics, mathematics, geography, political
economy, history, seem to constitute the immediate foundations of his
calling. The agriculturist needs ethics, mathematics, chemistry and
natural philosophy. The mechanic the same. To them the languages
are but ornament and comfort. I know it is often said there have
been shining examples of men of great abilities in all the businesses
of life, without any other science than what they had gathered from
conversations and intercourse with the world. But who can say what
these men would not have been had they started in the science on the
shoulders of a Demosthenes or Cicero, of a Locke or Bacon, or a
Newton? To sum the whole, therefore, it may truly be said that the
classical languages are a solid basis for most, and an ornament to
all the sciences.
I am warned by my aching fingers to close this hasty sketch,
and to place here my last and fondest wishes for the advancement of
our country in the useful sciences and arts, and my assurances of
respect and esteem for the Reviewer of the Memoir on modern Greek.
LIMITS TO JUDICIAL REVIEW
_To Judge Spencer Roane_
_Poplar Forest, September 6, 1819_
DEAR SIR, -- I had read in the Enquirer, and with great
approbation, the pieces signed Hampden, and have read them again with
redoubled approbation, in the copies you have been so kind as to send
me. I subscribe to every tittle of them. They contain the true
principles of the revolution of 1800, for that was as real a
revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in
its form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the
rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the
people. The nation declared its will by dismissing functionaries of
one principle, and electing those of another, in the two branches,
executive and legisltaive, submitted to their election. Over the
judiciary department, the constitution had deprived them of their
control. That, therefore, has continued the reprobated system, and
although new matter has been occasionally incorporated into the old,
yet the leaven of the old mass seems to assimilate to itself the new,
and after twenty years' confirmation of the federal system by the
voice of the nation, declared through the medium of elections, we
find the judiciary on every occasion, still driving us into
consolidation.
In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the
constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your
quotation from the Federalist, of an opinion that "the judiciary is
the last resort in relation _to the other departments_ of the
government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the
compact under which the judiciary is derived." If this opinion be
sound, then indeed is our constitution a complete _felo de se_. For
intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and
independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has
given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone, the right to
prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one
too, which is unelected by, and independent of the nation. For
experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is
not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent
cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, not belonging to
the case often, but sought for out of it, as if to rally the public
opinion beforehand to their views, and to indicate the line they are
to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have excited
animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body entrusted with
impeachment. The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing
of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape
into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of
eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is
independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the
spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes.
Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass.
They are inherently independent of all but moral law. My
construction of the constitution is very different from that you
quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the
others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the
meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and
especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal. I will
explain myself by examples, which, having occurred while I was in
office, are better known to me, and the principles which governed
them.
A legislature had passed the sedition law. The federal courts
had subjected certain individuals to its penalties of fine and
imprisonment. On coming into office, I released these individuals by
the power of pardon committed to executive discretion, which could
never be more properly exercised than where citizens were suffering
without the authority of law, or, which was equivalent, under a law
unauthorized by the constitution, and therefore null. In the case of
Marbury and Madison, the federal judges declared that commissions,
signed and sealed by the President, were valid, although not
delivered. I deemed delivery essential to complete a deed, which, as
long as it remains in the hands of the party, is as yet no deed, it
is in _posse_ only, but not in _esse_, and I withheld delivery of the
commissions. They cannot issue a mandamus to the President or
legislature, or to any of their officers (*). When the British
treaty of ----- arrived, without any provision against the
impressment of our seamen, I determined not to ratify it. The Senate
thought I should ask their advice. I thought that would be a mockery
of them, when I was predetermined against following it, should they
advise its ratification. The constitution had made their advice
necessary to confirm a treaty, but not to reject it. This has been
blamed by some; but I have never doubted its soundness. In the cases
of two persons, _antenati_, under exactly similar circumstances, the
federal court had determined that one of them (Duane) was not a
citizen; the House of Representatives nevertheless determined that
the other (Smith, of South Carolina) was a citizen, and admitted him
to his seat in their body. Duane was a republican, and Smith a
federalist, and these decisions were made during the federal
ascendancy.
(*) The constitution controlling the common law in this
particular.
These are examples of my position, that each of the three
departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is its
duty under the constitution, without any regard to what the others
may have decided for themselves under a similar question. But you
intimate a wish that my opinion should be known on this subject. No,
dear Sir, I withdraw from all contest of opinion, and resign
everything cheerfully to the generation now in place. They are wiser
than we were, and their successors will be wiser than they, from the
progressive advance of science. Tranquillity is the _summum bonum_
of age. I wish, therefore, to offend no man's opinion, nor to draw
disquieting animadversions on my own. While duty required it, I met
opposition with a firm and fearless step. But loving mankind in my
individual relations with them, I pray to be permitted to depart in
their peace; and like the superannuated soldier, _"quadragenis
stipendiis emeritis,"_ to hang my arms on the post. I have unwisely,
I fear, embarked in an enterprise of great public concern, but not to
be accomplished within my term, without their liberal and prompt
support. A severe illness the last year, and another from which I am
just emerged, admonish me that repetitions may be expected, against
which a declining frame cannot long bear up. I am anxious,
therefore, to get our University so far advanced as may encourage the
public to persevere to its final accomplishment. That secured, I
shall sing my _nunc demittas_. I hope your labors will be long
continued in the spirit in which they have always been exercised, in
maintenance of those principles on which I verily believe the future
happiness of our country essentially depends. I salute you with
affectionate and great respect.
GREEK PRONUNCIATION
_To Nathaniel F. Moore_
_Monticello, September 22, 1819_
I thank you, Sir for the remarks on the pronunciation of the
Greek language which you have been so kind as to send me. I have
read them with pleasure, as I had the pamphlet of Mr. Pickering on
the same subject. This question has occupied long and learned
inquiry, and cannot, as I apprehend, be ever positively decided.
Very early in my classical days, I took up the idea that the ancient
Greek language having been changed by degrees into the modern, and
the present race of that people having received it by tradition, they
had of course better pretensions to the ancient pronunciation also,
than any foreign nation could have. When at Paris, I became
acquainted with some learned Greeks, from whom I took pains to learn
the modern pronunciation. But I could not receive it as genuine _in
toto_. I could not believe that the ancient Greeks had provided six
different notations for the simple sound of {i}, iota, and left the
five other sounds which we give to _n, v, {i-i}, {oi}, {yi},_ without
any characters of notation at all. I could not acknowledge the {y},
upsillon, as an equivalent to our {n}, as in {Achilleys}, which they
pronounce Achillevs, nor the {g}, gamma, to our _y_, as in {alge},
which they pronounce alye. I concluded, therefore, that as
experience proves to us that the pronunciation of all languages
changes, in their descent through time, that of the Greek must have
done so also in some degree; and the more probably, as the body of
the words themselves had substantially changed, and I presumed that
the instances above mentioned might be classed with the degeneracies
of time; a presumption strengthened by their remarkable cacophony.
As to all the other letters, I have supposed we might yield to their
traditionary claim of a more orthodox pronunciation. Indeed, they
sound most of them as we do, and, where they differ, as in the {e, d,
ch,} their sounds do not revolt us, nor impair the beauty of the
language.
If we adhere to the Erasmian pronunciation, we must go to Italy
for it, as we must do for the most probably correct pronunciation of
the language of the Romans, because rejecting the modern, we must
argue that the ancient pronunciation was probably brought from
Greece, with the language itself; and, as Italy was the country to
which it was brought, and from which it emanated to other nations, we
must presume it better preserved there than with the nations copying
from them, who would be apt to affect its pronunciation with some of
their own national peculiarities. And in fact, we find that no two
nations pronounce it alike, although all pretend to the Erasmian
pronunciation. But the whole subject is conjectural, and allows
therefore full and lawful scope to the vagaries of the human mind. I
am glad, however, to see the question stirred here; because it may
excite among our young countrymen a spirit of inquiry and criticism,
and lead them to more attention to this most beautiful of all
languages. And wishing that the salutary example you have set may
have this good effect, I salute you with great respect and
consideration.
"I TOO AM AN EPICUREAN"
_To William Short, with a Syllabus_
_Monticello, October 31, 1819_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of the 21st is received. My late
illness, in which you are so kind as to feel an interest, was
produced by a spasmodic stricture of the ilium, which came upon me on
the 7th inst. The crisis was short, passed over favorably on the
fourth day, and I should soon have been well but that a dose of
calomel and jalap, in which were only eight or nine grains of the
former, brought on a salivation. Of this, however, nothing now
remains but a little soreness of the mouth. I have been able to get
on horseback for three or four days past.
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the
genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing
everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have
left us. Epictetus indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics;
all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their
great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations
of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of
Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but
enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out
mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by
certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy
conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to
rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. These they
fathered blasphemously on him whom they claimed as their founder, but
who would disclaim them with the indignation which their caricatures
of his religion so justly excite. Of Socrates we have nothing
genuine but in the Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one
of his Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the mantle
of his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself
complained. Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disfiguring his work
at times with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much of antithesis
and point, yet giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and
practical morality. But the greatest of all the reformers of the
depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth.
Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is
buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his
biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the
dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime
morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which
it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus
give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties
and charities we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent
and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing
it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from
artificial systems, (*) invented by ultra-Christian sects,
unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most
desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted
his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect
a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which
have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply
afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the
grain from the chaff of the historians of his life. I have sometimes
thought of translating Epictetus (for he has never been tolerable
translated into English) by adding the genuine doctrines of Epicurus
from the Syntagma of Gassendi, and an abstract from the Evangelists
of whatever has the stamp of the eloquence and fine imagination of
Jesus. The last I attempted too hastily some twelve or fifteen years
ago. It was the work of two or three nights only, at Washington,
after getting through the evening task of reading the letters and
papers of the day. But with one foot in the grave, these are now
idle projects for me. My business is to beguile the wearisomeness of
declining life, as I endeavor to do, by the delights of classical
reading and of mathematical truths, and by the consolations of a
sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and fear.
(*) _e. g._ The immaculate conception of Jesus, his
deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers,
his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the
Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration,
election, orders of Hierarchy, &c.
I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true
disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which
you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that "the
indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater
pain, is to be avoided." Your love of repose will lead, in its
progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind,
an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility
of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the
happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure;
fortitude, you know, is one of his four cardinal virtues. That
teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them,
like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest
us at every turn of our road. Weigh this matter well; brace yourself
up; take a seat with Correa, and come and see the finest portion of
your country, which, if you have not forgotten, you still do not
know, because it is no longer the same as when you knew it. It will
add much to the happiness of my recovery to be able to receive Correa
and yourself, and prove the estimation in which I hold you both.
Come, too, and see our incipient University, which has advanced with
great activitiy this year. By the end of the next, we shall have
elegant accommodations for seven professors, and the year following
the professors themselves. No secondary character will be received
among them. Either the ablest which America or Europe can furnish,
or none at all. They will give us the selected society of a great
city separated from the dissipations and levities of its ephemeral
insects.
I am glad the bust of Condorcet has been saved and so well
placed. His genius should be before us; while the lamentable, but
singular act of ingratitude which tarnished his latter days, may be
thrown behind us.
I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of
Epicurus, somewhat in the lapidary style, which I wrote some twenty
years ago, a like one of the philosophy of Jesus, of nearly the same
age, is too long to be copied. _Vale, et tibi persuade carissimum te
esse mihi_.
_Syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus._
_Physical_. -- The Universe eternal.
Its parts, great and small, interchangeable.
Matter and Void alone.
Motion inherent in matter which is weighty and declining.
Eternal circulation of the elements of bodies.
Gods, an order of beings next superior to man, enjoying in
their sphere, their own felicities; but not meddling with the
concerns of the scale of beings below them.
_Moral_. -- Happiness the aim of life.
Virtue the foundation of happiness.
Utility the test of virtue.
Pleasure active and In-do-lent.
In-do-lence is the absence of pain, the true felicity.
Active, consists in agreeable motion; it is not happiness, but
the means to produce it.
Thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity; eating
the means to obtain it.
The _summum bonum_ is to be not pained in body, nor troubled in
mind.
_i. e._ In-do-lence of body, tranquillity of mind.
To procure tranquillity of mind we must avoid desire and fear,
the two principal diseases of the mind.
Man is a free agent.
Virtue consists in 1. Prudence. 2. Temperance. 3. Fortitude. 4.
Justice.
To which are opposed, 1. Folly. 2. Desire. 3. Fear. 4. Deceit.
"A FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT"
_To John Holmes_
_Monticello, April 22, 1820_
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to
send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question.
It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased
to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident
they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to
the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question,
like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I
considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed,
indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final
sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle,
moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions
of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark
it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is
not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve
us from this heavy reproach, in any _practicable_ way. The cession
of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which
would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general
emancipation and _expatriation_ could be effected; and gradually, and
with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the
wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of one
thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to
another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not
be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would
make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the
accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a
greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence too, from this act of
power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of
Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of
men composing a State. This certainly is the exclusive right of
every State, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them
and given to the General Government. Could Congress, for example,
say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that
they shall not emigrate into any other State?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless
sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire
self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away
by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only
consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would
but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against
an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by
scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of
suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.
To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the
offering of my high esteem and respect.
JESUS AND THE JEWS
_To William Short_
_Monticello, August 4, 1820_
DEAR SIR, -- I owe you a letter for your favor of June the
29th, which was received in due time; and there being no subject of
the day, of particular interest, I will make this a supplement to
mine of April the 13th. My aim in that was, to justify the character
of Jesus against the fictions of his pseudo-followers, which have
exposed him to the inference of being an impostor. For if we could
believe that he really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods and
the charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, and admit the
misconstructions, interpolations and theorizations of the fathers of
the early, and fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be
irresistible by every sound mind, that he was an impostor. I give no
credit to their falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to
rescue his character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is
granted in reading every other historian. When Livy and Siculus, for
example, tell us things which coincide with our experience of the
order of nature, we credit them on their word, and place their
narrations among the records of credible history. But when they tell
us of calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and other things
against the course of nature, we reject these as fables not belonging
to history. In like manner, when an historian, speaking of a
character well known and established on satisfactory testimony,
imputes to it things incompatible with that character, we reject them
without hesitation, and assent to that only of which we have better
evidence. Had Plutarch informed us that Caesar and Cicero passed
their whole lives in religious exercises, and abstinence from the
affairs of the world, we should reject what was so inconsistent with
their established characters, still crediting what he relates in
conformity with our ideas of them. So again, the superlative wisdom
of Socrates is testified by all antiquity, and placed on ground not
to be questioned. When, therefore, Plato puts into his mouth such
paralogisms, such quibbles on words, and sophisms, as a school boy
would be ashamed of, we conclude they were the whimsies of Plato's
own foggy brain, and acquit Socrates of puerilities so unlike his
character. (Speaking of Plato, I will add, that no writer, antient
or modern, has bewildered the world with more _ignes fatui_, than
this renowned philosopher, in Ethics, in Politics and Physics. In
the latter, to specify a single example, compare his views of the
animal economy, in his Timaeus, with those of Mrs. Bryan in her
Conversations on Chemistry, and weigh the science of the canonised
philosopher against the good sense of the unassuming lady. But
Plato's visions have furnished a basis for endless systems of
mystical theology, and he is therefore all but adopted as a Christian
saint. It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to
throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified. But to
return from this parenthasis.) I say, that this free exercise of
reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus.
We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct
descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things
impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.
Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being,
aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence,
sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence and simplicity of
manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors,
with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed.
These could not be inventions of the groveling authors who relate
them. They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds. They
shew that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose
splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations
from their hands. Can we be at a loss in separating such materials,
and ascribing each to its genuine author? The difference is obvious
to the eye and to the understanding, and we may read as we run to
each his part; and I will venture to affirm, that he who, as I have
done, will undertake to winnow this grain from its chaff, will find
it not to require a moment's consideration. The parts fall asunder
of themselves, as would those of an image of metal and clay.
There are, I acknowledge, passages not free from objection,
which we may, with probability, ascribe to Jesus himself; but
claiming indulgence from the circumstances under which he acted. His
object was the reformation of some articles in the religion of the
Jews, as taught by Moses. That sect had presented for the object of
their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive,
capricious and unjust. Jesus, taking for his type the best qualities
of the human head and heart, wisdom, justice, goodness, and adding to
them power, ascribed all of these, but in infinite perfection, to the
Supreme Being, and formed him really worthy of their adoration.
Moses had either not believed in a future state of existence, or had
not thought it essential to be explicitly taught to his people.
Jesus inculcated that doctrine with emphasis and precision. Moses
had bound the Jews to many idle ceremonies, mummeries and
observances, of no effect towards producing the social utilities
which constitute the essence of virtue; Jesus exposed their futility
and insignificance. The one instilled into his people the most
anti-social spirit towards other nations; the other preached
philanthropy and universal charity and benevolence. The office of
reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever dangerous. Jesus
had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a
step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests
of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless
as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of
Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were
constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law.
He was justifiable, therefore, in avoiding these by evasions, by
sophisms, by misconstructions and misapplications of scraps of the
prophets, and in defending himself with these their own weapons, as
sufficient, _ad homines_, at least. That Jesus did not mean to
impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I
have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself
in that lore. But that he might conscientiously believe himself
inspired from above, is very possible. The whole religion of the
Jews, inculcated on him from his infancy, was founded in the belief
of divine inspiration. The fumes of the most disordered imaginations
were recorded in their religious code, as special communications of
the Deity; and as it could not but happen that, in the course of
ages, events would now and then turn up to which some of these vague
rhapsodies might be accommodated by the aid of allegories, figures,
types, and other tricks upon words, they have not only preserved
their credit with the Jews of all subsequent times, but are the
foundation of much of the religions of those who have schismatised
from them. Elevated by the enthusiasm of a warm and pure heart,
conscious of the high strains of an eloquence which had not been
taught him, he might readily mistake the coruscations of his own fine
genius for inspirations of an higher order. This belief carried,
therefore, no more personal imputation, than the belief of Socrates,
that himself was under the care and admonitions of a guardian Daemon.
