| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. VI. (of 9) - Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, - Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Author: Jefferson, Thomas
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. VI. (of 9) - Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, - Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private" ***
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_, and Old English text by
+plus marks+.
The [bracketed] footnotes are as in the original.
Inconsistent or incorrect accents and spelling in passages in French,
Latin and Italian have been left unchanged.
ς (final form sigma) in the middle of a word has been normalized to σ.
Greek diacritics were normalized to be all present or all missing,
according to their preponderance in the quotation.
The following possible inconsistencies/printer errors/archaic
spellings/different names for different entities were identified
but left as printed:
Vanderkemp and Vander Kemp
Mellish and Melish
Rochefaucault, Rochefoucauld, Rochfaucauld
De Tutt, Destutt, Dustutt Tracy
Machiavilian and Machiavelian
ascendancy and ascendency.
M. DE LOMERIE omitted from the table of contents.
Page 76: "orders of council have been repeated" should possibly be
"orders of council have been repealed"
Page 155: "Tries's" most outrageous riot and rescue should possibly
be "Fries's".
Page 159: Hallicarnassensis should possibly be Halicarnassus.
Page 163: Shaise's rebellion should possibly be Shay's rebellion.
Page 186: There is a possible punctuation error in the entry for "herb"
in the list under the heading "Adj."
Page 357: Pythagonic should possibly be Pythagoric.
Page 359: "The refractory siston" should possibly be "The refractory
system".
Page 402: Pretorian should possibly be Preætorian.
Page 505: homony should possibly be hominy.
Table of Contents references Putty, but text references Pully.
The formulas for calculating an annuity on page 200 were possibly
printed incorrectly.
THE
WRITINGS
OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON:
BEING HIS
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, CORRESPONDENCE, REPORTS, MESSAGES,
ADDRESSES, AND OTHER WRITINGS, OFFICIAL
AND PRIVATE.
PUBLISHED BY THE ORDER OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS ON THE
LIBRARY, FROM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS,
DEPOSITED IN THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE.
WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES, TABLES OF CONTENTS, AND A COPIOUS INDEX
TO EACH VOLUME, AS WELL AS A GENERAL INDEX TO THE WHOLE,
BY THE EDITOR
H. A. WASHINGTON.
VOL. VI.
NEW YORK:
H. W. DERBY, 625 BROADWAY.
1861.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
TAYLOR & MAURY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of
Columbia.
STEREOTYPED BY
THOMAS B. SMITH,
32 & 84 Beekman Street.
CONTENTS TO VOL. VI.
BOOK II.
PART III.--CONTINUED.--LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE UNITED
STATES DOWN TO THE TIME OF HIS DEATH.--(1790-1826,)--3.
Adams, John, letters written to, 35, 48, 59, 85, 120, 125, 142,
191, 217, 231, 302, 352, 488, 458, 523, 575.
Armstrong, General, letter written to, 103.
Astor, John Jacob, letters written to, 55, 247.
Austin, Benjamin, letters written to, 520, 553.
Bailey, General, letter written to, 100.
Barrow, Mr., letter written to, 456.
Barbour, Governor, letter written to, 38.
Bentley, William, letter written to, 503.
Burnside, Samuel M., letter written to, 290.
Burwell, W. A., letter written to, 5.
Cabell, Joseph C., letters written to, 299, 309, 389, 537, 540.
Cains, Clement, letter written to, 13.
Canby, Wm., letter written to, 210.
Carr, Mathew, letter written to, 132.
Carr, Dabney, letter written to, 527.
Christian, Charles, letter written to, 44.
Clay, Mr., letter written to, 7.
Clarke, John, letter written to, 307.
Clas, Charles, letter written to, 412.
Cook, Amos, J., letter written to, 531.
Cooper, Thomas, letters written to, 71, 311, 371, 375, 389.
Cooper, Dr. Thomas, letter written to, 290.
Correa, Mr., letter written to, 480.
Crawford, Mr., letter written to, 417.
Crawford, Dr., letter written to, 32.
Dearborne, H. A. S., letter written to, 27.
Dearborne, General, letter written to, 450.
Delaplaine, Mr., letters written to, 343, 373.
Duane, Colonel Wm., letters written to, 75, 79, 98, 109, 211.
Dufief, M., letter written to, 339.
Edwards, James L., letter written to, 8.
Eppes, Mr., letter written to, 15.
Eppes, John W., letters written to, 136, 194, 228.
Evans, Oliver, letter written to, 297.
Fleming, George, letter written to, 504.
Flourney, Thomas C., letter written to, 82.
Gallatin, Albert, letter written to, 498.
Galloway, Benjamin, letter written to, 41.
Gerry, Eldridge, letter written to, 62.
Girardin, Mr., letters written to, 335, 411, 439, 455.
Gray, Francis C., letter written to, 436.
Granger, Gideon, letter written to, 329.
Green, Nathaniel, letter written to, 71.
Greenhow, Samuel, letter written to, 308.
Humboldt, Baron de, letter written to, 267.
Jones, Dr. Walter, letter written to, 284.
King, Miles, letter written to, 387.
Kosciusko, General, letters written to, 67, 77.
La Fayette, Marquis de, letter written to, 421.
Latrobe, Mr., letter written to, 74.
Law, Thomas, letter written to, 348.
Leiper, Thomas, letters written to, 281, 463.
Letre, Thomas, letter written to, 79.
Lincoln, Levi, letter written to, 7.
Logan, Dr., letters written to, 215, 497.
Lyon, James, letter written to, 10.
Macon, Nathaniel, letter written to, 534.
Manners, Dr. John, letter written to, 319.
Martin, James, letter written to, 213.
Maury, James, letter written to, 51.
Maury, Mr., letters written to, 467, 469.
Maury, Thomas W., letter written to, 548.
Mellish, Mr., letters written to, 93, 403.
McMatron, Thomas Paine, letter written to, 107.
McPherson, Isaac, letter written to, 42.
Middleton, Henry, letter written to, 90.
Milligan, Joseph, letter written to, 568.
Mitchell, Andrew, letters written to, 6, 483.
Mole, Baron de, letter written to, 363.
Monroe, James, letters written to, 34, 123, 130, 394, 407, 550.
Morrell, Dr., letter written to, 99.
Nash, Melatiah, letter written to, 29.
Nelson, Hon. Mr., letter written to, 46.
Nemours, Dupont de, letters written to, 428, 457, 507, 589.
Nicholas, Governor, letters written to, 560, 578.
Onis, Chevalier de, letter written to, 341.
Patterson, Dr. R. M., letters written to, 10, 17, 26, 83, 301, 396,
397.
Partridge, Captain, letters written to, 495, 510.
Peale, Mr., letter written to, 6.
Pintard, John, letter written to, 289.
Plumer, Governor, letter written to, 414.
President of the United States, letters written to, 47, 57, 58, 70,
77, 101, 111, 133, 385, 391, 452.
Putty, Thomas, letter written to, 34.
Ritchie, Thomas, letter written to, 532.
Roane, Judge, letter written to, 493.
Rodman, Mr., letter written to, 54.
Ronaldson, Mr., letter written to, 91.
Rodney, Cæsar A., letter written to, 448.
Sargeant, Ezra, letter written to, 42.
Say, Jean Baptiste, letter written to, 430.
Shecut, John, letter written to, 153.
Short, Wm., letters written to, 127, 398.
Serra, Correa de., letters written to, 405, 595.
Small, Abraham, letter written to, 346.
Smith, Samuel H., letter written to, 383.
Spafford, Horatio G., letter written to, 334.
Stael, Madame de, letter written to, 481.
Taylor, John, letter written to, 604.
Tessé, Madame de, letter written to, 271.
Thompson, Charles, letter written to, 518.
Todd, Paine, letter written to, 16.
Torrence, W. H., letter written to, 460.
Tyler, Judge, letter written to, 65.
Valentin, Don de Toronda Coruna, letter written to, 273
Vander Kemp, Mr., letters written to, 44, 593.
Vaughan, John, letter written to, 416.
Watson, John F., letter written to, 345.
Wendover, Mr., letter written to, 444.
Wheaton, Dr., letter written to, 43.
Wilson, John, letter written to, 190.
Wilson, Dr. Peter, letter written to, 529.
Wirt, William, letters written to, 364, 483.
Worcester, Rev. Mr., letter written to, 538.
Wright, Hon. Mr., letter written to, 78.
Yancey, Colonel, letter written to, 514.
Address lost, letters written to, 129, 260, 391, 557.
Adams, John, letters written by, 146, 150, 154, 204, 208, 249,
251, 254, 263, 316, 324, 357, 473, 474, 491, 500, 545, 554,
598, 601.
PART III.--CONTINUED.
LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE U. S. DOWN TO THE TIME OF HIS
DEATH.
1790-1826.
TO DR. RUSH.
POPLAR FOREST, August 17, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--I write to you from a place ninety miles from Monticello,
near the New London of this State, which I visit three or four times a
year, and stay from a fortnight to a month at a time. I have fixed myself
comfortably, keep some books here, bring others occasionally, am in the
solitude of a hermit, and quite at leisure to attend to my absent friends.
I note this to show that I am not in a situation to examine the dates of
our letters, whether I have overgone the annual period of asking how you
do? I know that within that time I have received one or more letters from
you, accompanied by a volume of your introductory lectures, for which
accept my thanks. I have read them with pleasure and edification, for I
acknowledge facts in medicine as far as they go, distrusting only their
extension by theory. Having to conduct my grandson through his course of
mathematics, I have resumed that study with great avidity. It was ever
my favorite one. We have no theories there, no uncertainties remain on
the mind; all is demonstration and satisfaction. I have forgotten much,
and recover it with more difficulty than when in the vigor of my mind
I originally acquired it. It is wonderful to me that old men should not
be sensible that their minds keep pace with their bodies in the progress
of decay. Our old revolutionary friend Clinton, for example, who was a
hero, but never a man of mind, is wonderfully jealous on this head. He
tells eternally the stories of his younger days to prove his memory, as
if memory and reason were the same faculty. Nothing betrays imbecility so
much as the being insensible of it. Had not a conviction of the danger
to which an unlimited occupation of the executive chair would expose
the republican constitution of our government, made it conscientiously
a duty to retire when I did, the fear of becoming a dotard and of being
insensible of it, would of itself have resisted all solicitations to
remain. I have had a long attack of rheumatism, without fever and without
pain while I keep myself still. A total prostration of the muscles of the
back, hips and thighs, deprived me of the power of walking, and leaves it
still in a very impaired state. A pain when I walk, seems to have fixed
itself in the hip, and to threaten permanence. I take moderate rides,
without much fatigue; but my journey to this place, in a hard-going gig,
gave me great sufferings which I expect will be renewed on my return as
soon as I am able. The loss of the power of taking exercise would be a
sore affliction to me. It has been the delight of my retirement to be in
constant bodily activity, looking after my affairs. It was never damped
as the pleasures of reading are, by the question of _cui bono?_ for
what object? I hope your health of body continues firm. Your works show
that of your mind. The habits of exercise which your calling has given
to both, will tend long to preserve them. The sedentary character of my
public occupations sapped a constitution naturally sound and vigorous,
and draws it to an earlier close. But it will still last quite as long
as I wish it. There is a fulness of time when men should go, and not
occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance. We
must continue while here to exchange occasionally our mutual good wishes.
I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the
true old man's milk and restorative cordial. God bless you and preserve
you through a long and healthy old age.
TO WM. A. BURWELL, ESQ.
POPLAR FOREST, August 19, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--I am here after a long absence, having been confined at home
a month by rheumatism. I thought myself equal to the journey when I set
out, but I have suffered much coming, staying, and shall, returning.
If I am not better after a little rest at home, I shall set out for
the warm springs. The object of this letter is to inform Mrs. Burwell
that a ring, which she left where she washed the morning of leaving
Fludd's, is safe and will be delivered to her order or to herself when
she passes. I have not seen the President since he came home, nor do I
know what has passed with Foster from the fountain head; but through a
channel in which I have confidence, I learn he has delivered a formal
note in the name of his government, declaring that the circumstances
of the war oblige them to take possession of the ocean, and permit no
commerce on it but through their ports. Thus their purpose is at length
avowed. They cannot from their own resources maintain the navy necessary
to retain the dominion of the ocean, and mean that other nations shall
be assessed to maintain their own chains. Should the king die, as is
probable, although the ministry which would come in stand so committed
to repeal the orders of Council, I doubt if the nation will permit it.
For the usurpation of the sea has become a national disease. This state
of things annihilates the culture of tobacco, except of about 15,000
hhds. on the prime lands. Wheat and Flour keep up. Wheat was at 9s. 6d.
at Richmond ten days ago. I have sold mine here at the Richmond price,
abating 2s., but 8s. a bushel has been offered for machined wheat. Present
me respectfully to Mrs. Burwell, and accept assurances of affectionate
respect and esteem.
TO MR. 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.
TO MR. CLAY.
POPLAR FOREST, August 23, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--While here, and much confined to the house by my rheumatism,
I have amused myself with calculating the hour lines of an horizontal
dial for the latitude of this place, which I find to be 37° 22´ 26´´.
The calculations are for every five minutes of time, and are always
exact to within less than half a second of a degree. As I do not know
that any body here has taken this trouble before, I have supposed a copy
would be acceptable to you. It may be a good exercise for Master Cyrus
to make you a dial by them. He will need nothing but a protractor, or a
line of chords and dividers. A dial of size, say of from twelve inches to
two feet square, is the cheapest and most accurate measure of time for
general use, and would I suppose be more common if every one possessed
the proper horary lines for his own latitude. Williamsburg being very
nearly in the parallel of Poplar Forest, the calculations now sent would
serve for all the counties in the line between that place and this, for
your own place, New London, and Lynchburg in this neighborhood. Slate,
as being less affected by the sun, is preferable to wood or metal, and
needs but a saw and plane to prepare it, and a knife point to mark the
lines and figures. If worth the trouble, you will of course use the
paper enclosed; if not, some of your neighbors may wish to do it, and
the effect to be of some use to you will strengthen the assurances of
my great esteem and respect.
TO LEVI LINCOLN, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, August 25, 1811.
It is long, my good friend, since we have exchanged a letter; and yet
I demur to all prescription against it. I cannot relinquish the right
of correspondence with those I have learnt to esteem. If the extension
of common acquaintance in public life be an inconvenience, that with
select worth is more than a counterpoise. Be assured your place is high
among those whose remembrance I have brought with me into retirement,
and cherish with warmth. I was overjoyed when I heard you were appointed
to the supreme bench of national justice, and as much mortified when I
heard you had declined it. You are too young to be entitled to withdraw
your services from your country. You cannot yet number the _quadraginta
stipendia_ of the veteran. Our friends, whom we left behind, have ceased
to be friends among themselves. I am sorry for it, on their account
and on my own, for I have sincere affection for them all. I hope it
will produce no schisms among us, no desertions from our ranks; that no
Essex man will find matter of triumph in it. The secret treasons of his
heart, and open rebellions on his tongue, will still be punished, while
_in fieri_, by the detestation of his country, and by its vengeance in
the overt act. What a pity that history furnishes so many abuses of the
punishment by exile, the most rational of all punishments for meditated
treason. Their great king beyond the water would doubtless receive them as
kindly as his Asiatic prototype did the fugitive aristocracy of Greece.
But let us turn to good-humored things. How do you do? What are you
doing? Does the farm or the study occupy your time, or each by turns? Do
you read law or divinity? And which affords the most curious and cunning
learning? Which is most disinterested? And which was it that crucified
its Saviour? Or were the two professions united among the Jews? In that
case, what must their Caiaphases have been? Answer me these questions,
or any others you like better, but let me hear from you and know that
you are well and happy. That you may long continue so is the prayer of
yours affectionately.
TO MR. JAMES L. EDWARDS.
MONTICELLO, September 5, 1811.
SIR,--Your letter of August 20th has truly surprised me. In this it is
said that, _for certain services performed_ by Mr. James Lyon and Mr.
Samuel Morse, formerly editors of the Savannah Republican, I promised
them the sum of one thousand dollars. This, Sir, is totally unfounded. I
never promised to any printer on earth the sum of one thousand dollars,
nor any other sum, for certain services performed, or for any services
which that expression would imply. I have had no accounts with printers
but for their newspapers, for which I have paid always the ordinary price
and no more. I have occasionally joined in moderate contributions to
printers, as I have done to other descriptions of persons, distressed or
persecuted, not by promise, but the actual payment of what I contributed.
When Mr. Morse went to Savannah, he called on me and told me he meant to
publish a paper there, for which I subscribed, and paid him the year in
advance. I continued to take it from his successors, Everett & McLean,
and Everett & Evans, and paid for it at different epochs up to December
31, 1808, when I withdrew my subscription. You say McLean informed you
"he had some expectation of getting the money, as he had received a
letter from me on the subject." If such a letter exists under my name,
it is a forgery. I never wrote but a single letter to him, that was of
the 28th of January, 1810, and was on the subject of the last payment
made for his newspaper, and on no other subject; and I have two receipts
of his, (the last dated March 9, 1809,) of payments for his paper, both
stating to be _in full of all demands_, and a letter of the 17th of April,
1810, in reply to mine, manifestly showing he had no demand against me
of any other nature. The promise is said to have been made to Morse &
Lyon. Were Mr. Morse living, I should appeal to him with confidence, as
I believe him to have been a very honest man. Mr. Lyon I suppose to be
living, and will, I am sure, acquit me of any such transaction as that
alleged. The truth, then, being that I never made the promise suggested,
nor any one of a like nature to any printer or other person whatever,
every principle of justice and of self-respect requires that I should
not listen to any such demand.
TO MR. JAMES LYON.
MONTICELLO, September 5, 1811.
SIR,--I enclose you the copy of a letter I have received from a James
L. Edwards, of Boston. You will perceive at once its swindling object.
It appeals to two dead men, and one, (yourself,) whom he supposes I
cannot get at. I have written him an answer which may perhaps prevent
his persevering in the attempt, for the whole face of his letter betrays
a consciousness of its guilt. But perhaps he may expect that I would
sacrifice a sum of money rather than be disturbed with encountering a bold
falsehood. In this he is mistaken; and to prepare to meet him, should
he repeat his demand, and considering that he has presumed to implicate
your name in this attempt, I take the liberty of requesting a letter
from you bearing testimony to the truth of my never having made to you,
or within your knowledge or information, any such promise to yourself,
your partner Morse, or any other. My confidence in your character leaves
me without a doubt of your honest aid in repelling this base and bold
attempt to fix on me practices to which no honors or powers in this world
would ever have induced me to stoop. I have solicited none, intrigued
for none. Those which my country has thought proper to confide to me
have been of their own mere motion, unasked by me. Such practices as
this letter-writer imputes to me, would have proved me unworthy of their
confidence.
It is long since I have known anything of your situation or pursuits. I
hope they have been successful, and tender you my best wishes that they
may continue so, and for your own health and happiness.
TO DOCTOR PATTERSON.
MONTICELLO, September 11, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--The enclosed work came to me without a scrip of a pen
other than what you see in the title-page--"A Monsieur le President
de la Société." From this I conclude it intended for the Philosophical
Society, and for them I now enclose it to you. You will find the notes
really of value. They embody and ascertain to us all the scraps of
new discoveries which we have learned in detached articles from less
authentic publications. M. Goudin has generally expressed his measures
according to the old as well as the new standard, which is a convenience
to me, as I do not make a point of retaining the last in my memory.
I confess, indeed, I do not like the new system of French measures,
because not the best, and adapted to a standard accessible to themselves
exclusively, and to be obtained by other nations only from them. For, on
examining the map of the earth, you will find no meridian on it but the
one passing through their country, offering the extent of land on both
sides of the 45th degree, and terminating at both ends in a portion of
the ocean which the conditions of the problem for an universal standard
of measures require. Were all nations to agree therefore to adopt this
standard, they must go to Paris to ask it; and they might as well long
ago have all agreed to adopt the French foot, the standard of which they
could equally have obtained from Paris. Whereas the pendulum is equally
fixed by the laws of nature, is in possession of every nation, may be
verified everywhere and by every person, and at an expense within every
one's means. I am not therefore without a hope that the other nations
of the world will still concur, some day, in making the pendulum the
basis of a common system of measures, weights and coins, which applied
to the present metrical systems of France and of other countries, will
render them all intelligible to one another. England and this country
may give it a beginning, notwithstanding the war they are entering
into. The republic of letters is unaffected by the wars of geographical
divisions of the earth. France, by her power and science, now bears down
everything. But that power has its measure in time by the life of one
man. The day cannot be distant in the history of human revolutions, when
the indignation of mankind will burst forth, and an insurrection of the
universe against the political tyranny of France will overwhelm all her
arrogations. Whatever is most opposite to them will be most popular, and
what is reasonable therefore in itself, cannot fail to be adopted the
sooner from that motive. But why leave this adoption to the tardy will
of governments who are always, in their stock of information, a century
or two behind the intelligent part of mankind, and who have interests
against touching ancient institutions? Why should not the college of the
literary societies of the world adopt the second pendulum as the unit
of measure on the authorities of reason, convenience and common consent?
And why should not our society open the proposition by a circular letter
to the other learned institutions of the earth? If men of science,
in their publications, would express measures always in multiples and
decimals of the pendulum, annexing their value in municipal measures as
botanists add the popular to the botanical names of plants, they would
soon become familiar to all men of instruction, and prepare the way for
legal adoptions. At any rate, it would render the writers of every nation
intelligible to the readers of every other, when expressing the measures
of things. The French, I believe, have given up their Decada Calendar,
but it does not appear that they retire from the centesimal division of
the quadrant. On the contrary, M. Borda has calculated according to that
division, new trigonometrical tables not yet, I believe, printed. In the
excellent tables of Callet, lately published by Didot, in stereotype,
he has given a table of Logarithmic lines and tangents for the hundred
degrees of the quadrant, abridged from Borda's manuscript. But he has
given others for the sexagesimal division, which being for every 10´´
through the whole table, are more convenient than Hutton's, Scherwin's,
or any of their predecessors. It cannot be denied that the centesimal
division would facilitate our arithmetic, and that it might have been
preferable had it been originally adopted, as a numeration by eighths
would have been more convenient than by tens. But the advantages would
not now compensate the embarrassments of a change.
I extremely regret the not being provided with a time-piece equal to the
observations of the approaching eclipse of the sun. Can you tell me what
would be the cost in Philadelphia of a clock, the time-keeping part of
which should be perfect? And what the difference of cost between a wooden
and gridiron pendulum? To be of course without a striking apparatus, as
it would be wanted for astronomical purposes only. Accept assurances of
affectionate esteem and respect.
TO CLEMENT CAINE, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, September 16, 1811.
SIR,--Your favor of April 2d was not received till the 23d of June
last, with the volume accompanying it, for which be pleased to accept
my thanks. I have read it with great satisfaction, and received from
it information, the more acceptable as coming from a source which could
be relied on. The retort on European censors, of their own practices on
the liberties of man, the inculcation on the master of the moral duties
which he owes to the slave, in return for the benefits of his service,
that is to say, of food, clothing, care in sickness, and maintenance
under age and disability, so as to make him in fact as comfortable and
more secure than the laboring man in most parts of the world; and the
idea suggested of substituting free whites in all household occupations
and manual arts, thus lessening the call for the other kind of labor,
while it would increase the public security, give great merit to the
work, and will, I have no doubt, produce wholesome impressions. The
habitual violation of the equal rights of the colonist by the dominant
(for I will not call them the mother) countries of Europe, the invariable
sacrifice of their highest interests to the minor advantages of any
individual trade or calling at home, are as immoral in principle as the
continuance of them is unwise in practice, after the lessons they have
received. What, in short, is the whole system of Europe towards America
but an atrocious and insulting tyranny? One hemisphere of the earth,
separated from the other by wide seas on both sides, having a different
system of interests flowing from different climates, different soils,
different productions, different modes of existence, and its own local
relations and duties is made subservient to all the petty interests of
the other, to _their_ laws, _their_ regulations, _their_ passions and
wars, and interdicted from social intercourse, from the interchange of
mutual duties and comforts with their neighbors, enjoined on all men by
the laws of nature. Happily these abuses of human rights are drawing
to a close on both our continents, and are not likely to survive the
present mad contest of the lions and tigers of the other. Nor does it
seem certain that the insular colonies will not soon have to take care
of themselves, and to enter into the general system of independence
and free intercourse with their neighboring and natural friends. The
acknowledged depreciation of the paper circulation of England, with the
known laws of its rapid progression to bankruptcy, will leave that nation
shortly without revenue, and without the means of supporting the naval
power necessary to maintain dominion over the rights and interests of
different nations. The intention too, which they now formally avow, of
taking possession of the ocean as their exclusive domain, and of suffering
no commerce on it but through their ports, makes it the interest of
all mankind to contribute their efforts to bring such usurpations to an
end. We have hitherto been able to avoid professed war, and to continue
to our industry a more salutary direction. But the determination to
take all our vessels bound to any other than her ports, amounting to
all the war she can make (for we fear no invasion), it would be folly
in us to let that war be all on one side only, and to make no effort
towards indemnification and retaliation by reprisal. That a contest
thus forced on us by a nation a thousand leagues from us both, should
place your country and mine in relations of hostility, who have not a
single motive or interest but of mutual friendship and interchange of
comforts, shows the monstrous character of the system under which we
live. But however, in the event of war, greedy individuals on both sides,
availing themselves of its laws, may commit depredations on each other,
I trust that our quiet inhabitants, conscious that no cause exists but
for neighborly good will, and the furtherance of common interests, will
feel only those brotherly affections which nature has ordained to be
those of our situation.
A letter of thanks for a good book has thus run away from its subject
into fields of speculation into which discretion perhaps should have
forbidden me to enter, and for which an apology is due. I trust that
the reflections I hazard will be considered as no more than what they
really are, those of a private individual, withdrawn from the councils
of his country, uncommunicating with them, and responsible alone for any
errors of fact or opinion expressed; as the reveries, in short, of an
old man, who, looking beyond the present day, looks into times not his
own, and as evidences of confidence in the liberal mind of the person
to whom they are so freely addressed. Permit me, however, to add to them
my best wishes for his personal happiness, and assurances of the highest
consideration and respect.
TO MR. EPPES.
MONTICELLO, September 29, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--The enclosed letter came under cover to me without any
indication from what quarter it came.
Our latest arrival brings information of the death of the king of England.
Its coming from Ireland and not direct from England would make it little
worthy of notice, were not the event so probable. On the 26th of July the
English papers say he was expected hourly to expire. This vessel sailed
from Ireland the 4th of August, and says an express brought notice the
day before to the government that he died on the 1st; but whether on
that day or not, we may be certain he is dead, and entertain, therefore,
a hope that a change of ministers will produce that revocation of the
orders of council for which they stand so committed. In this event we
may still remain at peace, and that probably concluded between the other
powers. I am so far, in that case, from believing that our reputation
will be tarnished by our not having mixed in the mad contests of the rest
of the world that, setting aside the ravings of pepper-pot politicians,
of whom there are enough in every age and country, I believe it will
place us high in the scale of wisdom, to have preserved our country
tranquil and prosperous during a contest which prostrated the honor,
power, independence, laws and property of every country on the other
side of the Atlantic. Which of them have better preserved their honor?
Has Spain, has Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, Austria,
the other German powers, Sweden, Denmark, or even Russia? And would we
accept of the infamy of France or England in exchange for our honest
reputation, or of the result of their enormities, despotism to the
one, and bankruptcy and prostration to the other, in exchange for the
prosperity, the freedom and independence which we have preserved safely
through the wreck? The bottom of my page warns me it is time to present
my homage to Mrs. Eppes, and to yourself and Francis my affectionate
adieux.
TO MR. PAINE TODD.
MONTICELLO, October 10, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--According to promise I send you our observations of the solar
eclipse of September 17th. We had, you know, a perfect observation of
the passage of the sun over the meridian, and the eclipse began so soon
after as to leave little room for error from the time-piece. Her rate
of going, however, was ascertained by ten days' subsequent observation
and comparison with the sun, and the times, as I now give them to you,
are corrected by these. I have no confidence in the times of the first
and ultimate contacts, because you know we were not early enough on the
watch, deceived by our time-piece which was too slow. The impression on
the sun was too sensible when we first observed it, to be considered
as the moment of commencement, and the largeness of our conjectural
correction (18´´) shows that that part of the observation should be
considered as nothing. The last contact was well enough observed, but
it is on the forming and breaking of the annulus that I rely with entire
confidence. I am certain there was not an error of an instant of time in
either. I would be governed, therefore, solely by them, and not suffer
their result to be affected by the others. I have not yet entered on
the calculation of our longitude from them. They will enable you to do
it as a college exercise. Affectionately yours.
First contact, 0h. 13´ 54´´
Annulus formed, 1h. 53´ 0´´ }central time of }central time of
Annulus broken, 1h. 59´ 25´´}annulus, }the two contacts,
Ultimate contact, 3h. 29´ 2´´ 1h. 56´ 12½´ 1h. 51´ 28´´
Latitude of
Monticello, 38° 8´
TO DOCTOR 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 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°
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 recovered 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°, 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 arithmetic 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 2½ acres.
For measures of capacity, wet and dry,
The cubic Unit = .1 would be about .35 cubic feet, .28 bushels
dry, or ⅞ of a ton liquid.
Dime = .1 would be about 3.5 cubic feet, 2.8 bushels,
or about ⅞ of a barrel liquid.
Cent = .01 about 50 cubic inches, or ⅞ of a quart.
Mill = .001 = .5 of a cubic inch, or ⅔ 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 3½ oz. avoirdupois.
Centimmil = .00001 a little more than 6 dwt.
Millionth = .000001 about 15 grains.
Decimmillionth = .0000001 about 1½ 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 347¼ 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°
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° 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° 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.[1] 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° 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 equidistant
parallel to the south of 45°, suppose in 38° 29´. We might ask of them,
too, as they are in possession of the standards 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 Passamaquoddy,) 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° 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.
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°, 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°, 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°.
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.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] 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.
TO DOCTOR ROBERT PATTERSON.
MONTICELLO, November 10, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--I write this letter separate, because you may perhaps think
something in the other of the same date, worth communicating to the
committee.
I accept, willingly, Mr. Voigt's offer to make me a time-piece, and with
the kind of pendulum he proposes. I wish it to be as good as hands can
make it, in everything useful, but no unnecessary labor to be spent on
mere ornament. A plain but neat mahogany case will be preferred.