And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these
inspirations, while perfectly sane on all other subjects. Excusing,
therefore, on these considerations, those passages in the gospels
which seem to bear marks of weakness in Jesus, ascribing to him what
alone is consistent with the great and pure character of which the
same writings furnish proofs, and to their proper authors their own
trivialities and imbecilities, I think myself authorised to conclude
the purity and distinction of his character, in opposition to the
impostures which those authors would fix upon him; and that the
postulate of my former letter is no more than is granted in all other
historical works.
Mr. Correa is here, on his farewell visit to us. He has been
much pleased with the plan and progress of our University, and has
given some valuable hints to its botanical branch. He goes to do, I
hope, much good in his new country; the public instruction there, as
I understand, being within the department destined for him. He is
not without dissatisfaction, and reasonable dissatisfaction too, with
the piracies of Baltimore; but his justice and friendly dispositions
will, I am sure, distinguish between the iniquities of a few
plunderers, and the sound principles of our country at large, and of
our government especially. From many conversations with him, I hope
he sees, and will promote in his new situation, the advantages of a
cordial fraternization among all the American nations, and the
importance of their coalescing in an American system of policy,
totally independent of, and unconnected with that of Europe. The day
is not distant, when we may formally require a meridian of partition
through the ocean which separates the two hemispheres, on the hither
side of which no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American on
the other; and when, during the rage of the eternal wars of Europe,
the lion and the lamb, within our regions, shall lie down together in
peace. The excess of population in Europe and want of room, render
war, in their opinion, necessary to keep down that excess of numbers.
Here, room is abundant, population scanty, and peace the necessary
means for producing men, to whom the redundant soil is offering the
means of life and happiness. The principles of society there and
here, then, are radically different, and I hope no American patriot
will ever lose sight of the essential policy of interdicting in the
seas and territories of both Americas, the ferocious and sanguinary
contests of Europe. I wish to see this coalition begun. I am
earnest for an agreement with the maritime powers of Europe,
assigning them the task of keeping down the piracies of their seas
and the cannibalisms of the African coasts, and to us, the
suppression of the same enormities within our seas: and for this
purpose, I should rejoice to see the fleets of Brazil and the United
States riding together as brethren of the same family, and pursuing
the same object. And indeed it would be of happy augury to begin at
once this concert of action here, on the invitation of either to the
other government, while the way might be preparing for withdrawing
our cruisers from Europe, and preventing naval collisions there which
daily endanger our peace.
Turning to another part of your letter, I do not think the
obstacles insuperable which you state as opposed to your visit to us.
From one of the persons mentioned, I never heard a sentiment but of
esteem for you and I am certain you would be recieved with kindness
and cordiality. But still the call may be omitted without notice.
The mountain lies between his residence and the main road, and
occludes the expectation of transient visits. I am equally ignorant
of any dispositions not substantially friendly to you in the other
person. But the alibi there gives you ten free months in the year.
But if the visit is to be but once in your life, I would suppress my
impatience and consent it should be made a year or two hence.
Because, by that time our University will be compleate and in full
action: and you would recieve the satisfaction, in the final adieu to
your native state, of seeing that she would retain her equal standing
in the sisterhood of our republics. However, come now, come then, or
come when you please, your visit will give me the gratification I
feel in every opportunity of proving to you the sincerity of my
friendship and respect for you.
THE UNIVERSITY, NEOLOGY, AND MATERIALISM
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Aug. 15, 1820_
I am a great defaulter, my dear Sir, in our correspondence, but
prostrate health rarely permits me to write; and, when it does,
matters of business imperiously press their claims. I am getting
better however, slowly, swelled legs being now the only serious
symptom, and these, I believe, proceed from extreme debility. I can
walk but little; but I ride 6. or 8. miles a day without fatigue; and
within a few days, I shall endeavor to visit my other home, after a
twelve month's absence from it. Our University, 4 miles distant,
gives me frequent exercise, and the oftener as I direct it's
architecture. It's plan is unique, and it is becoming an object of
curiosity for the traveller. I have lately had an opportunity of
reading a critique on this institution in your North American Review
of January last, having been not without anxiety to see what that
able work would say of us: and I was relieved on finding in it much
coincidence of opinion, and even, where criticisms were indulged, I
found they would have been obviated had the developements of our plan
been fuller. But these were restrained by the character of the paper
reviewed, being merely a report of outlines, not a detailed treatise,
and addressed to a legislative body, not to a learned academy. E.g.
as an inducement to introduce the Anglo-Saxon into our plan, it was
said that it would reward amply the _few weeks_ of attention which
alone would be requisite for it's attainment; leaving both term and
degree under an indefinite expression, because I know that not much
time is necessary to attain it to an useful degree, sufficient to
give such instruction in the etymologies of our language as may
satisfy ordinary students, while more time would be requisite for
those who would propose to attain a critical knolege of it. In a
letter which I had occasion to write to Mr. Crofts (who sent you, I
believe, as well as myself, a copy of his treatise on the English and
German languages, as preliminary to an Etymological dictionary he
meditated) I went into explanations with him of an easy process for
simplifying the study of the Anglo-Saxon, and lessening the terrors,
and difficulties presented by it's rude Alphabet, and unformed
orthography. But this is a subject beyond the bounds of a letter, as
it was beyond the bounds of a Report to the legislature. Mr. Crofts
died, I believe, before any progress was made in the work he had
projected.
The reviewer expresses doubt, rather than decision, on our
placing Military and Naval architecture in the department of Pure
Mathematics. Military architecture embraces fortification and field
works, which with their bastions, curtains, hornworks, redoubts etc.
are based on a technical combination of lines and angles. These are
adapted to offence and defence, with and against the effects of
bombs, balls, escalades etc. But lines and angles make the sum of
elementary geometry, a branch of Pure Mathematics: and the direction
of the bombs, balls, and other projectiles, the necessary appendages
of military works, altho' no part of their architecture, belong to
the conic sections, a branch of transcendental geometry. Diderot and
Dalembert therefore, in their Arbor scientiae, have placed military
architecture in the department of elementary geometry. Naval
architecture teaches the best form and construction of vessels; for
which best form it has recourse to the question of the Solid of least
resistance, a problem of transcendental geometry. And it's
appurtenant projectiles belong to the same branch, as in the
preceding case. It is true that so far as respects the action of the
water on the rudder and oars, and of the wind on the sails, it may be
placed in the department of mechanics, as Diderot and Dalambert have
done: but belonging quite as much to geometry, and allied in it's
military character, to military architecture, it simplified our plan
to place both under the same head. These views are so obvious that I
am sure they would have required but a second thought to reconcile
the reviewer to their _location_ under the head of Pure Mathematics.
For this word _Location_, see Bailey, Johnson, Sheridan, Walker etc.
But if Dictionaries are to be the Arbiters of language, in which of
them shall we find _neologism_. No matter. It is a good word, well
sounding, obvious, and expresses an idea which would otherwise
require circumlocution. The Reviewer was justifiable therefore in
using it; altho' he noted at the same time, as unauthoritative,
_centrality_, _grade_, _sparse_; all which have been long used in
common speech and writing. I am a friend to _neology_. It is the
only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony. Without it
we should still be held to the vocabulary of Alfred or of Ulphilas;
and held to their state of science also: for I am sure they had no
words which could have conveyed the ideas of Oxigen, cotyledons,
zoophytes, magnetism, electricity, hyaline, and thousands of others
expressing ideas not then existing, nor of possible communication in
the state of their language. What a language has the French become
since the date of their revolution, by the free introduction of new
words! The most copious and eloquent in the living world; and equal
to the Greek, had not that been regularly modifiable almost ad
infinitum. Their rule was that whenever their language furnished or
adopted a root, all it's branches, in every part of speech were
legitimated by giving them their appropriate terminations.
{adelphos} ["brother"], {adelphe} ["sister"], {adelphidion} ["little
brother"], {adelphotes} ["brotherly affection"], {adelphixis}
["brotherhood"], {adelphidoys} ["nephew"], {adelphikos} ["brotherly,"
adj.], {adelphizo} ["to adopt as a brother"], {adelphikos}
["brotherly," adv.]. And this should be the law of every language.
Thus, having adopted the adjective _fraternal_, it is a root, which
should legitimate fraternity, fraternation, fraternisation,
fraternism, to fraternate, fraternise, fraternally. And give the
word neologism to our language, as a root, and it should give us it's
fellow substantives, neology, neologist, neologisation; it's
adjectives neologous, neological, neologistical, it's verb neologise,
and adverb neologically. Dictionaries are but the depositories of
words already legitimated by usage. Society is the work-shop in
which new ones are elaborated. When an individual uses a new word,
if illformed it is rejected in society, if wellformed, adopted, and,
after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries. And if,
in this process of sound neologisation, our transatlantic brethren
shall not choose to accompany us, we may furnish, after the Ionians,
a second example of a colonial dialect improving on it's primitive.
But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of
May 12. on matter, spirit, motion etc. It's croud of scepticisms
kept me from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid
it down, again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged
to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, `I feel: therefore I
exist.' I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other
existencies then. I call them _matter_. I feel them changing place.
This gives me _motion_. Where there is an absence of matter, I call
it _void_, or _nothing_, or _immaterial space_. On the basis of
sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the
certainties we can have or need. I can concieve _thought_ to be an
action of a particular organisation of matter, formed for that
purpose by it's creator, as well as that _attraction_ in an action of
matter, or _magnetism_ of loadstone. When he who denies to the
Creator the power of endowing matter with the mode of action called
_thinking_ shall shew how he could endow the Sun with the mode of
action called _attraction_, which reins the planets in the tract of
their orbits, or how an absence of matter can have a will, and, by
that will, put matter into motion, then the materialist may be
lawfully required to explain the process by which matter exercises
the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis of sensation,
all is in the wind. To talk of _immaterial_ existences is to talk of
_nothings_. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial,
is to say they are _nothings_, or that there is no god, no angels, no
soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my
creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of
the Christian church this heresy of _immaterialism_, this masked
atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is.
Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us indeed that `God is a
spirit,' but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is
not _matter_. And the antient fathers generally, if not universally,
held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but
still matter. Origen says `Deus reapse corporalis est; sed graviorum
tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus.' Tertullian `quid enim deus
nisi corpus?' and again `quis negabit deumesse corpus? Etsi deus
spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis, in sua effigie.'
St. Justin Martyr `{to Theion phamen einai asomaton oyk oti asomaton
-- epeide de to me krateisthai ypo tinos, toy krateisthai timioteron
esti, dia toyto kaloymen ayton asomaton.}' And St. Macarius, speaking
of angels says `quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia,
forma et figura, secundum tenuitatem naturae eorum, corpora sunt
tenuia.' And St. Austin, St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras
and others, with whose writings I pretend not a familiarity, are said
by those who are, to deliver the same doctrine. Turn to your Ocellus
d'Argens 97. 105. and to his Timaeus 17. for these quotations. In
England these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29. Car.
2. when the writ de haeretico comburendo was abolished: and here
until the revolution, that statute not having extended to us. All
heresies being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely
atheists, differing from the material Atheist only in their belief
that `nothing made something,' and from the material deist who
believes that matter alone can operate on matter.
Rejecting all organs of information therefore but my senses, I
rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in
speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and
disquiet the mind. A single sense may indeed be sometimes decieved,
but rarely: and never all our senses together, with their faculty of
reasoning. They evidence realities; and there are enough of these
for all the purposes of life, without plunging into the fathomless
abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently
occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling
myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no
evidence. I am sure that I really know many, many, things, and none
more surely than that I love you with all my heart, and pray for the
continuance of your life until you shall be tired of it yourself.
JUDICIAL SUBVERSION
_To Thomas Ritchie_
_Monticello, December 25, 1820_
DEAR SIR, -- On my return home after a long absence, I find
here your favor of November the 23d, with Colonel Taylor's
"Construction Construed," which you have been so kind as to send me,
in the name of the author as well as yourself. Permit me, if you
please, to use the same channel for conveying to him the thanks I
render you also for this mark of attention. I shall read it, I know,
with edification, as I did his Inquiry, to which I acknowledge myself
indebted for many valuable ideas, and for the correction of some
errors of early opinion, never seen in a correct light until
presented to me in that work. That the present volume is equally
orthodox, I know before reading it, because I know that Colonel
Taylor and myself have rarely, if ever, differed in any political
principle of importance. Every act of his life, and every word he
ever wrote, satisfies me of this. So, also, as to the two
Presidents, late and now in office, I know them both to be of
principles as truly republican as any men living. If there be
anything amiss, therefore, in the present state of our affairs, as
the formidable deficit lately unfolded to us indicates, I ascribe it
to the inattention of Congress to their duties, to their unwise
dissipation and waste of the public contributions. They seemed, some
little while ago, to be at a loss for objects whereon to throw away
the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury. I had feared the
result, because I saw among them some of my old fellow laborers, of
tried and known principles, yet often in their minorities. I am
aware that in one of their most ruinous vagaries, the people were
themselves betrayed into the same phrenzy with their Representatives.
The deficit produced, and a heavy tax to supply it, will, I trust,
bring both to their sober senses.
But it is not from this branch of government we have most to
fear. Taxes and short elections will keep them right. The judiciary
of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners
constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our
confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a
co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and
supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they
are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, _"boni
judicis est ampliare juris-dictionem."_ We shall see if they are bold
enough to take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately
taken. If they do, then, with the editor of our book, in his address
to the public, I will say, that "against this every man should raise
his voice," and more, should uplift his arm. Who wrote this
admirable address? Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too much, nor
one which can be changed but for the worse. That pen should go on,
lay bare these wounds of our constitution, expose the decisions
_seriatim_, and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation to
these bold speculators on its patience. Having found, from
experience, that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere
scare-crow, they consider themselves secure for life; they sculk from
responsibility to public opinion, the only remaining hold on them,
under a practice first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield. An
opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one,
delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy
or timid associates, by a crafty chief judge, who sophisticates the
law to his mind, by the turn of his own reasoning. A judiciary law
was once reported by the Attorney General to Congress, requiring each
judge to deliver his opinion _seriatim_ and openly, and then to give
it in writing to the clerk to be entered in the record. A judiciary
independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but
independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a
republican government.
But to return to your letter; you ask for my opinion of the
work you send me, and to let it go out to the public. This I have
ever made a point of declining, (one or two instances only excepted.)
Complimentary thanks to writers who have sent me their works, have
betrayed me sometimes before the public, without my consent having
been asked. But I am far from presuming to direct the reading of my
fellow citizens, who are good enough judges themselves of what is
worthy their reading. I am, also, too desirous of quiet to place
myself in the way of contention. Against this I am admonished by
bodily decay, which cannot be unaccompanied by corresponding wane of
the mind. Of this I am as yet sensible, sufficiently to be unwilling
to trust myself before the public, and when I cease to be so, I hope
that my friends will be too careful of me to draw me forth and
present me, like a Priam in armor, as a spectacle for public
compassion. I hope our political bark will ride through all its
dangers; but I can in future be but an inert passenger.
I salute you with sentiments of great friendship and respect.
THE MISSOURI QUESTION
_To Albert Gallatin_
_Monticello, Dec. 26, 1820_
DEAR SIR, -- `It is said to be an ill wind which blows
favorably to no one.' My ill health has long suspended the too
frequent troubles I have heretofore given you with my European
correspondence. To this is added a stiffening wrist, the effect of
age on an antient dislocation, which renders writing slow and
painful, and disables me nearly from all correspondence, and may very
possibly make this the last trouble I shall give you in that way.
Looking from our quarter of the world over the horizon of yours
we imagine we see storms gathering which may again desolate the face
of that country. So many revolutions going on, in different
countries at the same time, such combinations of tyranny, and
military preparations and movements to suppress them. England &
France unsafe from internal conflict, Germany, on the first favorable
occasion, ripe for insurrection, such a state of things, we suppose,
must end in war, which needs a kindling spark in one spot only to
spread over the whole. Your information can correct these views
which are stated only to inform you of impressions here.
At home things are not well. The flood of paper money, as you
well know, had produced an exaggeration of nominal prices and at the
same time a facility of obtaining money, which not only encouraged
speculations on fictitious capital, but seduced those of real
capital, even in private life, to contract debts too freely. Had
things continued in the same course, these might have been
manageable. But the operations of the U.S. bank for the demolition
of the state banks, obliged these suddenly to call in more than half
of their paper, crushed all fictitious and doubtful capital, and
reduced the prices of property and produce suddenly to 1/3 of what
they had been. Wheat, for example, at the distance of two or three
days from market, fell to and continues at from one third to half a
dollar. Should it be stationary at this for a while, a very general
revolution of property must take place. Something of the same
character has taken place in our fiscal system. A little while back
Congress seemed at a loss for objects whereon to squander the
supposed fathomless funds of our treasury. This short frenzy has
been arrested by a deficit of 5 millions the last year, and of 7.
millions this year. A loan was adopted for the former and is
proposed for the latter, which threatens to saddle us with a
perpetual debt. I hope a tax will be preferred, because it will
awaken the attention of the people, and make reformation & economy
the principles of the next election. The frequent recurrence of this
chastening operation can alone restrain the propensity of governments
to enlarge expence beyond income. The steady tenor of the courts of
the US. to break down the constitutional barrier between the
coordinate powers of the States, and of the Union, and a formal
opinion lately given by 5. lawyers of too much eminence to be
neglected, give uneasiness. But nothing has ever presented so
threatening an aspect as what is called the Missouri question. The
Federalists compleatly put down, and despairing of ever rising again
under the old division of whig and tory, devised a new one, of
slave-holding, & non-slave-holding states, which, while it had a
semblance of being Moral, was at the same time Geographical, and
calculated to give them ascendancy by debauching their old opponents
to a coalition with them. Moral the question certainly is not,
because the removal of slaves from one state to another, no more than
their removal from one country to another, would never make a slave
of one human being who would not be so without it. Indeed if there
were any morality in the question it is on the other side; because by
spreading them over a larger surface, their happiness would be
increased, & the burthen of their future liberation lightened by
bringing a greater number of shoulders under it. However it served
to throw dust into the eyes of the people and to fanaticise them,
while to the knowing ones it gave a geographical and preponderant
line of the Patomac and Ohio, throwing 12. States to the North and
East, & 10. to the South & West. With these therefore it is merely a
question of power: but with this geographical minority it is a
question of existence. For if Congress once goes out of the
Constitution to arrogate a right of regulating the conditions of the
inhabitants of the States, its majority may, and probably will next
declare that the condition of all men within the US. shall be that of
freedom, in which case all the whites South of the Patomak and Ohio
must evacuate their States; and most fortunate those who can do it
first. And so far this crisis seems to be advancing. The Missouri
constitution is recently rejected by the House of Representatives.
What will be their next step is yet to be seen. If accepted on the
condition that Missouri shall expunge from it the prohibition of free
people of colour from emigration to their state, it will be expunged,
and all will be quieted until the advance of some new state shall
present the question again. If rejected unconditionally, Missouri
assumes independent self-government, and Congress, after pouting
awhile, must recieve them on the footing of the original states.
Should the Representative propose force, 1. the Senate will not
concur. 2. were they to concur, there would be a secession of the
members South of the line, & probably of the three North Western
states, who, however inclined to the other side, would scarcely
separate from those who would hold the Misisipi from it's mouth to
it's source. What next? Conjecture itself is at a loss. But
whatever it shall be you will hear from others and from the
newspapers. And finally the whole will depend on Pensylvania. While
she and Virginia hold together, the Atlantic states can never
separate. Unfortunately in the present case she has become more
fanaticised than any other state. However useful where you are, I
wish you were with them. You might turn the scale there, which would
turn it for the whole. Should this scission take place, one of it's
most deplorable consequences would be it's discouragement of the
efforts of the European nations in the regeneration of their
oppressive and Cannibal governments.
Amidst this prospect of evil, I am glad to see one good effect.
It has brought the necessity of some plan of general emancipation &
deportation more home to the minds of our people than it has ever
been before. Insomuch, that our Governor has ventured to propose one
to the legislature. This will probably not be acted on at this time.
Nor would it be effectual; for while it proposes to devote to that
object one third of the revenue of the State, it would not reach one
tenth of the annual increase. My proposition would be that the
holders should give up all born after a certain day, past, present,
or to come, that these should be placed under the guardianship of the
State, and sent at a proper age to S. Domingo. There they are
willing to recieve them, & the shortness of the passage brings the
deportation within the possible means of taxation aided by charitable
contributions. In this I think Europe, which has forced this evil on
us, and the Eastern states who have been it's chief instruments of
importation, would be bound to give largely. But the proceeds of the
land office, if appropriated, would be quite sufficient. God bless
you and preserve you multos aNos.
BOLINGBROKE AND PAINE
_To Francis Eppes_
_Monticello, January 19, 1821_
DEAR FRANCIS, -- Your letter of the 1st came safely to hand. I
am sorry you have lost Mr. Elliot, however the kindness of Dr. Cooper
will be able to keep you in the track of what is worthy of your time.
You ask my opinion of Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine. They
were alike in making bitter enemies of the priests and pharisees of
their day. Both were honest men; both advocates for human liberty.
Paine wrote for a country which permitted him to push his reasoning
to whatever length it would go. Lord Bolingbroke in one restrained
by a constitution, and by public opinion. He was called indeed a
tory; but his writings prove him a stronger advocate for liberty than
any of his countrymen, the whigs of the present day. Irritated by
his exile, he committed one act unworthy of him, in connecting
himself momentarily with a prince rejected by his country. But he
redeemed that single act by his establishment of the principles which
proved it to be wrong. These two persons differed remarkably in the
style of their writing, each leaving a model of what is most perfect
in both extremes of the simple and the sublime. No writer has
exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of
expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming
language. In this he may be compared with Dr. Franklin; and indeed
his Common Sense was, for awhile, believed to have been written by
Dr. Franklin, and published under the borrowed name of Paine, who had
come over with him from England. Lord Bolingbroke's, on the other
hand, is a style of the highest order. The lofty, rhythmical,
full-flowing eloquence of Cicero. Periods of just measure, their
members proportioned, their close full and round. His conceptions,
too, are bold and strong, his diction copious, polished and
commanding as his subject. His writings are certainly the finest
samples in the English language, of the eloquence proper for the
Senate. His political tracts are safe reading for the most timid
religionist, his philosophical, for those who are not afraid to trust
their reason with discussions of right and wrong.
You have asked my opinion of these persons, and, _to you_, I
have given it freely. But, remember, that I am old, that I wish not
to make new enemies, nor to give offence to those who would consider
a difference of opinion as sufficient ground for unfriendly
dispositions. God bless you, and make you what I wish you to be.
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE SCHOOLS
_To General James Breckinridge_
_Monticello, February 15, 1821_
DEAR SIR, -- I learn, with deep affliction, that nothing is
likely to be done for our University this year. So near as it is to
the shore that one shove more would land it there, I had hoped that
would be given; and that we should open with the next year an
institution on which the fortunes of our country may depend more than
may meet the general eye. The reflections that the boys of this age
are to be the men of the next; that they should be prepared to
receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to
them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we
secure it to all our future generations; that in fulfilling this
duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing
our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to destinies of high
promise; these are considerations which will occur to all; but all, I
fear, do not see the speck in our horizon which is to burst on us as
a tornado, sooner or later. The line of division lately marked out
between different portions of our confederacy, is such as will never,
I fear, be obliterated, and we are now trusting to those who are
against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form
the minds and affections of our youth. If, as has been estimated, we
send three hundred thousand dollars a year to the northern
seminaries, for the instruction of our own sons, then we must have
there five hundred of our sons, imbibing opinions and principles in
discord with those of their own country. This canker is eating on
the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be
beyond remedy. We are now certainly furnishing recruits to their
school. If it be asked what are we to do, or said we cannot give the
last lift to the University without stopping our primary schools, and
these we think most important; I answer, I know their importance. No
body can doubt my zeal for the general instruction of the people.
Who first started that idea? I may surely say, myself. Turn to the
bill in the revised code, which I drew more than forty years ago, and
before which the idea of a plan for the education of the people,
generally, had never been suggested in this State. There you will
see developed the first rudiments of the whole system of general
education we are now urging and acting on: and it is well known to
those with thom I have acted on this subject, that I never have
proposed a sacrifice of the primary to the ultimate grade of
instruction. Let us keep our eye steadily on the whole system. If
we cannot do every thing at once, let us do one at a time. The
primary schools need no preliminary expense; the ultimate grade
requires a considerable expenditure in advance. A suspension of
proceeding for a year or two on the primary schools, and an
application of the whole income, during that time, to the completion
of the buildings necessary for the University, would enable us then
to start both institutions at the same time. The intermediate
branch, of colleges, academies and private classical schools, for the
middle grade, may hereafter receive any necessary aids when the funds
shall become competent. In the mean time, they are going on
sufficiently, as they have ever yet gone on, at the private expense
of those who use them, and who in numbers and means are competent to
their own exigencies. The experience of three years has, I presume,
left no doubt that the present plan of primary schools, of putting
money into the hands of twelve hundred persons acting for nothing,
and under no responsibility, is entirely inefficient. Some other
must be thought of; and during this pause, if it be only for a year,
the whole revenue of that year, with that of the last three years
which has not been already thrown away, would place our University in
readiness to start with a better organization of primary schools, and
both may then go on, hand in hand, for ever. No diminution of the
capital will in this way have been incurred; a principle which ought
to be deemed sacred. A relinquishment of interest on the late loan
of sixty thousand dollars, would so far, also, forward the University
without lessening the capital.
But what may be best done I leave with entire confidence to
yourself and your colleagues in legislation, who know better than I
do the conditions of the literary fund and its wisest applications
and I shall acquiesce with perfect resignation to their will. I have
brooded, perhaps with fondness, over this establishment, as it held
up to me the hope of continuing to be useful while I continued to
live. I had believed that the course and circumstances of my life
had placed within my power some services favorable to the outset of
the institution. But this may be egoism; pardonable, perhaps, when I
express a consciousness that my colleagues and successors will do as
well, whatever the legislature shall enable them to do.
I have thus, my dear Sir, opened my bosom, with all its
anxieties, freely to you. I blame nobody for seeing things in a
different light. I am sure that all act conscientiously, and that
all will be done honestly and wisely which can be done. I yield the
concerns of the world with cheerfulness to those who are appointed in
the order of nature to succeed to them; and for yourself, for our
colleagues, and for all in charge of our country's future fame and
fortune, I offer up sincere prayers.
A DANGEROUS EXAMPLE
_To Jedidiah Morse_
_Monticello, March 6, 1822_
SIR, -- I have duly received your letter of February the 16th,
and have now to express my sense of the honorable station proposed to
my ex-brethren and myself, in the constitution of the society for the
civilization and improvement of the Indian tribes. The object too
expressed, as that of the association, is one which I have ever had
much at heart, and never omitted an occasion of promoting, while I
have been in situations to do it with effect, and nothing, even now,
in the calm of age and retirement, would excite in me a more lively
interest than an approvable plan of raising that respectable and
unfortunate people from the state of physical and moral abjection, to
which they have been reduced by circumstances foreign to them. That
the plan now proposed is entitled to unmixed approbation, I am not
prepared to say, after mature consideration, and with all the
partialities which its professed object would rightfully claim from
me.
I shall not undertake to draw the line of demarcation between
private associations of laudable views and unimposing numbers, and
those whose magnitude may rivalise and jeopardise the march of
regular government. Yet such a line does exist. I have seen the
days, they were those which preceded the Revolution, when even this
last and perilous engine became necessary; but they were days which
no man would wish to see a second time. That was the case where the
regular authorities of the government had combined against the rights
of the people, and no means of correction remained to them, but to
organise a collateral power, which, with their support, might rescue
and secure their violated rights. But such is not the case with our
government. We need hazard no collateral power, which, by a change
of its original views, and assumption of others we know not how
virtuous or how mischievous, would be ready organised and in force
sufficient to shake the established foundations of society, and
endanger its peace and the principles on which it is based. Is not
the machine now proposed of this gigantic stature? It is to consist
of the ex-Presidents of the United States, the Vice President, the
Heads of all the executive departments, the members of the supreme
judiciary, the Governors of the several States and territories, all
the members of both Houses of Congress, all the general officers of
the army, the commissioners of the navy, all Presidents and
Professors of colleges and theological seminaries, all the clergy of
the United States, the Presidents and Secretaries of all associations
having relation to Indians, all commanding officers within or near
Indian territories, all Indian superintendants and agents; all these
_ex-officio_; and as many private individuals as will pay a certain
price for membership. Observe too, that the clergy will constitute
(*) nineteen twentieths of this association, and, by the law of the
majority, may command the twentieth part, which, composed of all the
high authorities of the United States, civil and military, may be
outvoted and wielded by the nineteen parts with uncontrollable power,
both as to purpose and process. Can thisformidable array be reviewed
without dismay? It will besaid, that in this association will be all
the confidential officers of the government; the choice of the people
themselves. No man on earth has more implicit confidence than myself
in the integrity and discretion of this chosen band of servants. But
is confidence or discretion, or is _strict limit_, the principle of
our constitution? It will comprehend, indeed, all the functionaries
of the government; but seceded from their constitutional stations as
guardians of the nation, and acting not by the laws of their station,
but by those of a voluntary society, having no limit to their
purposes but the same will which constitutes their existence. It
will be the authorities of the people and all influential characters
from among them, arrayed on one side, and on the other, the people
themselves deserted by their leaders. It is a fearful array. It
will be said, that these are imaginary fears. I know they are so at
present. I know it is as impossible for these agents of our choice
and unbounded confidence, to harbor machinations against the adored
principles of our constitution, as for gravity to change its
direction, and gravid bodies to mount upwards. The fears are indeed
imaginary: but the example is _real_. Under its authority, as a
precedent, future associations will arise with objects at which we
should shudder at this time. The society of Jacobins, in another
country, was instituted on principles and views as virtuous as ever
kindled the hearts of patriots. It was the pure patriotism of their
purposes which extended their association to the limits of the
nation, and rendered their power within it boundless; and it was this
power which degenerated their principles and practices to such
enormities, as never before could have been imagined. Yet these were
men; and we and our descendants will be no more. The present is a
case where, if ever, we are to guard against ourselves; not against
ourselves as we are, but as we may be; for who can now imagine what
we may become under circumstances not now imaginable? The object too
of this institution, seems to require so hazardous an example as
little as any which could be proposed. The government is, at this
time, going on with the process of civilising the Indians, on a plan
probably as promising as any one of us is able to devise, and with
resources more competent than we could expect to command by voluntary
taxation. Is it that the new characters called into association with
those of the government, are wiser than these? Is it that a plan
originated by a meeting of private individuals, is better than that
prepared by the concentrated wisdom of the nation, of men not
self-chosen, but clothed with the full confidence of the people? Is
it that there is no danger that a new authority, marching,
independently, along side of the government, in the same line and to
the same object, may not produce collision, may not thwart and
obstruct the operations of the government, or wrest the object
entirely from their hands? Might we not as well appoint a committee
for each department of the government, to counsel and direct its head
separately, as volunteer ourselves to counsel and direct the whole,
in mass? And might we not do it as well for their foreign, their
fiscal, and their military, as for their Indian affairs? And how
many societies, auxiliary to the government, may we expect to see
spring up, in imitation of this, offering to associate themselves in
this and that of its functions? In a word, why not take the
government out of its constitutional hands, associate them indeed
with us, to preserve a semblance that the acts are theirs, but
insuring them to be our own by allowing them a minor vote only?
(*) The clergy of the United States may probably be estimated
at eight thousand. The residue of this society at four hundred; but
if the former number be halved, the reasoning will be the same.
These considerations have impressed my mind with a force so
irresistible, that (in duty bound to answer your polite letter,
without which I should not have obtruded an opinion,) I have not been
able to withhold the expression of them. Not knowing the individuals
who have proposed this plan, I cannot be conceived as entertaining
personal disrespect for them. On the contrary, I see in the printed
list persons for whom I cherish sentiments of sincere friendship; and
others, for whose opinions and purity of purpose I have the highest
respect. Yet thinking as I do, that this association is unnecessary;
that the government is proceeding to the same object under control of
the law; that they are competent to it in wisdom, in means, and
inclination; that this association, this wheel within a wheel, is
more likely to produce collision than aid; and that it is, in its
magnitude, of dangerous example; I am bound to say, that, as a
dutiful citizen, I cannot in conscience become a member of this
society, possessing as it does my entire confidence in the integrity
of its views. I feel with awe the weight of opinion to which I may
be opposed, and that, for myself, I have need to ask the indulgence
of a belief, that the opinion I have given is the best result I can
deduce from my own reason and experience, and that it is sincerely
conscientious. Repeating therefore, my just acknowledgments for the
honor proposed to me; I beg leave to add the assurances to the
society and yourself of my highest confidence and consideration.
A UNITARIAN CREED
_To Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse_
_Monticello, June 26, 1822_
DEAR SIR, -- I have received and read with thankfulness and
pleasure your denunciation of the abuses of tobacco and wine. Yet,
however sound in its principles, I expect it will be but a sermon to
the wind. You will find it as difficult to inculcate these sanative
precepts on the sensualities of the present day, as to convince an
Athanasian that there is but one God. I wish success to both
attempts, and am happy to learn from you that the latter, at least,
is making progress, and the more rapidly in proportion as our
Platonizing Christians make more stir and noise about it. The
doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as
thyself, is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which
he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with
these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the
proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to
be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the
former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He
who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the
impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I say these are
the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the
sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of
the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the
_deliria_ of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is
that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into
infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed author
himself, with the horrors so falsely imputed to him. Had the
doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his
lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian. I
rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief,
which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor
priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I
trust that there is not a _young man_ now living in the United States
who will not die an Unitarian.
But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be
re-established, its votaries will fall into the fatal error of
fabricating formulas of creed and confessions of faith, the engines
which so soon destroyed the religion of Jesus, and made of
Christendom a mere Aceldama; that they will give up morals for
mysteries, and Jesus for Plato. How much wiser are the Quakers, who,
agreeing in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, schismatize
about no mysteries, and, keeping within the pale of common sense,
suffer no speculative differences of opinion, any more than of
feature, to impair the love of their brethren. Be this the wisdom of
Unitarians, this the holy mantle which shall cover within its
charitable circumference all who believe in one God, and who love
their neighbor! I conclude my sermon with sincere assurances of my
friendly esteem and respect.
SERIATIM OPINIONS AND THE HISTORY OF PARTIES
_To Justice William Johnson_
_Monticello, Oct. 27, 1822_
DEAR SIR, -- I have deferred my thanks for the copy of your
Life of Genl. Greene, until I could have time to read it. This I
have done, and with the greatest satisfaction; and can now more
understandingly express the gratification it has afforded me. I
really rejoice that we have at length a fair history of the Southern
war. It proves how much we were left to defend ourselves as we
could, while the resources of the Union were so disproportionately
devoted to the North. I am glad too to see the Romance of Lee
removed from the shelf of History to that of Fable. Some small
portion of the transactions he relates were within my own knolege;
and of these I can say he has given more falsehood than fact; and I
have heard many officers declare the same as to what had passed under
their eyes. Yet this book had begun to be quoted as history. Greene
was truly a great man, he had not perhaps all the qualities which so
peculiarly rendered Genl. Washington the fittest man on earth for
directing so great a contest under so great difficulties.