I have a curiosity to try the length of the pendulum vibrating seconds
here, and would wish Mr. Voigt to prepare one which could be substituted
for that of the clock occasionally, without requiring anything more than
unhanging the one and hanging the other in its place. The bob should be
spherical, of lead, and its radius, I presume, about one inch. As I should
not have the convenience of a room of uniform temperature, the suspending
rod should be such as not to be affected by heat or cold, nor yet so heavy
as to effect too sensibly the centre of oscillation. Would not a rod of
wood not larger than a large wire, answer this double view? I remember
Mr. Rittenhouse told me he had made experiments on some occasion, on the
expansibility of wood lengthwise by heat, which satisfied him it was as
good as the gridiron for a suspender of the bob. By the experiments on
the strength of wood and iron in supporting weights appended to them,
iron has been found but about six times as strong as wood, while its
specific gravity is eight times as great. Consequently, a rod of it of
equal strength, will weigh but three-fourths of one of iron, and disturb
the centre of oscillation less in proportion. A rod of wood of white oak,
e. g. not larger than a seine twine, would probably support a spherical
bob of lead of one inch radius. It might be worked down to that size
I suppose, by the cabinet-makers, who are in the practice of preparing
smaller threads of wood for inlaying. The difficulty would be in making
it fast to the bob at one end, and scapement at the other, so as to
regulate the length with ease and accuracy. This Mr. Voigt's ingenuity
can supply, and in all things I would submit the whole matter to your
direction to him, and be thankful to you to give it. Yours affectionately.
TO MR. H. A. S. DEARBORNE.
MONTICELLO, November 15, 1811.
SIR,--Your favor of October 14 was duly received, and with it Mr.
Bowditch's observations on the comet, for which I pray you to accept my
thanks, and be so good as to present them to Mr. Bowditch also. I am much
pleased to find that we have so able a person engaged in observing the
path of this great phenomenon; and hope that from his observations and
those of others of our philosophical citizens, on its orbit, we shall
have ascertained, on this side of the Atlantic, whether it be one of
those which have heretofore visited us. On the other side of the water
they have great advantages in their well-established observatories, the
magnificent instruments provided for them, and the leisure and information
of their scientific men. The acquirements of Mr. Bowditch in solitude
and unaided by these advantages, do him great honor.
With respect to the eclipse of September 17. I know of no observations
made in this State but my own, although I had no doubt that others had
observed it. I used myself an equatorial telescope, and was aided by a
friend who happened to be with me, and observed through an achromatic
telescope of Dollard's. Two others attended the time-pieces. I had a
perfect observation of the passage of the sun over the meridian, and the
eclipse commencing but a few minutes after, left little room for error
in our time. This little was corrected by the known rate of going of the
clock. But we as good as lost the first appulse by a want of sufficiently
early attention to be at our places, and composed. I have no confidence,
therefore, by several seconds, in the time noted. The last oscillation
of the two luminaries was better observed. Yet even there was a certain
term of uncertainty as to the precise moment at which the indenture on
the limb of the sun entirely vanished. It is therefore the forming of
the annulus, and its breaking, which alone possess my entire and complete
confidence. I am certain there was not an error of an instant of time in
the observation of either of them. Their result therefore should not be
suffered to be affected by either of the others. The four observations
were as follows:
The 1st. appulse, 0h. 13´ 54´´
Annulus formed, 1h. 53´ 0´´} central time of } central time of the
Annulus broken, 1h. 59´25´´} annulus } two contacts
Last oscillation, 3h. 29´ 2´´ 1h. 56´12½´´ 1h. 51´28´´
Latitude of Monticello, 38° 8´
I have thus given you, Sir, my observations, with a candid statement of
their imperfections. If they can be of any use to Mr. Bowditch, it will
be more than was in view when they were made; and should I hear of any
other observations made in this State, I shall not fail to procure and
send him a copy of them. Be so good as to present me affectionately to
your much-esteemed father, and to accept the tender of my respect.
TO MELATIAH NASH.
MONTICELLO, November 15, 1811.
SIR,--I duly received your letter of October 24 on the publication of
an Ephemeris. I have long thought it desirable that something of that
kind should be published in the United States, holding a middle station
between the nautical and the common popular almanacs. It would certainly
be acceptable to a numerous and respectable description of our fellow
citizens, who, without undertaking the higher astronomical operations,
for which the former is calculated, yet occasionally wish for information
beyond the scope of the common almanacs. What you propose to insert in
your Ephemeris is very well so far. But I think you might give it more
of the character desired by the addition of some other articles, which
would not enlarge it more than a leaf or two. For instance, the equation
of time is essential to the regulation of our clocks and watches, and
would only add a narrow column to your 2d page. The sun's declination
is often desirable, and would add but another narrow column to the same
page. This last would be the more useful as an element for obtaining the
rising and setting of the sun, in every part of the United States; for
your Ephemeris will, I suppose, give it only for a particular parallel,
as of New York, which would in a great measure restrain its circulation
to that parallel. But the sun's declination would enable every one to
calculate sunrise for himself, with scarcely more trouble than taking it
from an Almanac. If you would add at the end of the work a formula for
that calculation, as, for example, that for Delalande, § 1026, a little
altered. Thus, to the Logarithmic tangent of the latitude (a constant
number) add the Log. tangent of the sun's declination; taking 10 from
the Index, the remainder is the line of an arch which, turned into time
and added to 6 hours, gives sunrise for the winter half and sunset for
the summer half of the year, to which may be added 3 lines only from
the table of refractions, § 1028, or, to save even this trouble, and
give the calculation ready made for every parallel, print a table of
semi-diurnal arches, ranging the latitudes from 35° to 45° in a line
at top and the degrees of declination in a vertical line on the left,
and stating, in the line of the declination, the semi-diurnal arch for
each degree of latitude, so that every one knowing the latitude of his
place and the declination of the day, would find his sunrise or his
sunset where their horizontal and vertical lines meet. This table is
to be found in many astronomical books, as, for instance, in Wakeley's
Mariner's Compass Rectified, and more accurately in the Connoissance des
tems, for 1788. It would not occupy more than two pages at the end of
the work, and would render it an almanac for every part of the United
States.
To give novelty, and increase the appetite for continuing to buy your
Ephemeris annually, you might every year select some one or two useful
tables which many would wish to possess and preserve. These are to be
found in the requisite tables, the Connoissance des tems for different
years, and many in Pike's arithmetic.
I have given these hints because you requested my opinion. They may extend
the plan of your Ephemeris beyond your view, which will be sufficient
reason for not regarding them. In any event I shall willingly become a
subscriber to it, if you should have any place of deposit for them in
Virginia where the price can be paid. Accept the tender of my respects.
TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH.
POPLAR FOREST, December 5, 1811.
DEAR SIR,--While at Monticello I am so much engrossed by business or
society, that I can only write on matters of strong urgency. Here I have
leisure, as I have everywhere the disposition to think of my friends.
I recur, therefore, to the subject of your kind letters relating to Mr.
Adams and myself, which a late occurrence has again presented to me. I
communicated to you the correspondence which had parted Mrs. Adams and
myself, in proof that I could not give friendship in exchange for such
sentiments as she had recently taken up towards myself, and avowed and
maintained in her letters to me. Nothing but a total renunciation of
these could admit a reconciliation, and that could be cordial only in
proportion as the return to ancient opinions was believed sincere. In
these jaundiced sentiments of hers I had associated Mr. Adams, knowing
the weight which her opinions had with him, and notwithstanding she
declared in her letters that they were not communicated to him. A late
incident has satisfied me that I wronged him as well as her, in not
yielding entire confidence to this assurance on her part. Two of the Mr.
* * * * *, my neighbors and friends, took a tour to the northward during
the last summer. In Boston they fell into company with Mr. Adams, and
by his invitation passed a day with him at Braintree. He spoke out to
them everything which came uppermost, and as it occurred to his mind,
without any reserve; and seemed most disposed to dwell on those things
which happened during his own administration. He spoke of his _masters_,
as he called his Heads of departments, as acting above his control,
and often against his opinions. Among many other topics, he adverted to
the unprincipled licentiousness of the press against myself, adding, "I
always loved Jefferson, and still love him."
This is enough for me. I only needed this knowledge to revive towards him
all the affections of the most cordial moments of our lives. Changing a
single word only in Dr. Franklin's character of him, I knew him to be
always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes incorrect and
precipitate in his judgments; and it is known to those who have ever
heard me speak of Mr. Adams, that I have ever done him justice myself,
and defended him when assailed by others, with the single exception as
to political opinions. But with a man possessing so many other estimable
qualities, why should we be dissocialized by mere differences of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy, or anything else. His opinions
are as honestly formed as my own. Our different views of the same subject
are the result of a difference in our organization and experience. I
never withdrew from the society of any man on this account, although
many have done it from me; much less should I do it from one with whom
I had gone through, with hand and heart, so many trying scenes. I wish,
therefore, but for an apposite occasion to express to Mr. Adams my
unchanged affections for him. There is an awkwardness which hangs over
the resuming a correspondence so long discontinued, unless something
could arise which should call for a letter. Time and chance may perhaps
generate such an occasion, of which I shall not be wanting in promptitude
to avail myself. From this fusion of mutual affections, Mrs. Adams is
of course separated. It will only be necessary that I never name her.
In your letters to Mr. Adams, you can, perhaps, suggest my continued
cordiality towards him, and knowing this, should an occasion of writing
first present itself to him, he will perhaps avail himself of it, as I
certainly will, should it first occur to me. No ground for jealousy now
existing, he will certainly give fair play to the natural warmth of his
heart. Perhaps I may open the way in some letter to my old friend Gerry,
who I know is in habits of the greatest intimacy with him.
I have thus, my friend, laid open my heart to you, because you were so
kind as to take an interest in healing again revolutionary affections,
which have ceased in expression only, but not in their existence. God
ever bless you, and preserve you in life and health.
TO DOCTOR CRAWFORD.
MONTICELLO, January 2, 1812.
SIR,--Your favor of December 17th, has been duly received, and with
it the pamphlet on the cause, seat and cure of diseases, for which be
pleased to accept my thanks. The commencement which you propose by the
natural history of the diseases of the human body, is a very interesting
one, and will certainly be the best foundation for whatever relates to
their cure. While surgery is seated in the temple of the exact sciences,
medicine has scarcely entered its threshold. Her theories have passed in
such rapid succession as to prove the insufficiency of all, and their
fatal errors are recorded in the necrology of man. For some forms of
disease, well known and well defined, she has found substances which will
restore order to the human system, and it is to be hoped that observation
and experience will add to their number. But a great mass of diseases
remain undistinguished and unknown, exposed to the random shot of the
theory of the day. If on this chaos you can throw such a beam of light
as your celebrated brother has done on the sources of animal heat, you
will, like him, render great service to mankind.
The fate of England, I think with you, is nearly decided, and the
present form of her existence is drawing to a close. The ground, the
houses, the men will remain; but in what new form they will revive and
stand among nations, is beyond the reach of human foresight. We hope
it may be one of which the predatory principle may not be the essential
characteristic. If her transformation shall replace her under the laws
of moral order, it is for the general interest that she should still be
a sensible and independent weight in the scale of nations, and be able
to contribute, when a favorable moment presents itself, to reduce under
the same order, her great rival in flagitiousness. We especially ought to
pray that the powers of Europe may be so poised and counterpoised among
themselves, that their own safety may require the presence of all their
force at home, leaving the other quarters of the globe in undisturbed
tranquillity. When our strength will permit us to give the law of our
hemisphere, it should be that the meridian of the mid-Atlantic should
be the line of demarkation between war and peace, on this side of which
no act of hostility should be committed, and the lion and the lamb lie
down in peace together.
I am particularly thankful for the kind expressions of your letter towards
myself, and tender you in return my best wishes and the assurances of
my great respect and esteem.
TO MR. THOMAS PULLY.
MONTICELLO, January 8, 1812.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of December 22d, informing me
that the society of artists of the United States had made me an honorary
member of their society. I am very justly sensible of the honor they have
done me, and I pray you to return them my thanks for this mark of their
distinction. I fear that I can be but a very useless associate. Time,
which withers the fancy, as the other faculties of the mind and body,
presses on me with a heavy hand, and distance intercepts all personal
intercourse. I can offer, therefore, but my zealous good wishes for the
success of the institution, and that, embellishing with taste a country
already overflowing with the useful productions, it may be able to give an
innocent and pleasing direction to accumulations of wealth, which would
otherwise be employed in the nourishment of coarse and vicious habits.
With these I tender to the society and to yourself the assurances of my
high respect and consideration.
TO COLONEL MONROE.
MONTICELLO, January 11, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your letter of the 6th. It is a proof of your
friendship, and of the sincere interest you take in whatever concerns
me. Of this I have never had a moment's doubt, and have ever valued it
as a precious treasure. The question indeed whether I knew or approved
of General Wilkinson's endeavors to prevent the restoration of the
right of deposit at New Orleans, could never require a second of time
to answer. But it requires some time for the mind to recover from the
astonishment excited by the boldness of the suggestion. Indeed, it is
with difficulty I can believe he has really made such an appeal; and
the rather as the expression in your letter is that you have "casually
heard it," without stating the degree of reliance which you have in the
source of information. I think his understanding is above an expedient
so momentary and so finally overwhelming. Were Dearborne and myself dead,
it might find credit with some. But the world at large, even then, would
weigh for themselves the dilemma, whether it was more probable that, in
the situation I then was, clothed with the confidence and power of my
country, I should descend to so unmeaning an act of treason, or that he,
in the wreck now threatening him, should wildly lay hold of any plank.
They would weigh his motives and views against those of Dearborne and
myself, the tenor of his life against that of ours, his Spanish mysteries
against my open cherishment of the Western interests; and, living as we
are, and ready to purge ourselves by any ordeal, they must now weigh, in
addition, our testimony against his. All this makes me believe he will
never seek this refuge. I have ever and carefully restrained myself from
the expression of any opinion respecting General Wilkinson, except in
the case of Burr's conspiracy, wherein, after he had got over his first
agitations, we believed his decision firm, and his conduct zealous for
the defeat of the conspiracy, and although injudicious, yet meriting,
from sound intentions, the support of the nation. As to the rest of his
life, I have left it to his friends and his enemies, to whom it furnishes
matter enough for disputation. I classed myself with neither, and least
of all in this time of his distresses, should I be disposed to add to
their pressure. I hope, therefore, he has not been so imprudent as to
write our names in the pannel of his witnesses.
Accept the assurances of my constant affections.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, January 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 middling 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 middling stuffs for its own clothing and
household use. We consider a sheep for every person in the family as
sufficient to clothe it, in addition to the cotton, hemp and flax which
we raise ourselves. For fine stuff we shall depend on your northern
manufactories. 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 its 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
authorize. 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, 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 preëminence
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 Independence, I see now living not more than half a dozen
on your side of the Potomac, 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 three or four
hours of every day; visit three or four times a year a possession I
have ninety miles distant, 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 grand children, 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 its physical
decline, the same distance ahead of me which you have done in political
honors and achievements. 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
affection and respect.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR BARBOUR.
MONTICELLO, January 22, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 14th has been duly received, and I sincerely
congratulate you, or rather my country, on the just testimony of
confidence which it has lately manifested to you. In your hands I know
that its affairs will be ably and honestly administered.
In answer to your inquiry whether, in the early times of our government,
where the council was divided, the practice was for the Governor to give
the deciding vote? I must observe that, correctly speaking, the Governor
not being a counsellor, his vote could make no part of an advice of
council. That would be to place an advice on their journals which they
did not give, and could not give because of their equal division. But
he did what was equivalent in effect. While I was in the administration,
no doubt was ever suggested that where the council, divided in opinion,
could give no advice, the Governor was free and bound to act on his
own opinion and his own responsibility. Had this been a change of the
practice of my predecessor, Mr. Henry, the first governor, it would have
produced some discussion, which it never did. Hence, I conclude it was
the opinion and practice from the first institution of the government.
During Arnold's and Cornwallis' invasion, the council dispersed to their
several homes, to take care of their families. Before their separation,
I obtained from them a capitulary of standing advices for my government
in such cases as ordinarily occur: such as the appointment of militia
officers, justices, inspectors, &c., on the recommendations of the
courts; but in the numerous and extraordinary occurrences of an invasion,
which could not be foreseen, I had to act on my own judgment and my
own responsibility. The vote of general approbation, at the session
of the succeeding winter, manifested the opinion of the Legislature,
that my proceedings had been correct. General Nelson, my successor,
staid mostly, I think, with the army; and I do not believe his council
followed the camp, although my memory does not enable me to affirm the
fact. Some petitions against him for impressment of property without
authority of law, brought his proceedings before the next Legislature;
the questions necessarily involved were whether necessity, without
express law, could justify the impressment, and if it could, whether he
could order it without the advice of council. The approbation of the
Legislature amounted to a decision of both questions. I remember this
case the more especially, because I was then a member of the Legislature,
and was one of those who supported the Governor's proceedings, and I
think there was no division of the House on the question. I believe the
doubt was first suggested in Governor Harrison's time, by some member of
the council, on an equal division. Harrison, in his dry way, observed
that instead of one governor and eight counsellors, there would then
be eight governors and one counsellor, and continued, as I understood,
the practice of his predecessors. Indeed, it is difficult to suppose it
could be the intention of those who framed the constitution, that when
the council should be divided the government should stand still; and
the more difficult as to a constitution formed during a war, and for
the purpose of carrying on that war, that so high an officer as their
Governor should be created and salaried, merely to act as the clerk and
authenticator of the votes of the council. No doubt it was intended that
the advice of the council should control the governor. But the action of
the controlling power being withdrawn, his would be left free to proceed
on its own responsibility. Where from division, absence, sickness or
other obstacle, no advice could be given, they could not mean that their
Governor, the person of their peculiar choice and confidence, should stand
by, an inactive spectator, and let their government tumble to pieces for
want of a will to direct it. In executive cases, where promptitude and
decision are all important, an adherence to the letter of a law against
its probable intentions, (for every law must intend that itself shall be
executed,) would be fraught with incalculable danger. Judges may await
further legislative explanations, but a delay of executive action might
produce irretrievable ruin. The State is invaded, militia to be called
out, an army marched, arms and provisions to be issued from the public
magazines, the Legislature to be convened, and the council is divided.
Can it be believed to have been the intention of the framers of the
constitution, that the constitution itself and their constituents with
it should be destroyed for want of a will to direct the resources they
had provided for its preservation? Before such possible consequences
all verbal scruples must vanish; construction must be made _secundum
arbitrium boni viri_, and the constitution be rendered a practicable
thing. That exposition of it must be vicious, which would leave the
nation under the most dangerous emergencies without a directing will.
The cautious maxims of the bench, to seek the will of the legislator and
his words only, are proper and safer for judicial government. They act
ever on an individual case only, the evil of which is partial, and gives
time for correction. But an instant of delay in executive proceedings
may be fatal to the whole nation. They must not, therefore, be laced up
in the rules of the judiciary department. They must seek the intention
of the legislator in all the circumstances which may indicate it in the
history of the day, in the public discussions, in the general opinion and
understanding, in reason and in practice. The three great departments
having distinct functions to perform, must have distinct rules adapted
to them. Each must act under its own rules, those of no one having
any obligation on either of the others. When the opinion first begun
that a governor could not act when his council could not or would not
advise, I am uninformed. Probably not till after the war; for, had it
prevailed then, no militia could have been opposed to Cornwallis, nor
necessaries furnished to the opposing army of Lafayette. These, Sir, are
my recollections and thoughts on the subject of your inquiry, to which
I will only add the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO BENJAMIN GALLOWAY, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 2, 1812.
SIR,--I duly received your favor of the 1st inst., together with the
volume accompanying it, for which I pray you to accept my thanks, and
to be so kind as to convey them to Mrs. Debutts also, to whose obliging
care I am indebted for its transmission. But especially my thanks are
due to the author himself for the honorable mention he has made of me.
With the exception of two or three characters of greater eminence in the
revolution, we formed a group of fellow laborers in the common cause,
animated by a common zeal, and claiming no distinction of one over
another.
The spirit of freedom, breathed through the whole of Mr. Northmore's
composition, is really worthy of the purest times of Greece and Rome. It
would have been received in England, in the days of Hampden and Sidney,
with more favor than at this time. It marks a high and independent mind
in the author, one capable of rising above the partialities of country,
to have seen in the adversary cause that of justice and freedom, and to
have estimated fairly the motives and actions of those engaged in its
support. I hope and firmly believe that the whole world will, sooner
later, feel benefit from the issue of our assertion of the rights of man.
Although the horrors of the French revolution have damped for awhile the
ardor of the patriots in every country, yet it is not extinguished--it
will never die. The sense of right has been excited in every breast, and
the spark will be rekindled by the very oppressions of that detestable
tyranny employed to quench it. The errors of the honest patriots of
France, and the crimes of her Dantons and Robespierres, will be forgotten
in the more encouraging contemplation of our sober example, and steady
march to our object. Hope will strengthen the presumption that what has
been done once may be done again. As you have been the channel of my
receiving this mark of attention from Mr. Northmore, I must pray you
to be that of conveying to him my thanks, and an assurance of the high
sense I have of the merit of his work, and of its tendency to cherish
the noblest virtues of the human character.
On the political events of the day I have nothing to communicate. I have
retired from them, and given up newspapers for more classical reading.
I add, therefore, only the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO MR. EZRA SARGEANT.
MONTICELLO, February 3, 1812.
SIR,--Observing that you edit the Edinburgh Review, reprinted in New
York, and presuming that your occupations in that line are not confined
to that single work, I take the liberty of addressing the present letter
to you. If I am mistaken, the obviousness of the inference will be my
apology. Mr. Edward Livingston brought an action against me for having
removed his intrusion on the beach of the river Mississippi opposite
to New Orleans. At the request of my counsel I made a statement of the
facts of the case, and of the law applicable to them, so as to form a
full argument of justification. The case has been dismissed from court
for want of jurisdiction, and the public remain uninformed whether I
had really abused the powers entrusted to me, as he alleged. I wish
to convey to them this information by publishing the justification.
The questions arising in the case are mostly under the civil law, the
laws of Spain and of France, which are of course couched in French, in
Spanish, in Latin, and some in Greek; and the books being in few hands
in this country, I was obliged to make very long extracts from them. The
correctness with which your edition of the Edinburgh Review is printed,
and of the passages quoted in those languages, induces me to propose to
you the publication of the case I speak of. It will fill about 65 or 70
pages of the type and size of paper of the Edinburgh Review. The MS. is
in the handwriting of this letter, entirely fair and correct. It will
take between four and five sheets of paper, of sixteen pages each. I
should want 250 copies struck off for myself, intended principally for
the members of Congress, and the printer would be at liberty to print
as many more as he pleased for sale, but without any copyright, which
I should not propose to have taken out. It is right that I should add,
that the work is not at all for popular reading. It is merely a law
argument, and a very dry one; having been intended merely for the eye of
my counsel. It may be in some demand perhaps with lawyers, and persons
engaged in the public affairs, but very little beyond that. Will you
be so good as to inform me if you will undertake to edit this, and what
would be the terms on which you can furnish me with 250 copies? I should
want it to be done with as little delay as possible, so that Congress
might receive it before they separate; and I should add as a condition,
that not a copy should be sold until I could receive my number, and have
time to lay them on the desks of the members. This would require a month
from the time they should leave New York by the stage. In hopes of an
early answer I tender you the assurances of my respect.
MONTICELLO, February 14, 1812.
Thomas Jefferson presents his compliments to Dr. Wheaton, and his thanks
for the address he was so kind as to enclose him on the advancement in
Medicine. Having little confidence in the theories of that art, which
change in their fashion with the ladies' caps and gowns, he has much in
the facts it has established by observation. The experience of physicians
has proved that in certain forms of disease, certain substances will
restore order to the human system; and he doubts not that continued
observation will enlarge the catalogue, and give relief to our posterity
in cases wherein we are without it. The extirpation of the small pox
by vaccination, is an encouraging proof that the condition of man is
susceptible of amelioration, although we are not able to fix its extent.
He salutes Dr. Wheaton with esteem and respect.
TO MR. CHARLES CHRISTIAN.
MONTICELLO, March 21, 1812.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of the 10th inst. proposing to
me to join in a contribution for the support of the family of the late
Mr. Cheetham of New York. Private charities, as well as contributions
to public purposes in proportion to every one's circumstances, are
certainly among the duties we owe to society, and I have never felt a
wish to withdraw from my portion of them. The general relation in which
I, some time since, stood to the citizens of all our States, drew on me
such multitudes of these applications as exceeded all resource. Nor have
they much abated since my retirement to the limited duties of a private
citizen, and the more limited resources of a private fortune. They have
obliged me to lay down as a law of conduct for myself, to restrain my
contributions for public institutions to the circle of my own State,
and for private charities to that which is under my own observation;
and these calls I find more than sufficient for everything I can spare.
Nor was there anything in the case of the late Mr. Cheetham, which could
claim with me to be taken out of a general rule. On these considerations
I must decline the contribution you propose, not doubting that the
efforts of the family, aided by those who stand in the relation to them
of neighbors and friends, in so great a mart for industry as they are
placed in, will save them from all danger of want or suffering. With
this apology for returning the paper sent me, unsubscribed, be pleased
to accept the tender of my respect.
TO MR. VANDER KEMP.
MONTICELLO, March 22, 1812.
SIR,--I am indebted to you for the communication of the prospectus of
a work embracing the history of civilized man, political and moral,
from the great change produced in his condition by the extension of
the feudal system over Europe through all the successive effects of the
revival of letters, the invention of printing, that of the compass, the
enlargement of science, and the revolutionary spirit, religious and civil,
generated by that. It presents a vast anatomy of fact and reflection,
which if duly filled up would offer to the human mind a wonderful mass
for contemplation.
Your letter does not ascertain whether this work is already executed,
or only meditated; but it excites a great desire to see it completed,
and a confidence that the author of the analysis is best able to develop
the profound views there only sketched. It would be a library in itself,
and to our country particularly desirable and valuable, if executed in
the genuine republican principles of our constitution. The only orthodox
object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest
degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated
under it. The events which this work proposes to embrace will establish
the fact that unless the mass retains sufficient control over those
intrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted
to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in
the individuals and their families selected for the trust. Whether our
constitution has hit on the exact degree of control necessary, is yet
under experiment; and it is a most encouraging reflection that distance
and other difficulties securing us against the brigand governments of
Europe, in the safe enjoyment of our farms and firesides, the experiment
stands a better chance of being satisfactorily made here than on any
occasion yet presented by history. To promote, therefore, unanimity and
perseverance in this great enterprise, to disdain despair, encourage
trial, and nourish hope, are the worthiest objects of every political
and philanthropic work; and that this would be the necessary result
of that which you have delineated, the facts it will review, and the
just reflections arising out of them, will sufficiently answer. I hope,
therefore, that it is not _in petto_ merely, but already completed; and
that my fellow citizens, warned in it of the rocks and shoals on which
other political associations have been wrecked, will be able to direct
theirs with a better knowledge of the dangers in its way.
The enlargement of your observations on the subjects of natural history,
alluded to in your letter, cannot fail to add to our lights respecting
them, and will therefore ever be a welcome present to every friend of
science. Accept, I pray you, the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO THE HONORABLE MR. NELSON.
MONTICELLO, April 2d, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of March 22d has been duly received. By this time
a printed copy of my MS. respecting the Batture has I hope been laid
on your desk, by which you will perceive that the MS. itself has been
received long enough to have been sent to New York, printed and returned
to Washington.
On the subject of the omission of the officers of the Virginia State
line, in the provisions and reservations of the cession of Congress,
my memory enables me to say nothing more than that it was not through
inattention, as I believe, but the result of compromise. But of this
the President, who was in Congress when the arrangement was settled, can
give the best account. I had nothing to do but execute a deed according
to that arrangement, made previous to my being a member. Colonel Monroe
being a member with me, is more likely to remember what passed at that
time; but the best resource for explanation of everything we did, is in
our weekly correspondence with the Governor of Virginia, which I suppose
is still among the Executive records. We made it a point to write a
letter to him every week, either jointly, or individually by turns.
You request me to state the public sentiment of our part of the country
as to war and the taxes. You know I do not go out much. My own house
and our court yard are the only places where I see my fellow citizens.
As far as I can judge in this limited sphere, I think all regret that
there is cause for war, but all consider it as now necessary, and would,
I think, disapprove of a much longer delay of the declaration of it.
As to the taxes, they expect to meet them, would be unwilling to have
them postponed, and are only dissatisfied with some of the subjects of
taxation; that is to say the stamp tax and excise. To the former I have
not seen a man who is not totally irreconcilable. If the latter could be
collected from those who buy to sell again, so as to prevent domiciliary
visits by the officers, I think it would be acceptable, and I am sure a
wholesome tax. I am persuaded the Secretary of the Treasury is mistaken
in supposing so immense a deduction from the duties on imports. We shall
make little less to sell than we do now, for no one will let his hands
be idle; and consequently we shall export not much less, and expect
returns. Some part will be taken on the export and some on the import.
But taking into account the advance of prices, that revenue will not
fall so far short as he thinks; and I have no doubt might be counted
on to make good the entire suppression of the stamp tax. Yet, although
a very disgusting pill, I think there can be no question the people
will swallow it, if their representatives determine on it. I get their
sentiments mostly from those who are most in the habit of intercourse
with the people than I am myself. Accept the assurance of my great esteem
and respect.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, April 17, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--The enclosed papers will explain themselves. Their coming to
me is the only thing not sufficiently explained.
Your favor of the 3d came duly to hand. Although something of the kind
had been apprehended, the embargo found the farmers and planters only
getting their produce to market, and selling as fast as they could get it
there. I think it caught them in this part of the State with one-third of
their flour or wheat and three-quarters of their tobacco undisposed of.
If we may suppose the rest of the middle country in the same situation,
and that the upper and lower country may be judged by that as a mean,
these will perhaps be the proportions of produce remaining in the hands
of the producers. Supposing the objects of the government were merely to
keep our vessels and men out of harm's way, and that there is no idea
that the want of our flour will starve Great Britain, the sale of the
remaining produce will be rather desirable, and what would be desired
even in war, and even to our enemies. For I am favorable to the opinion
which has been urged by others, sometimes acted on, and now partly so by
France and Great Britain, that commerce, under certain restrictions and
licenses, may be indulged between enemies mutually advantageous to the
individuals, and not to their injury as belligerents. The capitulation
of Amelia Island, if confirmed, might favor this object, and at any rate
get off our produce now on hand. I think a people would go through a
war with much less impatience if they could dispose of their produce,
and that unless a vent can be provided for them, they will soon become
querulous and clamor for peace. They appear at present to receive the
embargo with perfect acquiescence and without a murmur, seeing the
necessity of taking care of our vessels and seamen. Yet they would be
glad to dispose of their produce in any way not endangering them, as by
letting it go from a neutral place in British vessels. In this way we
lose the carriage only; but better that than both carriage and cargo.
The rising of the price of flour, since the first panic is passed away,
indicates some prospects in the merchants of disposing of it. Our wheat
had greatly suffered by the winter, but is as remarkably recovered by
the favorable weather of the spring. Ever affectionately yours.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, April 20, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--I have it now in my power to send you a piece of homespun in
return for that I received from you. Not of the fine texture, or delicate
character of yours, or, to drop our metaphor, not filled as that was
with that display of imagination which constitutes excellence in Belles
Lettres, but a mere sober, dry and formal piece of logic. _Ornari res
ipsa negat._ Yet you may have enough left of your old taste for law
reading, to cast an eye over some of the questions it discusses. At any
rate, accept it as the offering of esteem and friendship.
You wish to know something of the Richmond and Wabash prophets. Of Nimrod
Hews I never heard before. Christopher Macpherson I have known for twenty
years. He is a man of color, brought up as a book-keeper by a merchant,
his master, and afterwards enfranchized. He had understanding enough to
post up his ledger from his journal, but not enough to bear up against
hypochondriac affections, and the gloomy forebodings they inspire. He
became crazy, foggy, his head always in the clouds, and rhapsodizing
what neither himself nor any one else could understand. I think he told
me he had visited you personally while you were in the administration,
and wrote you letters, which you have probably forgotten in the mass
of the correspondences of that crazy class, of whose complaints, and
terrors, and mysticisms, the several Presidents have been the regular
depositories. Macpherson was too honest to be molested by anybody, and
too inoffensive to be a subject for the mad-house; although, I believe,
we are told in the old book, that "every man that is mad, and maketh
himself a prophet, thou shouldst put him in prison and in the stocks."
The Wabash prophet is a very different character, more rogue than fool,
if to be a rogue is not the greatest of all follies. He arose to notice
while I was in the administration, and became, of course, a proper subject
of inquiry for me. The inquiry was made with diligence. His declared
object was the reformation of his red brethren, and their return to their
pristine manner of living. He pretended to be in constant communication
with the Great Spirit; that he was instructed by him to make known to
the Indians that they were created by him distinct from the whites, of
different natures, for different purposes, and placed under different
circumstances, adapted to their nature and destinies; that they must
return from all the ways of the whites to the habits and opinions of
their forefathers; they must not eat the flesh of hogs, of bullocks,
of sheep, &c., the deer and buffalo having been created for their food;
they must not make bread of wheat but of Indian corn; they must not wear
linen nor woollen, but dress like their fathers in the skins and furs
of animals; they must not drink ardent spirits, and I do not remember
whether he extended his inhibitions to the gun and gunpowder, in favor of
the bow and arrow. I concluded from all this, that he was a visionary,
enveloped in the clouds of their antiquities, and vainly endeavoring to
lead back his brethren to the fancied beatitudes of their golden age. I
thought there was little danger of his making many proselytes from the
habits and comfort they had learned from the whites, to the hardships
and privations of savagism, and no great harm if he did. We let him go
on, therefore, unmolested. But his followers increased till the English
thought him worth corruption and found him corruptible. I suppose his
views were then changed; but his proceedings in consequence of them were
after I left the administration, and are, therefore, unknown to me; nor
have I ever been informed what were the particular acts on his part,
which produced an actual commencement of hostilities on ours. I have
no doubt, however, that his subsequent proceedings are but a chapter
apart, like that of Henry and Lord Liverpool, in the book of the kings
of England.
Of this mission of Henry, your son had got wind in the time of the
embargo, and communicated it to me. But he had learned nothing of the
particular agent, although, of his workings, the information he had
obtained appears now to have been correct. He stated a particular which
Henry has not distinctly brought forward, which was that the Eastern
States were not to be required to make a formal act of separation from
the Union, and to take a part in the war against it; a measure deemed
much too strong for their people; but to declare themselves in a state of
neutrality, in consideration of which they were to have peace and free
commerce, the lure most likely to insure popular acquiescence. Having
no indications of Henry as the intermediate in this negotiation of the
Essex junto, suspicions fell on Pickering, and his nephew Williams, in
London. If he was wronged in this, the ground of the suspicion is to
be found in his known practices and avowed opinions, as that of his
accomplices in the sameness of sentiment and of language with Henry,
and subsequently by the fluttering of the wounded pigeons.
This letter, with what it encloses, has given you enough, I presume, of
law and the prophets. I will only add to it, therefore, the homage of my
respects to Mrs. Adams, and to yourself the assurances of affectionate
esteem and respect.
TO JAMES MAURY.
MONTICELLO, April 25, 1812.
MY DEAR AND ANCIENT FRIEND AND CLASSMATE,--Often has my heart smote me
for delaying acknowledgments to you, receiving, as I do, such frequent
proofs of your kind recollection in the transmission of papers to me. But
instead of acting on the good old maxim of not putting off to to-morrow
what we can do to-day, we are too apt to reverse it, and not to do to-day
what we can put off to-morrow. But this duty can be no longer put off.
To-day we are at peace; to-morrow, war. The curtain of separation is
drawing between us, and probably will not be withdrawn till one, if not
both of us, will be at rest with our fathers. Let me now, then, while
I may, renew to you the declarations of my warm attachment, which in no
period of life has ever been weakened, and seems to become stronger as
the remaining objects of our youthful affections are fewer.
Our two countries are to be at war, but not you and I. And why should
our two countries be at war, when by peace we can be so much more useful
to one another? Surely the world will acquit our government from having
sought it. Never before has there been an instance of a nation's bearing
so much as we have borne. Two items alone in our catalogue of wrongs
will forever acquit us of being the aggressors: the impressment of our
seamen, and the excluding us from the ocean. The first foundations of
the social compact would be broken up, were we definitively to refuse
to its members the protection of their persons and property, while in
their lawful pursuits. I think the war will not be short, because the
object of England, long obvious, is to claim the ocean as her domain,
and to exact transit duties from every vessel traversing it. This is
the sum of her orders of council, which were only a step in this bold
experiment, never meant to be retracted if it could be permanently
maintained. And this object must continue her in war with all the world.
To this I see no termination, until her exaggerated efforts, so much
beyond her natural strength and resources, shall have exhausted her
to bankruptcy. The approach of this crisis is, I think, visible in the
departure of her precious metals, and depreciation of her paper medium.
We, who have gone through that operation, know its symptoms, its course,
and consequences. In England they will be more serious than elsewhere,
because half the wealth of her people is now in that medium, the private
revenue of her money-holders, or rather of her paper-holders, being,
I believe, greater than that of her land-holders. Such a proportion of
property, imaginary and baseless as it is, cannot be reduced to vapor
but with great explosion. She will rise out of its ruins, however,
because her lands, her houses, her arts will remain, and the greater
part of her men. And these will give her again that place among nations
which is proportioned to her natural means, and which we all wish her
to hold. We believe that the just standing of all nations is the health
and security of all. We consider the overwhelming power of England on
the ocean, and of France on the land, as destructive of the prosperity
and happiness of the world, and wish both to be reduced only to the
necessity of observing moral duties. We believe no more in Bonaparte's
fighting merely for the liberty of the seas, than in Great Britain's
fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object of both is the same,
to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other
nations. We resist the enterprises of England first, because they first
come vitally home to us. And our feelings repel the logic of bearing the
lash of George the III. for fear of that of Bonaparte at some future
day. When the wrongs of France shall reach us with equal effect, we
shall resist them also. But one at a time is enough; and having offered
a choice to the champions, England first takes up the gauntlet.
The English newspapers suppose me the personal enemy of their nation. I
am not so. I am an enemy to its injuries, as I am to those of France.
If I could permit myself to have national partialities, and if the
conduct of England would have permitted them to be directed towards
her, they would have been so. I thought that in the administration of
Mr. Addington, I discovered some dispositions toward justice, and even
friendship and respect for us, and began to pave the way for cherishing
these dispositions, and improving them into ties of mutual good will.
But we had then a federal minister there, whose dispositions to believe
himself, and to inspire others with a belief in our sincerity, his
subsequent conduct has brought into doubt; and poor Merry, the English
minister here, had learned nothing of diplomacy but its suspicions,
without head enough to distinguish when they were misplaced. Mr. Addington
and Mr. Fox passed away too soon to avail the two countries of their
dispositions. Had I been personally hostile to England, and biased in
favor of either the character or views of her great antagonist, the
affair of the Chesapeake put war into my hand. I had only to open it
and let havoc loose. But if ever I was gratified with the possession of
power, and of the confidence of those who had entrusted me with it, it
was on that occasion when I was enabled to use both for the prevention
of war, towards which the torrent of passion here was directed almost
irresistibly, and when not another person in the United States, less
supported by authority and favor, could have resisted it. And now that a
definitive adherence to her impressments and orders of council renders
war no longer avoidable, my earnest prayer is that our government may
enter into no compact of common cause with the other belligerent, but
keep us free to make a separate peace, whenever England will separately
give us peace and future security. But Lord Liverpool is our witness
that this can never be but by her removal from our neighborhood.
I have thus, for a moment, taken a range into the field of politics,
to possess you with the view we take of things here. But in the scenes
which are to ensue, I am to be but a spectator. I have withdrawn myself
from all political intermeddlings, to indulge the evening of my life
with what have been the passions of every portion of it, books, science,
my farms, my family and friends. To these every hour of the day is now
devoted. I retain a good activity of mind, not quite as much of body,
but uninterrupted health. Still the hand of age is upon me. All my old
friends are nearly gone. Of those in my neighborhood, Mr. Divers and Mr.
Lindsay alone remain. If you could make it a partie quarrée, it would
be a comfort indeed. We would beguile our lingering hours with talking
over our youthful exploits, our hunts on Peter's mountain, with a long
train of _et cetera_, in addition, and feel, by recollection at least, a
momentary flash of youth. Reviewing the course of a long and sufficiently
successful life, I find in no portion of it happier moments than those
were. I think the old hulk in which you are, is near her wreck, and that
like a prudent rat, you should escape in time. However, here, there, and
everywhere, in peace or in war, you will have my sincere affections and
prayers for your life, health and happiness.
TO MR. RODMAN.
MONTICELLO, April 25, 1812.
Thomas Jefferson presents his complements to Mr. Rodman, and his thanks
for the translation of Montgalliard's work which he has been so kind
as to send him. It certainly presents some new and true views of the
situation of England. It is a subject of deep regret to see a great
nation reduced from an unexampled height of prosperity to an abyss of
ruin, by the long-continued rule of a single chief. All we ought to wish
as to both belligerent parties is to see them forced to disgorge what
their ravenous appetites have taken from others, and reduced to the
necessity of observing moral duties in future. If we read with regret
what concerns England, the fulsome adulation of the author towards his
own chief excites nausea and disgust at the state of degradation to
which the mind of man is reduced by subjection to the inordinate power
of another. He salutes Mr. Rodman with great respect.
TO MR. JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
MONTICELLO, May 24, 1812.
SIR,--Your letter of March 14th lingered much on the road, and a long
journey before I could answer it, has delayed its acknowledgment till
now. I am sorry your enterprise for establishing a factory on the
Columbia river, and a commerce through the line of that river and the
Missouri, should meet with the difficulties stated in your letter.
I remember well having invited your proposition on that subject, and
encouraged it with the assurance of every facility and protection which
the government could properly afford. I considered as a great public
acquisition the commencement of a settlement on that point of the Western
coast of America, and looked forward with gratification to the time
when its descendants should have spread themselves through the whole
length of that coast, covering it with free and independent Americans,
unconnected with us but by the ties of blood and interest, and employing
like us the rights of self-government. I hope the obstacles you state
are not insurmountable; that they will not endanger, or even delay the
accomplishment of so great a public purpose. In the present state of
affairs between Great Britain and us, the government is justly jealous of
contraventions of those commercial restrictions which have been deemed
necessary to exclude the use of British manufactures in these States,
and to promote the establishment of similar ones among ourselves. The
interests too of the revenue require particular watchfulness. But in
the non-importation of British manufactures, and the revenue raised on
foreign goods, the legislature could only have in view the consumption
of our own citizens, and the revenue to be levied on that. We certainly
did not mean to interfere with the consumption of nations foreign to us,
as the Indians of the Columbia and Missouri are, or to assume a right
of levying an impost on that consumption; and if the words of the laws
take in their supplies in either view, it was probably unintentional, and
because their case not being under the contemplation of the legislature,
has been inadvertently embraced by it. The question with them would be
not what manufactures these nations should use, or what taxes they should
pay us on them, but whether we should give a transit for them through
our country. We have a right to say we will not let the British exercise
that transit. But it is our interest as well as a neighborly duty to
allow it when exercised by our own citizens only. To guard against any
surreptitious introduction of British influence among those nations,
we may justifiably require that no Englishman be permitted to go with
the trading parties, and necessary precautions should also be taken to
prevent this covering the contravention of our own laws and views. But
these once securely guarded, our interest would permit the transit free
of duty. And I do presume that if the subject were fully presented to
the legislature, they would provide that the laws intended to guard our
own concerns only, should not assume the regulation of those of foreign
and independent nations; still less that they should stand in the way
of so interesting an object as that of planting the germ of an American
population on the shores of the Pacific. From meddling however with
these subjects it is my duty as well as my inclination to abstain. They
are in hands perfectly qualified to direct them, and who knowing better
the present state of things, are better able to decide what is right;
and whatever they decide on a full view of the case, I shall implicitly
confide has been rightly decided. Accept my best wishes for your success,
and the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO THE PRESIDENT.
MONTICELLO, May 30, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--Another _communication_ is enclosed, and the letter of the
applicant is the only information I have of his qualifications. I barely
remember such a person as the secretary of Mr. Adams, and messenger to
the Senate while I was of that body. It enlarges the sphere of choice by
adding to it a strong federalist. The triangular war must be the idea
of the Anglomen and malcontents, in other words, the federalists and
quids. Yet it would reconcile neither. It would only change the topic of
abuse with the former, and not cure the mental disease of the latter.
It would prevent our eastern capitalists and seamen from employment in
privateering, take away the only chance of conciliating them, and keep
them at home, idle, to swell the discontents; it would completely disarm
us of the most powerful weapon we can employ against Great Britain,
by shutting every port to our prizes, and yet would not add a single
vessel to their number; it would shut every market to our agricultural
productions, and engender impatience and discontent with that class which,
in fact, composes the nation; it would insulate us in general negotiations
for peace, making all the parties our opposers, and very indifferent
about peace with us, if they have it with the rest of the world, and
would exhibit a solecism worthy of Don Quixotte only, that of a choice
to fight two enemies at a time, rather than to take them by succession.
And the only motive for all this is a sublimated impartiality, at which
the world will laugh, and our own people will turn upon us in mass as
soon as it is explained to them, as it will be by the very persons who
are now laying that snare. These are the hasty views of one who rarely
thinks on these subjects. Your own will be better, and I pray to them
every success, and to yourself every felicity.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, June 6, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--I have taken the liberty of drawing the attention of the
Secretary at War to a small depôt of military stores at New London, and
leave the letter open for your perusal. Be so good as to seal it before
delivery. I really thought that General Dearborne had removed them to
Lynchburg, undoubtedly a safer and more convenient deposit.
Our county is the only one I have heard of which has required a draught;
this proceeded from a mistake of the colonel, who thought he could not
receive individual offers, but that the whole quota, 241, must present
themselves at once. Every one, however, manifests the utmost alacrity; of
the 241 there having been but ten absentees at the first muster called. A
further proof is that Captain Carr's company of volunteer cavalry being
specifically called for by the Governor, though consisting of but 28
when called on, has got up to 50 by new engagements since their call was
known. The only inquiry they make is whether they are to go to Canada or
Florida? Not a man, as far as I have learned, entertains any of those
doubts which puzzle the lawyers of Congress and astonish common sense,
whether it is lawful for them to pursue a retreating enemy across the
boundary line of the Union?
I hope Barlow's correspondence has satisfied all our Quixottes who thought
we should undertake nothing less than to fight all Europe at once. I
enclose you a letter from Dr. Bruff, a mighty good and very ingenious
man. His method of manufacturing bullets and shot, has the merit of
increasing their specific gravity greatly, (being made by composition,)
and rendering them as much heavier and better than the common leaden
bullet, as that is than an iron one. It is a pity he should not have
the benefit of furnishing the public when it would be equally to their
benefit also. God bless you.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, June 11, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--By our post preceding that which brought your letter of May
21st, I had received 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 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 mostly French. Lafitan, among them, and Adair an Englishman,
have written on this subject; the former two volumes, the latter one,
all in 4to. But unluckily Lafitan had in his head a preconceived theory
on the mythology, manners, institutions and government of the ancient
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 ancients
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 America 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, although he
writes particularly of the Southern Indians only, the Catawbas, Creeks,
Cherokees, Chickasaws and Chocktaws, with whom alone he was personally
acquainted, yet he generalizes 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,
yet have 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 Quixotte in whatever did not touch his religious chivalry. His
book contains a great deal of real instruction on its subject, only
requiring the reader to be constantly on his guard against the wonderful
obliquities of his theory.
The scope of your inquiry would scarcely, I suppose, take in the three
folio volumes of Latin of De Bry. In these, facts 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 Lafitan 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 ancient 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. Lafitan
called 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 foretell future events, bring down
rain, find stolen goods, raise the dead, destroy some and heal others
by enchantment, lay spells, &c. 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 Gannes and Gambres, 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
ancient 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 inquiries concerning Indians, a people with
whom, in the 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 government, where I was
very much with them. I knew much the great Ontassetè, 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 action, and the solemn silence of his people at their several
fires, filled me with awe and veneration, although I did not understand
a word he uttered. That nation, consisting now of about 2,000 warriors,
and the Creeks of about 3,000 are far advanced in civilization. They
have good cabins, enclosed 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 Cherokees is now instituting a regular representative
government. Some other tribes are advancing in the same line. On those
who have made any progress, English seductions will have no effect. But
the backward will yield, and be thrown further back. Those 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 forever 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 the future, and
complete 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.
TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.
MONTICELLO, June 11, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--It has given me great pleasure to receive a letter from you.
It seems as if, our ancient friends dying off, the whole mass of the
affections of the heart survives undiminished to the few who remain.
I think our acquaintance commenced in 1764, both then just of age. We
happened to take lodgings in the same house in New York. Our next meeting
was in the Congress of 1775, and at various times afterwards in the
exercise of that and other public functions, until your mission to Europe.
Since we have ceased to meet, we have still thought and acted together,
"_et idem velle, atque idem nolle, ea demum amicitia est_." Of this
harmony of principle, the papers you enclosed me are proof sufficient. I
do not condole with you on your release from your government. The vote
of your opponents is the most honorable mark by which the soundness of
your conduct could be stamped. I claim the same honorable testimonial.
There was but a single act of my whole administration of which that party
approved. That was the proclamation on the attack of the Chesapeake. And
when I found they approved of it, I confess I began strongly to apprehend
I had done wrong, and to exclaim with the Psalmist, "Lord, what have I
done that the wicked should praise me!"
What, then, does this English faction with you mean? Their newspapers
say rebellion, and that they will not remain united with us unless we
will permit them to govern the majority. If this be their purpose, their
anti-republican spirit, it ought to be met at once. But a government
like ours should be slow in believing this, should put forth its whole
might when necessary to suppress it, and promptly return to the paths
of reconciliation. The extent of our country secures it, I hope, from
the vindictive passions of the petty incorporations of Greece. I rather
suspect that the principal office of the other seventeen States will be
to moderate and restrain the local excitement of our friends with you,
when they (with the aid of their brethren of the other States, if they
need it) shall have brought the rebellious to their feet. They count on
British aid. But what can that avail them by land? They would separate
from their friends, who alone furnish employment for their navigation,
to unite with their only rival for that employment. When interdicted
the harbors of their quondam brethren, they will go, I suppose to ask
a share in the carrying trade of their rivals, and a dispensation with
their navigation act. They think they will be happier in an association
under the rulers of Ireland, the East and West Indies, than in an
independent government, where they are obliged to put up with their
proportional share only in the direction of its affairs. But I trust
that such perverseness will not be that of the honest and well-meaning
mass of the federalists of Massachusetts; and that when the questions of
separation and rebellion shall be nakedly proposed to them, the Gores
and the Pickerings will find their levees crowded with silk stocking
gentry, but no yeomanry; an army of officers without soldiers. I hope,
then, all will still end well; the Anglomen will consent to make peace
with their bread and butter, and you and I shall sink to rest, without
having been actors or spectators in another civil war.
How many children have you? You beat me, I expect, in that count, but I
you in that of our grand-children. We have not timed these things well
together, or we might have begun a re-alliance between Massachusetts
and the Old Dominion, faithful companions in the war of Independence,
peculiarly tallied in interests, by each wanting exactly what the other
has to spare; and estranged to each other in latter times, only by the
practices of a third nation, the common enemy of both. Let us live only
to see this re-union, and I will say with old Simeon, "Lord, now lettest
thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."
In that peace may you long remain, my friend, and depart only in the
fulness of years, all passed in health and prosperity. God bless you.
P. S. June 13. I did not condole with you on the reprobation of your
opponents, because it proved your orthodoxy. Yesterday's post brought
me the resolution of the republicans of Congress, to propose you as
Vice President. On this I sincerely congratulate you. It is a stamp of
double proof. It is a notification to the factionaries that their nay is
the yea of truth, and its best test. We shall be almost within striking
distance of each other. Who knows but you may fill up some short recess
of Congress with a visit to Monticello, where a numerous family will
hail you with a hearty country welcome.
TO JUDGE TYLER.
MONTICELLO, June 17, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--* * * * *
On the other subject of your letter, the application of the common law to
our present situation, I deride with you the ordinary doctrine, that we
brought with us from England the _common law rights_. This narrow notion
was a favorite in the first moment of rallying to our rights against Great
Britain. But it was that of men who felt their rights before they had
thought of their explanation. The truth is, that we brought with us the
_rights of men_; of expatriated men. On our arrival here, the question
would at once arise, by what law will we govern ourselves? The resolution
seems to have been, by that system with which we are familiar, to be
altered by ourselves occasionally, and adapted to our new situation.
The proofs of this resolution are to be found in the form of the oaths
of the judges, 1. Hening's Stat. 169. 187; of the Governor, ib. 504; in
the act for a provisional government, ib. 372; in the preamble to the
laws of 1661-2; the uniform current of opinions and decisions, and in
the general recognition of all our statutes, framed on that basis. But
the state of the English law at the date of our emigration, constituted
the system adopted here. We may doubt, therefore, the propriety of
quoting in our courts English authorities subsequent to that adoption;
still more, the admission of authorities posterior to the Declaration of
Independence, or rather to the accession of that King, whose reign, _ab
initio_, was the very tissue of wrongs which rendered the Declaration
at length necessary. The reason for it had inception at least as far
back as the commencement of his reign. This relation to the beginning of
his reign, would add the advantage of getting us rid of all Mansfield's
innovations, or civilizations of the common law. For however I admit the
superiority of the civil over the common law code, as a system of perfect
justice, yet an incorporation of the two would be like Nebuchadnezzar's
image of metals and clay, a thing without cohesion of parts. The only
natural improvement of the common law, is through its homogeneous ally,
the chancery, in which new principles are to be examined, concocted and
digested. But when, by repeated decisions and modifications, they are
rendered pure and certain, they should be transferred by statute to the
courts of common law, and placed within the pale of juries. The exclusion
from the courts of the malign influence of all authorities after the
_Georgium sidus_ became ascendant, would uncanonize Blackstone, whose
book, although the most elegant and best digested of our law catalogue,
has been perverted more than all others, to the degeneracy of legal
science. A student finds there a smattering of everything, and his
indolence easily persuades him that if he understands that book, he is
master of the whole body of the law. The distinction between these, and
those who have drawn their stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke
Littleton, seems well understood even by the unlettered common people,
who apply the appellation of Blackstone lawyers to these ephemeral
insects of the law.
Whether we should undertake to reduce the common law, our own, and so
much of the English statutes as we have adopted, to a text, is a question
of transcendent difficulty. It was discussed at the first meeting of the
committee of the revised code, in 1776, and decided in the negative, by
the opinions of Wythe, Mason and myself, against Pendleton and Thomas Lee.
Pendleton proposed to take Blackstone for that text, only purging him
of what was inapplicable or unsuitable to us. In that case, the meaning
of every word of Blackstone would have become a source of litigation,
until it had been settled by repeated legal decisions. And to come at
that meaning, we should have had produced, on all occasions, that very
pile of authorities from which it would be said he drew his conclusion,
and which, of course, would explain it, and the terms in which it is
couched. Thus we should have retained the same chaos of law-lore from
which we wished to be emancipated, added to the evils of the uncertainty
which a new text and new phrases would have generated. An example of this
may be found in the old statutes, and commentaries on them, in Coke's
second institute, but more remarkably in the institute of Justinian,
and the vast masses explanatory or supplementary of that which fill the
libraries of the civilians. We were deterred from the attempt by these
considerations, added to which, the bustle of the times did not admit
leisure for such an undertaking.
Your request of my opinion on this subject has given you the trouble
of these observations. If your firmer mind in encountering difficulties
would have added your vote to the minority of the committee, you would
have had on your side one of the greatest men of our age, and like him,
have detracted nothing from the sentiments of esteem and respect which
I bore to him, and tender with sincerity the assurance of to yourself.
TO GENERAL 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 _aut parcem, 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.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, June 29, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--I duly received your favor of the 22d covering the declaration
of war. It is entirely popular here, the only opinion being that it should
have been issued the moment the season admitted the militia to enter
Canada. * * * * * To continue the war popular, two things are necessary
mainly. 1. To stop Indian barbarities. The conquest of Canada will do
this. 2. To furnish markets for our produce, say indeed for our flour,
for tobacco is already given up, and seemingly without reluctance. The
great profits of the wheat crop have allured every one to it; and never
was such a crop on the ground as that which we generally begin to cut
this day. It would be mortifying to the farmer to see such an one rot
in his barn. It would soon sicken him to war. Nor can this be a matter
of wonder or of blame on him. Ours is the only country on earth where
war is an instantaneous and total suspension of all the objects of his
industry and support. For carrying our produce to foreign markets our
own ships, neutral ships, and even enemy ships under neutral flag, which
I would wink at, will probably suffice. But the coasting trade is of
double importance, because both seller and buyer are disappointed, and
both are our own citizens. You will remember that in this trade our
greatest distress in the last war was produced by our own pilot boats
taken by the British and kept as tenders to their larger vessels. These
being the swiftest vessels on the ocean, they took them and selected the
swiftest from the whole mass. Filled with men they scoured everything
along shore, and completely cut up that coasting business which might
otherwise have been carried on within the range of vessels of force and
draught. Why should not we then line our coast with vessels of pilot-boat
construction, filled with men, armed with cannonades, and only so much
larger as to assure the mastery of the pilot boat? The British cannot
counter-work us by building similar ones, because, the fact is, however
unaccountable, that our builders alone understand that construction.
It is on our own pilot boats the British will depend, which our larger
vessels may thus retake. These, however, are the ideas of a landsman
only, Mr. Hamilton's judgment will test their soundness.
Our militia are much afraid of being called to Norfolk at this season.
They all declare a preference of a march to Canada. I trust however
that Governor Barbour will attend to circumstances, and so apportion the
service among the counties, that those acclimated by birth or residence
may perform the summer tour, and the winter service be allotted to the
upper counties.
I trouble you with a letter for General Kosciusko. It covers a bill of
exchange from Mr. Barnes for him, and is therefore of great importance
to him. Hoping you will have the goodness so far to befriend the General
as to give it your safest conveyance, I commit it to you, with the
assurance of my sincere affections.
TO NATHANIEL GREENE, MONTAGUE CENTER.
MONTICELLO, July 5, 1812.
SIR,--Your favor of May 19th from New Orleans is just now received. I
have no doubt that the information you will present to your countrymen
on the subject of the Asiatic countries into which you have travelled,
will be acceptable as sources both of amusement and instruction; and
the more so, as the observations of an American will be more likely to
present what are peculiarities to us, than those of any foreigner on
the same countries. In reading the travels of a Frenchman through the
United States what he remarks as peculiarities in us, prove to us the
contrary peculiarities of the French. We have the accounts of Barbary from
European and American travellers. It would be more amusing if Melli Melli
would give us his observations on the United States. If, with the fables
and follies of the Hindoos, so justly pointed out to us by yourselves
and other travellers, we could compare the contrast of those which an
Hindoo traveller would imagine he found among us, it might enlarge our
instruction. It would be curious to see what parallel among us he would
select for his Veeshni. What you will have seen in your western tour
will also instruct many who often know least of things nearest home.
The charitable institution you have proposed to the city of New Orleans
would undoubtedly be valuable, and all such are better managed by those
locally connected with them. The great wealth of that city will insure
its support, and the names subscribed to it will give it success. For
a private individual, a thousand miles distant, to imagine that his
name could add anything to what exhibits already the patronage of the
highest authorities of the State, would be great presumption. It will
certainly engage my best wishes, to which permit me to add for yourself
the assurances of my respect.
TO THOMAS COOPER, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, July 10, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--I received by your last post through Mr. Hall, of Baltimore,
a copy of your introductory lecture to a course of chemistry, for which
accept my thanks. I have just entered on the reading of it, and perceive
that I have a feast before me. I discover from an error of the binder,
that my copy has duplicates of pages 122, 123, 126, 127, and wants
altogether, pages 121, 124, 125, 128, and forseeing that every page will
be a real loss, and that the book has been printed at Carlisle, I will
request your directions to the printer to enclose those four pages under
cover to me at this place, _near Milton_. You know the just esteem which
attached itself to Dr. Franklin's science, because he always endeavored
to direct it to something useful in private life. The chemists have not
been attentive enough to this. I have wished to see their science applied
to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider,
to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread,
butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c. And I am happy to
observe some of these titles in the syllabus of your lecture. I hope
you will make the chemistry of these subjects intelligible to our good
house-wives. Glancing over the pages of your book, the last one caught my
attention, where you recommend to students the books on metaphysics. Not
seeing De Tutt Tracy's name there, I suspected you might not have seen
his work. His first volume on Ideology appeared in 1800. I happen to have
a duplicate of this, and will send it to you. Since that, has appeared
his second volume on grammar and his third on logic. They are considered
as holding the most eminent station in that line; and considering with
you that a course of anatomy lays the best foundation for understanding
these subjects, Tracy should be preceded by a mature study of the most
profound of all human compositions, "Cabanis's Rapports du Physique et
du moral de l'homme."