Difficulties proceeding not from lukewarmness in our citizens or
their functionaries, as our military leaders supposed; but from the
pennyless condition of a people, totally shut out from all commerce &
intercourse with the world, and therefore without any means for
converting their labor into money. But Greene was second to no one
in enterprise, in resource, in sound judgment, promptitude of
decision, and every other military talent. In addition to the work
you have given us, I look forward with anxiety to that you promise in
the last paragraph of your book. Lee's military fable you have put
down. Let not the invidious libel on the views of the Republican
party, and on their regeneration of the government go down to
posterity as hypocritically masked. I was myself too laboriously
employed, while in office, and too old when I left it, to do justice
to those who had labored so faithfully to arrest our course towards
monarchy, and to secure the result of our revolutionary sufferings
and sacrifices in a government bottomed on the only safe basis, the
elective will of the people. You are young enough for the task, and
I hope you will undertake it.
There is a subject respecting the practice of the court of
which you are a member, which has long weighed on my mind, on which I
have long thought I would write to you, and which I will take this
opportunity of doing. It is in truth a delicate undertaking, & yet
such is my opinion of your candor and devotedness to the
Constitution, in it's true spirit, that I am sure I shall meet your
approbation in unbosoming myself to you. The subject of my
uneasiness is the habitual mode of making up and delivering the
opinions of the supreme court of the US.
You know that from the earliest ages of the English law, from
the date of the year-books, at least, to the end of the IId George,
the judges of England, in all but self-evident cases, delivered their
opinions seriatim, with the reasons and authorities which governed
their decisions. If they sometimes consulted together, and gave a
general opinion, it was so rarely as not to excite either alarm or
notice. Besides the light which their separate arguments threw on
the subject, and the instruction communicated by their several modes
of reasoning, it shewed whether the judges were unanimous or divided,
and gave accordingly more or less weight to the judgment as a
precedent. It sometimes happened too that when there were three
opinions against one, the reasoning of the one was so much the most
cogent as to become afterwards the law of the land. When Ld.
Mansfield came to the bench he introduced the habit of caucusing
opinions. The judges met at their chambers, or elsewhere, secluded
from the presence of the public, and made up what was to be delivered
as the opinion of the court. On the retirement of Mansfield, Ld.
Kenyon put an end to the practice, and the judges returned to that of
seriatim opinions, and practice it habitually to this day, I believe.
I am not acquainted with the late reporters, do not possess them, and
state the fact from the information of others. To come now to
ourselves I know nothing of what is done in other states, but in this
our great and good Mr. Pendleton was, after the revolution, placed at
the head of the court of Appeals. He adored Ld. Mansfield, &
considered him as the greatest luminary of law that any age had ever
produced, and he introduced into the court over which he presided,
Mansfield's practice of making up opinions in secret & delivering
them as the Oracles of the court, in mass. Judge Roane, when he came
to that bench, broke up the practice, refused to hatch judgments, in
Conclave, or to let others deliver opinions for him. At what time
the seriatim opinions ceased in the supreme Court of the US., I am
not informed. They continued I know to the end of the 3d Dallas in
1800. Later than which I have no Reporter of that court. About that
time the present C. J. came to the bench. Whether he carried the
practice of Mr. Pendleton to it, or who, or when I do not know; but I
understand from others it is now the habit of the court, & I suppose
it true from the cases sometimes reported in the newspapers, and
others which I casually see, wherein I observe that the opinions were
uniformly prepared in private. Some of these cases too have been of
such importance, of such difficulty, and the decisions so grating to
a portion of the public as to have merited the fullest explanation
from every judge seriatim, of the reasons which had produced such
convictions on his mind. It was interesting to the public to know
whether these decisions were really unanimous, or might not perhaps
be of 4. against 3. and consequently prevailing by the preponderance
of one voice only. The Judges holding their offices for life are
under two responsibilities only. 1. Impeachment. 2. Individual
reputation. But this practice compleatly withdraws them from both.
For nobody knows what opinion any individual member gave in any case,
nor even that he who delivers the opinion, concurred in it himself.
Be the opinion therefore ever so impeachable, having been done in the
dark it can be proved on no one. As to the 2d guarantee, personal
reputation, it is shielded compleatly. The practice is certainly
convenient for the lazy, the modest & the incompetent. It saves them
the trouble of developing their opinion methodically and even of
making up an opinion at all. That of seriatim argument shews whether
every judge has taken the trouble of understanding the case, of
investigating it minutely, and of forming an opinion for himself,
instead of pinning it on another's sleeve. It would certainly be
right to abandon this practice in order to give to our citizens one
and all, that confidence in their judges which must be so desirable
to the judges themselves, and so important to the cement of the
union. During the administration of Genl. Washington, and while E.
Randolph was Attorney General, he was required by Congress to digest
the judiciary laws into a single one, with such amendments as might
be thought proper. He prepared a section requiring the Judges to
give their opinions seriatim, in writing, to be recorded in a
distinct volume. Other business prevented this bill from being taken
up, and it passed off, but such a volume would have been the best
possible book of reports, and the better, as unincumbered with the
hired sophisms and perversions of Counsel.
What do you think of the state of parties at this time? An
opinion prevails that there is no longer any distinction, that the
republicans & Federalists are compleatly amalgamated but it is not
so. The amalgamation is of name only, not of principle. All indeed
call themselves by the name of Republicans, because that of
Federalists was extinguished in the battle of New Orleans. But the
truth is that finding that monarchy is a desperate wish in this
country, they rally to the point which they think next best, a
consolidated government. Their aim is now therefore to break down
the rights reserved by the constitution to the states as a bulwark
against that consolidation, the fear of which produced the whole of
the opposition to the constitution at it's birth. Hence new
Republicans in Congress, preaching the doctrines of the old
Federalists, and the new nick-names of Ultras and Radicals. But I
trust they will fail under the new, as the old name, and that the
friends of the real constitution and union will prevail against
consolidation, as they have done against monarchism. I scarcely know
myself which is most to be deprecated, a consolidation, or
dissolution of the states. The horrors of both are beyond the reach
of human foresight.
I have written you a long letter, and committed to you thoughts
which I would do to few others. If I am right, you will approve
them; if wrong, commiserate them as the dreams of a Superannuate
about things from which he is to derive neither good nor harm. But
you will still receive them as a proof of my confidence in the
rectitude of your mind and principles, of which I pray you to receive
entire assurance with that of my continued and great friendship and
respect.
RELIGION AND THE UNIVERSITY
_To Dr. Thomas Cooper_
_Monticello, November 2, 1822_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of October the 18th came to hand
yesterday. The atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged
with a threatening cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser
in others, but too heavy in all. I had no idea, however, that in
Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it
could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to
the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy and absurdity of the
five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them,
render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone
to denunciation. In Boston, however, and its neighborhood,
Unitarianism has advanced to so great strength, as now to humble this
haughtiest of all religious sects; insomuch that they condescend to
interchange with them and the other sects, the civilities of
preaching freely and frequently in each others' meeting-houses. In
Rhode Island, on the other hand, no sectarian preacher will permit an
Unitarian to pollute his desk. In our Richmond there is much
fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night
meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, and
sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of
their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty
would permit them to use to a mere earthly lover. In our village of
Charlottesville, there is a good degree of religion, with a small
spice only of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either
church or meeting-house. The court-house is the common temple, one
Sunday in the month to each. Here, Episcopalian and Presbyterian,
Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their Maker,
listen with attention and devotion to each others' preachers, and all
mix in society with perfect harmony. It is not so in the districts
where Presbyterianism prevails undividedly. Their ambition and
tyranny would tolerate no rival if they had power. Systematical in
grasping at an ascendency over all other sects, they aim, like the
Jesuits, at engrossing the education of the country, are hostile to
every institution which they do not direct, and jealous at seeing
others begin to attend at all to that object. The diffusion of
instruction, to which there is now so growing an attention, will be
the remote remedy to this fever of fanaticism; while the more
proximate one will be the progress of Unitarianism. That this will,
ere long, be the religion of the majority from north to south, I have
no doubt.
In our university you know there is no Professorship of
Divinity. A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea
that this is an institution, not merely of no religion, but against
all religion. Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the
Visitors, to bring forward an idea that might silence this calumny,
which weighed on the minds of some honest friends to the institution.
In our annual report to the legislature, after stating the
constitutional reasons against a public establishment of any
religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of encouraging the
different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a
professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the university,
so near as that their students may attend the lectures there, and
have the free use of our library, and every other accommodation we
can give them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of
each other. This fills the chasm objected to ours, as a defect in an
institution professing to give instruction in _all_ useful sciences.
I think the invitation will be accepted, by some sects from candid
intentions, and by others from jealousy and rivalship. And by
bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other
students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize
their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace,
reason, and morality.
The time of opening our university is still as uncertain as
ever. All the pavilions, boarding houses, and dormitories are done.
Nothing is now wanting but the central building for a library and
other general purposes. For this we have no funds, and the last
legislature refused all aid. We have better hopes of the next. But
all is uncertain. I have heard with regret of disturbances on the
part of the students in your seminary. The article of discipline is
the most difficult in American education. Premature ideas of
independence, too little repressed by parents, beget a spirit of
insubordination, which is the great obstacle to science with us, and
a principal cause of its decay since the revolution. I look to it
with dismay in our institution, as a breaker ahead, which I am far
from being confident we shall be able to weather. The advance of
age, and tardy pace of the public patronage, may probably spare me
the pain of witnessing consequences.
I salute you with constant friendship and respect.
CALVIN AND COSMOLOGY
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, April 11, 1823_
DEAR SIR, -- The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I
may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least
in his exclamation of `_mon Dieu!_ jusque a quand'! would make me
immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing _his god._ He was
indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was
Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being
described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege
and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a
daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe
in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes
of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great
handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation,
there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god. Now one
sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians: the other five
sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian
revelation, are without a knolege of the existence of a god! This
gives compleatly a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus,
Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D'Holbach. The argument which they
rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis
of Cosmogony you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something;
and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to
employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice.
They say then that it is more simple to believe at once in the
eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may
for ever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and
witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior
cause, or Creator of the world, a being whom we see not, and know
not, of whose form substance and mode or place of existence, or of
action no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to
delineate or comprehend. On the contrary I hold (without appeal to
revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts
general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to
percieve and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and
indefinite power in every atom of it's composition. The movements of
the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance
of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth
itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere,
animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest
particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as
man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it
is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there
is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a
fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and
regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their
regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of
the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in
it's course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones
have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run
foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws;
certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no
restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by
one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So
irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent
that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all time,
they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit,
in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather
than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous
sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the
other hypothesis. Some early Christians indeed have believed in the
coeternal pre-existance of both the Creator and the world, without
changing their relation of cause and effect. That this was the
opinion of St. Thomas, we are informed by Cardinal Toleto, in these
words `Deus ab aeterno fuit jam omnipotens, sicut cum produxit
mundum. Ab aeterno potuit producere mundum. -- Si sol ab aeterno
esset, lumen ab aeterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium. At
lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficientis solis et pedis; potuit
ergo cum causa aeterna effectus coaeterna esse. Cujus sententiae est
S. Thomas Theologorum primus' Cardinal Toleta.
Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us
that `God is a spirit.' 4. John 24. but without defining what a
spirit is {pneyma o Theos}. Down to the 3d. century we know that it
was still deemed material; but of a lighter subtler matter than our
gross bodies. So says Origen. `Deus igitur, cui anima similis est,
juxta Originem, reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione
corporum incorporeus.' These are the words of Huet in his commentary
on Origen. Origen himself says `appelatio {asomaton} apud nostros
scriptores est inusitata et incognita.' So also Tertullian `quis
autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? Spiritus etiam
corporis sui generis, in sua effigie.' Tertullian. These two fathers
were of the 3d. century. Calvin's character of this supreme being
seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. But the reformation of
these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy,
pure and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his
discources to the Jews: and his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the
world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st.
chapter of John, in these words, `{en arche en o logos, kai o logos
en pros ton Theon kai Theos en o logos. `otos en en arche pros ton
Theon. Panta de ayto egeneto, kai choris ayto egeneto ode en, o
gegonen}. Which truly translated means `in the beginning God
existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God.
This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it,
and without it was made not one thing which was made'. Yet this
text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was
created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by
modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a
mistranslation of the word {logos}. One of it's legitimate meanings
indeed is `a word.' But, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon:
while the other meaning `reason', equally legitimate, explains
rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the
world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that `a word,' the mere
action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create
a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second
preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation
of the universe. The Atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness
of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent
universe. The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of
Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have
perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely
incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words.
And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the
supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed
with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in
these United States will do away with all this artificial
scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of
this the most venerated reformer of human errors.
So much for your quotation of Calvin's `mon dieu! jusqu'a
quand' in which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I
join you cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness
than reluctance. May we meet there again, in Congress, with our
antient Colleagues, and recieve with them the seal of approbation
`Well done, good and faithful servants.'
THE SUPREME COURT AND THE CONSTITUTION
_To Justice William Johnson_
_Monticello, June 12, 1823_
DEAR SIR, -- Our correspondence is of that accommodating
character, which admits of suspension at the convenience of either
party, without inconvenience to the other. Hence this tardy
acknowledgment of your favor of April the 11th. I learn from that
with great pleasure, that you have resolved on continuing your
history of parties. Our opponents are far ahead of us in
preparations for placing their cause favorably before posterity. Yet
I hope even from some of them the escape of precious truths, in angry
explosions or effusions of vanity, which will betray the genuine
monarchism of their principles. They do not themselves believe what
they endeavor to inculcate, that we were an opposition party, not on
principle, but merely seeking for office. The fact is, that at the
formation of our government, many had formed their political opinions
on European writings and practices, believing the experience of old
countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be a
safer guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe were, that men
in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of
order and justice, but by forces physical and moral, wielded over
them by authorities independent of their will. Hence their
organization of kings, hereditary nobles, and priests. Still further
to constrain the brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to
keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from
them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting
labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to
sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings they apply
to maintain their privileged orders in splendor and idleness, to
fascinate the eyes of the people, and excite in them an humble
adoration and submission, as to an order of superior beings.
Although few among us had gone all these lengths of opinion, yet many
had advanced, some more, some less, on the way. And in the
convention which formed our government, they endeavored to draw the
cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to lessen the
dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to
subject to them those of the States, and to weaken their means of
maintaining the steady equilibrium which the majority of the
convention had deemed salutary for both branches, general and local.
To recover, therefore, in practice the powers which the nation had
refused, and to warp to their own wishes those actually given, was
the steady object of the federal party. Ours, on the contrary, was
to maintain the will of the majority of the convention, and of the
people themselves. We believed, with them, that man was a rational
animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of
justice; and that he could be restrained from wrong and protected in
right by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and
held to their duties by dependence on his own will. We believed that
the complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests, was not
the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of associated man; that
wisdom and virtue were not hereditary, that the trappings of such a
machinery, consumed by their expense, those earnings of industry,
they were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities they produced,
exposed liberty to sufferance. We believed that men, enjoying in
ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by
all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think
for themselves, and to follow their reason as their guide, would be
more easily and safely governed, than with minds nourished in error,
and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, by ignorance, indigence and
oppression. The cherishment of the people then was our principle,
the fear and distrust of them, that of the other party. Composed, as
we were, of the landed and laboring interests of the country, we
could not be less anxious for a government of law and order than were
the inhabitants of the cities, the strongholds of federalism. And
whether our efforts to save the principles and form of our
constitution have not been salutary, let the present republican
freedom, order and prosperity of our country determine. History may
distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior
efforts at justification of those who are conscious of needing it
most. Nor will the opening scenes of our present government be seen
in their true aspect, until the letters of the day, now held in
private hoards, shall be broken up and laid open to public view.
What a treasure will be found in General Washington's cabinet, when
it shall pass into the hands of as candid a friend to truth as he was
himself! When no longer, like Caesar's notes and memorandums in the
hands of Anthony, it shall be open to the high priests of federalism
only, and garbled to say so much, and no more, as suits their views!
With respect to his farewell address, to the authorship of
which, it seems, there are conflicting claims, I can state to you
some facts. He had determined to decline re-election at the end of
his first term, and so far determined, that he had requested Mr.
Madison to prepare for him something valedictory, to be addressed to
his constituents on his retirement. This was done, but he was
finally persuaded to acquiesce in a second election, to which no one
more strenuously pressed him than myself, from a conviction of the
importance of strengthening, by longer habit, the respect necessary
for that office, which the weight of his character only could effect.
When, at the end of his second term, his Valedictory came out, Mr.
Madison recognized in it several passages of his draught, several
others, we were both satisfied, were from the pen of Hamilton, and
others from that of the President himself. These he probably put
into the hands of Hamilton to form into a whole, and hence it may all
appear in Hamilton's hand-writing, as if it were all of his
composition.
I have stated above, that the original objects of the
federalists were, 1st, to warp our government more to the form and
principles of monarchy, and, 2d, to weaken the barriers of the State
governments as coordinate powers. In the first they have been so
completely foiled by the universal spirit of the nation, that they
have abandoned the enterprise, shrunk from the odium of their old
appellation, taken to themselves a participation of ours, and under
the pseudo-republican mask, are now aiming at their second object,
and strengthened by unsuspecting or apostate recruits from our ranks,
are advancing fast towards an ascendancy. I have been blamed for
saying, that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one
day call for reformation or _revolution_. I answer by asking if a
single State of the Union would have agreed to the constitution, had
it given all powers to the General Government? If the whole
opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every
State, of being subjected to the other States in matters merely its
own? And if there is any reason to believe the States more disposed
now than then, to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their
rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided?