In return for the many richer favors received from you, I send you my
little tract on the batture of New Orleans, and Livingston's claim to
it. I was at a loss where to get it printed, and confided it to the
editor of the Edinburgh Review, re-printed at New York. But he has not
done it immaculately. Although there are typographical errors in your
lecture, I wonder to see so difficult a work so well done at Carlisle.
I am making a fair copy of the catalogue of my library, which I mean to
have printed merely for the use of the library. It will require correct
orthography in so many languages, that I hardly know where I can get it
done. Have you read the Review of Montesquieu, printed by Duane? I hope
it will become the elementary book of the youth at all our colleges.
Such a reduction of Montesquieu to his true value had been long wanting
in political study. Accept the assurance of my great and constant esteem
and respect.
TO MR. LATROBE.
MONTICELLO, July 12, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--Of all the faculties of the human mind, that of memory is the
first which suffers decay from age. Of the commencement of this decay, I
was fully sensible while I lived in Washington, and it was my earliest
monitor to retire from public business. It has often since been the
source of great regret when applied to by others to attest transactions in
which I had been an agent, to find that they had entirely vanished from
my memory. In no case has it given me more concern than in that which is
the subject of your letter of the 2d instant: the supper given in 1807
to the workmen on the capitol. Of this supper I have not the smallest
recollection. If it ever was mentioned to me, not a vestige of it now
remains in my mind. This failure of my memory is no proof the thing did
not happen, but only takes from it the support of my testimony, which
cannot be given for what is obliterated from it. I have looked among my
papers to see if they furnish any trace of the matter, but I find none,
and must therefore acquiesce in my incompetence to administer to truth
on this occasion. I am sorry to learn that Congress has relinquished
the benefit of the engagements of Andrei & Franzoni, on the sculpture of
the capitol. They are artists of a grade far above what we can expect to
get again. I still hope they will continue to work on the basis of the
appropriation made, and as far as that will go; so that what is done will
be well done; and perhaps a more favorable moment may still preserve them
to us. With respect to yourself, the little disquietudes from individuals
not chosen for their taste in works of art, will be sunk into oblivion,
while the Representatives' chamber will remain a durable monument of
your talents as an architect. I say nothing of the Senate room, because I
have never seen it. I shall live in the hope that the day will come when
an opportunity will be given you of finishing the middle building in a
style worthy of the two wings, and worthy of the first temple dedicated
to the sovereignty of the people, embellishing with Athenian taste the
course of a nation looking far beyond the range of Athenian destinies.
In every situation, public or private, be assured of my sincere wishes
for your prosperity and happiness, and of the continuance of my esteem
and respect.
TO COLONEL DUANE.
MONTICELLO, August 4, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 17th ult. came duly to hand, and I have
to thank you for the military manuals you were so kind as to send me.
This is the sort of book most needed in our country, where even the
elements of tactics are unknown. The young have never seen service, and
the old are past it, and of those among them who are not superannuated
themselves, their science is become so. I see, as you do, the difficulties
and defects we have to encounter in war, and should expect disasters if
we had an enemy on land capable of inflicting them. But the weakness of
our enemy there will make our first errors innocent, and the seeds of
genius which nature sows with even hand through every age and country,
and which need only soil and season to germinate, will develop themselves
among our military men. Some of them will become prominent, and seconded
by the native energy of our citizens, will soon, I hope, to our force
add the benefits of skill. The acquisition of Canada this year, as far
as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and
will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the
final expulsion of England from the American continent. Halifax once
taken, every cock-boat of hers must return to England for repairs. Their
fleet will annihilate our public force on the water, but our privateers
will eat out the vitals of their commerce. Perhaps they will burn New
York or Boston. If they do, we must burn the city of London, not by
expensive fleets or congreve rockets, but by employing an hundred or two
Jack-the-painters, whom nakedness, famine, desperation and hardened vice,
will abundantly furnish from among themselves. We have a rumor now afloat
that the orders of council are repeated. The thing is impossible after
Castlereagh's late declaration in Parliament, and the re-construction
of a Percival ministry.
I consider this last circumstance fortunate for us. The repeal of the
orders of council would only add recruits to our minority, and enable
them the more to embarrass our march to thorough redress of our past
wrongs, and permanent security for the future. This we shall attain if
no internal obstacles are raised up. The exclusion of their commerce
from the United States, and the closing of the Baltic against it,
which the present campaign in Europe will effect, will accomplish the
catastrophe already so far advanced on them. I think your anticipations
of the effects of this are entirely probable, their arts, their science,
and what they have left of virtue, will come over to us, and although
their vices will come also, these, I think, will soon be diluted and
evaporated in a country of plain honesty. Experience will soon teach the
new-comers how much more plentiful and pleasant is the subsistence gained
by wholesome labor and fair dealing, than a precarious and hazardous
dependence on the enterprises of vice and violence. Still I agree with
you that these immigrations will give strength to English partialities,
to eradicate which is one of the most consoling expectations from the
war. But probably the old hive will be broken up by a revolution, and
a regeneration of its principles render intercourse with it no longer
contaminating. A republic there like ours, and a reduction of their naval
power within the limits of their annual facilities of payment, might
render their existence even interesting to us. It is the construction of
their government, and its principles and means of corruption, which make
its continuance inconsistent with the safety of other nations. A change
in its form might make it an honest one, and justify a confidence in
its faith and friendship. That regeneration however will take a longer
time than I have to live. I shall leave it to be enjoyed among you, and
make my exit with a bow to it, as the most flagitious of governments
I leave among men. I sincerely wish you may live to see the prodigy of
its renovation, enjoying in the meantime health and prosperity.
TO GENERAL KOSCIUSKO.
MONTICELLO, August 5, 1812.
DEAR GENERAL,--* * * * *
I have little to add to my letter of June. We have entered Upper Canada,
and I think there can be no doubt of our soon having in our possession
the whole of the St. Lawrence except Quebec. We have at this moment
about two hundred privateers on the ocean, and numbers more going out
daily. It is believed we shall fit out about a thousand in the whole.
Their success has been already great, and I have no doubt they will cut
up more of the commerce of England than all the navies of Europe could
do, could those navies venture to sea at all. You will find that every
sea on the globe where England has any commerce, and where any port can
be found to sell prizes, will be filled with our privateers. God bless
you and give you a long and happy life.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, August 5, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--* * * * *
I am glad of the re-establishment of a Percival ministry. The opposition
would have recruited our minority by half way offers. With Canada in
hand we can go to treaty with an off-set for spoliation before the war.
Our farmers are cheerful in the expectation of a good price for wheat in
Autumn. Their pulse will be regulated by this, and not by the successes
or disasters of the war. To keep open sufficient markets is the very
first object towards maintaining the popularity of the war, which is as
great at present as could be desired. We have just had a fine rain of
1¼ inches in the most critical time for our corn. The weather during
the harvest was as advantageous as could be. I am sorry to find you
remaining so long at Washington. The effect on your health may lose us a
great deal of your time; a couple of months at Montpelier at this season
would not lose us an hour. Affectionate salutations to Mrs. Madison and
yourself.
TO THE HONORABLE MR. WRIGHT.
MONTICELLO, August 8, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--I receive and return the congratulations of your letter of
July 6 with pleasure, and join the great mass of my fellow citizens in
saying, "Well done, good and faithful servants, receive the benedictions
which your constituents are ready to give you." The British government
seem to be doing late, what done earlier might have prevented war; to
wit: repealing the orders in Council. But it should take more to make
peace than to prevent war. The sword once drawn, full justice must be
done. "Indemnification for the past and security for the future," should
be painted on our banners. For 1,000 ships taken, and 6,000 seamen
impressed, give us Canada for indemnification, and the only security
they can give us against their Henrys, and the savages, and agree that
the American flag shall protect the persons of those sailing under it,
both parties exchanging engagements that neither will receive the seamen
of the other on board their vessels. This done, I should be for peace
with England and then war with France. One at a time is enough, and in
fighting the one we need the harbors of the other for our prizes. Go on
as you have begun, only quickening your pace, and receive the benedictions
and prayers of those who are too old to offer anything else.
TO THOMAS LETRE, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, August 8, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--I duly received your favor of the 14th ult., covering a
paper containing proceedings of the patriots of South Carolina. It
adds another to the many proofs of their steady devotion to their own
country. I can assure you the hearts of their fellow citizens in this
State beat in perfect unison with them, and with their government. Of
this their concurrence in the election of Mr. Madison and Mr. Gerry,
at the ensuing election, will give sufficient proof. The schism in
Massachusetts, when brought to the crisis of principle, will be found
to be exactly the same as in the Revolutionary war. The monarchists will
be left alone, and will appear to be exactly the tories of the last war.
Had the repeal of the orders of council, which now seems probable, taken
place earlier, it might have prevented war; but much more is requisite
to make peace--"indemnification for the past, and security for the
future," should be the motto of the war. 1,000 ships taken, 6,000 seamen
impressed, savage butcheries of our citizens, and incendiary machinations
against our union, declare that they and their allies, the Spaniards,
must retire from the Atlantic side of our continent as the only security
or indemnification which will be effectual. Accept the assurances of my
great esteem and respect.
TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE.
MONTICELLO, October 1, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of September the 20th, has been duly received,
and I cannot but be gratified by the assurance it expresses, that my aid
in the councils of our government would increase the public confidence
in them; because it admits an inference that they have approved of
the course pursued, when I heretofore bore a part in those councils. I
profess, too, so much of the Roman principle, as to deem it honorable for
the general of yesterday to act as a corporal to-day, if his services
can be useful to his country; holding that to be false pride, which
postpones the public good to any private or personal considerations.
But I am past service. The hand of age is upon me. The decay of bodily
faculties apprizes me that those of the mind cannot be unimpaired, had
I not still better proofs. Every year counts by increased debility, and
departing faculties keep the score. The last year it was the sight, this
it is the hearing, the next something else will be going, until all is
gone. Of all this I was sensible before I left Washington, and probably
my fellow laborers saw it before I did. The decay of memory was obvious;
it is now become distressing. But the mind too, is weakened. When I
was young, mathematics was the passion of my life. The same passion has
returned upon me, but with unequal powers. Processes which I then read
off with the facility of common discourse, now cost me labor, and time,
and slow investigation. When I offered this, therefore, as one of the
reasons deciding my retirement from office, it was offered in sincerity
and a consciousness of its truth. And I think it a great blessing that
I retain understanding enough to be sensible how much of it I have lost,
and to avoid exposing myself as a spectacle for the pity of my friends;
that I have surmounted the difficult point of knowing when to retire.
As a compensation for faculties departed, nature gives me good health,
and a perfect resignation to the laws of decay which she has prescribed
to all the forms and combinations of matter.
The detestable treason of Hull has, indeed, excited a deep anxiety in all
breasts. The depression was in the first moment gloomy and portentous.
But it has been succeeded by a revived animation, and a determination to
meet the occurrence with increased efforts; and I have so much confidence
in the vigorous minds and bodies of our countrymen, as to be fearless as
to the final issue. The treachery of Hull, like that of Arnold, cannot
be matter of blame on our government. His character, as an officer of
skill and bravery, was established on the trials of the last war, and
no previous act of his life had led to doubt his fidelity. Whether the
Head of the war department is equal to his charge, I am not qualified
to decide. I knew him only as a pleasant, gentlemanly man in society;
and the indecision of his character rather added to the amenity of his
conversation. But when translated from the colloquial circle to the
great stage of national concerns, and the direction of the extensive
operations of war, whether he has been able to seize at one glance the
long line of defenceless border presented by our enemy, the masses of
strength which we hold on different points of it, the facility this
gave us of attacking him, on the same day, on all his points, from the
extremity of the lakes to the neighborhood of Quebec, and the perfect
indifference with which this last place, impregnable as it is, might
be left in the hands of the enemy to fall of itself; whether, I say,
he could see and prepare vigorously for all this, or merely wrapped
himself in the cloak of cold defence, I am uninformed. I clearly think
with you on the competence of Monroe to embrace great views of action.
The decision of his character, his enterprise, firmness, industry, and
unceasing vigilance, would, I believe, secure, as I am sure they would
merit, the public confidence, and give us all the success which our means
can accomplish. If our operations have suffered or languished from any
want of energy in the present head which directs them, I have so much
confidence in the wisdom and conscientious integrity of Mr. Madison, as
to be satisfied, that however torturing to his feelings, he will fulfil
his duty to the public and to his own reputation, by making the necessary
change. Perhaps he may be preparing it while we are talking about it;
for of all these things I am uninformed. I fear that Hull's surrender
has been more than the mere loss of a year to us. Besides bringing on
us the whole mass of savage nations, whom fear and not affection has
kept in quiet, there is danger that in giving time to an enemy who can
send reinforcements of regulars faster than we can raise them, they
may strengthen Canada and Halifax beyond the assailment of our lax and
divided powers. Perhaps, however, the patriotic efforts from Kentucky
and Ohio, by recalling the British force to its upper posts, may yet
give time to Dearborne to strike a blow below. Effectual possession of
the river from Montreal to the Chaudiere, which is practicable, would
give us the upper country at our leisure, and close forever the scenes
of the tomahawk and scalping knife.
But these things are for others to plan and achieve. The only succor
from the old must lie in their prayers. These I offer up with sincere
devotion; and in my concern for the great public, I do not overlook my
friends, but supplicate for them, as I do for yourself, a long course
of freedom, happiness and prosperity.
TO THOMAS C. FLOURNEY, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, October 1, 1812.
SIR,--Your letter of August 29th is just now received, having lingered
long on the road. I owe you much thankfulness for the favorable opinion
you entertain of my services, and the assurance expressed that they would
again be acceptable in the executive chair. But, sir, I was sincere in
stating age as one of the reasons of my retirement from office, beginning
then to be conscious of its effects, and now much more sensible of
them. Servile inertness is not what is to save our country; the conduct
of a war requires the vigor and enterprise of younger heads. All such
undertakings, therefore, are out of the question with me, and I say so
with the greater satisfaction, when I contemplate the person to whom
the executive powers were handed over. You probably do not know Mr.
Madison personally, or at least intimately, as I do. I have known him
from 1779, when he first came into the public councils, and from three
and thirty years' trial, I can say conscientiously that I do not know in
the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested
and devoted to genuine republicanism; nor could I, in the whole scope
of America and Europe, point out an abler head. He may be illy seconded
by others, betrayed by the Hulls and Arnolds of our country, for such
there are in every country, and with sorrow and suffering we know it.
But what man can do will be done by Mr. Madison. I hope, therefore,
there will be no difference among republicans as to his re-election,
and we shall know his value when we have to give him up, and to look at
large for his successor. With respect to the unfortunate loss of Detroit
and our army, I with pleasure see the animation it has inspired through
our whole country, but especially through the Western States, and the
determination to retrieve our loss and our honor by increased exertions.
I am not without hope that the Western efforts under General Harrison,
may oblige the enemy to remain at their upper posts, and give Dearborne a
fair opportunity to strike a blow below. A possession of the river from
Montreal to the Chaudiere, gives us the upper country of course, and
closes forever the scenes of the tomahawk and scalping-knife. Quebec is
impregnable, but it is also worthless, and may be safely left in their
hands to fall of itself. The vigorous minds and bodies of our countrymen
leave me no fear as to ultimate results. In this confidence I resign
myself to the care of those whom in their younger days I assisted in
taking care of, and salute you with assurances of esteem and respect.
TO DOCTOR ROBERT PATTERSON.
MONTICELLO, December 27, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--After an absence of five weeks at a distant possession of mine,
to which I pay such visits three or four times a year, I find here your
favor of November 30th. I am very thankful to you for the description
of Redhefer's machine. I had never before been able to form an idea of
what his principle of deception was. He is the first of the inventors
of perpetual motion within my knowledge, who has had the cunning to put
his visitors on a false pursuit, by amusing them with a sham machinery
whose loose and vibratory motion might impose on them the belief that
it is the real source of the motion they see. To this device he is
indebted for a more extensive delusion than I have before witnessed on
this point. We are full of it as far as this State, and I know not how
much farther. In Richmond they have done me the honor to quote me as
having said that it was a possible thing. A poor Frenchman who called on
me the other day, with another invention of perpetual motion, assured me
that Dr. Franklin, many years ago, expressed his opinion to him that it
was not impossible. Without entering into contest on this abuse of the
Doctor's name, I gave him the answer I had given to others before, that
the Almighty himself could not construct a machine of perpetual motion
while the laws exist which he has prescribed for the government of matter
in our system; that the equilibrium established by him between cause
and effect must be suspended to effect that purpose. But Redhefer seems
to be reaping a rich harvest from the public deception. The office of
science is to instruct the ignorant. Would it be unworthy of some one of
its votaries who witness this deception, to give a popular demonstration
of the insufficiency of the ostensible machinery, and of course of the
necessary existence of some hidden mover? And who could do it with more
effect on the public mind than yourself?
I received, at the same time, the Abbé Rochon's pamphlets and book on
his application of the double refraction of the Iceland Spath to the
measure of small angles. I was intimate with him in France, and had
received there, in many conversations, explanations of what is contained
in these sheets. I possess, too, one of his lunettes which he had given
to Dr. Franklin, and which came to me through Mr. Hopkinson. You are
therefore probably acquainted with it. The graduated bar on each side
is 12 inches long. The one extending to 37´ of angle, the other to
3,438 diameter in distance of the object viewed. On so large a scale of
graduation, a nonias might distinctly enough sub-divide the divisions
of 10´´ to 10´´ each; which is certainly a great degree of precision.
But not possessing the common micrometer of two semi-lenses, I am not
able to judge of their comparative merit. * * * * *
TO MR. ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, December 28, 1812.
DEAR SIR,--An absence of five or six weeks, on a journey I take three
or four times a year, must apologize for my late acknowledgment of your
favor of October 12th. After getting through the mass of business which
generally accumulates during my absence, my first attention has been
bestowed on the subject of your letter. I turned to the passages you
refer to in Hutchinson and Winthrop, and with the aid of their dates, I
examined our historians to see if Wollaston's migration to this State was
noticed by them. It happens, unluckily, that Smith and Stith, who alone
of them go into minute facts, bring their histories, the former only to
1623, and the latter to 1624. Wollaston's arrival in Massachusetts was
in 1625, and his removal to this State was "some time" after. Beverly &
Keith, who came lower down, are nearly superficial, giving nothing but
those general facts which every one knew as well as themselves. If our
public records of that date were not among those destroyed by the British
on their invasion of this State, they may possibly have noticed Wollaston.
What I possessed in this way have been given out to two gentlemen, the
one engaged in writing our history, the other in collecting our ancient
laws; so that none of these resources are at present accessible to me.
Recollecting that Nathaniel Morton, in his New England memorial, gives
with minuteness the early annals of the colony of New Plymouth, and
occasionally interweaves the occurrences of that on Massachusetts Bay, I
recurred to him, and under the year 1628, I find he notices both Wollaston
and Thomas Morton, and gives with respect to both, some details which
are not in Hutchinson or Winthrop. As you do not refer to him, and so
possibly may not have his book, I will transcribe from it the entire
passage, which will prove at least my desire to gratify your curiosity
as far as the materials within my power will enable me.
Extract from Nathaniel Morton's New England's Memorial, pp. 93 to 99,
Anno 1628. "Whereas, about three years before this time, there came
over one Captain Wollaston,[2] a man of considerable parts, and with him
three or four more of some eminency, who brought with them a great many
servants, with provisions and other requisites for to begin a plantation,
and pitched themselves in a place within the Massachusetts Bay, which
they called afterwards by their captain's name, Mount Wollaston; which
place is since called by the name of Braintry. And amongst others that
came with him, there was one Mr. Thomas Morton, who, it should seem,
had some small adventure of his own of other men's amongst them, but
had little respect, and was slighted by the meanest servants they kept.
They having continued some time in New England, and not finding things
to answer their expectation, nor profit to arise as they looked for, the
said Captain Wollaston takes a great part of the servants and transports
them to Virginia, and disposed of them there, and writes back to one Mr.
Rasdale, one of his chief partners, (and accounted then merchant,) to
bring another part of them to Virginia, likewise intending to put them
off there as he had done the rest; and he, with the consent of the said
Rasdale, appointed one whose name was Filcher, to be his Lieutenant, and
to govern the remainder of the plantation until he or Rasdale should
take further order thereabout. But the aforesaid Morton, (having more
craft than honesty,) having been a petty-fogger at Furnival's-inn, he,
in the other's absence, watches an opportunity, (commons being put hard
among them,) and got some strong drink and other junkets, and made them
a feast, and after they were merry, he began to tell them he would give
them good counsel. You see, (saith he,) that many of your fellows are
carried to Virginia, and if you stay still until Rasdale's return, you
will also be carried away and sold for slaves with the rest; therefore I
would advise you to thrust out Lieutenant Filcher, and I having a part
in the plantation, will receive you as my partners and consociates, so
you may be free from service, and we will converse, plant, trade and
live together as equals (or to the like effect). This counsel was easily
followed; so they took opportunity, and thrust Lieutenant Filcher out of
doors, and would not suffer him to come any more amongst them, but forced
him to seek bread to eat and other necessaries amongst his neighbors,
till he would get passage for England. (See the sad effect of want of
good government.)
"After this they fell to great licentiousness of life, in all
prophaneness, and the said Morton became lord of misrule, and maintained
(as it were) a school of Atheism, and after they had got some goods into
their hands, and got much by trading with the Indians, they spent it as
vainly, in quaffing and drinking both wine and strong liquors in great
excess, (as some have reported,) ten pounds worth in a morning, setting
up a May pole, drinking and dancing about like so many fairies, or
furies rather, yea and worse practices, as if they had anew revived and
celebrated the feast of the Roman goddess Flora, or the beastly practices
of the mad Bacchanalians. The said Morton likewise to show his poetry,
composed sundry rythmes and verses, some tending to licentiousness,
and others to the detraction and scandal of some persons names, which
he affixed to his idle or idol May-pole; they changed also the name of
their place, and instead of calling it Mount Wollaston, they called it
the Merry Mount, as if this jollity would have lasted always. But this
continued not long, for shortly after that worthy gentleman Mr. John
Endicot, who brought over a patent under the broad seal of England for
the government of the Massachusetts, visiting those parts, caused that
May-pole to be cut down, and rebuked them for their prophaneness, and
admonished them to look to it that they walked better; so the name was
again changed and called Mount Dagon.
"Now to maintain this riotous prodigality and profuse expense, the said
Morton thinking himself lawless, and hearing what gain the fishermen made
of trading of pieces, powder, and shot, he as head of this consortship,
began the practice of the same in these parts; and first he taught the
Indians how to use them, to charge and discharge 'em, and what proportion
of powder to give the piece; according to the size of bigness of the
same, and what shot to use for fowl, and what for deer; and having
instructed them, he employed some of them to hunt and fowl for him; so
as they became somewhat more active in that imployment than any of the
English, by reason of their swiftness of foot, and nimbleness of body,
being also quick-sighted, and by continual exercise, well knowing the
haunt of all sorts of game; so as when they saw the execution that a
piece would do, and the benefit that might come by the same, they became
very eager after them, and would not stick to give any price they could
attain to for them; accounting their bows and arrows but baubles in
comparison of them.
"And here we may take occasion to bewail the mischief which came by this
wicked man, and others like unto him; in that notwithstanding laws for
the restraint of selling ammunition to the natives, that so far base
covetousness prevailed, and doth still prevail, as that the Salvages
became amply furnished with guns, powder, shot, rapiers, pistols, and
also well skilled in repairing of defective arms: yea some have not
spared to tell them how gunpowder is made, and all the materials in it,
and they are to be had in their own land; and would (no doubt, in case
they could attain to the making of Saltpeter) teach them to make powder,
and what mischief may fall out unto the English in these parts thereby,
let this pestilent fellow Morton (aforenamed) bear a great part of the
blame and guilt of it to future generations. But lest I should hold the
reader too long in relation to the particulars of his vile actings; when
as the English that then lived up and down about the Massachusetts, and
in other places, perceiving the sad consequences of his trading, so as
the Indians became furnished with the English arms and ammunition, and
expert in the improving of them, and fearing that they should at one
time or another get a blow thereby; and also taking notice, that if he
were let alone in his way, they should keep no servants for him, because
he would entertain any, how vile soever, sundry of the chief of the
straggling plantations met together, and agreed by mutual consent to
send to Plimouth, who were then of more strength to join with them, to
suppress this mischief who considering the particulars proposed to them
to join together to take some speedy course to prevent (if it might be)
the evil that was accruing towards them; and resolved first to admonish
him of his wickedness respecting the premises, laying before him the
injury he did to their common safety, and that his acting considering the
same was against the King's proclamation; but he insolently persisted
on in his way, and said the King was dead, and his displeasure with
him, and threatened them that if they come to molest him, they should
look to themselves; so that they saw that there was no way but to take
him by force; so they resolved to proceed in such a way, and obtained
of the Governor of Plimouth to send Capt. Standish and some other aid
with him, to take the said Morton by force, the which accordingly was
done; but they found him to stand stiffly on his defence, having made
fast his doors, armed his consorts, set powder and shot ready upon the
table; scoffed and scorned at them, he and his complices being fitted
with strong drink, were desperate in their way; but he himself coming
out of doors to make a shot at Capt. Standish, he stepping to him put
by his piece and took him, and so little hurt was done; and so he was
brought prisoner to Plimouth, and continued in durance till an opportunity
of sending him for England, which was done at their common charge, and
letters also with him, to the honorable council for New England, and
returned again into the country in some short time, with less punishment
than his demerits deserved (as was apprehended). The year following he
was again apprehended, and sent for England, where he lay a considerable
time in Exeter gaol; for besides his miscarriage here in New England,
he was suspected to have murthered a man that had ventured monies with
him when he came first into New England; and a warrant was sent over
from the Lord Chief Justice to apprehend him, by virtue whereof, he
was by the Governor of Massachusetts sent into England, and for other
of his misdemeanors amongst them in that government, they demolished
his house, that it might no longer be a roost for such unclean birds.
Notwithstanding he got free in England again, and wrote an infamous and
scurrilous book against many godly and chief men of the country, full
of lies and slanders, and full fraught with prophane calumnies against
their names and persons, and the way of God. But to the intent I may
not trouble the reader any more with mentioning of him in this history;
in fine, sundry years after he came again into the country, and was
imprisoned at Boston for the aforesaid book and other things, but denied
sundry things therein, affirming his book was adulterated. And soon after
being grown old in wickedness, at last ended his life at Piscataqua.
But I fear I have held the reader too long about so unworthy a person,
but hope it may be useful to take notice how wickedness was beginning,
and would have further proceeded, had it not been prevented timely."
So far Nathaniel Morton. The copy you have of Thomas Morton's New English
Canaan, printed in 1637 by Stam of Amsterdam, was a second edition of
that "infamous and scurrilous book against the godly." The first had been
printed in 1632, by Charles Green, in a 4to of 188 pages, and is the one
alluded to by N. Morton. Both of them made a part of the American library
given by White Kennett in 1713 to the Society for the propagation of
the Gospel in foreign parts. This society being a chartered one, still,
as I believe, existing, and probably their library also, I suppose that
these and the other books of that immense collection, the catalogue of
which occupies 275 pages 4to, are still to be found with them. If any
research I can hereafter make should ever bring to my knowledge anything
more of Wollaston, I shall not fail to communicate it to you. Ever and
affectionately yours.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] This gentleman's name is here occasionally used, and although
he came over in the year 1625, yet these passages in reference
to Morton fell out about this year, and therefore referred to
this place.
TO HENRY MIDDLETON, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 8, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of November 25th was a month on its passage to me.
I received with great pleasure this mark of your recollection, heightened
by the assurance that the part I have acted in public life has met your
approbation. Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down
to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have
cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt,
believing that these were the high road to public as well as to private
prosperity and happiness. And, certainly, there never before has been a
state of the world in which such forbearances as we have exercised would
not have preserved our peace. Nothing but the total prostration of all
moral principle could have produced the enormities which have forced us
at length into the war. On one hand, a ruthless tyrant, drenching Europe
in blood to obtain through future time the character of the destroyer
of mankind; on the other, a nation of buccanniers, urged by sordid
avarice, and embarked in the flagitious enterprise of seizing to itself
the maritime resources and rights of all other nations, have left no
means of peace to reason and moderation. And yet there are beings among
us who think we ought still to have acquiesced. As if while full war was
waging on one side, we could lose by making some reprisal on the other.
The paper you were so kind as to enclose me is a proof you are not of
this sentiment; it expresses our grievances with energy and brevity,
as well as the feelings they ought to excite. And I see with pleasure
another proof that South Carolina is ever true to the principles of
free government. Indeed it seems to me that in proportion as commercial
avarice and corruption advance on us from the north and east, the
principles of free government are to retire to the agricultural states
of the south and west, as their last asylum and bulwark. With honesty
and self-government for her portion, agriculture may abandon contentedly
to others the fruits of commerce and corruption. Accept, I pray you,
the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO MR. RONALDSON.
MONTICELLO, Jan. 12, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of November 2d arrived a little before I sat out
on a journey on which I was absent between five and six weeks. I have
still therefore to return you my thanks for the seeds accompanying it,
which shall be duly taken care of, and a communication made to others
of such as shall prove valuable. I have been long endeavoring to procure
the Cork tree from Europe, but without success. A plant which I brought
with me from Paris died after languishing some time, and of several
parcels of acorns received from a correspondent at Marseilles, not one
has ever vegetated. I shall continue my endeavors, although disheartened
by the nonchalance of our southern fellow citizens, with whom alone they
can thrive. It is now twenty-five years since I sent them two shipments
(about 500 plants) of the Olive tree of Aix, the finest Olives in the
world. If any of them still exist, it is merely as a curiosity in their
gardens, not a single orchard of them has been planted. I sent them also
the celebrated species of Sainfoin,[3] from Malta, which yields good
crops without a drop of rain through the season. It was lost. The upland
rice which I procured fresh from Africa and sent them, has been preserved
and spread in the upper parts of Georgia, and I believe in Kentucky.
But we must acknowledge their services in furnishing us an abundance
of cotton, a substitute for silk, flax and hemp. The ease with which it
is spun will occasion it to supplant the two last, and its cleanliness
the first. Household manufacture is taking deep root with us. I have a
carding machine, two spinning machines, and looms with the flying shuttle
in full operation for clothing my own family; and I verily believe that
by the next winter this State will not need a yard of imported coarse or
middling clothing. I think we have already a sheep for every inhabitant,
which will suffice for clothing, and one-third more, which a single year
will add, will furnish blanketing. With respect to marine hospitals, which
are one of the subjects of your letter, I presume you know that such
establishments have been made by the general government in the several
States, that a portion of seaman's wages is drawn for their support, and
the government furnishes what is deficient. Mr. Gallatin is attentive to
them, and they will grow with our growth. You doubt whether we ought to
permit the exportation of grain to our enemies; but Great Britain, with
her own agricultural support, and those she can command by her access
into every sea, cannot be starved by withholding our supplies. And if
she is to be fed at all events, why may we not have the benefit of it
as well as others? I would not, indeed, feed her armies landed on our
territory, because the difficulty of inland subsistence is what will
prevent their ever penetrating far into the country, and will confine
them to the sea coast. But this would be my only exception. And as to
feeding her armies in the peninsula, she is fighting our battles there,
as Bonaparte is on the Baltic. He is shutting out her manufactures from
that sea, and so far assisting us in her reduction to extremity. But if
she does not keep him out of the peninsular, if he gets full command of
that, instead of the greatest and surest of all our markets, as that
has uniformly been, we shall be excluded from it, or so much shackled
by his tyranny and ignorant caprices, that it will become for us what
France now is. Besides, if we could, by starving the English armies,
oblige them to withdraw from the peninsular, it would be to send them
here; and I think we had better feed them there for pay, than feed and
fight them here for nothing. A truth, too, not to be lost sight of is,
that no country can pay war taxes if you suppress all their resources.
To keep the war popular, we must keep open the markets. As long as good
prices can be had, the people will support the war cheerfully. If you
should have an opportunity of conveying to Mr. Heriot my thanks for his
book, you will oblige me by doing it. Accept the assurance of my great
esteem and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Called Sulla.
TO MR. 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 has 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 practicable 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.
TO COLONEL DUANE.
MONTICELLO, January 22, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I do not know how the publication of the Review turned out
in point of profit, whether gainfully or not. I know it ought to have
been a book of great sale. I gave a copy to a student of William and
Mary college, and recommended it to Bishop Madison, then President of
the college, who was so pleased with it that he established it as a
school-book, and as the young gentleman informed me, every copy which
could be had was immediately bought up, and there was a considerable
demand for more. You probably know best whether new calls for it have
been made. Pr. Madison was a good whig. * * * * * Your experiment on that
work will enable you to decide whether you ought to undertake another,
not of greater but of equal merit. I have received from France a MS. work
on Political Economy, written by De Tutt Tracy, the most conspicuous
writer of the present day in the metaphysical line. He has written a
work entitled Ideology, which has given him a high reputation in France.
He considers that as having laid a solid foundation for the present
volume on Political Economy, and will follow it by one on Moral Duties.
The present volume is a work of great ability. It may be considered as
a review of the principles of the Economists, of Smith and of Say, or
rather an elementary book on the same subject. As Smith had corrected
some principles of the Economists, and Say some of Smiths, so Tracy has
done as to the whole. He has, in my opinion, corrected fundamental errors
in all of them, and by simplifying principles, has brought the subject
within a narrow compass. I think the volume would be of about the size
of the Review of Montesquieu. Although he puts his name to the work, he
is afraid to publish it in France, lest its freedom should bring him
into trouble. If translated and published here, he could disavow it,
if necessary. In order to enable you to form a better judgment of the
work, I will subjoin a list of the chapters or heads, and if you think
proper to undertake the translation and publication, I will send the
work itself. You will certainly find it one of the very first order. It
begins with * * * * *
Our war on the land has commenced most inauspiciously. I fear we are
to expect reverses until we can find out who are qualified for command,
and until these can learn their profession. The proof of a general, to
know whether he will stand fire, costs a more serious price than that
of a cannon; these proofs have already cost us thousands of good men,
and deplorable degradation of reputation, and as yet have elicited but
a few negative and a few positive characters. But we must persevere till
we recover the rank we are entitled to.
Accept the assurances of my continued esteem and respect.
TO DOCTOR MORRELL.
MONTICELLO, February 5, 1813.
SIR,--The book which you were so kind as to take charge of at Paris for
me, is safely received, and I thank you for your care of it, and more
particularly for the indulgent sentiments you are so kind as to express
towards myself. I am happy at all times to hear of the welfare of my
literary friends in that country; they have had a hard time of it since
I left them. I know nothing which can so severely try the heart and
spirit of man, and especially of the man of science, as the necessity of
a passive acquiescence under the abominations of an unprincipled tyrant
who is deluging the earth with blood to acquire for himself the reputation
of a Cartouche or a Robin Hood. The petty larcenies of the Blackbeards
and Buccaneers of the ocean, the more immediately exercised on us, are
dirty and grovelling things addressed to our contempt, while the horrors
excited by the Scelerat of France are beyond all human execrations. With
my thanks for your kind attentions, be pleased to accept the assurance
of my respect.
TO GENERAL BAILEY.
MONTICELLO, February 6, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of January 25th is received, and I have to renew
my thanks to you for the map accompanying it. These proofs of friendly
remembrance give additional interest to the subjects which convey them.
The scenes, too, which compose the map, are become highly interesting.
Our first entrance on them has been peculiarly inauspicious. Our men
are good, but force without conduct is easily baffled. The Creator has
not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to
make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold,
and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses. But
our turn of success will come by-and-bye, and we must submit to the
previous misfortunes which are to be the price of it. I think with you
on the subject of privateers. Our ships of force will undoubtedly be
blockaded by the enemy, and we shall have no means of annoying them at
sea but by small, swift-sailing vessels; these will be better managed and
more multiplied in the hands of individuals than of the government. In
short, they are our true and only weapon in a war against Great Britain,
when once Canada and Nova Scotia shall have been rescued from them. The
opposition to them in Congress is merely partial. It is a part of the navy
fever, and proceeds from the desire of securing men for the public ships
by suppressing all other employments from them. But I do not apprehend
that this ill-judged principle is that of a majority of Congress. I
hope, on the contrary, they will spare no encouragement to that kind of
enterprise. Our public ships, to be sure, have done wonders. They have
saved our military reputation sacrificed on the shores of Canada; but
in point of real injury and depredation on the enemy, our privateers
without question have been most effectual. Both species of force have
their peculiar value. I salute you with assurances of friendship and
respect.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, February 8, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 27th ult. has been duly received. You have
had a long holiday from my intrusions. In truth I have had nothing to
write about, and your time should not be consumed by letters about
nothing. The enclosed paper however makes it a duty to give you the
trouble of reading it. You know the handwriting and the faith due to
it. Our intimacy with the writer leaves no doubt about his facts, and
in his letter to me he pledges himself for their fidelity. He says the
narrative was written at the request of a young friend in Virginia, and
a copy made for my perusal, on the presumption it would be interesting
to me. Whether the word "Confidential" at the head of the paper was
meant only for his young friend or for myself also, nothing in his
letter indicates. I must, therefore, govern myself by considerations of
discretion and of duty combined. Discretion dictates that I ought not so
to use the paper as to compromit my friend; an effect which would be as
fatal to my peace as it might be to his person. But duty tells me that
the public interest is so deeply concerned in your perfect knowledge
of the characters employed in its high stations, that nothing should
be withheld which can give you useful information. On these grounds I
commit it to yourself and the Secretary at War, to whose functions it
relates more immediately. It may have effect on your future designation
of those to whom particular enterprises are to be committed, and this
is the object of the communication. If you should think it necessary
that the minds of the other members of the Cabinet should be equally
apprized of its contents, although not immediately respecting their
departments, the same considerations, and an entire confidence in them
personally, would dictate its communication to them also. But beyond
this no sense of duty calls on me for its disclosure, and fidelity to
my friend strongly forbids it. The paper presents such a picture of
indecision in purpose, inattention to preparation, and imprudence of
demeanor, as to fix a total incompetence for military direction. How
greatly we were deceived in this character, as is generally the case in
appointments not on our own knowledge. I remember when we appointed him
we rejoiced in the acquisition of an officer of so much understanding
and integrity, as we imputed to him; and placed him as near the head of
the army as the commands then at our disposal admitted. Perhaps, still,
you may possess information giving a different aspect to this case, of
which I sincerely wish it may be susceptible. I will ask the return of
the paper when no longer useful to you.
The accession to your Cabinet meets general approbation. This is chiefly
at present given to the character most known, but will be equally so
to the other when better known. I think you could not have made better
appointments.
The autumn and winter have been most unfriendly to the wheat in red
lands, by continued cold and alternate frosts and thaws. The late snow
of about ten inches now disappearing, have received it. That grain is
got to $2 at Richmond. This is the true barometer of the popularity of
the war. Ever affectionately yours.
TO GENERAL ARMSTRONG.
MONTICELLO, February 8, 1813.
DEAR GENERAL,--I have long ago in my heart congratulated our country on
your call to the place you now occupy. But with yourself personally it
is no subject of congratulation. The happiness of the domestic fireside
is the first boon of heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that
which is the lot of the mass of mankind. The duties of office are a
Corvée which must be undertaken on far other considerations than those
of personal happiness. But whether this be a subject of congratulation
or of condolence, it furnishes the occasion of recalling myself to your
recollection, and of renewing the assurances of my friendship and respect.
Whatever you do in office, I know will be honestly and ably done, and
although we who do not see the whole ground may sometimes impute error,
it will be because we, not you, are in the wrong; or because your views
are defeated by the wickedness or incompetence of those you are obliged
to trust with their execution. An instance of this is the immediate cause
of the present letter. I have enclosed a paper to the President, with
a request to communicate it to you, and if he thinks it should be known
to your associates of the Cabinet, although not immediately respecting
their departments, he will communicate it to them also. That it should
go no further is rendered an obligation on me by considerations personal
to a young friend whom I love and value, and by the confidence which has
induced him to commit himself to me. I hope, therefore, it will never
be known that such a narrative has been written, and much less by whom
written, and to whom addressed. It is unfortunate that heaven has not set
its stamp on the forehead of those whom it has qualified for military
achievement. That it has left us to draw for them in a lottery of so
many blanks to a prize, and where the blank is to be manifested only
by the public misfortunes. If nature had planted the _fœnum in cornu_
on the front of treachery, of cowardice, of imbecility, the unfortunate
debut we have made on the theatre of war would not have sunk our spirits
at home, and our character abroad. I hope you will be ready to act on
the first breaking of the ice, as otherwise we may despair of wresting
Canada from our enemies. Their starving manufactories can furnish men
for its defence much faster than we can enlist them for its assault.
Accept my prayers for success in all your undertakings, and the assurance
of my affectionate esteem and respect.
TO DOCTOR RUSH.
MONTICELLO, March 6, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I received some time ago a letter signed "James Carver,"
proposing that myself, and my friends in this quarter, should subscribe
and forward a sum of money towards the expenses of his voyage to London,
and maintenance there while going through a course of education in their
Veterinary school, with a view to his returning to America, and practising
the art in Philadelphia. The name, person and character of the writer,
were equally unknown to me, and unauthenticated, but as self-declared
in the letter. I supposed him an Englishman, from the style in which
he spoke of "His Majesty," and because an American, without offence to
the laws, could not now be going, nor be sent by private individuals to
England. The scheme did not appear to me either the shortest or surest
way of going to work to accomplish the object. Because, if the Veterinary
institution there be of the celebrity he described, it must already have
produced subjects prepared for entering into practice, and disposed to
come to a good position, claiming nothing till they should enter into
function, or not more than their passage. I did not receive the letter
until the day had elapsed on which the vessel was to depart wherein he
had taken his passage; and his desire that the answer should go through
you, is my only authority for troubling you with this, addressed to you,
whom I know, love, and revere, and not to him, who, for any evidence I
have but from himself, may be a zealous son of science, or an adventurer
wanting money to carry him to London. I know nothing of the Veterinary
institution of London, yet have no doubt it merits the high character he
ascribes to it. It is a nation which possesses many learned men. I know
well the Veterinary school of Paris, of long standing, and saw many of its
publications during my residence there. They were classically written,
announced a want of nothing but certainty as to their facts, which
granted, the hypotheses were learned and plausible. The coach-horses of
the rich of Paris were availed of the institution; but the farmers even
of the neighborhood could not afford to call a Veterinary Doctor to their
plough-horses in the country, or to send them to a livery stable to be
attended in the city. On the whole, I was not a convert to the utility
of the Institution. You know I am so to that of medicine, even in human
complaints, but in a limited degree. That there are certain diseases of
the human body, so distinctly pronounced by well-articulated symptoms,
and recurring so often, as not to be mistaken, wherein experience has
proved that certain substances applied, will restore order, I cannot
doubt. Such are Kinkina in Intermittents, Mercury in Syphilis, Castor
Oil in Dysentery, &c. And so far I go with the physicians. But there
are also a great mass of indistinct diseases, presenting themselves
under no form clearly characterized, nor exactly recognized as having
occurred before, and to which of course the application of no particular
substance can be known to have been made, nor its effect on the case
experienced. These may be called unknown cases, and they may in time be
lessened by the progress of observation and experiment. Observing that
there are in the construction of the animal system some means provided
unknown to us, which have a tendency to restore order, when disturbed
by accident, called by physicians the _vis medicatrix naturæ_, I think
it safer to trust to this power in the unknown cases, than to uncertain
conjectures built on the ever-changing hypothetical systems of medicine.
Now, in the Veterinary department all are unknown cases. Man can tell
his physician the seat of his pain, its nature, history, and sometimes
its cause, and can follow his directions for the curative process--but
the poor dumb horse cannot signify where his pain is, what it is, or when
or whence it came, and resists all process for its cure. If in the case
of man, then, the benefit of medical interference in such cases admits
of question, what must it be in that of the horse? And to what narrow
limits is the real importance of the Veterinary art reduced? When a boy,
I knew a Doctor Seymour, neighbor to our famous botanist Clayton, who
imagined he could cure the diseases of his tobacco plants; he bled some,
administered lotions to others, sprinkled powders on a third class, and
so on--they only withered and perished the faster. I am sensible of the
presumption of hazarding an opinion to you on a subject whereon you are
so much better qualified for decision, both by reading and experience.
But our opinions are not voluntary. Every man's own reason must be his
oracle. And I only express mine to explain why I did not comply with
Mr. Carver's request; and to give you a further proof that there are no
bounds to my confidence in your indulgence in matters of opinion.
Mr. Adams and myself are in habitual correspondence. I owe him a letter
at this time, and shall pay the debt as soon as I have something to write
about: for with the commonplace topic of politics we do not meddle. Where
there are so many others on which we agree, why should we introduce
the only one on which we differ. Besides the pleasure which our naval
successes have given to every honest patriot, his must be peculiar,
because a navy has always been his hobby-horse. A little further time will
show whether his ideas have been premature, and whether the little we
can oppose on that element to the omnipotence of our enemy there, would
lessen the losses of the war, or contribute to shorten its duration,
the legitimate object of every measure. On the land, indeed, we have
been most unfortunate; so wretched a succession of generals never before
destroyed the fairest expectations of a nation, counting on the bravery
of its citizens, which has proved itself on all these trials. Our first
object must now be the vindication of our character in the field; after
that, peace with the _liberum mare_, personal inviolability there, and
ouster from this continent of the incendiaries of savages. God send us
these good things, and to you health and life here, till you wish to
awake to it in another state of being.
TO M. DE LOMERIE.
MONTICELLO, April 3, 1813.
SIR,--Your letter of the 26th has been received, as had been that of the
5th. The preceding ones had been complied with by applications verbal
and written to the members of the government, to which I could expect
no specific answers, their whole time being due to the public, and
employed on their concerns. Had it been my good fortune to preserve at
the age of seventy, all the activity of body and mind which I enjoyed
in earlier life, I should have employed it now, as then, in incessant
labors to serve those to whom I could be useful. But the torpor of age
is weighing heavily on me. The writing table is become my aversion,
and its drudgeries beyond my remaining powers. I have retired, then,
of necessity, from all correspondence not indispensably called for by
some special duty, and I hope that this necessity will excuse me with
you from further interference in obtaining your passage to France, which
requires solicitations and exertions beyond what I am able to encounter.
I request this the more freely, because I am sure of finding, in your
candor and consideration, an acquiescence in the reasonableness of my
desire to indulge the feeble remains of life in that state of ease and
tranquillity which my condition, physical and moral, require. Accept,
then, with my adieux, my best wishes for a safe and happy return to your
native country, and the assurances of my respect.
TO MR. THOMAS PAINE M'MATRON.
MONTICELLO, April 3, 1813.
SIR,--Your favor of March 24th is received, and nothing could have been
so pleasing to me as to have been able to comply wit the request therein
made, feeling especial motives to become useful to any person connected
with Mr. M'Matron. But I shall state to you the circumstances which
control my will, and rest on your candor their just estimate. When I
retired from the government four years ago, it was extremely my wish to
withdraw myself from all concern with public affairs, and to enjoy with
my fellow citizens the protection of government, under the auspices and
direction of those to whom it was so worthily committed. Solicitations
from my friends, however, to aid them in their applications for office,
drew from me an unwary compliance, till at length these became so
numerous as to occupy a great portion of my time in writing letters to
the President and heads of departments, and although these were attended
to by them with great indulgence, yet I was sensible they could not fail
of being very embarrassing. They kept me, at the same time, standing
forever in the attitude of a suppliant before them, daily asking favors
as humiliating and afflicting to my own mind, as they were unreasonable
from their multitude. I was long sensible of the necessity of putting
an end to these unceasing importunities, when a change in the heads of
the two departments to which they were chiefly addressed, presented me
an opportunity. I came to a resolution, therefore, on that change, never
to make another application. I have adhered to it strictly, and find
that on its rigid observance, my own happiness and the friendship of
the government too much depend, for me to swerve from it in future. On
consideration of these circumstances, I hope you will be sensible how
much they import, both to the government and myself; and that you do
me the justice to be assured of the reluctance with which I decline an
opportunity of being useful to one so nearly connected with Mr. M'Matron,
and that with the assurance of my regrets, you will accept that of my
best wishes for your success, and of my great respect.
TO COLONEL DUANE.
MONTICELLO, April 4, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of February 14th has been duly received, and the
MS. of the commentary on Montesquieu is also safe at hand. I now forward
to you the work of Tracy, which you will find a valuable supplement and
corrective to those we already possess on political economy. It is a
little unlucky that its outset is of a metaphysical character, which may
damp the ardor of perusal in some readers. He has been led to this by a
desire to embody this work, as well as a future one he is preparing on
morals, with his former treatise on Ideology. By-the-bye, it is merely to
this work that Bonaparte alludes in his answer to his Council of State,
published not long since, in which he scouts "the dark and metaphysical
doctrine of Ideology, which, diving into first causes, founds on this
basis a legislation of the people, &c." If, indeed, this answer be not
a forgery, for everything is now forged, even to the fat of our beef
and mutton: yet the speech is not unlike him, and affords scope for an
excellent parody. I wish you may succeed in getting the commentary on
Montesquieu reviewed by the Edinburgh Reviewers. I should expect from
them an able and favorable analysis of it. I sent a copy of it to a
friend in England, in the hope he would communicate it to them; not,
however, expressing that hope, lest the source of it should have been
made known. But the book will make its way, and will become a standard
work. A copy which I sent to France was under translation by one of the
ablest men of that country.
It is true that I am tired of practical politics, and happier while
reading the history of ancient than of modern times. The total banishment
of all moral principle from the code which governs the intercourse of
nations, the melancholy reflection that after the mean, wicked and
cowardly cunning of the cabinets of the age of Machiavel had given
place to the integrity and good faith which dignified the succeeding
one of a Chatham and Turgot, that this is to be swept away again by the
daring profligacy and avowed destitution of all moral principle of a
Cartouche and a Blackbeard, sickens my soul unto death. I turn from the
contemplation with loathing, and take refuge in the histories of other
times, where, if they also furnished their Tarquins, their Catalines and
Caligulas, their stories are handed to us under the brand of a Livy, a
Sallust and a Tacitus, and we are comforted with the reflection that the
condemnation of all succeeding generations has confirmed the censures
of the historian, and consigned their memories to everlasting infamy, a
solace we cannot have with the Georges and Napoleons but by anticipation.
In surveying the scenes of which we make a part, I confess that three
frigates taken by our gallant little navy, do not balance in my mind
three armies lost by the treachery, cowardice, or incapacity of those
to whom they were intrusted. I see that our men are good, and only want
generals. We may yet hope, however, that the talents which always exist
among men will show themselves with opportunity, and that it will be
found that this age also can produce able and honest defenders of their
country, at what further expense, however, of blood and treasure, is yet
to be seen. Perhaps this Russian mediation may cut short the history
of the present war, and leave to us the laurels of the sea, while our
enemies are bedecked with those of the land. This would be the reverse
of what has been expected, and perhaps of what was to be wished.
I have never seen the work on Political Economy, of which you speak. Say
and Tracy contain the sum of that science as far as it has been soundly
traced in my judgment. And it is a pity that Say's work should not, as
well as Tracy's, be made known to our countrymen by a good translation.
It would supplant Smith's book altogether, because shorter, clearer and
sounder.
Accept my friendly salutations and assurances of continued esteem and
respect.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, May 21, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--The enclosed letter from Whit was unquestionably intended for
you. The subject, the address, both of title and place, prove it, and
the mistake of the name only shows the writer to be a very uninquisitive
statesman. Dr. Waterhouse's letter, too, was intended for your eye,
and although the immediate object fails by previous appointment, yet
he seems to entertain further wishes. I enclose, too, the newspapers
he refers to, as some of their matter may have escaped your notice, and
the traitorous designs fostered in Massachusetts, and explained in them,
call for attention.
We have never seen so unpromising a crop of wheat as that now growing.
The winter killed an unusual proportion of it, and the fly is destroying
the remainder. We may estimate the latter loss at one-third at present,
and fast increasing from the effect of the extraordinary drought. With
such a prospect before us, the blockade is acting severely on our past
labors. It caught nearly the whole wheat of the middle and upper country
in the hands of the farmers and millers, whose interior situation had
prevented their getting it to an earlier market. From this neighborhood
very little had been sold. When we cast our eyes on the map, and see
the extent of country from New York to North Carolina inclusive, whose
produce is raised on the waters of the Chesapeake, (for Albemarle sound
is, by the canal of Norfolk, become a water of the Chesapeake,) and
consider its productiveness, in comparison with the rest of the Atlantic
States, probably a full half, and that all this can be shut up by two
or three ships of the line lying at the mouth of the bay, we see that
an injury so vast to ourselves and so cheap to our enemy, must forever
be resorted to by them, and constantly maintained. To defend all the
shores of those waters in detail is impossible. But is there not a single
point where they may be all defended by means to which the magnitude of
the object gives a title? I mean at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Not by
ships of the line, or frigates; for I know that with our present enemy
we cannot contend in that way. But would not a sufficient number of
gun-boats of _small_ draught, stationed in Lynhaven river, render it
unsafe for ships of war either to ascend the Chesapeake or to lie at
its mouth? I am not unaware of the effect of the ridicule cast on this
instrument of defence by those who wished for engines of offence. But
resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us. I know, too,
the prejudices of the gentlemen of the navy, and that these are very
natural. No one has been more gratified than myself by the brilliant
achievements of our little navy. They have deeply wounded the pride of
our enemy, and been balm to ours, humiliated on the land where our real
strength was felt to lie. But divesting ourselves of the enthusiasm these
brave actions have justly excited, it is impossible not to see that all
these vessels must be taken and added to the already overwhelming force
of our enemy; that even while we keep them, they contribute nothing to
our defence, and that so far as we are to be defended by anything on
the water, it must be by such vessels as can assail under advantageous
circumstances, and under adverse ones withdraw from the reach of the
enemy. This, in shoally waters, is the humble, the ridiculed, but the
formidable gun-boats. I acknowledge that in the case which produces these
reflections, the station of Lynhaven river would not be safe against land
attacks on the boats, and that a retreat for them is necessary in this
event. With a view to this there was a survey made by Colonel Tatham,
which was lodged either in the war or navy office, showing the depth and
length of a canal which would give them a retreat from Lynhaven river
into the eastern branch of Elizabeth river. I think the distance is not
over six or eight miles, perhaps not so much, through a country entirely
flat, and little above the level of the sea. A cut of ten yards wide
and four yards deep, requiring the removal of forty cubic yards of earth
for every yard in length of the canal, at twenty cents the cubic yard,
would cost about $15,000 a mile. But even doubling this to cover all
errors of estimate, although in a country offering the cheapest kind of
labor, it would be nothing compared with the extent and productions of
the country it is to protect. It would, for so great a country, bear no
proportion to what has been expended, and justly expended by the Union,
to defend the single spot of New York.
While such a channel of retreat secures effectually the safety of the
gun-boats, it insures also their aid for the defence of Norfolk, if
attacked from the sea. And the Norfolk canal gives them a further passage
into Albemarle sound, if necessary for their safety, or in aid of the
flotilla of that sound, or to receive the aid of that flotilla either
at Norfolk or in Lynhaven river. For such a flotilla there also will
doubtless be thought necessary, that being the only outlet now, as during
the last war, for the waters of the Chesapeake. Colonel Monroe, I think,
is personally intimate with the face of all that country, and no one,
I am certain, is more able or more disposed than the present Secretary
of the Navy, to place himself above the navy prejudices, and do justice
to the aptitude of these humble and economical vessels to the shallow
waters of the South. On the bold Northern shores they would be of less
account, and the larger vessels will of course be more employed there.
Were they stationed with us, they would rather attract danger than ward
it off. The only service they can render us would be to come _in a body_
when the occasion offers, of overwhelming a weaker force of the enemy
occupying our bay, to oblige them to keep their force in a body, leaving
the mass of our coast open.
Although it is probable there may not be an idea here which has not
been maturely weighed by yourself, and with a much broader view of
the whole field, yet I have frankly hazarded them, because possibly
some of the facts or ideas may have escaped in the multiplicity of the
objects engaging your notice, and because in every event they will cost
you but the trouble of reading. The importance of keeping open a water
which covers wholly or considerably five of the most productive States,
containing three-fifths of the population of the Atlantic portion of
our Union, and of preserving their resources for the support of the
war, as far as the state of war and the means of the confederacy will
admit; and especially if it can be done for less than is contributed by
the Union for more than one single city, will justify our anxieties to
have it effected. And should my views of the subject be even wrong, I am
sure they will find their apology with you in the purity of the motives
of personal and public regard which induce a suggestion of them. In
all cases I am satisfied you are doing what is for the best, as far as
the means put into your hands will enable you, and this thought quiets
me under every occurrence, and under every occurrence I am sincerely,
affectionately and respectfully yours.
TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN.
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! Robespierre 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 Bonaparte destroys the poor, and he is eulogized
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 universalize 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. Bonaparte 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 Bonaparte. We
are assailed by those of England. The one continent thus placed under
the gripe of England, and the other of Bonaparte, 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 Bonaparte 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 for years been 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 Bonaparte 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 an 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 meantime, 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 naturalized, 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 spirit 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
reclamation 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 rights 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 Bonaparte, 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 apologize 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 deprivation 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.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, May 27, 1813.
Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone, my dear Sir, another of
the co-signers of the Independence of our country. And a better man than
Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer
genius, or more honest. We too must go; and that ere long. I believe we
are under half a dozen at present; I mean the signers of the Declaration.
Yourself, Gerry, Carroll, and myself, are all I know to be living. I
am the only one south of the Potomac. Is Robert Treat Payne, or Floyd
living? It is long since I heard of them, and yet I do not recollect to
have heard of their deaths.
Moreton's deduction of the origin of our Indians from the fugitive
Trojans, stated in your letter of January the 26th, and his manner of
accounting for the sprinkling of their Latin with Greek, is really
amusing. Adair makes them talk Hebrew. Reinold Foster derives them
from the soldiers sent by Kouli Khan to conquer Japan. Brerewood, from
the Tartars, as well as our bears, wolves, foxes, &c., which, he says,
"must of necessity fetch their beginning from Noah's ark, which rested,
after the deluge in Asia, seeing they could not proceed by the course of
nature, as the imperfect sort of living creatures do, from putrefaction."
Bernard Romans is of opinion that God created an original man and woman
in this part of the globe. Doctor Barton thinks they are not specifically
different from the Persians; but, taking afterwards a broader range,
he thinks, "that in all the vast countries of America, there is but one
language, nay, that it may be proven, or rendered highly probable, that
all the languages of the earth bear some affinity together." This reduces
it to a question of definition, in which every one is free to use his
own: to wit, what constitutes identity, or difference in two things, in
the common acceptation of _sameness_? All languages may be called the
same, as being all made up of the same primitive sounds, expressed by
the letters of the different alphabets. But, in this sense, all things
on earth are the same as consisting of matter. This gives up the useful
distribution into genera and species, which we form, arbitrarily indeed,
for the relief of our imperfect memories. To aid the question, from
whence our Indian tribes descended, some have gone into their religion,
their morals, their manners, customs, habits, and physical forms. By
such helps it may be learnedly proved, that our trees and plants of every
kind are descended from those of Europe; because, like them, they have no
locomotion, they draw nourishment from the earth, they clothe themselves
with leaves in spring, of which they divest themselves in autumn for
the sleep of winter, &c. Our animals too must be descended from those of
Europe, because our wolves eat lambs, our deer are gregarious, our ants
hoard, &c. But, when for convenience we distribute languages, according
to common understanding, into classes originally different, as we choose
to consider them, as the Hebrew, the Greek, the Celtic, the Gothic; and
these again into genera, or families, as the Icelandic, German, Swedish,
Danish, English; and these last into species, or dialects, as English,
Scotch, Irish, we then ascribe other meanings to the terms "same" and
"different." In some one of these senses, Barton, and Adair, and Foster,
and Brerewood, and Moreton, may be right, every one according to his
own definition of what constitutes "identity." Romans, indeed, takes a
higher stand, and supposes a separate creation. On the same unscriptural
ground, he had but to mount one step higher, to suppose no creation
at all, but that all things have existed without beginning in time, as
they now exist, and may forever exist, producing and reproducing in a
circle, without end. This would very summarily dispose of Mr. Moreton's
learning, and show that the question of Indian origin, like many others,
pushed to a certain height, must receive the same answer, "Ignoro."
You ask if the usage of hunting in circles has ever been known among
any of our tribes of Indians? It has been practised by them all; and is
to this day, by those still remote from the settlements of the whites.
But their numbers not enabling them, like Genghis Khan's seven hundred
thousand, to form themselves into circles of one hundred miles diameter,
they make their circle by firing the leaves fallen on the ground, which
gradually forcing the animals to a centre, they there slaughter them with
arrows, darts, and other missiles. This is called fire hunting, and has
been practised in this State within my time, by the white inhabitants.
This is the most probable cause of the origin and extension of the
vast prairies in the western country, where the grass having been of
extraordinary luxuriance, has made a conflagration sufficient to kill
even the old as well as the young timber.