You request me confidentially, to examine the question, whether
the Supreme Court has advanced beyond its constitutional limits, and
trespassed on those of the State authorities? I do not undertake it,
my dear Sir, because I am unable. Age and the wane of mind
consequent on it, have disqualified me from investigations so severe,
and researches so laborious. And it is the less necessary in this
case, as having been already done by others with a logic and learning
to which I could add nothing. On the decision of the case of Cohens
_vs_. The State of Virginia, in the Supreme Court of the United
States, in March, 1821, Judge Roane, under the signature of Algernon
Sidney, wrote for the Enquirer a series of papers on the law of that
case. I considered these papers maturely as they came out, and
confess that they appeared to me to pulverize every word which had
been delivered by Judge Marshall, of the extra-judicial part of his
opinion; and all was extra-judicial, except the decision that the act
of Congress had not purported to give to the corporation of
Washington the authority claimed by their lottery law, of controlling
the laws of the States within the States themselves. But unable to
claim that case, he could not let it go entirely, but went on
gratuitously to prove, that notwithstanding the eleventh amendment of
the constitution, a State _could_ be brought as a defendant, to the
bar of his court; and again, that Congress might authorize a
corporation of its territory to exercise legislation within a State,
and paramount to the laws of that State. I cite the sum and result
only of his doctrines, according to the impression made on my mind at
the time, and still remaining. If not strictly accurate in
circumstance, it is so in substance. This doctrine was so completely
refuted by Roane, that if he can be answered, I surrender human
reason as a vain and useless faculty, given to bewilder, and not to
guide us. And I mention this particular case as one only of several,
because it gave occasion to that thorough examination of the
constitutional limits between the General and State jurisdictions,
which you have asked for. There were two other writers in the same
paper, under the signatures of Fletcher of Saltoun, and Somers, who,
in a few essays, presented some very luminous and striking views of
the question. And there was a particular paper which recapitulated
all the cases in which it was thought the federal court had usurped
on the State jurisdictions. These essays will be found in the
Enquirers of 1821, from May the 10th to July the 13th. It is not in
my present power to send them to you, but if Ritchie can furnish
them, I will procure and forward them. If they had been read in the
other States, as they were here, I think they would have left, there
as here, no dissentients from their doctrine. The subject was taken
up by our legislature of 1821 - '22, and two draughts of
remonstrances were prepared and discussed. As well as I remember,
there was no difference of opinion as to the matter of right; but
there was as to the expediency of a remonstrance at that time, the
general mind of the States being then under extraordinary excitement
by the Missouri question; and it was dropped on that consideration.
But this case is not dead, it only sleepeth. The Indian Chief said
he did not go to war for every petty injury by itself, but put it
into his pouch, and when that was full, he then made war. Thank
Heaven, we have provided a more peaceable and rational mode of
redress.
This practice of Judge Marshall, of travelling out of his case
to prescribe what the law would be in a moot case not before the
court, is very irregular and very censurable. I recollect another
instance, and the more particularly, perhaps, because it in some
measure bore on myself. Among the midnight appointments of Mr.
Adams, were commissions to some federal justices of the peace for
Alexandria. These were signed and sealed by him, but not delivered.
I found them on the table of the department of State, on my entrance
into office, and I forbade their delivery. Marbury, named in one of
them, applied to the Supreme Court for a mandamus to the Secretary of
State, (Mr. Madison) to deliver the commission intended for him. The
court determined at once, that being an original process, they had no
cognizance of it; and therefore the question before them was ended.
But the Chief Justice went on to lay down what the law would be, had
they jurisdiction of the case, to wit: that they should command the
delivery. The object was clearly to instruct any other court having
the jurisdiction, what they should do if Marbury should apply to
them. Besides the impropriety of this gratuitous interference, could
anything exceed the perversion of law? For if there is any principle
of law never yet contradicted, it is that delivery is one of the
essentials to the validity of the deed. Although signed and sealed,
yet as long as it remains in the hands of the party himself, it is in
_fieri_ only, it is not a deed, and can be made so only by its
delivery. In the hands of a third person it may be made an escrow.
But whatever is in the executive offices is certainly deemed to be in
the hands of the President; and in this case, was actually in my
hands, because, when I countermanded them, there was as yet no
Secretary of State. Yet this case of Marbury and Madison is
continually cited by bench and bar, as if it were settled law,
without any animadversion on its being merely an _obiter_
dissertation of the Chief Justice.
It may be impracticable to lay down any general formula of
words which shall decide at once, and with precision, in every case,
this limit of jurisdiction. But there are two canons which will
guide us safely in most of the cases. 1st. The capital and leading
object of the constitution was to leave with the States all
authorities which respected their own citizens only, and to transfer
to the United States those which respected citizens of foreign or
other States: to make us several as to ourselves, but one as to all
others. In the latter case, then, constructions should lean to the
general jurisdiction, if the words will bear it; and in favor of the
States in the former, if possible to be so construed. And indeed,
between citizens and citizens of the same State, and under their own
laws, I know but a single case in which a jurisdiction is given to
the General Government. That is, where anything but gold or silver
is made a lawful tender, or the obligation of contracts is any
otherwise impaired. The separate legislatures had so often abused
that power, that the citizens themselves chose to trust it to the
general, rather than to their own special authorities. 2d. On every
question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the
constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the
debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of
the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in
which it was passed. Let us try Cohen's case by these canons only,
referring always, however, for full argument, to the essays before
cited.
1. It was between a citizen and his own State, and under a law
of his State. It was a domestic case, therefore, and not a foreign
one.
2. Can it be believed, that under the jealousies prevailing
against the General Government, at the adoption of the constitution,
the States meant to surrender the authority of preserving order, of
enforcing moral duties and restraining vice, within their own
territory? And this is the present case, that of Cohen being under
the ancient and general law of gaming. Can any good be effected by
taking from the States the moral rule of their citizens, and
subordinating it to the general authority, or to one of their
corporations, which may justify forcing the meaning of words, hunting
after possible constructions, and hanging inference on inference,
from heaven to earth, like Jacob's ladder? Such an intention was
impossible, and such a licentiousness of construction and inference,
if exercised by both governments, as may be done with equal right,
would equally authorize both to claim all power, general and
particular, and break up the foundations of the Union. Laws are made
for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be
construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is
not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make
anything mean everything or nothing, at pleasure. It should be left
to the sophisms of advocates, whose trade it is, to prove that a
defendant is a plaintiff, though dragged into court, _torto collo_,
like Bonaparte's volunteers, into the field in chains, or that a
power has been given, because it ought to have been given, _et alia
talia_. The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had
secured themselves against constructive powers. They were not
lessoned yet by Cohen's case, nor aware of the slipperiness of the
eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General
Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can
best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign
ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome
distribution of powers established by the constitution for the
limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to
Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people,
they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market.
But the Chief Justice says, "there must be an ultimate arbiter
somewhere." True, there must; but does that prove it is either party?
The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their
deputies in convention, at the call of Congress, or of two-thirds of
the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority
claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom
and felicity of our constitution, to have provided this peaceable
appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force.
I rejoice in the example you set of _seriatim_ opinions. I
have heard it often noticed, and always with high approbation. Some
of your brethren will be encouraged to follow it occasionally, and in
time, it may be felt by all as a duty, and the sound practice of the
primitive court be again restored. Why should not every judge be
asked his opinion, and give it from the bench, if only by yea or nay?
Besides ascertaining the fact of his opinion, which the public have a
right to know, in order to judge whether it is impeachable or not, it
would show whether the opinions were unanimous or not, and thus
settle more exactly the weight of their authority.
The close of my second sheet warns me that it is time now to
relieve you from this letter of unmerciful length. Indeed, I wonder
how I have accomplished it, with two crippled wrists, the one
scarcely able to move my pen, the other to hold my paper. But I am
hurried sometimes beyond the sense of pain, when unbosoming myself to
friends who harmonize with me in principle. You and I may differ
occasionally in details of minor consequence, as no two minds, more
than two faces, are the same in every feature. But our general
objects are the same, to preserve the republican form and principles
of our constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers
which that has established. These are the two sheet anchors of our
Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.
To my prayers for its safety and perpetuity, I add those for the
continuation of your health, happiness, and usefulness to your
country.
"RIVERS OF BLOOD MUST YET FLOW"
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Sep. 4, 1823_
DEAR SIR, -- Your letter of Aug. 15. was recieved in due time,
and with the welcome of every thing which comes from you. With it's
opinions on the difficulties of revolutions, from despotism to
freedom, I very much concur. The generation which commences a
revolution can rarely compleat it. Habituated from their infancy to
passive submission of body and mind to their kings and priests, they
are not qualified, when called on, to think and provide for
themselves and their inexperience, their ignorance and bigotry make
them instruments often, in the hands of the Bonapartes and Iturbides
to defeat their own rights and purposes. This is the present
situation of Europe and Spanish America. But it is not desperate.
The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has
eminently changed the condition of the world. As yet that light has
dawned on the midling classes only of the men of Europe. The kings
and the rabble of equal ignorance, have not yet recieved it's rays;
but it continues to spread. And, while printing is preserved, it can
no more recede than the sun return on his course. A first attempt to
recover the right of self-government may fail; so may a 2d. a 3d.
etc., but as a younger, and more instructed race comes on, the
sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a 4th. a 5th. or some
subsequent one of the ever renewed attempts will ultimately succeed.
In France the 1st. effort was defeated by Robespierre, the 2d. by
Bonaparte, the 3d. by Louis XVIII. and his holy allies; another is
yet to come, and all Europe, Russia excepted, has caught the spirit,
and all will attain representative government, more or less perfect.
This is now well understood to be a necessary check on kings, whom
they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to
exterminate. To attain all this however rivers of blood must yet
flow, and years of desolation pass over. Yet the object is worth
rivers of blood, and years of desolation for what inheritance so
valuable can man leave to his posterity? The spirit of the Spaniard
and his deadly and eternal hatred to a Frenchman, gives me much
confidence that he will never submit, but finally defeat this
atrocious violation of the laws of god and man under which he is
suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes afford
reasonable hope that that nation will settle down in a temperate
representative government, with an Executive properly subordinated to
that. Portugal, Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece will follow suit.
You and I shall look down from another world on these glorious
atchievements to man, which will add to the joys even of heaven.
I observe your toast of Mr. Jay on the 4th. of July, wherein
you say that the omission of his signature to the Declaration of
Independance was by _accident_. Our impressions as to this fact
being different, I shall be glad to have mine corrected, if wrong.
Jay, you know, had been in constant opposition to our laboring
majority. Our estimate, at the time, was that he, Dickinson and
Johnson of Maryland by their ingenuity, perseverance and partiality
to our English connection, had constantly kept us a year behind where
we ought to have been in our preparations and proceedings. From
about the date of the Virginia instructions of May 15. 76. to declare
Independance Mr. Jay absented himself from Congress, and never came
there again until Dec. 78. Of course he had no part in the
discussions or decision of that question. The instructions to their
delegates by the Convention of New York, then sitting, to sign the
Declaration, were presented to Congress on the 15th. of July only,
and on that day the journals shew the absence of Mr. Jay by a letter
recieved from him, as they had done as early as the 29th. of May by
another letter. And, I think, he had been omitted by the Convention
on a new election of Delegates when they changed their instructions.
Of this last fact however having no evidence but an antient
impression, I shall not affirm it. But whether so or not, no agency
of _accident_ appears in the case. This error of fact however,
whether yours or mine, is of little consequence to the public. But
truth being as cheap as error, it is as well to rectify it for our
own satisfaction.
I have had a fever of about three weeks during the last and
preceding month, from which I am entirely recovered except as to
strength. Ever and affectionately yours
"THE BEST LETTER THAT EVER WAS WRITTEN . . ."
_To John Adams_
_Monticello, Oct. 12, 1823_
DEAR SIR, -- I do not write with the ease whichyour letter of
Sep. 18. supposes. Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and
laborious. But, while writing to you, I lose the sense of these
things, in the recollection of antient times, when youth and health
made happiness out of every thing. I forget for a while the hoary
winter of age, when we can think of nothing but how to keep ourselves
warm, and how to get rid of our heavy hours until the friendly hand
of death shall rid us of all at once. Against this tedium vitae
however I am fortunately mounted on a Hobby, which indeed I should
have better managed some 30. or 40. years ago, but whose easy amble
is still sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an Octogenary
rider. This is the establishment of an University, on a scale more
comprehensive, and in a country more healthy and central than our old
William and Mary, which these obstacles have long kept in a state of
languor and inefficiency. But the tardiness with which such works
proceed may render it doubtful whether I shall live to see it go into
action.
Putting aside these things however for the present, I write
this letter as due to a friendship co-eval with our government, and
now attempted to be poisoned, when too late in life to be replaced by
new affections. I had for some time observed, in the public papers,
dark hints and mysterious innuendoes of a correspondence of yours
with a friend, to whom you had opened your bosom without reserve, and
which was to be made public by that friend, or his representative.
And now it is said to be actually published. It has not yet reached
us, but extracts have been given, and such as seemed most likely to
draw a curtain of separation between you and myself. Were there no
other motive than that of indignation against the author of this
outrage on private confidence, whose shaft seems to have been aimed
at yourself more particularly, this would make it the duty of every
honorable mind to disappoint that aim, by opposing to it's impression
a seven-fold shield of apathy and insensibility. With me however no
such armour is needed. The circumstances of the times, in which we
have happened to live, and the partiality of our friends, at a
particular period, placed us in a state of apparent opposition, which
some might suppose to be personal also; and there might not be
wanting those who wish'd to make it so, by filling our ears with
malignant falsehoods, by dressing up hideous phantoms of their own
creation, presenting them to you under my name, to me under your's,
and endeavoring to instill into our minds things concerning each
other the most destitute of truth. And if there had been, at any
time, a moment when we were off our guard, and in a temper to let the
whispers of these people make us forget what we had known of each
other for so many years, and years of so much trial, yet all men who
have attended to the workings of the human mind, who have seen the
false colours under which passion sometimes dresses the actions and
motives of others, have seen also these passions subsiding with time
and reflection, dissipating, like mists before the rising sun, and
restoring to us the sight of all things in their true shape and
colours. It would be strange indeed if, at our years, we were to go
an age back to hunt up imaginary, or forgotten facts, to disturb the
repose of affections so sweetening to the evening of our lives. Be
assured, my dear Sir, that I am incapable of recieving the slightest
impression from the effort now made to plant thorns on the pillow of
age, worth, and wisdom, and to sow tares between friends who have
been such for near half a century. Beseeching you then not to suffer
your mind to be disquieted by this wicked attempt to poison it's
peace, and praying you to throw it by, among the things which have
never happened, I add sincere assurances of my unabated, and constant
attachment, friendship and respect.
THE MONROE DOCTRINE
_To the President of the United States_
(JAMES MONROE)
_Monticello, October 24, 1823_
DEAR SIR, -- The question presented by the letters you have
sent me, is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my
contemplation since that of Independence. That made us a nation,
this sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer
through the ocean of time opening on us. And never could we embark
on it under circumstances more auspicious. Our first and fundamental
maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe.
Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic
affairs. America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct
from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore
have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe.
While the last is laboring to become the domicil of despotism, our
endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that of freedom.
One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit; she now
offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it. By acceding to her
proposition, we detach her from the bands, bring her mighty weight
into the scale of free government, and emancipate a continent at one
stroke, which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty.
Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one,
or all on earth; and with her on our side we need not fear the whole
world. With her then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial
friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than
to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause. Not that
I would purchase even her amity at the price of taking part in her
wars. But the war in which the present proposition might engage us,
should that be its consequence, is not her war, but ours. Its object
is to introduce and establish the American system, of keeping out of
our land all foreign powers, of never permitting those of Europe to
intermeddle with the affairs of our nations. It is to maintain our
own principle, not to depart from it. And if, to facilitate this, we
can effect a division in the body of the European powers, and draw
over to our side its most powerful member, surely we should do it.
But I am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that it will prevent
instead of provoking war. With Great Britain withdrawn from their
scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe
combined would not undertake such a war. For how would they propose
to get at either enemy without superior fleets? Nor is the occasion
to be slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our
protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of nations, by
the interference of any one in the internal affairs of another, so
flagitiously begun by Bonaparte, and now continued by the equally
lawless Alliance, calling itself Holy.
But we have first to ask ourselves a question. Do we wish to
acquire to our own confederacy any one or more of the Spanish
provinces? I candidly confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as
the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system
of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would
give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus
bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it,
would fill up the measure of our political well-being. Yet, as I am
sensible that this can never be obtained, even with her own consent,
but by war; and its independence, which is our second interest, (and
especially its independence of England,) can be secured without it, I
have no hesitation in abandoning my first wish to future chances, and
accepting its independence, with peace and the friendship of England,
rather than its association, at the expense of war and her enmity.
I could honestly, therefore, join in the declaration proposed,
that we aim not at the acquisition of any of those possessions, that
we will not stand in the way of any amicable arrangement between them
and the mother country; but that we will oppose, with all our means,
the forcible interposition of any other power, as auxiliary,
stipendiary, or under any other form or pretext, and most especially,
their transfer to any power by conquest, cession, or acquisition in
any other way. I should think it, therefore, advisable, that the
Executive should encourage the British government to a continuance in
the dispositions expressed in these letters, by an assurance of his
concurrence with them as far as his authority goes; and that as it
may lead to war, the declaration of which requires an act of
Congress, the case shall be laid before them for consideration at
their first meeting, and under the reasonable aspect in which it is
seen by himself.