I sincerely congratulate you on the successes of our little navy; which
must be more gratifying to you than to most men, as having been the early
and constant advocate of wooden walls. If I have differed with you on
this ground, it was not on the principle, but the time; supposing that
we cannot build or maintain a navy, which will not immediately fall into
the same gulf which has swallowed not only the minor navies, but even
those of the great second-rate powers of the sea. Whenever these can be
resuscitated, and brought so near to a balance with England that we can
turn the scale, then is my epoch for aiming at a navy. In the meantime,
one competent to keep the Barbary States in order, is necessary; these
being the only smaller powers disposed to quarrel with us. But I respect
too much the weighty opinions of others, to be unyielding on this point,
and acquiesce with the prayer "_quod felix faustumque sit_;" adding ever
a sincere one for your health and happiness.
TO COLONEL MONROE.
MONTICELLO, May 30, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the communication of the President's Message,
which has not yet reached us through the public papers. It is an
interesting document, always looked for with anxiety, and the late one
is equally able as interesting. I hope Congress will act in conformity
with it, in all its parts. The unwarrantable ideas often expressed in the
newspapers, and by persons who ought to know better, that I intermeddle
in the Executive councils, and the indecent expressions, sometimes, of
a hope that Mr. Madison will pursue the principles of my administration,
expressions so disrespectful to his known abilities and dispositions, have
rendered it improper in me to hazard suggestions to him, on occasions
even where ideas might occur to me, that might accidentally escape him.
This reserve has been strengthened, too, by a consciousness that my
views must be very imperfect, from the want of a correct knowledge of
the whole ground.
I lately, however, hazarded to him a suggestion on the defence of
the Chesapeake, because, although decided on provisionally with the
Secretaries of War and the Navy formerly, yet as it was proposed only in
the case of war, which did not actually arise, and not relating to his
department, might not then have been communicated to him. Of this fact
my memory did not ascertain me. I will now hazard another suggestion
to yourself, which indeed grows out of that one: it is, the policy of
keeping our frigates together in a body, in some place where they can be
defended against a superior naval force, and from whence, nevertheless,
they can easily sally forth on the shortest warning. This would oblige
the enemy to take stations, or to cruise only in masses equal at least,
each of them, to our whole force; and of course they could be acting
only in two or three spots at a time, and the whole of our coast, except
the two or three portions where they might be present, would be open
to exportation and importation. I think all that part of the United
States over which the waters of the Chesapeake spread themselves, was
blockaded in the early season by a single ship. This would keep our
frigates in entire safety, as they would go out only occasionally to
oppress a blockading force known to be weaker than themselves, and thus
make them a real protection to our whole commerce. And it seems to me
that this would be a more essential service, than that of going out by
ones, or twos, in search of adventures, which contribute little to the
protection of our commerce, and not at all to the defence of our coast,
or the shores of our inland waters. A defence of these by militia is
most harassing to them. The applications from Maryland, which I have
seen in the papers, and those from Virginia, which I suspect, merely
because I see such masses of the militia called off from their farms,
must be embarrassing to the Executive, not only from a knowledge of
the incompetency of such a mode of defence, but from the exhausture
of funds which ought to be husbanded for the effectual operations of a
long war. I fear, too, it will render the militia discontented, perhaps
clamorous for an end of the war on any terms. I am happy to see that
it is entirely popular as yet, and that no symptom of flinching from it
appears among the people, as far as I can judge from the public papers,
or from my own observation, limited to the few counties adjacent to the
two branches of James river. I have such confidence that what I suggest
has been already maturely discussed in the Cabinet, and that for wise
and sufficient reasons the present mode of employing the frigates is the
best, that I hesitate about sending this even after having written. Yet
in that case it will only have given you the trouble of reading it. You
will bury it in your own breast, as _non-avenue_, and see in it only an
unnecessary zeal on my part, and a proof of the unlimited confidence of
yours ever and affectionately.
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 instant, and on the 9th I received 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 anything 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 completely vanished from my memory. The last
is on the subject of religion, and by its 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
its 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 conceive 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 correspondences 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 its view to this country alone. England
and its 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, page 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, &c. 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 acme
of excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance. Although
in the passage of your answer alluded to, you expressly disclaim the wish
to influence the freedom of inquiry, you predict that that will produce
nothing more worthy of transmission to posterity than the principles,
institutions and systems of education received 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 although I happened to cite
it from you, the whole letter shows 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_, with whom we supposed you in a state
of duress. 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 General Washington had left you," and whom you seemed, therefore,
to consider as under public protection. Many other incidents showed 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 receive 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.
TO MR. SHORT.
MONTICELLO, June 18, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 2d is received, and a copy of Higgenbotham's
mortgage is now enclosed. The journey to Bedford which I proposed in my
last, my engagements here have obliged me to postpone till after harvest,
which is now approaching; it is the most unpromising one I have seen. We
have been some days in expectation of seeing M. Correa. If he is on the
road, he has had some days of our very hottest weather. My thermometer
has been for two days at 92 and 92½°, the last being the maximum ever
seen here. Although we usually have the hottest day of the year in June,
yet it is soon interrupted by cooler weather. In July the heat, though
not so great, is more continuous and steady.
On the duration of the war I think there is uncertainty. Ever since
the rupture of the treaty of Amiens, the object of Great Britain has
visibly been the permanent conquest of the ocean, and levying a tribute
on every vessel she permits to sail on it, as the Barbary powers do on
the Mediterranean, which they call their sea. She must be conscious she
cannot from her own resources maintain the exaggerated fleet she now has,
and which is necessary to maintain her conquest; she must, therefore,
levy the deficiency of duties of transit on other nations. If she should
get another ministry with sense enough to abandon this senseless scheme,
the war with us ought to be short, because there is no material cause
now existing but impressment; and there our only difference is how to
establish a mode of discrimination between our citizens which she does
not claim, and hers which it is neither our wish or interest ever to
employ. The seamen which our navigation raises had better be of our
own. If this be all she aims at, it may be settled at Saint Petersburg.
My principle has ever been that war should not suspend either exports
or imports. If the piracies of France and England, however, are to be
adopted as the law of nations, or should become their practice, it will
oblige us to manufacture at home all the material comforts.
This may furnish a reason to check imports until necessary manufactures
are established among us. This offers the advantage, too, of placing the
consumer of our produce near the producer, but I should disapprove of
the prohibition of exports even to the enemy themselves, except indeed
refreshments and water to their cruisers on our coast, in order to oblige
them to intermit their cruises to go elsewhere for these supplies. The
idea of starving them as to bread, is a very idle one. It is dictated by
passion, not by reason. If the war is lengthened we shall take Canada,
which will relieve us from Indians, and Halifax, which will put an end
to their occupation of the American seas, because every vessel must then
go to England to repair every accident. To retain these would become
objects of first importance to us, and of great importance to Europe,
as the means of curtailing the British marine. But at present, being
merely _in posse_, they should not be an impediment to peace. We have a
great and a just claim of indemnifications against them for the thousand
ships they have taken piratically, and six thousand seamen impressed.
Whether we can, on this score, successfully insist on curtailing their
American possessions, by the meridian of Lake Huron, so as to cut them
off from the Indians bordering on us, would be matter for conversation
and experiment at the treaty of pacification. I sometimes allow my mind
to wander thus into the political field, but rarely, and with reluctance.
It is my desire as well as my duty to leave to the vigor of younger minds
to settle concerns which are no longer mine, but must long be theirs.
Affectionately adieu.
TO ----.
Your kind answer of the 16th entirely satisfies my doubts as to the
employment of the navy, if kept within striking distance of our coast;
and shows how erroneous views are apt to be with those who have not
all in view. Yet as I know from experience that profitable suggestions
sometimes come from lookers on, they may be usefully tolerated, provided
they do not pretend to the right of an answer. They would cost very
dear indeed were they to occupy the time of a high officer in writing
when he should be acting. I intended no such trouble to you, my dear
Sir, and were you to suppose I expected it, I must cease to offer a
thought on our public affairs. Although my entire confidence in their
direction prevents my reflecting on them but accidentally, yet sometimes
facts, and sometimes ideas occur, which I hazard as worth the trouble
of reading but not of answering. Of this kind was my suggestion of the
facts which I recollected as to the defence of the Chesapeake, and of
what had been contemplated at the time between the Secretaries of War
and the Navy and myself. If our views were sound, the object might be
effected in one year, even of war, and at an expense which is nothing
compared to the population and productions it would cover. We are here
laboring under the most extreme drought ever remembered at this season.
We have had but one rain to lay the dust in two months. That was a good
one, but was three weeks ago. Corn is but a few inches high and dying.
Oats will not yield their seed. Of wheat, the hard winter and fly leave
us about two-thirds of an ordinary crop. So that in the lotteries of
human life you see that even farming is but gambling. We have had three
days of excessive heat. The thermometer on the 16th was at 92°, on the
17th 92½°, and yesterday at 93°. It had never before exceeded 92½ at
this place; at least within the periods of my observations. Ever and
affectionately yours.
TO COLONEL MONROE.
MONTICELLO, June 18, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favors of the 7th and 16th are received, and I now
return you the memoir enclosed in the former. I am much gratified by its
communication, because, as the plan appeared in the newspapers soon after
the new Secretary of War came into office, we had given him the credit
of it. Every line of it is replete with wisdom; and we might lament that
our tardy enlistments prevented its execution, were we not to reflect
that these proceeded from the happiness of our people at home. It is more
a subject of joy that we have so few of the desperate characters which
compose modern regular armies. But it proves more forcibly the necessity
of obliging every citizen to be a soldier; this was the case with the
Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free State. Where there
is no oppression there will be no pauper hirelings. We must train and
classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction
a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe till this
is done.
I have been persuaded, _ab initio_, that what we are to do in Canada
must be done quickly; because our enemy, with a little time, can empty
pickpockets upon us faster than we can enlist honest men to oppose them.
If we fail in this acquisition, Hull is the cause of it. Pike, in his
situation, would have swept their posts to Montreal, because his army
would have grown as it went along. I fear the reinforcements arrived
at Quebec will be at Montreal before General Dearborne, and if so, the
game is up. If the marching of the militia into an enemy's country be
once ceded as unconstitutional (which I hope it never will be), then
will their force, as now strengthened, bid us permanent defiance. Could
we acquire that country, we might perhaps insist successfully at St.
Petersburg on retaining all westward of the meridian of Lake Huron, or
of Ontario, or of Montreal, according to the pulse of the place, as an
indemnification for the past and security for the future. To cut them off
from the Indians even west of the Huron would be a great future security.
Your kind answer of the 16th, entirely satisfies my doubts as to the
employment of a navy, if kept within striking distance of our coast, and
shows how erroneous views are apt to be with those who have not all in
view. Yet, as I know by experience that profitable suggestions sometimes
come from lookers on, they may be usefully tolerated, provided they
do not pretend to the right of an answer. They would cost very dear,
indeed, were they to occupy the time of a high officer in writing when
he should be acting. * * * * *
TO MR. MATTHEW CARR.
MONTICELLO, June 19, 1813.
SIR,--I thank you for the copy of Mr. Clarke's sketches of the naval
history of the United States, which you have been so kind as to send me.
It is a convenient repository of cases of that class, and has brought to
my recollection a number of individual cases of the Revolutionary war
which had escaped me. I received, also one of Mr. Clarke's circulars,
asking supplementary communications for a second edition. But these
things are so much out of the reach of my inland situation, that I am
the least able of all men to contribute anything to his desire. I will
indulge myself, therefore, in two or three observations, of which you
will make what use you may think they merit. 1. Bushnel's Turtle is
mentioned slightly. Would the description of the machine be too much
for the sale of the work? It may be found very minutely given in the
American Philosophical transactions. It was excellently contrived, and
might perhaps, by improvement, be brought into real use. I do not know
the difference between this and Mr. Fulton's submarine boat. But an
effectual machine of that kind is not beyond the laws of nature; and
whatever is within these, is not to be despaired of. It would be to the
United States the consummation of their safety. 2. The account of the loss
of the Philadelphia, does not give a fair impression of the transaction.
The proofs may be seen among the records of the Navy office. After this
loss, Capt. Bainbridge had a character to redeem. He has done it most
honorably, and no one is more gratified by it than myself. But still the
transaction ought to be correctly stated. 3. But why omit all mention of
the scandalous campaigns of Commodore Morris? A two years' command of an
effective squadron, with discretionary instructions, wasted in sailing
from port to port of the Mediterranean, and a single half day before the
port of the enemy against which he was sent. All this can be seen in
the proceedings of the court on which he was dismissed; and it is due
to the honorable truths with which the book abounds, to publish those
which are not so. A fair and honest narrative of the bad, is a voucher
for the truth of the good. In this way the old Congress set an example
to the world, for which the world amply repaid them, by giving unlimited
credit to whatever was stamped with the name of Charles Thompson. It is
known that this was never put to an untruth but once, and that where
Congress was misled by the credulity of their General (Sullivan). The
first misfortune of the Revolutionary war, induced a motion to suppress
or garble the account of it. It was rejected with indignation. The whole
truth was given in all its details, and there never was another attempt
in that body to disguise it. These observations are meant for the good
of the work, and for the honor of those whom it means to honor. Accept
the assurance of my esteem and respect.
TO PRESIDENT MADISON.
MONTICELLO, June 21, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 6th has been received, and I will beg leave
to add a few supplementary observations on the subject of my former
letter. I am not a judge of the best forms which may be given to the
gunboat; and indeed I suppose they should be of various forms, suited
to the various circumstances to which they would be applied. Among
these, no doubt, Commodore Barney's would find their place. While the
largest and more expensive are fitted for moving from one seaport to
another, coast-wise, to aid in a particular emergency, those of smaller
draught and expense suit shallower waters; and of these shallow and
cheap forms must be those for Lynhaven river. Commodore Preble, in his
lifetime, undertook to build such in the best manner for two or three
thousand dollars. Colonel Monroe, to whose knowledge of the face of the
country I had referred, approves, in a letter to me, of such a plan of
defence as was suggested, adding to it a fort on the middle grounds;
but thinks the work too great to be executed during a war. Such a fort,
certainly, could not be built during a war, in the face of an enemy.
Its practicability at any time has been doubted, and although a good
auxiliary, is not a necessary member of this scheme of defence. But the
canal of retreat is really a small work, of a few months' execution;
the laborers would be protected by the military guard on the spot, and
many of these would assist in the execution, for fatigue, rations, and
pay. The exact magnitude of the work I would not affirm, nor do I think
we should trust for it to Tatham's survey: still less would I call in
Latrobe, who would immediately contemplate a canal of Languedoc. I would
sooner trust such a man as Thomas Monroe to take the level, measure the
distances, and estimate the expense. And if the plan were all matured
the ensuing winter, and laborers engaged at the proper season, it might
be executed in time to mitigate the blockade of the next summer. On
recurring to an actual survey of that part of the country, made in the
beginning of the Revolutionary war, under the orders of the Governor
and Council, by Mr. Andrews I think, a copy of which I took with great
care, instead of the half a dozen miles I had conjectured in my former
letter, the canal would seem to be of not half that length. I send you
a copy of that part of the map, which may be useful to you on other
occasions, and is more to be depended on for minutia, probably, than
any other existing. I have marked on that the conjectured route of the
canal, to wit, from the bridge on Lynhaven river to King's landing, on
the eastern branch. The exact draught of water into Lynhaven river you
have in the Navy office. I think it is over four feet.
When we consider the population and productions of the Chesapeake country,
extending from the Génissee to the Saura towns and Albemarle Sound, its
safety and commerce seem entitled even to greater efforts, if greater
could secure them. That a defence at the entrance of the bay can be made
mainly effective, that it will cost less in money, harass the militia
less, place the inhabitants on its interior waters freer from alarm
and depredation, and render provisions and water more difficult to the
enemy, is so possible as to render thorough inquiry certainly expedient.
Some of the larger gun-boats, or vessels better uniting swiftness with
force, would also be necessary to scour the interior, and cut off any
pickaroons which might venture up the bay or rivers. The loss on James'
river alone, this year, is estimated at two hundred thousand barrels of
flour, now on hand, for which the half price is not to be expected. This
then is a million of dollars levied on a single water of the Chesapeake,
and to be levied every year during the war. If a concentration of its
defence at the entrance of the Chesapeake should be found inadequate,
then we must of necessity submit to the expenses of detailed defence,
to the harassment of the militia, the burnings of towns and houses,
depredations of farms, and the hard trial of the spirit of the Middle
States, the most zealous supporters of the war, and, therefore, the
peculiar objects of the vindictive efforts of the enemy. Those north of
the Hudson need nothing, because treated by the enemy as neutrals. All
their war is concentrated on the Delaware and Chesapeake; and these,
therefore, stand in principal need of the shield of the Union. The
Delaware can be defended more easily. But I should not think one hundred
gun-boats (costing less than one frigate) an over-proportioned allotment
to the Chesapeake country, against the over-proportioned hostilities
pointed at it.
I am too sensible of the partial and defective state of my information,
to be over-confident, or pertinacious, in the opinion I have formed.
A thorough examination of the ground will settle it. We may suggest,
perhaps it is a duty to do it. But you alone are qualified for decision,
by the whole view which you can command; and so confident am I in the
intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be
satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
While I trust that no difficulties will dishearten us, I am anxious to
lessen the trial as much as possible. Heaven preserve you under yours,
and help you through all its perplexities and perversities.
TO JOHN W. 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 principle 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 you 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 principle 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 a 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.
* * * * *
Ever affectionately yours
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, June 27, 1813.
Ιδαν ες πολυδενδρον ανηρ ὑλητομος ελθων
Παπταινει, παρεοντος αδην, ποθεν αρξεται εργου
Τι πρατον καταλεξω; επει παρα μυρια ειπην.
And I too, my dear Sir, like the wood-cutter of Ida, should doubt where
to begin, were I to enter the forest of opinions, discussions, and
contentions which have occurred in our day. I should say with Theocritus,
Τι πρατον καταλεξω; επει παρα μυρια ειπην. But I shall not do it.
The _summum bonum_ with me is now truly epicurian, ease of body and
tranquillity of mind; and to these I wish to consign my remaining days.
Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these
opinions, from the first origin of societies, and in all governments
where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. The same
political parties which now agitate the United States, have existed
through all time. Whether the power of the people or that of the αριστοι
should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome
in eternal convulsions, as they now schismatize every people whose minds
and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the terms
of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They
denote the temper and constitution of mind of different individuals. To
come to our own country, and to the times when you and I became first
acquainted, we well remember the violent parties which agitated the old
Congress, and their bitter contests. There you and I were together, and
the Jays, and the Dickinsons, and other anti-independents, were arrayed
against us. They cherished the monarchy of England, and we the rights
of our countrymen. When our present government was in the mew, passing
from Confederation to Union, how bitter was the schism between the
Feds and Antis. Here you and I were together again. For although, for
a moment, separated by the Atlantic from the scene of action, I favored
the opinion that nine States should confirm the constitution, in order
to secure it, and the others hold off until certain amendments, deemed
favorable to freedom, should be made. I rallied in the first instant
to the wiser proposition of Massachusetts, that all should confirm,
and then all instruct their delegates to urge those amendments. The
amendments were made, and all were reconciled to the government. But as
soon as it was put into motion, the line of division was again drawn. We
broke into two parties, each wishing to give the government a different
direction; the one to strengthen the most popular branch, the other the
more permanent branches, and to extend their permanence. Here you and I
separated for the first time, and as we had been longer than most others
on the public theatre, and our names therefore were more familiar to our
countrymen, the party which considered you as thinking with them, placed
your name at their head; the other, for the same reason, selected mine.
But neither decency nor inclination permitted us to become the advocates
of ourselves, or to take part personally in the violent contests which
followed. We suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be
passive subjects of public discussion. And these discussions, whether
relating to men, measures or opinions, were conducted by the parties
with an animosity, a bitterness and an indecency which had never been
exceeded. All the resources of reason and of wrath were exhausted by each
party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary opinions;
one was upbraided with receiving the anti-federalists, the other the
old tories and refugees, into their bosom. Of this acrimony, the public
papers of the day exhibit ample testimony, in the debates of Congress,
of State Legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses, answers, and
newspaper essays; and to these, without question, may be added the
private correspondences of individuals; and the less guarded in these,
because not meant for the public eye, not restrained by the respect
due to that, but poured forth from the overflowings of the heart into
the bosom of a friend, as a momentary easement of our feelings. In this
way, and in answers to addresses, you and I could indulge ourselves. We
have probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with prejudice, but
always, as we believed, adhering to truth. I have not examined my letters
of that day. I have no stomach to revive the memory of its feelings. But
one of these letters, it seems, has got before the public, by accident
and infidelity, by the death of one friend to whom it was written, and
of his friend to whom it had been communicated, and by the malice and
treachery of a third person, of whom I had never before heard, merely to
make mischief, and in the same satanic spirit in which the same enemy
had intercepted and published, in 1776, your letter animadverting on
Dickinson's character. How it happened that I quoted you in my letter
to Doctor Priestley, and for whom, and not for yourself, the strictures
were meant, has been explained to you in my letter of the 15th, which
had been committed to the post eight days before I received yours of the
10th, 11th and 14th. That gave you the reference which these asked to
the particular answer alluded to in the one to Priestley. The renewal of
these old discussions, my friend, would be equally useless and irksome.
To the volumes then written on these subjects, human ingenuity can add
nothing new, and the rather, as lapse of time has obliterated many of
the facts. And shall you and I, my dear Sir, at our age, like Priam of
old, gird on the _arma, diu desueta, trementibus œvo humeris_? Shall
we, at our age, become the Athletæ of party, and exhibit ourselves as
gladiators in the arena of the newspapers? Nothing in the universe could
induce me to it. My mind has been long fixed to bow to the judgment of
the world, who will judge by my acts, and will never take counsel from
me as to what that judgment shall be. If your objects and opinions have
been misunderstood, if the measures and principles of others have been
wrongfully imputed to you, as I believe they have been, that you should
leave an explanation of them, would be an act of justice to yourself. I
will add, that it has been hoped that you would leave such explanations
as would place every saddle on its right horse, and replace on the
shoulders of others the burthens they shifted on yours.
But all this, my friend, is offered, merely for your consideration and
judgment, without presuming to anticipate what you alone are qualified
to decide for yourself. I mean to express my own purpose only, and the
reflections which have led to it. To me, then, it appears, that there
have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the first
establishment of governments to the present day, and on the same question
which now divides our own country; that these will continue through all
future time; that every one takes his side in favor of the many, or of
the few, according to his constitution, and the circumstances in which
he is placed; that opinions, which are equally honest on both sides,
should not affect personal esteem or social intercourse; that as we judge
between the Claudii and the Gracchi, the Wentworths and the Hampdens of
past ages, so of those among us whose names may happen to be remembered
for awhile, the next generations will judge, favorably or unfavorably,
according to the complexion of individual minds, and the side they shall
themselves have taken; that nothing new can be added by you or me to
what has been said by others, and will be said in every age in support
of the conflicting opinions on government; and that wisdom and duty
dictate an humble resignation to the verdict of our future peers. In
doing this myself, I shall certainly not suffer moot questions to affect
the sentiments of sincere friendship and respect, consecrated to you by
so long a course of time, and of which I now repeat sincere assurances.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, June 28, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I know not what, unless it were the prophet of Tippecanoe,
had turned my curiosity to inquiries after the metaphysical science
of the Indians, their ecclesiastical establishments, and theological
theories; but your letter, written with all the accuracy, perpiscuity,
and elegance of your youth and middle age, as it has given me great
satisfaction, deserves my best thanks.
It has given me satisfaction, because, while it has furnished me with
information _where_ all the knowledge is to be obtained that books
afford, it has convinced me that I shall never know much more of the
subject than I do now. As I have never aimed at making my collection of
books upon this subject, I have none of those you abridged in so concise
a manner. Lafitan Adair, and De Bry, were known to me only by name.
The various ingenuity which has been displayed in inventions of
hypothesis, to account for the original population of America, and the
immensity of learning profusely expended to support them, have appeared to
me for a longer time than I can precisely recollect, what the physicians
call the _Literæ nihil Sanantes_. Whether serpents teeth were sown here
and sprang up men; whether men and women dropped from the clouds upon
this Atlantic Island; whether the Almighty created them here, or whether
they emigrated from Europe, are questions of no moment to the present or
future happiness of man. Neither agriculture, commerce, manufactures,
fisheries, science, literature, taste, religion, morals, nor any other
good will be promoted, or any evil averted, by any discoveries that can
be made in answer to these questions.
The opinions of the Indians and their usages, as they are represented
in your obliging letter of the 11th of June, appear to me to resemble
the Platonizing Philo, or the Philonizing Plato, more than the genuine
system of Indianism.
The philosophy both of Philo and Plato are at least as absurd. It is
indeed less intelligible.
Plato borrowed his doctrines from Oriental and Egyptian philosophers,
for he had travelled both in India and Egypt.
The Oriental philosophy, imitated and adopted, in part, if not the whole,
by Plato and Philo, was
1. One God the good.
2. The ideas, the thoughts, the reason, the intellect, the logos, the
ratio of God.
3. Matter, the universe, the production of the logos, or contemplations
of God. This matter was the source of evil.
Perhaps the three powers of Plato, Philo, the Egyptians, and Indians,
cannot be distinctly made out, from your account of the Indians, but--
1. The great spirit, the good, who is worshipped by the kings, sachems,
and all the great men, in their solemn festivals, as the Author, the
Parent of good.
2. The Devil, or the source of evil. They are not metaphysicians enough
as yet to suppose it, or at least to call it matter, like the wiscains
of Antiquity, and like Frederick the Great who has written a very silly
essay on the origin of evil, in which he ascribes it all to matter, as
if this was an original discovery of his own.
The watchmaker has in his head an idea of the system of a watch before
he makes it. The mechanician of the universe had a complete idea of the
universe before he made it; and this idea, this logos, was almighty, or
at least powerful enough to produce the world, but it must be made of
matter which was eternal; for creation out of nothing was impossible.
And matter was unmanageable. It would not, and could not be fashioned
into any system, without a large mixture of evil in it; for matter was
essentially evil.
The Indians are not metaphysicians enough to have discovered this _idea_,
this logos, this intermediate power between good and evil, God and matter.
But of the two powers, the good and the evil, they seem to have a full
conviction; and what son or daughter of Adam and Eve has not?
This logos of Plato seems to resemble, if it was not the prototype of,
the _Ratio and its Progress_ of Manilius, the astrologer; of the _Progress
of the Mind_ of Condorcet, and the _Age of Reason_ of Tom Payne.
I could make a system too. The seven hundred thousand soldiers of Zingis,
when the whole, or any part of them went to battle, they sent up a howl,
which resembled nothing that human imagination has conceived, unless it
be the supposition that all the devils in hell were let loose at once
to set up an infernal scream, which terrified their enemies, and never
failed to obtain them victory. The Indian yell resembles this; and,
therefore, America was peopled from Asia.
Another system. The armies of Zingis, sometimes two or three or four
hundred thousand of them, surrounded a province in a circle, and marched
towards the centre, driving all the wild beasts before them, lions,
tigers, wolves, bears, and every living thing, terrifying them with their
howls and yells, their drums, trumpets, &c., till they terrified and
tamed enough of them to victual the whole army. Therefore, the Scotch
Highlanders, who practice the same thing in miniature, are emigrants
from Asia. Therefore, the American Indians, who, for anything I know,
practice the same custom, are emigrants from Asia or Scotland.
I am weary of contemplating nations from the lowest and most beastly
degradations of human life, to the highest refinement of civilization. I
am weary of Philosophers, Theologians, Politicians, and Historians. They
are an immense mass of absurdities, vices, and lies. Montesquieu had sense
enough to say in jest, that all our knowledge might be comprehended in
twelve pages in duodecimo, and I believe him in earnest. I could express
my faith in shorter terms. He who loves the workman and his work, and
does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of him.
I have also felt an interest in the Indians, and a commiseration for
them from my childhood. Aaron Pomham the priest, and Moses Pomham the
king of the Punkapang and Neponset tribes, were frequent visitors at my
father's house, at least seventy years ago. I have a distinct remembrance
of their forms and figures. They were very aged, and the tallest and
stoutest Indians I have ever seen. The titles of king and priest, and the
names of Moses and Aaron, were given them no doubt by our Massachusetts
divines and statesmen. There was a numerous family in this town, whose
wigwam was within a mile of this house. This family were frequently
at my father's house, and I, in my boyish rambles, used to call at
their wigwam, where I never failed to be treated with whortleberries,
blackberries, strawberries or apples, plums, peaches, &c., for they had
planted a variety of fruit trees about them. But the girls went out to
service, and the boys to sea, till not a soul is left. We scarcely see
an Indian in a year. I remember the time when Indian murder, scalpings,
depredations and conflagrations, were as frequent on the Eastern and
Northern frontier of Massachusetts, as they are now in Indiana, and
spread as much terror. But since the conquest of Canada, all has ceased;
and I believe with you that another conquest of Canada will quiet the
Indians forever, and be as great a blessing to them as to us.
The instance of Aaron Pomham made me suspect that there was an order of
priesthood among them. But, according to your account, the worship of the
good spirit was performed by the kings, sachems, and warriors, as among
the ancient Germans, whose highest rank of nobility were priests. The
worship of the evil spirit, Αθανατους μὲν πρωτα θεους νομῳ ως διακειται
τιμα.
We have war now in earnest. I lament the contumacious spirit that appears
about me. But I lament the cause that has given too much apology for it;
the total neglect and absolute refusal of all maritime protection and
defence. Money, mariners, and soldiers, would be at the public service,
if only a few frigates had been ordered to be built. Without this, our
Union will be a brittle china vase, a house of ice, or a palace of glass.
I am, Sir, with an affectionate respect, yours
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, June 28, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--It is very true that the denunciations of the priesthood are
fulminated against every advocate for a complete freedom of religion.
Comminations, I believe, would be plenteously pronounced by even the
most liberal of them, against Atheism, Deism, against every man who
disbelieved or doubted the resurrection of Jesus, or the miracles of
the New Testament. Priestley himself would denounce the man who should
deny the Apocalypse, or the Prophecies of Daniel. Priestley and Lindsay
both have denounced as idolaters and blasphemers all the Trinitarians,
and even the Arians.
Poor weak man, when will thy perfection arrive? Thy perfectability I
shall not deny; for a greater character than Priestley or Godwin has
said, "Be ye perfect," &c. For my part I can not deal damnation round
the land on all I judge the foes of God and man. But I did not intend to
say a word on this subject in this letter. As much of it as you please
hereafter, but let me return to politics.
With some difficulty I have hunted up, or down, the "address of the
young men of the city of Philadelphia, the district of Southwark, and
the Northern Liberties," and the answer.
The addresses say, "Actuated by the same principles on which our
forefathers achieved their independence, the recent attempts of a
foreign power to derogate from the dignity and rights of our country,
awaken our liveliest sensibility, and our strongest indignation." Huzza
my brave boys! Could Thomas Jefferson or John Adams hear those words
with insensibility, and without emotion? These boys afterwards add, "We
regard our liberty and independence as the richest portion given us by
our ancestors." And who were those ancestors? Among them were Thomas
Jefferson and John Adams. And I very coolly believe that no two men
among those ancestors did more towards it than those two. Could either
hear this like statues? If, one hundred years hence, your letters and
mine should see the light, I hope the reader will hunt up this address,
and read it all; and remember that we were then engaged, or on the point
of engaging, in a war with France. I shall not repeat the answer till
we come to the paragraph upon which you criticised to Dr. Priestley,
though every word of it is true, and I now rejoice to see it recorded,
and though I had wholly forgotten it.
The paragraph is, "Science and morals are the great pillars on which
this country has been raised to its present population, opulence and
prosperity, and these alone can advance, support, and preserve it.
Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity, or influence the freedom
of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious
and impartial researches, the longest liver of you all will find no
principles, institutions, or systems of education more fit, IN GENERAL,
to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from
your ancestors."
Now, compare the paragraph in the answer with the paragraph in the
address, as both are quoted above, and see if we can find the extent
and the limits of the meaning of both.
Who composed that army of fine young fellows that was then before my
eyes? There were among them Roman Catholics, English Episcopalians,
Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anabaptists,
German Lutherans, German Calvinists, Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans,
Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants and House
Protestants, Deists and Atheists; and "Protestans qui ne croyent rien."
Very few however of several of these species. Nevertheless, all educated
in the GENERAL PRINCIPLES of Christianity; and the general principles
of English and American liberty.
Could my answer be understood by any candid reader or hearer, to recommend
to all the others the general principles, institutions, or systems of
education of the Roman Catholics? Or those of the Quakers? Or those of
the Presbyterians? Or those of the Menonists? Or those of the Methodists?
Or those of the Moravians? Or those of the Universalists? Or those of
the Philosophers? No.
The GENERAL PRINCIPLES on which the fathers achieved independence, were
the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentlemen
could unite, and these principles only could be intended by them in
their address, or by me in my answer.
And what were these GENERAL PRINCIPLES? I answer, the general principles
of Christianity, in which all those sects were united; and the GENERAL
PRINCIPLES of English and American liberty, in which all these young
men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities
sufficient to assert and maintain her independence.
Now I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those
general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the
existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty
are as unalterable as human nature, and our terrestrial mundane system.
I could therefore safely say, consistently with all my then and present
information, that I believed they would never make discoveries in
contradiction to these GENERAL PRINCIPLES. In favor of these GENERAL
PRINCIPLES in philosophy, religion and government, I would fill sheets
of quotations from Frederick of Prussia, from Hume, Gibbon, Bolingbroke,
Rousseau and Voltaire, as well as Newton and Locke; not to mention
thousands of divines and philosophers of inferior fame.
I might have flattered myself that my sentiments were sufficiently known
to have protected me against suspicions of narrow thoughts, contracted
sentiments, bigoted, enthusiastic, or superstitious principles, civil,
political, philosophical, or ecclesiastical. The first sentence of the
preface to my defence of the constitution, vol. 1st, printed in 1787,
is in these words: "The arts and sciences, in general, during the three
or four last centuries, have had a regular course of _progressive_
improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural
philosophy, navigation, and commerce, and the advancement of civilization
and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world
and the human character, which would have astonished the most refined
nations of antiquity," &c. I will quote no farther; but request you
to read again that whole page, and then say whether the writer of it
could be suspected of recommending to youth "to look backward instead
of forward" for instruction and improvement.
This letter is already too long. In my next I shall consider the Terrorism
of the day. Meantime I am, as ever, your friend
TO DOCTOR JOHN L. E. W. SHECUT.
MONTICELLO, June 29, 1813.
SIR,--I am very sensible of the honor done me by the Antiquarian Society
of Charleston, in the Rule for the organization of their Society, which
you have been so good as to communicate, and I pray you to do me the
favor of presenting to them my thanks. Age, and my inland and retired
situation, make it scarcely probable that I shall be able to render them
any services. But, should any occasion occur wherein I can be useful
to them, I shall receive their commands with pleasure, and execute
them with fidelity. While the promotion of the arts and sciences is
interesting to every nation, and at all times, it becomes peculiarly so
to ours, at this time, when the total demoralization of the governments
of Europe, has rendered it safest, by cherishing internal resources,
to lessen the occasions of intercourse with them. The works of our
aboriginal inhabitants have been so perishable, that much of them must
have disappeared already. The antiquarian researches, therefore, of
the Society, cannot be too soon, or too assiduously directed, to the
collecting and preserving what still remain.
Permit me to place here my particular thankfulness for the kind sentiments
of personal regard which you have been pleased to express.
I have been in the constant hope of seeing the second volume of your
excellent botanical work. Its alphabetical form and popular style, its
attention to the properties and uses of plants, as well as to their
descriptions, are well calculated to encourage and instruct our citizens
in botanical inquiries.
I avail myself of this occasion, of enclosing you a little of the fruit
of a _Capsicum_ I have just received from the province of Texas, where
it is indigenous and perennial, and is used as freely as salt by the
inhabitants. It is new to me. It differs from your _Capsicum Minimum_,
in being perennial and probably hardier; perhaps, too, in its size,
which would claim the term of _Minutissimum_. This stimulant being found
salutary in a visceral complaint known on the sea-coast, the introduction
of a hardier variety may be of value. Accept the assurance of my great
respect and consideration.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, June 30, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--* * * * *
But to return, _for the present_, to "The sensations excited in free,
yet firm minds by the Terrorism of the day." You say none can conceive
them who did not witness them; and they were felt by one party only.
Upon this subject I despair of making myself understood by posterity, by
the present age, and even by you. To collect and arrange the documents
illustrative of it, would require as many lives as those of a cat. You
never felt the terrorism of Chaise's Rebellion in Massachusetts. I believe
you never felt the terrorism of Gallatin's insurrection in Pennsylvania.
You certainly never realized the terrorism of Tries's most outrageous
riot and rescue, as I call it. Treason, rebellion--as the world, and
great judges, and two juries pronounce it.
You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genet in 1793, when
ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day,
threatened to drag Washington out of his house, and effect a revolution
in the government, or compel it to declare war in favor of the French
revolution, and against England. The coolest and the firmest minds,
even among the Quakers in Philadelphia, have given their opinions to
me, that nothing but the yellow fever, which removed Dr. Hutchinson and
Jonathan Dickinson Sargent from this world, could have saved the United
States from a total revolution of government. I have no doubt you were
fast asleep in philosophical tranquillity when ten thousand people, and
perhaps many more, were parading the streets of Philadelphia, on the
evening of my _Fast Day_. When even Governor Mifflin himself, thought
it his duty to order a patrol of horse and foot, to preserve the peace;
when Market Street was as full as men could stand by one another, and
even before my door; when some of my domestics, in phrenzy, determined
to sacrifice their lives in my defence; when all were ready to make a
desperate sally among the multitude, and others were with difficulty and
danger dragged back by the others; when I myself judged it prudent and
necessary to order chests of arms from the war office, to be brought
through by lanes and back doors; determined to defend my house at the
expense of my life, and the lives of the few, very few, domestics and
friends within it. What think you of terrorism, Mr. Jefferson? Shall I
investigate the causes, the motives, the incentives to these terrorisms?
Shall I remind you of Phillip Freneau, of Loyd, of Ned Church? Of
Peter Markoe, of Andrew Brown, of Duane? Of Callender, of Tom Paine, of
Greenleaf, of Cheatham, of Tennison at New York, of Benjamin Austin at
Boston?
But above all, shall I request you to collect circular letters
from members of Congress in the middle and southern States to their
constituents? I would give all I am worth for a complete collection of
all those circular letters. Please to recollect Edward Livingston's
motions and speeches, and those of his associates, in the case of
Jonathan Robbins. The real terrors of both parties have always been, and
now are, the fear that they shall lose the elections, and consequently
the loaves and fishes; and that their antagonists will obtain them.
Both parties have excited artificial terrors, and if I were summoned as
a witness to say, upon oath, which party had excited, Machiavillialy,
the most terror, and which had really felt the most, I could not give
a more sincere answer than in the vulgar style, put them in a bag and
shake them, and then see which comes out first.
Where is the terrorism now, my friend? There is now more real terrorism
in New England than there ever was in Virginia. The terror of a civil
war, _à La Vendee_, a division of the States, &c., &c., &c. How shall we
conjure down this damnable rivalry between Virginia and Massachusetts?
Virginia had recourse to Pennsylvania and New York. Massachusetts has
now recourse to New York. They have almost got New Jersey and Maryland,
and they are aiming at Pennsylvania. And all this in the midst of a war
with England, when all Europe is in flames.
I will give you a hint or two more on the subject of terrorism. When John
Randolph in the House, and Stephens Thompson Mason in the Senate, were
treating me with the utmost contempt; when Ned Livingston was threatening
me with impeachment for the murder of Jonathan Robbins, _the native of
Danvers in Connecticut_; when I had certain information, that the daily
language in an Insurance Office in Boston was, even from the mouth of
Charles Jarvis, "We must go to Philadelphia and drag that John Adams from
his chair;" I thank God that terror never yet seized on my mind. But I
have had more excitements to it, from 1761 to this day, than any other
man. Name the other if you can. I have been disgraced and degraded, and
I have a right to complain. But as I always expected it, I have always
submitted to it; perhaps often with too much tameness. The amount of all
the speeches of John Randolph in the House, for two or three years is,
that himself and myself are the only two honest and consistent men in
the United States. Himself eternally in opposition to government, and
myself as constantly in favor of it. He is now in correspondence with
his friend Quincy. What will come of it, let Virginia and Massachusetts
judge. In my next you may find something upon correspondences; Whig
and Tory; Federal and Democratic; Virginian and Novanglian; English and
French; Jacobinic and Despotic, &c.
Meantime I am as ever, your friend.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Correspondences! The letters of Bernard and Hutchinson, and
Oliver and Paxton, &c., were detected and exposed before the Revolution.
There are, I doubt not, thousands of letters now in being, (but still
concealed from their party,) to their friends, which will, one day, see
the light. I have wondered for more than thirty years, that so few have
appeared; and have constantly expected that a Tory History of the rise
and progress of the Revolution would appear; and wished it. I would
give more for it than for Marshall, Gordon, Ramsay, and all the rest.
Private letters of all parties will be found analogous to the newspapers,
pamphlets, and historians of the times. Gordon's and Marshall's histories
were written to make money; and fashioned and finished to sell high
in the London market. I should expect to find more truth in a history
written by Hutchinson, Oliver, or Sewall; and I doubt not, such histories
will one day appear. Marshall's is a Mausolæum, 100 feet square at the
base, and 200 feet high. It will be as durable as the monuments of the
Washington benevolent societies. Your character in history may easily
be foreseen. Your administration will be quoted by philosophers as a
model of profound wisdom; by politicians, as weak, superficial, and
short sighted. Mine, like Pope's woman, will have no character at all.
The impious idolatry to Washington destroyed all character. His legacy
of ministers was not the worst part of the tragedy; though by his own
express confession to me, and by Pickering's confession to the world, in
his letters to Sullivan, two of them, at least, were fastened upon him
by necessity, because he could get no other. The truth is, Hamilton's
influence over him was so well known, that no man fit for the office
of State or War would accept either. He was driven to the necessity of
appointing such as would accept; and this necessity was, in my opinion,
the real cause of his retirement from office; for you may depend upon
it, that retirement was not voluntary.
My friend, you and I have passed our lives in serious times. I know not
whether we have ever seen any moments more serious than the present.
The Northern States are now retaliating upon the Southern States their
conduct from 1797 to 1800. It is a mortification to me to see what
servile mimics they are. Their newspapers, pamphlets, hand-bills, and
their legislative proceedings, are copied from the examples set them,
especially by Virginia and Kentucky. I know not which party has the
most unblushing front, the most lying tongue, or the most impudent and
insolent, not to say the most seditious and rebellious pen.
If you desire explanation on any of the points in this letter, you shall
have them. This correspondence, I hope, will be concealed as long as
Hutchinson's and Oliver's; but I should have no personal objection to
the publication of it in the National Intelligencer. I am, and shall be
for life, your friend.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July 9, 1813.
Lord! Lord! What can I do with so much Greek? When I was of your age,
young man, _i. e._, seven, or eight, or nine years ago, I felt a kind
of pang of affection for one of the flames of my youth, and again paid
my addresses to Isocrates, and Dionysius Hallicarnassensis, &c., &c. I
collected all my Lexicons and Grammars, and sat down to περὶ συνθησεως
ονοματων, &c. In this way I amused myself for some time; but I found,
that if I looked a word to-day, in less than a week I had to look it
again. It was to little better purpose than writing letters on a pail
of water.
Whenever I set down to write to you, I am precisely in the situation
of the wood-cutter on Mount Ida. I cannot see wood for trees. So many
subjects crowd upon me, that I know not with which to begin. But I will
begin, at random, with Belsham; who is, as I have no doubt, a man of
merit. He had no malice against you, nor any thought of doing mischief;
nor has he done any, though he has been imprudent. The truth is, the
dissenters of all denominations in England, and especially the Unitarians,
are cowed, as we used to say at College. They are ridiculed, insulted,
persecuted. They can scarcely hold their heads above water. They catch
at straws and shadows to avoid drowning. Priestley sent your letter to
Linsay, and Belsham printed it from the same motive, _i. e._ to derive
some countenance from the name of Jefferson. Nor has it done harm here
Priestley says to Linsay, "You see he is almost one of us, and he hopes
will soon be altogether such as we are." Even in our New England, I have
heard a high Federal Divine say, your letters had increased his respect
for you.
"The same political parties which now agitate the United States, have
existed through all time;" precisely. And this is precisely the complaint
in the preface to the first volume of my defence. While all other
sciences have advanced, that of government is at a stand; little better
understood; little better practiced now, than three or four thousand
years ago. What is the reason? I say, parties and factions will not
suffer, or permit improvements to be made. As soon as one man hints at
an improvement, his rival opposes it. No sooner has one party discovered
or invented an amelioration of the condition of man, or the order of
society, than the opposite party belies it, misconstrues, misrepresents
it, ridicules it, insults it, and persecutes it. Records are destroyed.
Histories are annihilated, or interpolated, or prohibited: sometimes by
popes, sometimes by emperors, sometimes by aristocratical, and sometimes
by democratical assemblies, and sometimes by mobs.
Aristotle wrote the history of eighteen hundred republics which existed
before his time. Cicero wrote two volumes of discourses on government,
which, perhaps, were worth all the rest of his works. The works of Livy
and Tacitus, &c., that are lost, would be more interesting than all that
remain. Fifty gospels have been destroyed, and where are St. Luke's world
of books that have been written? If you ask my opinion who has committed
all the havoc, I will answer you candidly,--Ecclesiastical and Imperial
despotism has done it, to conceal their frauds.
Why are the histories of all nations, more ancient than the Christian
era, lost? Who destroyed the Alexandrian library? I believe that Christian
priests, Jewish rabbis, Grecian sages, and emperors, had as great a hand
in it as Turks and Mahometans.
Democrats, Rebels and Jacobins, when they possessed a momentary power,
have shown a disposition both to destroy and forge records as vandalical
as priests and despots. Such has been and such is the world we live in.
I recollect, near some thirty years ago, to have said carelessly to
you that I wished I could find time and means to write something upon
aristocracy. You seized upon the idea, and encouraged me to do it with
all that friendly warmth that is natural and habitual to you. I soon
began, and have been writing upon that subject ever since. I have been
so unfortunate as never to be able to make myself understood.
Your "ἄριστοι" are the most difficult animals to manage of anything
in the whole theory and practice of government. They will not suffer
themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own subtlety,
industry and courage, but they employ the commonalty to knock to pieces
every plan and model that the most honest architects in legislation can
invent to keep them within bounds. Both patricians and plebeians are as
furious as the workmen in England, to demolish labor-saving machinery.
But who are these "ἄριστοι"? Who shall judge? Who shall select these
choice spirits from the rest of the congregation? Themselves? We must
first find out and determine who themselves are. Shall the congregation
choose? Ask Xenophon; perhaps hereafter I may quote you Greek. Too much in
a hurry at present, English must suffice. Xenophon says that the ecclesia
always chooses the worst men they can find, because none others will do
their dirty work. This wicked motive is worse than birth or wealth. Here
I want to quote Greek again. But the day before I received your letter
of June 27th, I gave the book to George Washington Adams, going to the
academy at Hingham. The title is Ηθικη ποιησις, a collection of moral
sentences from all the most ancient Greek poets. In one of the oldest
of them, I read in Greek, that I cannot repeat, a couplet, the sense
of which was: "Nobility in men is worth as much as it is in horses,
asses, or rams; but the meanest blooded puppy in the world, if he gets
a little money, is as good a man as the best of them." Yet birth and
wealth together have prevailed over virtue and talents in all ages. The
many will acknowledge no other "ἄριστοι"
Your experience of this truth will not much differ from that of your
best friend.
MR ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July 13, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Let me allude to one circumstance more in one of your letters
to me, before I touch upon the subject of religion in your letters to
Priestley.
The first time that you and I differed in opinion on any material
question, was after your arrival from Europe, and that point was the
French revolution.
You were well persuaded in your own mind, that the nation would succeed
in establishing a free republican government. I was as well persuaded in
mine, that a project of such a government over five and twenty millions
of people, when four and twenty millions and five hundred thousand of
them could neither read nor write, was as unnatural, irrational and
impracticable as it would be over the elephants, lions, tigers, panthers,
wolves and bears in the royal menagerie at Versailles. Napoleon has
lately invented a word which perfectly expresses my opinion, at that
time and ever since. He calls the project Ideology; and John Randolph,
though he was, fourteen years ago, as wild an enthusiast for equality
and fraternity as any of them, appears to be now a regenerated proselyte
to Napoleon's opinion and mine, that it was all madness.
The Greeks, in their allegorical style, said that the two ladies,
Αριστοκρατια and δημοκρατια, always in a quarrel, disturbed every
neighborhood with their brawls. It is a fine observation of yours, that
"Whig and Tory belong to natural history." Inequalities of mind and
body are so established by God Almighty, in his constitution of human
nature, that no art or policy can ever plane them down to a level. I
have never read reasoning more absurd, sophistry more gross, in proof of
the Athanasian creed, or Transubstantiation, than the subtle labors of
Helvetius and Rousseau, to demonstrate the natural equality of mankind.
_Jus cuique_, the golden rule, do as you would be done by, is all the
equality that can be supported or defended by reason, or reconciled to
common sense.
It is very true, as you justly observe, I can say nothing new on this or
any other subject of government. But when Lafayette harangued you and me
and John Quincy Adams, through a whole evening in your hotel in the Cul
de Sac, at Paris, and developed the plans then in operation to reform
France, though I was as silent as you were, I then thought I could say
something new to him.
In plain truth, I was astonished at the grossness of his ignorance of
government and history, as I had been for years before, at that of Turgot,
Rochefaucault, Condorcet and Franklin. This gross Ideology of them all,
first suggested to me the thought and the inclination which I afterwards
hinted to you in London, of writing something upon aristocracy. I was
restrained for years, by many fearful considerations. Who, and what was
I? A man of no name or consideration in Europe. The manual exercise of
writing was painful and distressing to me, almost like a blow on the
elbow or knee. My style was habitually negligent, unstudied, unpolished;
I should make enemies of all the French patriots, the Dutch patriots,
the English republicans, dissenters, reformers, call them what you will;
and what came nearer home to my bosom than all the rest, I knew I should
give offence to many if not all of my best friends in America, and very
probably destroy all the little popularity I ever had, in a country where
popularity had more omnipotence than the British Parliament assumed.
Where should I get the necessary books? What printer or bookseller would
undertake to print such hazardous writings?
But when the French assembly of notables met, and I saw that Turgot's
"government in one centre, and that centre the nation," a sentence as
mysterious or as contradictory as the Athanasian creed, was about to
take place, and when I saw that Shaise's rebellion was about breaking
out in Massachusetts, and when I saw that even my obscure name was often
quoted in France as an advocate for simple democracy, when I saw that the
sympathies in America had caught the French flame, I was determined to
wash my own hands as clean as I could of all this foulness. I had then
strong forebodings that I was sacrificing all the honors and emoluments
of this life, and so it has happened, but not in so great a degree as
I apprehended.
In truth, my defence of the constitutions and "discourses on Davila,"
laid the foundation for that immense unpopularity which fell, like the
tower of Siloam, upon me. Your steady defence of democratical principles,
and your invariable favorable opinion of the French revolution, laid
the foundation of your unbounded popularity.
_Sic transit gloria mundi!_ Now I will forfeit my life, if you can find
one sentence in my defence of the constitutions, or the discourses on
Davila, which, by a fair construction, can favor the introduction of
hereditary monarchy or aristocracy into America.
They were all written to support and strengthen the constitutions of
the United States.
The wood-cutter on Ida, though he was puzzled to find a tree to chop at
first, I presume knew how to leave off when he was weary. But I never
know when to cease when I begin to write to you.
TO DOCTOR SAMUEL BROWN.
MONTICELLO, July 14, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of May 25th and June 13th have been duly received,
as also the first supply of Capsicum, and the second of the same article
with other seeds. I shall set great store by the Capsicum, if it is
hardy enough for our climate, the species we have heretofore tried being
too tender. The Galvance, too, will be particularly attended to, as it
appears very different from what we cultivate by that name. I have so many
grandchildren and others who might be endangered by the poison plant,
that I think the risk overbalances the curiosity of trying it. The most
elegant thing of that kind known is a preparation of the Jamestown weed,
Datura-Stramonium, invented by the French in the time of Robespierre.
Every man of firmness carried it constantly in his pocket to anticipate
the Guillotine. It brings on the sleep of death as quietly as fatigue does
the ordinary sleep, without the least struggle or motion. Condorcet, who
had recourse to it, was found lifeless on his bed a few minutes after his
landlady had left him there, and even the slipper which she had observed
half suspended on his foot, was not shaken off. It seems far preferable to
the Venesection of the Romans, the Hemlock of the Greeks, and the Opium
of the Turks. I have never been able to learn what the preparation is,
other than a strong concentration of its lethiferous principle. Could
such a medicament be restrained to self-administration, it ought not to
be kept secret. There are ills in life as desperate as intolerable, to
which it would be the rational relief, _e. g._ the inveterate cancer.
As a relief from tyranny indeed, for which the Romans recurred to it in
the times of the emperors, it has been a wonder to me that they did not
consider a poignard in the breast of the tyrant as a better remedy.
I am sorry to learn that a banditti from our country are taking part in
the domestic contests of the country adjoining you; and the more so as
from the known laxity of execution in our laws, they cannot be punished,
although the law has provided punishment. It will give a wrongful hue
to a rightful act of taking possession of Mobile, and will be imputed to
the national authority as Meranda's enterprise was, because not punished
by it. I fear, too, that the Spaniards are too heavily oppressed by
ignorance and superstition for self-government, and whether a change
from foreign to domestic despotism will be to their advantage remains
to be seen.
We have been unfortunate in our first military essays by land. Our men
are good, but our generals unqualified. Every failure we have incurred
has been the fault of the general, the men evincing courage in every
instance. At sea we have rescued our character; but the chief fruit of our
victories there is to prove to those who have fleets, that the English
are not invincible at sea, as Alexander has proved that Bonaparte is
not invincible by land. How much to be lamented that the world cannot
unite and destroy these two land and sea monsters! The one drenching
the earth with human gore, the other ravaging the ocean with lawless
piracies and plunder. Bonaparte will die, and the nations of Europe will
recover their independence with, I hope, better governments. But the
English government never dies, because their king is no part of it, he
is a mere formality, and the real government is the aristocracy of the
country, for their House of Commons is of that class. Their aim is to
claim the dominion of the ocean by conquest, and to make every vessel
navigating it pay a tribute to the support of the fleet necessary to
maintain that dominion, to which their own resources are inadequate.
I see no means of terminating their maritime dominion and tyranny but
in their own bankruptcy, which I hope is approaching. But I turn from
these painful contemplations to the more pleasing one of my constant
friendship and respect for you.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July 15, 1813.
Never mind it, my dear Sir, if I write four letters to your one, your
one is worth more than my four.
It is true that I can say, and have said, nothing new on the subject of
government. Yet I did say in my defence and in my discourses on Davila,
though in an uncouth style, what was new to Locke, to Harrington, to
Milton, to Hume, to Montesquieu, to Rousseau, to Turgot, to Condorcet, to
Rochefaucault, to Price, to Franklin, and to yourself; and at that time
to almost all Europe and America. I can prove all this by indisputable
authorities and documents.
Writings on government had been not only neglected, but discountenanced
and discouraged throughout all Europe, from the restoration of Charles
the Second in England, till the French revolution commenced.
The English commonwealth, the fate of Charles the 1st, and the military
despotism of Cromwell, had sickened mankind with disquisitions on
government to such a degree, that there was scarcely a man in Europe
who had looked into the subject.
David Hume had made himself so fashionable with the aid of the court
and clergy, Atheist, as they called him, and by his elegant lies against
the republicans and gaudy daubings of the courtiers, that he had nearly
laughed into contempt Rapin, Sydney, and even Locke. It was ridiculous
and even criminal in almost all Europe to speak of constitutions, or
writers upon the principles or the fabrics of them.
In this state of things my poor, unprotected, unpatronized books appeared;
and met with a fate not quite so cruel as I had anticipated. They were
at last, however, overborne by misrepresentations, and will perish
in obscurity, though they have been translated into German as well as
French. The three emperors of Europe, the Prince Regents, and all the
ruling powers, would no more countenance or tolerate such writings, than
the Pope, the emperor of Haiti, Ben Austin, or Tom Paine.
The nations of Europe appeared to me, when I was among them, from the
beginning of 1778, to 1785, _i. e._ to the commencement of the troubles
in France, to be advancing by slow but sure steps towards an amelioration
of the condition of man in religion and government, in liberty, equality,
fraternity, knowledge, civilization and humanity.
The French revolution I dreaded, because I was sure it would not only
arrest the progress of improvement, but give it a retrograde course, for
at least a century, if not many centuries. The French patriots appeared
to me like young scholars from a college, or sailors flushed with recent
pay or prize money, mounted on wild horses, lashing and spurring till
they would kill the horses, and break their own necks.
Let me now ask you very seriously, my friend, where are now, in 1813,
the perfection and the perfectability of human nature? Where is now the
progress of the human mind? Where is the amelioration of society? Where
the augmentations of human comforts? Where the diminutions of human pains
and miseries? I know not whether the last day of Dr. Young can exhibit
to a mind unstaid by philosophy and religion [for I hold there can be
no philosophy without religion], more terrors than the present state
of the world. When, where, and how is the present chaos to be arranged
into order? There is not, there cannot be, a greater abuse of words
than to call the writings of Calender, Paine, Austin and Lowell, or the
speeches of Ned Livingston and John Randolph, public discussions. The
ravings and rantings of Bedlam merit the character as well; and yet Joel
Barlow was about to record Tom Paine as the great author of the American
Revolution! If he was, I desire that my name may be blotted out forever
from its records.
You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each
other.
I shall come to the subject of religion by-and-bye. Your friend.
I have been looking for some time for a space in my good husband's
letters to add the regards of an old friend, which are still cherished
and preserved through all the changes and vicissitudes which have taken
place since we first became acquainted, and will, I trust, remain as
long as
A. ADAMS.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July 16, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your letters to Priestley have increased my grief, if that were
possible, for the loss of Rush. Had he lived, I would have stimulated
him to insist on your promise to him, to write him on the subject of
religion. Your plan I admire.
In your letter to Priestley of March 21st, 1801, dated at Washington,
you call "The Christian Philosophy, the most sublime and benevolent, but
the most perverted system that ever shone upon man." That it is the most
sublime and benevolent, I agree. But whether it has been more perverted
than that of Moses, of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathan, of
Numa, of Mahomet, of the Druids, of the Hindoos, &c., &c., I cannot
as yet determine because I am not sufficiently acquainted with those
systems, or the history of their effects, to form a decisive opinion of
the result of the comparison.
In your letter dated Washington, April 9, 1803, you say, "In consequence
of some conversations with Dr. Rush, in the years 1798-99. 1 had promised
some day to write to him a letter, giving him my view of the Christian
system. I have reflected often on it since, and even sketched the outline
in my own mind. I should first take a general view of the moral doctrines
of the most remarkable of the ancient philosophers, of whose ethics we
have sufficient information to make an estimate; say of Pythagoras,
Epicurus, Epictetus, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, Antonius. 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, and doctrines of Jesus,
who, sensible of the 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, and philanthropy, and to
inculcate the belief of a future state. This view would purposely omit
the question of his Divinity, and even of 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, and 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 and sublime, probably, that has been ever taught, and more
perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers. His character and
doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to
be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his
actions and 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 imposter, on the most innocent, the most
benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that has ever been
exhibited to man. This is the outline!"
"Sancte Socrate! ora pro nobis!"--Erasmus.
Priestley in his letter to Linsay, enclosing a copy of your letter to
him, says, "He is generally considered an unbeliever; if so, however, he
cannot be far from us, and I hope in the way to be not only almost, but
altogether what we are. He now attends public worship very regularly,
and his moral conduct was never impeached."
Now, I see not but you are as good a Christian as Priestley and Linsay.
Piety and morality were the end and object of the Christian system,
according to them, and according to you. They believed in the resurrection
of Jesus, in his miracles, and in his inspiration; but what inspiration?
Not all that is recorded in the New Testament, nor the Old. They have not
yet told us how much they believe, or how much they doubt or disbelieve.
They have not told us how much allegory, how much parable, they find,
nor how they explain them all, in the Old Testament or the New.
John Quincy Adams has written for years to his two sons, boys of ten and
twelve, a series of letters, in which he pursues a plan more extensive
than yours; but agreeing in most of the essential points. I wish these
letters could be preserved in the bosoms of his boys, but women and
priests will get them; and I expect, if he makes a peace, he will be
obliged to retire like a Jay, to study prophecies to the end of his
life. I have more to say on this subject of religion.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July 18, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I have more to say on religion. For more than sixty years
I have been attentive to this great subject. Controversies between
Calvinists and Armenians, Trinitarians and Unitarians, Deists and
Christians, Atheists and both, have attracted my attention, whenever
the singular life I have led would admit, to all these questions. The
history of this little village of Quincy, if it were worth recording,
would explain to you how this happened. I think I can now say I have
read away bigotry, if not enthusiasm. What does Priestley mean by an
unbeliever, when he applies it to you? How much did he "unbelieve"
himself? Gibbon had him right, when he determined his creed "scanty."