I have been so long weaned from political subjects, and have so
long ceased to take any interest in them, that I am sensible I am not
qualified to offer opinions on them worthy of any attention. But the
question now proposed involves consequences so lasting, and effects
so decisive of our future destinies, as to rekindle all the interest
I have heretofore felt on such occasions, and to induce me to the
hazard of opinions, which will prove only my wish to contribute still
my mite towards anything which may be useful to our country. And
praying you to accept it at only what it is worth, I add the
assurance of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
A PLAN OF EMANCIPATION
_To Jared Sparks_
_Monticello, February 4, 1824_
DEAR SIR, -- I duly received your favor of the 13th, and with
it, the last number of the North American Review. This has
anticipated the one I should receive in course, but have not yet
received, under my subscription to the new series. The article on
the African colonization of the people of color, to which you invite
my attention, I have read with great consideration. It is, indeed, a
fine one, and will do much good. I learn from it more, too, than I
had before known, of the degree of success and promise of that
colony.
In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two
rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The
establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce
among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings
of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some
retribution for the long course of injuries we have been committing
on their population. And considering that these blessings will
descend to the _"nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis,"_ we shall
in the long run have rendered them perhaps more good than evil. To
fulfil this object, the colony of Sierra Leone promises well, and
that of Mesurado adds to our prospect of success. Under this view,
the colonization society is to be considered as a missionary society,
having in view, however, objects more humane, more justifiable, and
less aggressive on the peace of other nations, than the others of
that appellation.
The subject object, and the most interesting to us, as coming
home to our physical and moral characters, to our happiness and
safety, is to provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the
whole of that population from among us, and establish them under our
patronage and protection, as a separate, free and independent people,
in some country and climate friendly to human life and happiness.
That any place on the coast of Africa should answer the latter
purpose, I have ever deemed entirely impossible. And without
repeating the other arguments which have been urged by others, I will
appeal to figures only, which admit no controversy. I shall speak in
round numbers, not absolutely accurate, yet not so wide from truth as
to vary the result materially. There are in the United States a
million and a half of people of color in slavery. To send off the
whole of these at once, nobody conceives to be practicable for us, or
expedient for them. Let us take twenty-five years for its
accomplishment, within which time they will be doubled. Their
estimated value as property, in the first place, (for actual property
has been lawfully vested in that form, and who can lawfully take it
from the possessors?) at an average of two hundred dollars each,
young and old, would amount to six hundred millions of dollars, which
must be paid or lost by somebody. To this, add the cost of their
transportation by land and sea to Mesurado, a year's provision of
food and clothing, implements of husbandry and of their trades, which
will amount to three hundred millions more, making thirty-six
millions of dollars a year for twenty-five years, with insurance of
peace all that time, and it is impossible to look at the question a
second time. I am aware that at the end of about sixteen years, a
gradual detraction from this sum will commence, from the gradual
diminution of breeders, and go on during the remaining nine years.
Calculate this deduction, and it is still impossible to look at the
enterprise a second time. I do not say this to induce an inference
that the getting rid of them is forever impossible. For that is
neither my opinion nor my hope. But only that it cannot be done in
this way. There is, I think, a way in which it can be done; that is,
by emancipating the after-born, leaving them, on due compensation,
with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance,
and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age
for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the
subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to
conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the Notes on
Virginia, under the fourteenth query. The estimated value of the
new-born infant is so low, (say twelve dollars and fifty cents,) that
it would probably be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus
reduce the six hundred millions of dollars, the first head of
expense, to thirty-seven millions and a half; leaving only the
expense of nourishment while with the mother, and of transportation.
And from what fund are these expenses to be furnished? Why not from
that of the lands which have been ceded by the very States now
needing this relief? And ceded on no consideration, for the most
part, but that of the general good of the whole. These cessions
already constitute one fourth of the States of the Union. It may be
said that these lands have been sold; are now the property of the
citizens composing those States; and the money long ago received and
expended. But an equivalent of lands in the territories since
acquired, may be appropriated to that object, or so much, at least,
as may be sufficient; and the object, although more important to the
slave States, is highly so to the others also, if they were serious
in their arguments on the Missouri question. The slave States, too,
if more interested, would also contribute more by their gratuitous
liberation, thus taking on themselves alone the first and heaviest
item of expense.
In the plan sketched in the Notes on Virginia, no particular
place of asylum was specified; because it was thought possible, that
in the revolutionary state of America, then commenced, events might
open to us some one within practicable distance. This has now
happened. St. Domingo has become independent, and with a population
of that color only; and if the public papers are to be credited,
their Chief offers to pay their passage, to receive them as free
citizens, and to provide them employment. This leaves, then, for the
general confederacy, no expense but of nurture with the mother a few
years, and would call, of course, for a very moderate appropriation
of the vacant lands. Suppose the whole annual increase to be of
sixty thousand effective births, fifty vessels, of four hundred tons
burthen each, constantly employed in that short run, would carry off
the increase of every year, and the old stock would die off in the
ordinary course of nature, lessening from the commencement until its
final disappearance. In this way no violation of private right is
proposed. Voluntary surrenders would probably come in as fast as the
means to be provided for their care would be competent to it.
Looking at my own State only, and I presume not to speak for the
others, I verily believe that this surrender of property would not
amount to more, annually, than half our present direct taxes, to be
continued fully about twenty or twenty-five years, and then gradually
diminishing for as many more until their final extinction; and even
this half tax would not be paid in cash, but by the delivery of an
object which they have never yet known or counted as part of their
property; and those not possessing the object will be called on for
nothing. I do not go into all the details of the burthens and
benefits of this operation. And who could estimate its blessed
effects? I leave this to those who will live to see their
accomplishment, and to enjoy a beatitude forbidden to my age. But I
leave it with this admonition, to rise and be doing. A million and a
half are within their control; but six millions, (which a majority of
those now living will see them attain,) and one million of these
fighting men, will say, "we will not go."
I am aware that this subject involves some constitutional
scruples. But a liberal construction, justified by the object, may
go far, and an amendment of the constitution, the whole length
necessary. The separation of infants from their mothers, too, would
produce some scruples of humanity. But this would be straining at a
gnat, and swallowing a camel.
I am much pleased to see that you have taken up the subject of
the duty on imported books. I hope a crusade will be kept up against
it, until those in power shall become sensible of this stain on our
legislation, and shall wipe it from their code, and from the
remembrance of man, if possible.
I salute you with assurances of high respect and esteem.
PROFESSORS FROM ABROAD
_To Dugald Stewart_
_Monticello in Virginia, Apr. 26, 1824_
DEAR SIR, -- It is now 35 years since I had the great pleasure
of becoming acquainted with you in Paris, and since we saw together
Louis XVI. led in triumph by his people thro' the streets of his
capital; these years too have been like ages in the events they have
engendered without seeming at all to have bettered the condn of
suffering man. Yet his mind has been opening and advancing, a
sentiment of his wrongs has been spreading, and it will end in the
ultimate establishment of his rights. To effect this nothing is
wanting but a general concurrence of will, and some fortunate
accident will produce that. At a subsequent period you were so kind
as to recall me to your recollection on the publicn of your
invaluable book on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, a copy of which
you sent me, and I have been happy to see it become the text book of
most of our colleges & academies, and pass thro' several
reimpressions in the U.S. An occurrence of a character dear to us
both leads again to a renewal of our recollections and associates us
in an occasion of still rendering some service to those we are about
to leave. The State of Virga, of which I am a native and resident,
is establishing an university on a scale as extensive and liberal as
circumstances permit or call for. We have been 4 or 5 years in
preparing our buildings, which are now ready to recieve their
tenants. We proceed, therefore, to the engaging professors, and
anxious to recieve none but of the highest grade of science in their
respective lines, we find we must have recourse to Europe, where
alone that grade is to be found, and to Gr. Br. of preference, as the
land of our own language, morals, manners, and habits. To make the
selection we send a special agent, M'r Francis W. Gilmer, who will
have the honor of delivering you this letter. He is well educated
himself in most of the branches of science, of correct morals and
habits, an enlarged mind, and a discretion meriting entire
confidence. From the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where we
expect he will find persons duly qualified in the particular branches
in which these seminaries are respectively eminent, he will pass on
to Edinburg, distinguished for it's school of Medicine as well as of
other sciences, but when arrived there he will be a perfect stranger,
and would have to grope his way in darkness and uncertainty; you can
lighten his path, and to beseech you to do so is the object of this
letter. Your knolege of persons and characters there can guard him
against being misled and lead him to the consummation of our wishes.
We do not expect to engage the high characters there who are at the
head of their schools, established in offices, honors, & emoluments
which can be bettered no where. But we know there is always a junior
set of aspirants, treading on their heels, ready to take their
places, and as well & sometimes better qualified than they are.
These persons, unsettled as yet, surrounded by competitors of equal
claims, and perhaps greater credit and interest, may be willing to
accept immediately a comfortable certainty here in place of uncertain
hopes there, and a lingering delay of even these. From this
description of persons we may hope to procure characters of the first
order of science. But how to distinguish them? For we are told that
were the mission of our agent once known, he would be overwhelmed
with applicants, unworthy as well as worthy, yet all supported on
recommendns and certificates equally exaggerated, and by names so
respectable as to confound all discrimination. Yet this
discrimination is all important to us. An unlucky selection at first
would blast all our prospects. Let me beseech you, then, good Sir,
to lead Mr. Gilmer by the hand in his researches, to instruct him as
to the competent characters, & guard him against those not so.
Besides the first degree of eminence in science, a professor with us
must be of sober and correct morals & habits, having the talent of
communicating his knolege with facility, and of an accomodating and
peaceable temper. The latter is all important for the harmony of the
institution. For minuter particulars I will refer you to Mr. Gilmer,
who possesses a full knolege of everything & our full confidence in
everything. He takes with him plans of our establm't, which will
shew the comfortable accommodns provided for the professors, whether
with or without families; and by the expensiveness and extent of the
scale they will see it is not an ephemeral thing to which they are
invited.
A knolege of your character & disposns to do good dispenses
with all apology for the trouble I give you. While the character and
success of this institN, involving the future hopes and happiness of
my country, will justify the anxieties I feel in the choice of it's
professors, I am sure the object will excite in your breast such
sympathies of kind disposN, as will give us the benefits we ask of
your counsels & attentions. And, with my acknolegements for these,
accept assurances of constant and sincere attamt, esteem & respect.
SAXONS, CONSTITUTIONS, AND A CASE OF PIOUS FRAUD
_To Major John Cartwright_
_Monticello, June 5, 1824_
DEAR AND VENERABLE SIR, -- I am much indebted for your kind
letter of February the 29th, and for your valuable volume on the
English constitution. I have read this with pleasure and much
approbation, and think it has deduced the constitution of the English
nation from its rightful root, the Anglo-Saxon. It is really
wonderful, that so many able and learned men should have failed in
their attempts to define it with correctness. No wonder then, that
Paine, who thought more than he read, should have credited the great
authorities who have declared, that the will of parliament is the
constitution of England. So Marbois, before the French revolution,
observed to me, that the Almanac Royal was the constitution of
France. Your derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons, seems to be
made on legitimate principles. Having driven out the former
inhabitants of that part of the island called England, they became
aborigines as to you, and your lineal ancestors. They doubtless had
a constitution; and although they have not left it in a written
formula, to the precise text of which you may always appeal, yet they
have left fragments of their history and laws, from which it may be
inferred with considerable certainty. Whatever their history and
laws shew to have been practised with approbation, we may presume was
permitted by their constitution; whatever was not so practised, was
not permitted. And although this constitution was violated and set
at naught by Norman force, yet force cannot change right. A
perpetual claim was kept up by the nation, by their perpetual demand
of a restoration of their Saxon laws; which shews they were never
relinquished by the will of the nation. In the pullings and haulings
for these antient rights, between the nation, and its kings of the
races of Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts, there was sometimes gain,
and sometimes loss, until the final re-conquest of their rights from
the Stuarts. The destitution and expulsion of this race broke the
thread of pretended inheritance, extinguished all regal usurpations,
and the nation re-entered into all its rights; and although in their
bill of rights they specifically reclaimed some only, yet the
omission of the others was no renunciation of the right to assume
their exercise also, whenever occasion should occur. The new King
received no rights or powers, but those expressly granted to him. It
has ever appeared to me, that the difference between the whig and the
tory of England is, that the whig deduces his rights from the
Anglo-Saxon source, and the tory from the Norman. And Hume, the
great apostle of toryism, says, in so many words, note AA to chapter
42, that, in the reign of the Stuarts, `it was the people who
encroached upon the sovereign, not the sovereign who attempted, as is
pretended, to usurp upon the people.' This supposes the Norman
usurpations to be rights in his successors. And again, C, 159, `the
commons established a principle, which is noble in itself, and seems
specious, but is belied by all history and experience, _that the
people are the origin of all just power_.' And where else will this
degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the
origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will
it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?
Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It
presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased.
We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal
parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a
semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found
them engraved on our hearts. Yet we did not avail ourselves of all
the advantages of our position. We had never been permitted to
exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices
in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our
former education. We established however some, although not all its
important principles. The constitutions of most of our States
assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may
exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think
themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive
and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all
judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by
representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right
and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom
of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of
the press. In the structure of our legislatures, we think experience
has proved the benefit of subjecting questions to two separate bodies
of deliberants; but in constituting these, natural right has been
mistaken, some making one of these bodies, and some both, the
representatives of property instead of persons; whereas the double
deliberation might be as well obtained without any violation of true
principle, either by requiring a greater age in one of the bodies, or
by electing a proper number of representatives of persons, dividing
them by lots into two chambers, and renewing the division at frequent
intervals, in order to break up all cabals. Virginia, of which I am
myself a native and resident, was not only the first of the States,
but, I believe I may say, the first of the nations of the earth,
which assembled its wise men peaceably together to form a fundamental
constitution, to commit it to writing, and place it among their
archives, where every one should be free to appeal to its text. But
this act was very imperfect. The other States, as they proceeded
successively to the same work, made successive improvements; and
several of them, still further corrected by experience, have, by
conventions, still further amended their first forms. My own State
has gone on so far with its _premiere ebauche_; but it is now
proposing to call a convention for amendment. Among other
improvements, I hope they will adopt the subdivision of our counties
into wards. The former may be estimated at an average of twenty-four
miles square; the latter should be about six miles square each, and
would answer to the hundreds of your Saxon Alfred. In each of these
might be, 1. An elementary school. 2. A company of militia, with its
officers. 3. A justice of the peace and constable. 4. Each ward
should take care of their own poor. 5. Their own roads. 6. Their own
police. 7. Elect within themselves one or more jurors to attend the
courts of justice. And 8. Give in at their Folk-house, their votes
for all functionaries reserved to their election. Each ward would
thus be a small republic within itself, and every man in the State
would thus become an acting member of the common government,
transacting in person a great portion of its rights and duties,
subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely within his
competence. The wit of man cannot devise a more solid basis for a
free, durable and well administered republic.
With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not
think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They
generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is
not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and
integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all
legislation and administration, in affairs which concern their own
citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever
concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States; these functions
alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the
foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over
the other, but within its own department. There are one or two
exceptions only to this partition of power. But, you may ask, if the
two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where is
the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of
little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep
them aloof from the questionable ground: but if it can neither be
avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called,
to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think
best. You will perceive by these details, that we have not yet so
far perfected our constitutions as to venture to make them
unchangeable. But still, in their present state, we consider them
not otherwise changeable than by the authority of the people, on a
special election of representatives for that purpose expressly: they
are until then the _lex legum_.
But can they be made unchangeable? Can one generation bind
another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The
Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and
powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter,
unendowed with will. The dead are not even things. The particles of
matter which composed their bodies, make part now of the bodies of
other animals, vegetables, or minerals, of a thousand forms. To what
then are attached the rights and powers they held while in the form
of men? A generation may bind itself as long as its majority
continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in
place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held,
and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves.
Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights
of man.
I was glad to find in your bo ok a formal contradition, at
length, of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such
the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that
Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary,
which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common
law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when
they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that
such a character had ever existed. But it may amuse you, to shew
when, and by what means, they stole this law in upon us. In a case
of _quare impedit_ in the Year-book 34. H. 6. folio 38. (anno 1458,)
a question was made, how far the ecclesiastical law was to be
respected in a common law court? And Prisot, Chief Justice, gives
his opinion in these words, `A tiel leis qu' ils de seint eglise ont
en _ancien scripture_, covient a nous a donner credence; car ceo
common ley sur quels touts manners leis sont fondes. Et auxy, Sir,
nous sumus obleges de conustre lour ley de saint eglise: et
semblablement ils sont obliges de conustre nostre ley. Et, Sir, si
poit apperer or a nous que l'evesque ad fait come un ordinary fera en
tiel cas, adong nous devons ceo adjuger bon, ou auterment nemy,' &c.
See S. C. Fitzh. Abr. Qu. imp. 89. Bro. Abr. Qu. imp. 12. Finch in
his first book, c. 3. is the first afterwards who quotes this case,
and mistakes it thus. `To such laws of the church as have warrant in
_holy scripture_, our law giveth credence.' And cites Prisot;
mistranslating _`ancien scripture,'_ into _`holy scripture.'_ Whereas
Prisot palpably says, `to such laws as those of holy church have in
_antient writing_, it is proper for us to give credence;' to wit, to
their _antient written_ laws. This was in 1613, a century and a half
after the dictum of Prisot. Wingate, in 1658, erects this false
translation into a maxim of the common law, copying the words of
Finch, but citing Prisot. Wing. Max. 3. And Sheppard, title,
`Religion,' in 1675, copies the same mistranslation, quoting the Y.
B. Finch and Wingate. Hale expresses it in these words;
`Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.' 1 Ventr. 293. 3 Keb.
607. But he quotes no authority. By these echoings and re-echoings
from one to another, it had become so established in 1728, that in
the case of the King _vs._ Woolston, 2 Stra. 834, the court would not
suffer it to be debated, whether to write against Christianity was
punishable in the temporal court at common law? Wood, therefore,
409, ventures still to vary the phrase, and say, that all blasphemy
and profaneness are offences by the common law; and cites 2 Stra.
Then Blackstone, in 1763, IV. 59, repeats the words of Hale, that
`Christianity is part of the laws of England,' citing Ventris and
Strange. And finally, Lord Mansfield, with a little qualification,
in Evans' case, in 1767, says, that `the essential principles of
revealed religion are part of the common law.' Thus ingulphing Bible,
Testament and all into the common law, without citing any authority.
And thus we find this chain of authorities hanging link by link, one
upon another, and all ultimately on one and the same hook, and that a
mistranslation of the words _`ancien scripture,'_ used by Prisot.
Finch quotes Prisot; Wingate does the same. Sheppard quotes Prisot,
Finch and Wingate. Hale cites nobody. The court in Woolston's case,
cite Hale. Wood cites Woolston's case. Blackstone quotes Woolston's
case and Hale. And Lord Mansfield, like Hale, ventures it on his own
authority. Here I might defy the best read lawyer to produce another
scrip of authority for this judiciary forgery; and I might go on
further to shew, how some of the Anglo-Saxon priests interpolated
into the text of Alfred's laws, the 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd
chapters of Exodus, and the 15th of the Acts of the Apostles, from
the 23rd to the 29th verses. But this would lead my pen and your
patience too far. What a conspiracy this, between Church and State!
Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all!
I must still add to this long and rambling letter, my
acknowledgments for your good wishes to the University we are now
establishing in this State. There are some novelties in it. Of that
of a professorship of the principles of government, you express your
approbation. They will be founded in the rights of man. That of
agriculture, I am sure, you will approve: and that also of
Anglo-Saxon. As the histories and laws left us in that type and
dialect, must be the text books of the reading of the learners, they
will imbibe with the language their free principles of government.
The volumes you have been so kind as to send, shall be placed in the
library of the University. Having at this time in England a person
sent for the purpose of selecting some Professors, a Mr. Gilmer of my
neighborhood, I cannot but recommend him to your patronage, counsel
and guardianship, against imposition, misinformation, and the
deceptions of partial and false recommendations, in the selection of
characters. He is a gentleman of great worth and correctness, my
particular friend, well educated in various branches of science, and
worthy of entire confidence.
Your age of eighty-four and mine of eighty-one years, insure us
a speedy meeting. We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on
the good and evil, which, in the course of our long lives, we have
both witnessed; and in the mean time, I pray you to accept assurances
of my high veneration and esteem for your person and character.
THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY
_To William Ludlow_
_Monticello, September 6, 1824_
SIR, -- The idea which you present in your letter of July 30th,
of the progress of society from its rudest state to that it has now
attained, seems conformable to what may be probably conjectured.
Indeed, we have under our eyes tolerable proofs of it. Let a
philosophic observer commence a journey from the savages of the Rocky
Mountains, eastwardly towards our sea-coast. These he would observe
in the earliest stage of association living under no law but that of
nature, subscribing and covering themselves with the flesh and skins
of wild beasts. He would next find those on our frontiers in the
pastoral state, raising domestic animals to supply the defects of
hunting. Then succeed our own semi-barbarous citizens, the pioneers
of the advance of civilization, and so in his progress he would meet
the gradual shades of improving man until he would reach his, as yet,
most improved state in our seaport towns. This, in fact, is
equivalent to a survey, in time, of the progress of man from the
infancy of creation to the present day. I am eighty-one years of
age, born where I now live, in the first range of mountains in the
interior of our country. And I have observed this march of
civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a
cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition,
insomuch as that we are at this time more advanced in civilization
here than the seaports were when I was a boy. And where this
progress will stop no one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime,
been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in
time, I trust, disappear from the earth. You seem to think that this
advance has brought on too complicated a state of society, and that
we should gain in happiness by treading back our steps a little way.
I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is
necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who
maintain it. Your experiment seems to have this in view. A society
of seventy families, the number you name, may very possibly be
governed as a single family, subsisting on their common industry, and
holding all things in common. Some regulators of the family you
still must have, and it remains to be seen at what period of your
increasing population your simple regulations will cease to be
sufficient to preserve order, peace, and justice. The experiment is
interesting; I shall not live to see its issue, but I wish it success
equal to your hopes, and to yourself and society prosperity and
happiness.
RETURN OF THE HERO
_To Lafayette_
_Monticello, October 9, 1824_
I have duly received, my dear friend and General, your letter
of the 1st from Philadelphia, giving us the welcome assurance that
you will visit the neighborhood which, during the march of our enemy
near it, was covered by your shield from his robberies and ravages.
In passing the line of your former march you will experience pleasing
recollections of the good you have done. My neighbors, too, of our
academical village, who well remember their obligations to you, have
expressed to you, in a letter from a committee appointed for that
purpose, their hope that you will accept manifestations of their
feelings, simple indeed, but as cordial as any you will have
received. It will be an additional honor to the University of the
State that you will have been its first guest. Gratify them, then,
by this assurance to their committee, if it has not been done. But
what recollections, dear friend, will this call up to you and me!
What a history have we to run over from the evening that yourself,
Meusnier, Bernau, and other patriots settled, in my house in Paris,
the outlines of the constitution you wished! And to trace it through
all the disastrous chapters of Robespierre, Barras, Bonaparte, and
the Bourbons! These things, however, are for our meeting. You
mention the return of Miss Wright to America, accompanied by her
sister; but do not say what her stay is to be, nor what her course.
Should it lead her to a visit of our University, which, in its
architecture only, is as yet an object, herself and her companion
will nowhere find a welcome more hearty than with Mrs. Randolph, and
all the inhabitants of Monticello. This Athenaeum of our country, in
embryo, is as yet but promise; and not in a state to recall the
recollections of Athens. But everything has its beginning, its
growth, and end; and who knows with what future delicious morsels of
philosophy, and by what future Miss Wright raked from its ruins, the
world may, some day, be gratified and instructed? Your son George we
shall be very happy indeed to see, and to renew in him the
recollections of your very dear family; and the revolutionary merit
of M. le Vasseur has that passport to the esteem of every American,
and, to me, the additional one of having been your friend and
co-operator, and he will, I hope, join you in making head-quarters
with us at Monticello. But all these things _a revoir_ -- ; in the
meantime we are impatient that your ceremonies at York should be
over, and give you to the embraces of friendship.
P. S. Will you come by Mr. Madison's, or let him or me know on
what day he may meet you here, and join us in our greetings?
COUNSEL TO A NAMESAKE
_To Thomas Jefferson Smith_
_Monticello, February 21, 1825_
This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer
will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your
affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address
to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on
the course of life you have to run, and I too, as a namesake, feel an
interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good
dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your
parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than
yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence.
So shall the life into which you have entered, be the portal to one
of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted
to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will
be under my regard. Farewell.
_The portrait of a good man by the most sublime of poets, for
your imitation_
Lord, who's the happy man that may to thy blest courts repair;
Not stranger-like to visit them but to inhabit there?
'Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves;
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart
disproves.
Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor's fame to wound;
Nor hearken to a false report, by malice whispered round.
Who vice in all its pomp and power, can treat with just
neglect;
And piety, though clothed in rages, religiously respect.
Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood;
And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good.
Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ;
Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.
|P1500|p1
The man, who, by his steady course, has happiness insur'd.
When earth's foundations shake, shall stand, by Providence
secur'd.
_A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life_.
1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will
be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never
happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an
hundred.
THE OBJECT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
_To Henry Lee_
_Monticello, May 8, 1825_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of Apr. 29 has been duly recieved, and
the offer of mineralogical specimens from Mr. Myer has been
communicated to Dr. Emmet our Professor of Natural history. The last
donation of the legislature to the University was appropriated
specifically to a library and apparatus of every kind. But we apply
it first to the more important articles of a library, of an
astronomical, physical, & chemical apparatus. And we think it safest
to see what these will cost, before we venture on collections of
mineral & other subjects, the last we must proportion to what sum we
shall have left only. The Professor possesses already what he thinks
will be sufficient for mineralogical and geological explanations to
his school. I do not know how far he might be tempted to enlarge his
possession by a catalogue of articles and prices, if both should be
satisfactory. If Mr. Myer chuses to send such a catalogue, it shall
be returned to you immediately, if the purchase be not approved.
That George Mason was the author of the bill of rights, and the
constitution founded on it, the evidence of the day established fully
in my mind. Of the paper you mention, purporting to be instructions
to the Virginia delegation in Congress, I have no recollection. If
it were anything more than a project of some private hand, that is to
say, had any such instructions been ever given by the convention,
they would appear in the journals, which we possess entire. But with
respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government
contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of
the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When
forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the
tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This
was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out
new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely
to say things which had never been said before; but to place before
mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm
as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the
independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at
originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any
particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression
of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone
and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then
on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in
conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books
of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. The
historical documents which you mention as in your possession, ought
all to be found, and I am persuaded you will find, to be
corroborative of the facts and principles advanced in that
Declaration. Be pleased to accept assurances of my great esteem and
respect.
THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE
_To the Honorable J. Evelyn Denison, M.P._
_Monticello, November 9, 1825_
DEAR SIR, -- Your favor of July 30th was duly received, and we
have now at hand the books you have been so kind as to send to our
University. They are truly acceptable in themselves, for we might
have been years not knowing of their existence; but give the greater
pleasure as evidence of the interest you have taken in our infant
institution. It is going on as successfully as we could have
expected; and I have no reason to regret the measure taken of
procuring Professors from abroad where science is so much ahead of
us. You witnessed some of the puny squibs of which I was the butt on
that account. They were probably from disappointed candidates, whose
unworthiness had occasioned their applications to be passed over.
The measure has been generally approved in the South and West; and by
all liberal minds in the North. It has been peculiarly fortunate,
too, that the Professors brought from abroad were as happy selections
as could have been hoped, as well for their qualifications in science
as correctness and amiableness of character. I think the example
will be followed, and that it cannot fail to be one of the
efficacious means of promoting that cordial good will, which it is so
much the interest of both nations to cherish. These teachers can
never utter an unfriendly sentiment towards their native country; and
those into whom their instructions will be infused, are not of
ordinary significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to
succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future
enmities, its friendships and fortunes. As it is our interest to
receive instruction through this channel, so I think it is yours to
furnish it; for these two nations holding cordially together, have
nothing to fear from the united world. They will be the models for
regenerating the condition of man, the sources from which
representative government is to flow over the whole earth.
I learn from you with great pleasure, that a taste is reviving
in England for the recovery of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of our
language; for a mere dialect it is, as much as those of Piers
Plowman, Gower, Douglas, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, for
even much of Milton is already antiquated. The Anglo-Saxon is only
the earliest we possess of the many shades of mutation by which the
language has tapered down to its modern form. Vocabularies we need
for each of these stages from Somner to Bailey, but not grammars for
each or any of them. The grammar has changed so little, in the
descent from the earliest, to the present form, that a little
observation suffices to understand its variations. We are greatly
indebted to the worthies who have preserved the Anglo-Saxon form,
from Doctor Hickes down to Mr. Bosworth. Had they not given to the
public what we possess through the press, that dialect would by this
time have been irrecoverably lost. I think it, however, a misfortune
that they have endeavored to give it too much of a learned form, to
mount it on all the scaffolding of the Greek and Latin, to load it
with their genders, numbers, cases, declensions, conjugations, &c.
Strip it of these embarrassments, vest it in the Roman type which we
have adopted instead of our English black letter, reform its uncouth
orthography, and assimilate its pronunciation, as much as may be, to
the present English, just as we do in reading Piers Plowman or
Chaucer, and with the cotemporary vocabulary for the few lost words,
we understand it as we do them. For example, the Anglo-Saxon text of
the Lord's prayer, as given us 6th Matthew, ix., is spelt and written
thus, in the equivalent Roman type: "Faeder ure thu the eart in
heofenum, si thin nama gehalgod. to becume thin rice. gewurthe thin
willa on eorthan. swa swa on heofenum. urne daeghwamlican hlaf syle
us to daeg. and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgifath urum
gyltendum. and ne ge-laedde thu us on costnunge, ac alys us of
yfele'. I should spell and pronounce thus: 'Father our, thou tha art
in heavenum. si thine name y-hallowed. come thin ric. y-wurth
thine will on earthan. so so on heavenum. ourn daywhamlican loaf
sell us to day. and forgive us our guilts so so we forgivath ourum
guiltendum. and no y-lead thou us on costnunge, ac a-lease us of
evil'. And here it is to be observed by-the-bye, that there is but
the single word "temptation" in our present version of this prayer
that is not Anglo-Saxon; for the word "trespasses" taken from the
French, ({ofeilemata} in the original) might as well have been
translated by the Anglo-Saxon "guilts."
The learned apparatus in which Dr. Hickes and his successors
have muffled our Anglo-Saxon, is what has frightened us from
encountering it. The simplification I propose may, on the contrary,
make it a regular part of our common English education.
So little reading and writing was there among our Anglo-Saxon
ancestors of that day, that they had no fixed orthography. To
produce a given sound, every one jumbled the letters together,
according to his unlettered notion of their power, and all jumbled
them differently, just as would be done at this day, were a dozen
peasants, who have learnt the alphabet, but have never read, desired
to write the Lord's prayer. Hence the varied modes of spelling by
which the Anglo-Saxons meant to express the same sound. The word
_many_, for example, was spelt in twenty different ways; yet we
cannot suppose they were twenty different words, or that they had
twenty different ways of pronouncing the same word. The Anglo-Saxon
orthography, then, is not an exact representation of the sounds meant
to be conveyed. We must drop in pronunciation the superfluous
consonants, and give to the remaining letters their present English
sound; because, not knowing the true one, the present enunciation is
as likely to be right as any other, and indeed more so, and
facilitates the acquisition of the language.
It is much to be wished that the publication of the present
county dialects of England should go on. It will restore to us our
language in all its shades of variation. It will incorporate into
the present one all the riches of our ancient dialects; and what a
store this will be, may be seen by running the eye over the county
glossaries, and observing the words we have lost by abandonment and
disuse, which in sound and sense are inferior to nothing we have
retained. When these local vocabularies are published and digested
together into a single one, it is probable we shall find that there
is not a word in Shakspeare which is not now in use in some of the
counties in England, from whence we may obtain its true sense. And
what an exchange will their recovery be for the volumes of idle
commentaries and conjectures with which that divine poet has been
masked and metamorphosed. We shall find in him new sublimities which
we had never tasted before, and find beauties in our ancient poets
which are lost to us now. It is not that I am merely an enthusiast
for Palaeology. I set equal value on the beautiful engraftments we
have borrowed from Greece and Rome, and I am equally a friend to the
encouragement of a judicious neology; a language cannot be too rich.
The more copious, the more susceptible of embellishment it will
become. There are several things wanting to promote this
improvement. To reprint the Saxon books in modern type; reform their
orthography; publish in the same way the treasures still existing in
manuscript. And, more than all things, we want a dictionary on the
plan of Stephens or Scapula, in which the Saxon root, placed
alphabetically, shall be followed by all its cognate modifications of
nouns, verbs, &c., whether Anglo-Saxon, or found in the dialects of
subsequent ages. We want, too, an elaborate history of the English
language. In time our country may be able to co-operate with you in
these labors, of common advantage, but as yet it is too much a blank,
calling for other and more pressing attentions. We have too much to
do in the improvements of which it is susceptible, and which are
deemed more immediately useful. Literature is not yet a distinct
profession with us. Now and then a strong mind arises, and at its
intervals of leisure from business, emits a flash of light. But the
first object of young societies is bread and covering; science is but
secondary and subsequent.
I owe apology for this long letter. It must be found in the
circumstance of its subject having made an interesting part in the
tenor of your letter, and in my attachment to it. It is a hobby
which too often runs away with me where I meant not to give up the
rein. Our youth seem disposed to mount it with me, and to begin
their course where mine is ending.
Our family recollects with pleasure the visit with which you
favored us; and join me in assuring you of our friendly and
respectful recollections, and of the gratification it will ever be to
us to hear of your health and welfare.
A GIFT TO A GRANDDAUGHTER
_Ellen Randolph Coolidge_
_Monticello, Nov. 14, 1825_
MY DEAR ELLEN -- In my letter of Oct. 13. to Mr. Coolidge, I
gave an account of the riot we had at the University, and of it's
termination. You will both of course be under anxiety till you know
how it has gone off? With the best effects in the world. Having let
it be understood, from the beginning, that we wished to trust very
much to the discretion of the Students themselves for their own
government. With about four fifths of them, this did well, but there
were about 15. or 20. bad subjects who were disposed to try whether
our indulgence was without limit. Hence the licentious transaction
of which I gave an account to Mr. Coolidge. But when the whole mass
saw the serious way in which that experiment was met, the Faculty of
Professors assembled, the Board of Visitors coming forward in support
of that authority, a grand jury taking up the subject, four of the
most guilty expelled, the rest reprimanded, severer laws enacted, and
a rigorous execution of them declared in future, it gave them a shock
and struck a terror, the most severe, as it was less expected. It
determined the well disposed among them to frown upon every thing of
the kind hereafter, and the ill-disposed returned to order from fear
if not from better motives. A perfect subordination has succeeded,
entire respect towards the Professors, and industry, order, and quiet
the most exemplary, has prevailed ever since. Every one is sensible
of the strength which the institution has derived from what appeared
at first to threaten it's foundation. We have no further fear of any
thing of the kind from the present set. But as at the next term
their numbers will be more than doubled by the accession of an
additional band, as unbroken as these were, we mean to be prepared,
and to ask of the legislature a power to call in the civil authority
in the first instant of disorder, and to quell it on the spot by
imprisonment and the same legal coercions, provided against disorder
generally, committed by other citizens, from whom, at their age, they
have no right to distinction.
We have heard of the loss of your baggage, with the vessel
carrying it, and sincerely condole with you on it. It is not to be
estimated by it's pecuniary value, but by that it held in your
affections. The documents of your childhood, your letters,
correspondencies, notes, books, &c., &c., all gone! And your life
cut in two, as it were, and a new one to begin, without any records
of the former. John Hemmings was the first who brought me the news.
He had caught it accidentally from those who first read the letter
from Col. Peyton announcing it. He was au desespoir! That beautiful
writing desk he had taken so much pains to make for you! Everything
else seemed as nothing in his eye, and that loss was everything.
Virgil could not have been more afflicted had his Aeneid fallen a
prey to the flames. I asked him if he could not replace it by making
another? No. His eyesight had failed him too much, and his
recollection of it was too imperfect. It has occurred to me however,
that I can replace it, not, indeed, to you, but to Mr. Coolidge, by a
substitute, not claiming the same value from it's decorations, but
from the part it has _borne_ in our history and the events with which
it has been associated. I recieved a letter from a friend in
Philadelphia lately, asking information of the house, and room of the
house there, in which the Declaration of Independence was written,
with a view to future celebrations of the 4th. of July in it,
another, enquiring whether a paper given to the Philosophical society
there, as a rough draught of that Declaration was genuinely so? A
society is formed there lately for an annual celebration of the
advent of Penn to that place. It was held in his antient Mansion,
and the chair in which he actually sat when at his writing table was
presented by a lady owning it, and was occupied by the president of
the celebration. Two other chairs were given them, made of the elm,
under the shade of which Penn had made his first treaty with the
Indians. If then things acquire a superstitious value because of
their connection with particular persons, surely a connection with
the great Charter of our Independence may give a value to what has
been associated with that; and such was the idea of the enquirers
after the room in which it was written. Now I happen still to
possess the writing-box on which it was written. It was made from a
drawing of my own, by Ben. Randall, a cabinet maker in whose house I
took my first lodgings on my arrival in Philadelphia in May 1776.
And I have used it ever since. It claims no merit of particular
beauty. It is plain, neat, convenient, and, taking no more room on
the writing table than a moderate 4to. volume, it yet displays it
self sufficiently for any writing. Mr. Coolidge must do me the favor
of accepting this. Its imaginary value will increase with the years,
and if he lives to my age, or another half century, he may see it
carried in the procession of our nation's birthday, as the relics of
teh saints are in those of the church. I will send it thro' Colonel
Peyton, and hope with better fortune than that for which it is to be
a substitute.
I remark what you say in your letter to your mother, relative
to Mr. Willard and our University clock. Judging from that that he
is the person whom Mr. Coolidge would recommend, and having recieved
from Dr. Waterhouse a very strong recommendation of him, you may
assure the old gentleman from me that he shall have the making of it.
We have lately made an important purchase of lands amounting to 7000.
D. and the government is taking from us, under their old and new
Tariff, 2700. D. duty on the marble caps and bases of the portico of
our Rotunda, of 10 columns only. These things try our funds for the
moment. At the end of the year we shall see how we stand, and I
expect we may be able to give the final order for the clock by
February.
I want to engage you, as my agent at Boston, for certain
articles not to be had here, and for such only. But it will be on
the indispensable condition that you keep as rigorous an account of
Dollars and cents as old Yerragan our neighbor would do. This alone
can induce friends to ask services freely, which would otherwise be
the asking of presents and amount to a prohibition. We should be
very glad occasionally to get small supplies of the fine dumb codfish
to be had at Boston, and also of the tongues and sounds of the Cod.
This selection of the articles I trouble you for is not of such as
are better there than here; for on that ground we might ask for every
thing from thence, but such only as are not to be had here to all.
Perhaps I should trepass on Mr. Coolidge for one other article. We
pay here 2. D. a gallon for bad French brandy. I think I have seen
in Degrand's Price current Marseilles brandy, from Dodge and Oxnard,
advertised good at 1. Dollar, and another kind called Seignettes,
which I am told is good Cognac at 1.25. D. I will ask of you then a
supply of a kental of good dumb fish, and about 20 or 30 lbs. of
tongues and sounds; and of Mr. Collidge a 30 gallon cask of Dodge and
Oxnard's Marseilles brandy, if tolerable good at 1. D. or
thereabouts, but double cased to guard against spoliation. Knowing
nothing of the prices of the fish, I will at a venture, desire Col.
Peyton to remit 60. D. to Mr. Coolidge immediately, and any little
difference between this and actual cost either way, may stand over to
your next account. We should be the better perhaps of your recipe
for dressing both articles.
I promised Mr. Ticknor to inform him at times how our
University goes on. I shall be glad if you will read to him that
part of this letter which respects it, presuming Mr. Coolidge may
have communicated to him the facts of my former letter to him. These
facts may be used ad libitum, only keeping my name out of sight.
Writing is so irksome to me, especially since I am obliged to do it
in a recumbent posture, that I am sure Mr. Ticknor will excuse my
economy in this exercise. To you perhaps I should apologize for the
want of it on this occasion. The family is well. My own health
changes little. I ride two or three miles in a carriage every day.
With my affectionate salutations to Mr. Coolidge, be assured yourself
of my tender and constant love.
CONSOLIDATION!
_To William Branch Giles_
_Monticello, December 26, 1825_
DEAR SIR, -- I wrote you a letter yesterday, of which you will
be free to make what use you please. This will contain matters not
intended for the public eye. I see, as you do, and with the deepest
affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our
government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights
reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all
powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which,
if legitimate, leave no limits to their power. Take together the
decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of the President, and
the misconstructions of the constitutional compact acted on by the
legislature of the federal branch, and it is but too evident, that
the three ruling branches of that department are in combination to
strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved
by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and
domestic. Under the power to regulate commerce, they assume
indefinitely that also over agriculture and manufactures, and call it
regulation to take the earnings of one of these branches of industry,
and that too the most depressed, and put them into the pockets of the
other, the most flourishing of all. Under the authority to establish
post roads, they claim that of cutting down mountains for the
construction of roads, of digging canals, and aided by a little
sophistry on the words "general welfare," a right to do, not only the
acts to effect that, which are specifically enumerated and permitted,
but whatsoever they shall think, or pretend will be for the general
welfare. And what is our resource for the preservation of the
constitution? Reason and argument? You might as well reason and
argue with the marble columns encircling them. The representatives
chosen by ourselves? They are joined in the combination, some from
incorrect views of government, some from corrupt ones, sufficient
voting together to out-number the sound parts; and with majorities
only of one, two, or three, bold enough to go forward in defiance.
Are we then _to stand to our arms_, with the hot-headed Georgian?
No. That must be the last resource, not to be thought of until much
longer and greater sufferings. If every infraction of a compact of
so many parties is to be resisted at once, as a dissolution of it,
none can ever be formed which would last one year. We must have
patience and longer endurance then with our brethren while under
delusion; give them time for reflection and experience of
consequences; keep ourselves in a situation to profit by the chapter
of accidents; and separate from our companions only when the sole
alternatives left, are the dissolution of our Union with them, or
submission to a government without limitation of powers. Between
these two evils, when we must make a choice, there can be no
hesitation. But in the meanwhile, the States should be watchful to
note every material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as
they occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as
wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as
acknowledgments or precedents of r yeomanry. This will be to them a
next best blessing to the monarchy of their first aim, and perhaps
the surest stepping-stone to it.
I learn with great satisfaction that your school is thriving
well, and that you have at its head a truly classical scholar. He is
one of three or four whom I can hear of in the State. We were
obliged the last year to receive shameful Latinists into the
classical school of the University, such as we will certainly refuse
as soon as we can get from better schools a sufficiency of those
properly instructed to form a class. We must get rid of this
Connecticut Latin, of this barbarous confusion of long and short
syllables, which renders doubtful whether we are listening to a
reader of Cherokee, Shawnee, Iroquois, or what. Our University has
been most fortunate in the five professors procured from England. A
finer selection could not have been made. Besides their being of a
grade of science which has left little superior behind, the
correctness of their moral character, their accommodating
dispositions, and zeal for the prosperity of the institution, leave
us nothing more to wish. I verily believe that as high a degree of
education can now be obtained here, as in the country they left. And
a finer set of youths I never saw assembled for instruction. They
committed some irregularities at first, until they learned the lawful
length of their tether; since which it has never been transgressed in
the smallest degree. A great proportion of them are severely devoted
to study, and I fear not to say that within twelve or fifteen years
from this time, a majority of the rulers of our State will have been
educated here. They shall carry hence the correct principles of our
day, and you may count assuredly that they will exhibit their country
in a degree of sound respectability it has never known, either in our
days, or those of our forefathers. I cannot live to see it. My joy
must only be that of anticipation. But that youo may see it in full
fruition, is the probable consequence of the twenty years I am ahead
of you in time, and is the sincere prayer of your affectionate and
constant friend.
"TAKE CARE OF ME WHEN DEAD"
_To James Madison_
_Monticello. February 17, 1826_
DEAR SIR, -- My circular was answered by Genl. Breckenridge,
approving, as we had done, of the immediate appointment of Terril to
the chair of Law. But our four Colleagues, who were together in
Richmond, concluded not to appoint until our meeting in April. In
the meantime the term of the present lamented Incumbent draws near to
a close. About 150. students have already entered; many of those who
engaged for a 2d. year, are yet to come; and I think we may count
that our dormitories will be filled. Whether there will be any
overflowing for the accomodations provided in the vicinage, which are
quite considerable, is not yet known. None will enter there while a
dormitory remains vacant. Were the Law-chair filled it would add 50.
at least to our number.
Immediately on seeing the overwhelming vote of the House of
Representatives against giving us another dollar, I rode to the
University and desired Mr. Brockenbrough to engage in nothing new, to
stop everything on hand which could be done without, and to employ
all his force and funds in finishing the circular room for the books,
and the anatomical theatre. These cannot be done without; and for
these and all our debts we have funds enough. But I think it prudent
then to clear the decks thoroughly, to see how we shall stand, and
what we may accomplish further. In the meantime, there have arrived
for us in different ports of the United States, ten boxes of books
from Paris, seven from London, and from Germany I know not how many;
in all, perhaps, about twenty-five boxes. Not one of these can be
opened until the book-room is completely finished, and all the
shelves ready to receive their charge directly from the boxes as they
shall be opened. This cannot be till May. I hear nothing definite
of the three thousand dollars duty of which we are asking the
remission from Congress. In the selection of our Law Professor, we
must be rigorously attentive to his political principles. You will
recollect that before the revolution, Coke Littleton was the
universal elementary book of law students, and a sounder whig never
wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the
British constitution, or in what were called English liberties. You
remember also that our lawyers were then all whigs. But when his
black-letter text, and uncouth but cunning learning got out of
fashion, and the honied Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the
student's hornbook, from that moment, that profession (the nursery of
our Congress) began to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young
brood of lawyers now are of that hue. They suppose themselves,
indeed, to be whigs, because they no longer know what whigism or
republicanism means. It is in our seminary that that vestal flame is
to be kept alive; it is thence it is to spread anew over our own and
the sister States. If we are true and vigilant in our trust, within
a dozen or twenty years a majority of our own legislature will be
from one school, and many disciples will have carried its doctrines
home with them to their several States, and will have leavened thus
the whole mass. New York has taken strong ground in vindication of
the constitution; South Carolina had already done the same. Although
I was against our leading, I am equally against omitting to follow in
the same line, and backing them firmly; and I hope that yourself or
some other will mark out the track to be pursued by us.
You will have seen in the newspapers some proceedings in the
legislature, which have cost me much mortification. My own debts had
become considerable, but not beyond the effect of some lopping of
property, which would have been little felt, when our friend Nicholas
gave me the _coup de grace_. Ever since that I have been paying
twelve hundred dollars a year interest on his debt, which, with my
own, was absorbing so much of my annual income, as that the
maintenance of my family was making deep and rapid inroads on my
capital, and had already done it. Still, sales at a fair price would
leave me competently provided. Had crops and prices for several
years been such as to maintain a steady competition of substantial
bidders at market, all would have been safe. But the long succession
of years of stunted crops, of reduced prices, the general prostration
of the farming business, under levies for the support of
manufactures, &c., with the calamitous fluctuations of value in our
paper medium, have kept agriculture in a state of abject depression,
which has peopled the western States by silently breaking up those on
the Atlantic, and glutted the land market, while it drew off its
bidders. In such a state of things, property has lost its character
of being a resource for debts. Highland in Bedford, which, in the
days of our plethory, sold readily for from fifty to one hundred
dollars the acre, (and such sales were many then,) would not now sell
for more than from ten to twenty dollars, or one-quarter or one-fifth
of its former price. Reflecting on these things, the practice
occurred to me, of selling, on fair valuation, and by way of lottery,
often resorted to before the Revolution to effect large sales, and
still in constant usage in every State for individual as well as
corporation purposes. If it is permitted in my case, my lands here
alone, with the mills, &c., will pay every thing, and leave me
Monticello and a farm free. If refused, I must sell everything here,
perhaps considerably in Bedford, move thither with my family, where I
have not even a log hut to put my head into, and whether ground for
burial, will depend on the depredations which, under the form of
sales, shall have been committed on my property. The question then
with me was _ultrum horum_? But why afflict you with these details?
Indeed, I cannot tell, unless pains are lessened by communication
with a frt, which, with my own, was absorbing so much of my annual
income, as that the maintenance of my family was making deep and
rapid inroads on my capital, and had already done it. Still, sales
at a fair price would leave me competently provided. Had crops and
prices for several years been such as to maintain a steady
competition of substantial bidders at market, all would have been
safe. But the long succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced
prices, the general prostration of the farming business, under levies
for the support of manufactures, &c., with the calamitous
fluctuations of value in our paper medium, have kept agriculture in a
state of abject depression, which has peopled the western States by
silently breaking up those on the Atlantic, and glutted the land
market, while it drew off its bidders. In such a state of things,
property has lost its character of being a resource for debts.
Highland in Bedford, which, in the days of our plethory, sold readily
for from fifty to one hundred dollars the acre, (and such sales were
many then,) would not now sell for more than from ten to twenty
dollars, or one-quarter or one-fifth of its former price. Reflecting
on these things, the practice occurred to me, of selling, on fair
valuation, and by way of lottery, often resorted to before the
Revolution to effect large sales, and still in constant usage in
every State for individual as well as corporation purposes. If it is
permitted in my case, my lands here alone, with the mills, &c., will
pay every thing, and leave me Monticello and a farm free. If
refused, I must sell everything here, perhaps considerably in
Bedford, move thither with my family, where I have not even a log hut
to put my head into, and whether ground for burial, will depend on
the depredations which, under the form of sales, shall have been
committed on my property. The question then with me was _ultrum
horum_? But why afflict you with these details? Indeed, I cannot
tell, unless pains are lessened by communication with a friend. The
friendship which has subsisted between us, now half a century, and
the harmony of our political principles and pursuits, have been
sources of constant happiness to me through that long period. And if
I remove beyond the reach of attentions to the University, or beyond
the bourne of life itself, as I soon must, it is a comfort to leave
that institution under your care, and an assurance that it will not
be wanting. It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that
you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have
pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of
self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If
ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a
single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of
those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know
reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted. To myself
you have been a pillar of support through life. Take care of me when
dead, and be assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.
_NUNC DIMITTIS_ ON SLAVERY
_To James Heaton_
_Monticello, May 20, 1826_
DEAR SIR, -- The subject of your letter of April 20, is one on
which I do not permit myself to express an opinion, but when time,
place, and occasion may give it some favorable effect. A good cause
is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the
arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance, and patience are
the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others. The
revolution in public opinion which this cause requires, is not to be
expected in a day, or perhaps in an age; but time, which outlives all
things, will outlive this evil also. My sentiments have been forty
years before the public. Had I repeated them forty times, they would
only have become the more stale and threadbare. Although I shall not
live to see them consummated, they will not die with me; but living
or dying, they will ever be in my most fervent prayer. This is
written for yourself and not for the public, in compliance with your
request of two lines of sentiment on the subject. Accept the
assurance of my good will and respect.
LAST LETTER: APOTHEOSIS OF LIBERTY
_To Roger C. Weightman_
_Monticello, June 24, 1826_
RESPECTED SIR, -- The kind invitation I receive from you, on
the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present
with them at their celebration on the fiftieth anniversary of
American Independence, as one of the surviving signers of an
instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most
flattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment
proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the
sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal
participation in the rejoicings of that day. But acquiescence is a
duty, under circumstances not placed among those we are permitted to
control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and
exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the
remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in
the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country,
between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the
consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of
experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts
sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing
men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and
superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the
blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have
substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of
reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to
the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has
already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of
mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored
few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace
of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let
the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of
these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
I will ask permission here to express the pleasure with which I
should have met my ancient neighbors of the city of Washington and
its vicinities, with whom I passed so many years of a pleasing social
intercourse; an intercourse which so much relieved the anxieties of
the public cares, and left impressions so deeply engraved in my
affections, as never to be forgotten. With my regret that ill health
forbids me the gratification of an acceptance, be pleased to receive
for yourself, and those for whom you write, the assurance of my
highest respect and friendly attachments.