We are to understand, no doubt, that he believed the resurrection of
Jesus; some of his miracles; his inspiration, but in what degree? He did
not believe in the inspiration of the writings that contain his history,
yet he believed in the Apocalyptic beast, and he believed as much as he
pleased in the writings of Daniel and John. This great, excellent, and
extraordinary man, whom I sincerely loved, esteemed, and respected, was
really a phenomenon; a comet in the system, like Voltaire, Bolingbroke,
and Hume. Had Bolingbroke or Voltaire taken him in hand, what would they
have made of him and his creed.
I do not believe you have read much of Priestley's "corruptions of
Christianity," his history of early opinions of Jesus Christ, his
predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy with Horsley.
I have been a diligent student for many years in books whose titles
you have never seen. In Priestley's and Linsay's writings; in Farmer,
in Cappe, in Tucker's or Edwards searches; Light of Nature pursued;
in Edwards and Hopkins, and lately in Ezra Styles Ely; his reverend
and learned panegyrists, and his elegant and spirited opponents. I am
not wholly uninformed of the controversies in Germany, and the learned
researches of universities and professors, in which the sanctity of
the Bible and the inspiration of its authors are taken for granted, or
waived, or admitted, or not denied. I have also read Condorcet's Progress
of the Human Mind.
Now, what is all this to you? No more, than if I should tell you that
I read Dr. Clark, and Dr. Waterland, and Emlyn, and Leland's view or
review of the Deistical writers more than fifty years ago; which is a
literal truth. I blame you not for reading Euclid and Newton, Thucydides
and Theocrites; for I believe you will find as much entertainment and
instruction in them, as I have found in my theological and ecclesiastical
instructors; or even as I have found in a profound investigation of the
life, writings, and doctrines of Erastus, whose disciples were Milton,
Harrington, Selden, St. John, the Chief Justice, father of Bolingbroke,
and others, the choicest spirits of their age; or in Le Harpe's history
of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, or in Vander Kemp's vast
map of the causes of the revolutionary spirit in the same and preceding
centuries. These things are to me, at present, the marbles and nine-pins
of old age; I will not say the beads and prayer-books.
I agree with you, as far as you go, most cordially, and I think solidly.
How much farther I go, how much more I believe than you, I may explain
in a future letter. Thus much I will say at present, I have found so
many difficulties, that I am not astonished at your stopping where you
are; and so far from sentencing you to perdition, I hope soon to meet
you in another country.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July 22, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Dr. Priestley, in a letter to Mr. Linsey, Northumberland,
November 4, 1803, says:
"As you were pleased with my comparison of Socrates and Jesus, I have
begun to carry the same comparison to all the heathen moralists, and
I have all the books that I want for the purpose except Simplicius
and Arrian on Epictetus, and them I hope to get from a library in
Philadelphia; lest, however, I should fail there, I wish you or Mr.
Belsham would procure and send them from London. While I am capable
of anything I cannot be idle, and I do not know that I can do anything
better. This, too, is an undertaking that Mr. Jefferson recommends to me."
In another letter, dated Northumberland, January 16th, 1804, Dr. Priestley
says to Mr. Linsey:
"I have now finished and transcribed for the press, my comparison of the
Grecian philosophers with those of Revelation, and with more ease and
more to my own satisfaction than I expected They who liked my pamphlet
entitled, 'Socrates and Jesus compared,' will not, I flatter myself,
dislike this work. It has the same object and completes the scheme. It
has increased my own sense of the unspeakable value of revelation, and
must, I think, that of every person who will give due attention to the
subject."
I have now given you all that relates to yourself in Priestley's letters.
This was possibly and not improbably, the last letter this great, this
learned, indefatigable, most excellent and extraordinary man ever wrote,
for on the 4th of February, 1804, he was released from his labors and
sufferings. Peace, rest, joy and glory to his soul! For I believe he
had one, and one of the greatest.
I regret, oh how I lament that he did not live to publish this work!
It must exist in manuscript. Cooper must know something of it. Can you
learn from him where it is, and get it printed?
I hope you will still perform your promise to Doctor Rush.
If Priestley had lived, I should certainly have corresponded with him. His
friend Cooper, who, unfortunately for him and me and you, had as fatal
an influence over him as Hamilton had over Washington, and whose rash
hot head led Priestley into all his misfortunes and most of his errors
in conduct, could not have prevented explanations between Priestley and
me.
I should propose to him a thousand, a million questions. And no man
was more capable or better disposed to answer them candidly than Dr.
Priestley.
Scarcely anything that has happened to me in my curious life, has
made a deeper impression upon me than that such a learned, ingenious,
scientific and talented madcap as Cooper, could have influence enough
to make Priestley my enemy.
I will not yet communicate to you more than a specimen of the questions
I would have asked Priestley.
One is; Learned and scientific, Sir!--You have written largely about
matter and spirit, and have concluded there is no human soul. Will you
please to inform me what matter is? and what spirit is? Unless we know
the meaning of words, we cannot reason in or about words.
I shall never send you all my questions that I would put to Priestley,
because they are innumerable; but I may hereafter send you two or three.
I am, in perfect charity, your old friend.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, August 9, 1813.
I believe I told you in my last that I had given you all in Linsey's
memorial that interested you, but I was mistaken. In Priestley's letter
to Linsey, December 19th, 1803, I find this paragraph:
"With the work I am now composing, I go on much faster and better than
I expected, so that in two or three months, if my health continues as
it now is, I hope to have it ready for the press, though I shall hardly
proceed to print it till we have dispatched the notes.
"It is upon the same plan with that of Socrates and Jesus compared,
considering all the more distinguished of the Grecian sects of philosophy,
till the establishment of Christianity in the Roman empire. If you liked
that pamphlet, I flatter myself you will like this.
"I hope it is calculated to show, in a peculiarly striking light, the
great advantage of revelation, and that it will make an impression on
candid unbelievers if they will read.
"But I find few that will trouble themselves to read anything on the
subject, which, considering the great magnitude and interesting nature
of the subject, is a proof of a very improper state of mind, unworthy
of a rational being."
I send you this extract for several reasons. First, because you set him
upon this work. Secondly, because I wish you to endeavor to bring it to
light and get it printed. Thirdly, because I wish it may stimulate you
to pursue your own plan which you promised to Dr. Rush.
I have not seen any work which expressly compares the morality of the Old
Testament with that of the New, in all their branches, nor either with
that of the ancient philosophers. Comparisons with the Chinese, the East
Indians, the Africans, the West Indians, &c., would be more difficult;
with more ancient nations impossible. The documents are destroyed.
TO MR. ISAAC M'PHERSON.
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 pulley, 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 in 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 des 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 Lausanne, 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 Hydraulique de Belidor, the 2d volume
of which is said [De la Lande's continuation of Montucla's 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 we copied 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 plough-share
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 harassment 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.
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 though a life of much hasty
writing, more indebted for style to 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 curæ." "Allieni appetens, sui profusus; ardens in
cupiditatibus; satis loquentiæ, sapientiæ 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 Grammaticé, aliud Latiné 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 other improves 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 Æolic, and other dialects, as disfiguring or as beautifying their
language? Did they fastidiously disavow Herodotus, Pindar, Theocritus,
Sappho, Alcæus, 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 _plæce_,[4] for instance, and the Greek and Latin
roots, of kindred meaning, adopted in English, to wit, θεσις and locatio,
with their prepositions.
mis-place
after-place
gain-place
fore-place
hind-place
by-place
for-place
fro-place
in-place
on-place
over-place
out-place
thorough-place
under-place
up-place
with-place
amphi-thesis
ana-thesis
anti-thesis
apo-thesis
dia-thesis
ek-thesis
en-thesis
epi-thesis
cata-thesis
para-thesis
peri-thesis
pro-thesis
pros-thesis
syn-thesis
hyper-thesis
hypo-thesis
a-location
ab-location
abs-location
al-location
anti-location
circum-location
cis-location
col-location
contra-location
de-location
di-location
dis-location
e-location
ex-location
extra-location
il-location
inter-location
intro-location
juxta-location
ob-location
per-location
post-location
pre-location
preter-location
pro-location
retro-location
re-location
se-location
sub-location
super-location
trans-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-cræft+, book-craft, learning, +riht-geleaf-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 offers good. 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.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] 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 _plæce_, _platea_, _vicus_.
TO MR. JOHN WILSON.
MONTICELLO, August 17, 1813.
SIR,--Your letter of the 3d has been duly received. That of Mr. Eppes
had before come to hand, covering your MS. on the reformation of the
orthography of the plural of nouns ending in _y_, and _ey_, and on
orthoepy. A change has been long desired in English orthography, such as
might render it an easy and true index of the pronunciation of words.
The want of conformity between the combinations of letters, and the
sounds they should represent, increases to foreigners the difficulty
of acquiring the language, occasions great loss of time to children in
learning to read, and renders correct spelling rare but in those who
read much. In England a variety of plans and propositions have been
made for the reformation of their orthography. Passing over these, two
of our countrymen, Dr. Franklin and Dr. Thornton, have also engaged in
the enterprise; the former proposing an addition of two or three new
characters only, the latter a reformation of the whole alphabet nearly.
But these attempts in England, as well as here, have been without effect.
About the middle of the last century an attempt was made to banish the
letter _d_ from the words bridge, judge, hedge, knowledge, &c., others
of that termination, and to write them as we write age, cage, sacrilege,
privilege; but with little success. The attempt was also made, which you
mention in your second part, to drop the letter _u_ in words of Latin
derivation ending in _ou_r, and to write honor, candor, rigor, &c.,
instead of honour, candour, rigour. But the _u_ having been picked up in
the passage of these words from the Latin, through the French, to us, is
still preserved by those who consider it as a memorial of our title to
the words. Other partial attempts have been made by individual writers,
but with as little success. Pluralizing nouns in _y_, and _ey_, by adding
_s_ only, as you propose, would certainly simplify the spelling, and
be analogous to the general idiom of the language. It would be a step
gained in the progress of general reformation, if it could prevail.
But my opinion being requested I must give it candidly, that judging
of the future by the past, I expect no better fortune to this than
similar preceding propositions have experienced. It is very difficult
to persuade the great body of mankind to give up what they have once
learned, and are now masters of, for something to be learnt anew. Time
alone insensibly wears down old habits, and produces small changes at
long intervals, and to this process we must all accommodate ourselves,
and be content to follow those who will not follow us. Our Anglo-Saxon
ancestors had twenty ways of spelling the word "many." Ten centuries have
dropped all of them and substituted that which we now use. I now return
your MS. without being able, with the gentlemen whose letters are cited,
to encourage hope as to its effect. I am bound, however, to acknowledge
that this is a subject to which I have not paid much attention; and that
my doubts therefore should weigh nothing against their more favorable
expectations. That these may be fulfilled, and mine prove unfounded, I
sincerely wish, because I am a friend to the reformation generally of
whatever can be made better, and because it could not fail of gratifying
you to be instrumental in this work. Accept the assurance of my respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, August 22, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Since my letter of June the 27th, I am in your debt for many;
all of which I have read with infinite delight. They open a wide field
for reflection, and offer subjects enough to occupy the mind and the pen
indefinitely. I must follow the good example you have set, and when I have
not time to take up every subject, take up a single one. Your approbation
of my outline to Dr. Priestley is a great gratification to me; and I
very much suspect that if thinking men would have the courage to think
for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do
not differ in religious opinions as much as is supposed. I remember to
have heard Dr. Priestley say, that if all England would candidly examine
themselves, and confess, they would find that Unitarianism was really
the religion of all; and I observe a bill is now depending in parliament
for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians. It is too late in the day for men
of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that
three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three,
and the three are not one; to divide mankind by a single letter into
ομοουσιανς and ὁμοιουσιανς. But this constitutes the craft, the power
and the profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of
factitious religion, and they would catch no more flies. We should all
then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests, moralize for
ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what
no man can understand, nor therefore believe; for I suppose belief to
be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition.
It is with great pleasure I can inform you, that Priestley finished the
comparative view of the doctrines of the philosophers of antiquity,
and of Jesus, before his death; and that it was printed soon after.
And, with still greater pleasure, that I can have a copy of his work
forwarded from Philadelphia, by a correspondent there, and presented for
your acceptance, by the same mail which carries you this, or very soon
after. The branch of the work which the title announces, is executed
with learning and candor, as was everything Priestley wrote, but perhaps
a little hastily; for he felt himself pressed by the hand of death.
The Abbé Batteux had, in fact laid the foundation of this part in his
Causes Premieres, with which he has given us the originals of Ocellus
and Timæus, who first committed the doctrines of Pythagoras to writing,
and Enfield, to whom the Doctor refers, had done it more copiously. But
he has omitted the important branch, which, in your letter of August the
9th, you say you have never seen executed, a comparison of the morality
of the Old Testament with that of the New. And yet, no two things were
ever more unlike. I ought not to have asked him to give it. He dared not.
He would have been eaten alive by his intolerant brethren, the Cannibal
priests. And yet, this was really the most interesting branch of the work.
Very soon after my letter to Doctor Priestley, the subject being still in
my mind, I had leisure during an abstraction from business for a day or
two, while on the road, to think a little more on it, and to sketch more
fully than I had done to him, a syllabus of the matter which I thought
should enter into the work. I wrote it to Doctor Rush, and there ended
all my labor on the subject; himself and Doctor Priestley being the
only two depositories of my secret. The fate of my letter to Priestley,
after his death, was a warning to me on that of Doctor Rush; and at my
request, his family were so kind as to quiet me by returning my original
letter and syllabus. By this, you will be sensible how much interest I
take in keeping myself clear of religious disputes before the public,
and especially of seeing my syllabus disembowelled by the Aruspices of
the modern Paganism. Yet I enclose it _to you_ with entire confidence,
free to be perused by yourself and Mrs. Adams, but by no one else, and
to be returned to me.
You are right in supposing, in one of yours, that I had not read much
of Priestley's Predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy
with Horsley. But I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and
Early Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them, and on
Middleton's writings, especially his letters from Rome, and to Waterland,
as the basis of my own faith. These writings have never been answered,
nor can be answered by quoting historical proofs, as they have done. For
these facts, therefore, I cling to their learning, so much superior to
my own.
I now fly off in a tangent to another subject. Marshall, in the first
volume of his history, chapter 3, p. 180, ascribes the petition to the
King, of 1774, (1 Journ. Cong. 67) to the pen of Richard Henry Lee.
I think myself certain it was not written by him, as well from what I
recollect to have heard, as from the internal evidence of style. His was
loose, vague, frothy, rhetorical. He was a poorer writer than his brother
Arthur; and Arthur's standing may be seen in his Monitor's letters, to
insure the sale of which, they took the precaution of tacking to them
a new edition of the Farmer's letters, like Mezentius, who "_mortua
jungebat corpora vivis_." You were of the committee, and can tell me
who wrote this petition, and who wrote the address to the inhabitants of
the colonies, ib. 45. Of the papers of July 1775, I recollect well that
Mr. Dickinson drew the petition to the King, ib. 149; I think Robert R.
Livingston drew the address to the inhabitants of Great Britain, ib. 152.
Am I right in this? And who drew the address to the people of Ireland,
ib. 180? On these questions I ask of your memory to help mine. Ever and
affectionately yours.
TO MR. EPPES.
POPLAR FOREST, September 11, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I turn with great reluctance from the functions of a private
citizen to matters of State. The swaggering on deck, as a passenger,
is so much more pleasant than clambering the ropes as a seaman, and my
confidence in the skill and activity of those employed to work the vessel
is so entire, that I notice nothing _en passant_, but how smoothly she
moves. Yet I avail myself of the leisure which a visit to this place
procures me, to revolve again in my mind the subject of my former letter,
and in compliance with the request of yours of ----, to add some further
thoughts on it. Though intended as only supplementary to that, I may
fall into repetitions, not having that with me, nor paper or book of
any sort to supply the default of a memory on the wane.
The objects of finance in the United States have hitherto been very
simple; merely to provide for the support of the government on its peace
establishment, and to pay the debt contracted in the revolutionary war,
a war which will be sanctioned by the approbation of posterity through
all future ages. The means provided for these objects were ample, and
resting on a consumption which little affected the poor, may be said
to have been sensibly felt by none. The fondest wish of my heart ever
was that the surplus portion of these taxes, destined for the payment
of that debt, should, when that object was accomplished, be continued
by annual or biennial re-enactments, and applied, in time of peace, to
the improvement of our country by canals, roads and useful institutions,
literary or others; and in time of war to the maintenance of the war. And
I believe that keeping the civil list within proper bounds, the surplus
would have been sufficient for any war, administered with integrity and
judgment. For authority to apply the surplus to objects of improvement,
an amendment of the constitution would have been necessary. I have said
that the taxes should be continued by annual or biennial re-enactments,
because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public
purse, is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought
not to wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted to be free. No tax should
ever be yielded for a longer term than that of the congress wanting it,
except when pledged for the reimbursement of a loan. On this system,
the standing income being once liberated from the revolutionary debt,
no future loan nor future tax would ever become necessary, and wars
would no otherwise affect our pecuniary interests than by suspending the
improvements belonging to a state of peace. This happy consummation would
have been achieved by another eight years' administration, conducted by
Mr. Madison, and executed in its financial department by Mr. Gallatin,
could peace have been so long preserved. So enviable a state in prospect
for our country, induced me to temporize, and to bear with national
wrongs which under no other prospect ought ever to have been unresented
or unresisted. My hope was, that by giving time for reflection, and
retraction of injury, a sound calculation of their own interests would
induce the aggressing nations to redeem their own character by a return
to the practice of right. But our lot happens to have been cast in
an age when two nations to whom circumstances have given a temporary
superiority over others, the one by land, the other by sea, throwing off
all restraints of morality, all pride of national character, forgetting
the mutability of fortune and the inevitable doom which the laws of
nature pronounce against departure from justice, individual or national,
have dared to treat her reclamations with derision, and to set up force
instead of reason as the umpire of nations. Degrading themselves thus
from the character of lawful societies into lawless bands of robbers
and pirates, they are abusing their brief ascendency by desolating the
world with blood and rapine. Against such a banditti, war had become
less ruinous than peace, for then peace was a war on one side only. On
the final and formal declarations of England, therefore, that she never
would repeal her orders of council as to us, until those of France should
be repealed as to other nations as well as us, and that no practicable
arrangement against her impressment of our seamen could be proposed or
devised, war was justly declared, and ought to have been declared. This
change of condition has clouded our prospects of liberation from debt,
and of being able to carry on a war without new loans or taxes. But
although deferred, these prospects are not desperate. We should keep
forever in view the state of 1817, towards which we were advancing, and
consider it as that which we must attain. Let the old funds continue
appropriated to the civil list and revolutionary debt, and the reversion
of the surplus to improvement during peace, and let us take up this war
as a separate business, for which, substantive and distinct provision
is to be made.
That we are bound to defray its expenses within our own time, and
unauthorized to burthen posterity with them, I suppose to have been
proved in my former letter. I will place the question nevertheless in
one additional point of view. The former regarded their independent
right over the earth; this over their own persons. There have existed
nations, and civilized and learned nations, who have thought that a
father had a right to sell his child as a slave, in perpetuity; that he
could alienate his body and industry conjointly, and _à fortiori_ his
industry separately; and consume its fruits himself. A nation asserting
this fratricide right might well suppose they could burthen with public
as well as private debt their "_nati natorum, et qui nascentur at
illis_." But we, this age, and in this country especially, are advanced
beyond those notions of natural law. We acknowledge that our children
are born free; that that freedom is the gift of nature, and not of him
who begot them; that though under our care during infancy, and therefore
of necessity under a duly tempered authority, that care is confided to
us to be exercised for the preservation and good of the child only; and
his labors during youth are given as a retribution for the charges of
infancy. As he was never the property of his father, so when adult he is
_sui juris_, entitled himself to the use of his own limbs and the fruits
of his own exertions: so far we are advanced, without mind enough, it
seems, to take the whole step. We believe, or we act as if we believed,
that although an individual father cannot alienate the labor of his son,
the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labor of all their sons,
of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all
the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our
vices, our passions, or our personal interests may lead us. But I trust
that this proposition needs only to be looked at by an American to be
seen in its true point of view, and that we shall all consider ourselves
unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay
them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of
a generation, or the life of the majority. In my former letter I supposed
this to be a little[5] over twenty years. We must raise then ourselves
the money for this war, either by taxes within the year, or by loans;
and if by loans, we must repay them ourselves, proscribing forever the
English practice of perpetual funding; the ruinous consequences of which,
putting right out of the question, should be a sufficient warning to a
considerate nation to avoid the example.
The raising money by Tontine, more practised on the continent of Europe
than in England, is liable to the same objection, of encroachment on
the independent rights of posterity; because the annuities not expiring
gradually, with the lives on which they rest, but all on the death of
the last survivor only, they will of course over-pass the term of a
generation, and the more probably as the subjects on whose lives the
annuities depend, are generally chosen of the ages, constitutions and
occupations most favorable to long life.
Annuities for single lives are also beyond our powers, because the
single life may pass the term of a generation. This last practice is
objectionable too, as encouraging celibacy, and the disinherison of heirs.
Of the modes which are within the limits of right, that of raising within
the year its whole expenses by taxation, might be beyond the abilities
of our citizens to bear. It, is moreover, generally desirable that the
public contributions should be as uniform as practicable from year to
year, that our habits of industry and of expense may become adapted to
them; and that they may be duly digested and incorporated with our annual
economy.
There remains then for us but the method of limited anticipation, the
laying taxes for a term of years within that of our right, which may
be sold for a present sum equal to the expenses of the year; in other
words, to obtain a loan equal to the expenses of the year, laying a tax
adequate to its interest, and to such a surplus as will reimburse, by
growing instalments, the whole principal within the term. This is, in
fact, what has been called raising money on the sale of annuities for
years. In this way a new loan, and of course a new tax, is requisite
every year during the continuance of the war; and should that be so
long as to produce an accumulation of tax beyond our ability, in time
of war the resource would be an enactment of the taxes requisite to
ensure good terms, by securing the lender, with a suspension of the
payment of instalments of principal and perhaps of interest also, until
the restoration of peace. This method of anticipating our taxes, or of
borrowing on annuities for years, insures repayment to the lender, guards
the rights of posterity, prevents a perpetual alienation of the public
contributions, and consequent destitution of every resource even for the
ordinary support of government. The public expenses of England during
the present reign, have amounted to the fee simple value of the whole
island. If its whole soil could be sold, farm by farm, for its present
market price, it would not defray the cost of governing it during the
reign of the present king, as managed by him. Ought not then the right
of each successive generation to be guarantied against the dissipations
and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our
constitution? And, if that has not been made, does it exist the less;
there being between generation and generation, as between nation and
nation, no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to
do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us
hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and
that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued, we
shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing
on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will
fall within the accomplishment of our own lives.
The question will be asked and ought to be looked at, what is to be
the resource if loans cannot be obtained? There is but one, "_Carthago
delenda est_." Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium
must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. It is the only fund
on which they can rely for loans; it is the only resource which can
never fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose.
Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as
may be found necessary, thrown into circulation will take the place of
so much gold and silver, which last, when crowded, will find an efflux
into other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary
level. Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash
alone or for treasury notes. They discount for cash alone in every other
country on earth except Great Britain, and her too often unfortunate
copyist, the United States. If taken in time they may be rectified by
degrees, and without injustice, but if let alone till the alternative
forces itself on us, of submitting to the enemy for want of funds, or
the suppression of bank paper, either by law or by convulsion, we cannot
foresee how it will end. The remaining questions are mathematical only.
How are the taxes and the time of their continuance to be proportioned
to the sum borrowed, and the stipulated interest?
The rate of interest will depend on the state of the money market, and
the duration of the tax on the will of the legislature. Let us suppose
that (to keep the taxes as low as possible) they adopt the term of
twenty years for reimbursement, which we call their maximum; and let
the interest they last gave of 7½ per cent. be that which they must
expect to give. The problem then will stand in this form. Given the sum
borrowed (which call _s_,) a million of dollars for example; the rate
of interest .075 or 75/1000; (call it _r-i_) and the duration of the
annuity or tax, twenty years, (=_t_,) what will be (_a_) the annuity or
tax, which will reimburse principal and interest within the given term?
This problem, laborious and barely practicable to common arithmetic,
is readily enough solved, Algebraically and with the aid of Logarithms.
The theorem applied to the case is _a_=(tr-1x1)/(1-1/n) the solution of
which gives _a_=$98,684.2, nearly $100,000, or 1/10 of the sum borrowed.
It maybe satisfactory to see stated in figures the yearly progression
of reimbursement of the million of dollars, and their interest at 7½
per cent. effected by the regular payment of ---- dollars annually. It
will be as follows:
Borrowed, $1,000,000.
Balance after 1st payment, $975,000 Balance after 11th paym't, $594,800
" 2d " 948,125 " 12th " 539,410
" 3d " 919,234 " 13th " 479,866
" 4th " 888,177 " 14th " 415,850
" 5th " 854,790 " 15th " 347,039
" 6th " 818,900 " 16th " 273,068
" 7th " 780,318 " 17th " 193,548
" 8th " 738,841 " 18th " 108,064
" 9th " 694,254 " 19th " 16,169
" 10th " 646,324
If we are curious to know the effect of the same annual sum on loans at
lower rates of interest, the following process will give it:
From the Logarithm of _a_, subtract the Logarithm _r-i_, and from
the number of the remaining Logarithm subtract _s_, then subtract
the Logarithm of this last remainder from the difference between the
Logarithm _a_ and Logarithm _r-i_ as found before, divide the remainder
by Logarithm _r_, the quotient will be _t_. It will be found that ----
dollars will reimburse a million,
Years. Dollars.
At 7½ per cent. interest in 19.17, costing in the whole 1,917,000
7 " " 17.82, " " 1,782,000
6½ " " 16.67, " " 1,667,000
6 " " 15.72, " " 1,572,000
5½ " " 14.91, " " 1,491,000
5 " " 14. 2, " " 1,420,000
0 " " 10. " " 1,000,000
By comparing the 1st and the last of these articles, we see that if the
United States were in possession of the circulating medium, as they ought
to be, they could redeem what they could borrow from that, dollar for
dollar, and in ten annual instalments; whereas, the usurpation of that
fund by bank paper, obliging them to borrow elsewhere at 7½ per cent.,
two dollars are required to reimburse one. So that it is literally true
that the toleration of banks of paper-discount, costs the United States
one-half their war taxes; or, in other words, doubles the expenses of
every war. Now think, but for a moment, what a change of condition that
would be, which should save half our war expenses, require but half the
taxes, and enthral us in debt but half the time.
Two loans having been authorized, of sixteen and seven and a half
millions, they will require for their due reimbursement two millions
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the three millions expected
from the taxes lately imposed. When the produce shall be known of the
several items of these taxes, such of them as will make up this sum
should be selected, appropriated, and pledged for the reimbursement of
these loans. The balance of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, will
be a provision for 6½ millions of the loan of the next year; and in all
future loans, I would consider it as a rule never to be departed from,
to lay a tax of 1/10, and pledge it for the reimbursement.
In the preceding calculations no account is taken of the increasing
population of the United States, which we know to be in a compound
ratio of more than 3 per cent. per annum; nor of the increase of wealth,
proved to be in a higher ratio by the increasing productiveness of the
imports on consumption. We shall be safe therefore in considering every
tax as growing at the rate of 3 per cent. compound ratio annually. I
say _every tax_, for as to those on consumption the fact is known; and
the same growth will be found in the value of real estate, if valued
annually; or, which would be better, 3 per cent. might be assumed by the
law as the average increase, and an addition of 1/33 of the tax paid the
preceding year, be annually called for. Supposing then a tax laid which
would bring in $100,000 at the time it is laid, and that it increases
annually at the rate of 3 per cent. compound, its important effect may
be seen in the following statement:
The 1st year 103,090, and reduces the million to $972,000
2d " 106,090, " " " 938,810
3d " 109,273, " " " 899,947
4th " 112,556, " " " 854,896
5th " 115,920, " " " 803,053
6th " 119,410, " " " 743,915
7th " 122,990, " " " 676,719
8th " 126,680, " " " 600,793
---------
915,913
It yields the 9th year $130,470, and reduces it to $515,382
10th " 134,390, " " 419,646
11th " 138,420, " " 312,699
12th " 142,580, " " 193,517
13th " 146,850, " " 61,181
14th " 151,260 over pays, 85,491
----------
1,759,883
This estimate supposes a million borrowed at 7½ per cent; but, if obtained
from the circulation without interest, it would be reimbursed within
eight years and eight months, instead of fourteen years, or of twenty
years, on our first estimate.
But this view being in prospect only, should not affect the quantum of
tax which the former circulation pronounces necessary. Our creditors
have a right to certainty, and to consider these political speculations
as make-weights only to that, and at our risk, not theirs. To us belongs
only the comfort of hoping an earlier liberation than that calculation
holds out, and the right of providing expressly that the tax hypothecated
shall cease so soon as the debt it secures shall be actually reimbursed;
and I will add that to us belongs also the regret that improvident
legislators should have exposed us to a twenty years' thraldom of debts
and taxes, for the necessary defence of our country, where the same
contributions would have liberated us in eight or nine years; or have
reduced us perhaps to an abandonment of our rights, by their abandonment
of the only resource which could have ensured their maintenance.
I omit many considerations of detail because they will occur to yourself,
and my letter is too long already. I can refer you to no book as treating
of this subject fully and suitably to our circumstances. Smith gives the
history of the public debt of England, and some views adapted to that;
and Dr. Price, in his book on annuities, has given a valuable chapter
on the effects of a sinking fund. But our business being to make every
loan tax a sinking fund for itself, no general one will be wanting; and
if my confidence is well founded that our original import, when freed
from the revolutionary debt, will suffice to embellish and improve our
country in peace, and defend her in war, the present may be the only
occasion of perplexing ourselves with sinking funds.
Should the injunctions under which I laid you, as to my former letter,
restrain any useful purpose to which you could apply it, I remove them;
preferring public benefit to all personal considerations. My original
disapprobation of banks circulating paper is not unknown, nor have
I since observed any effects either on the morals or fortunes of our
citizens, which are any counterbalance for the public evils produced;
and a thorough conviction that, if this war continues, that circulation
must be suppressed, or the government shaken to its foundation by the
weight of taxes, and impracticability to raise funds on them, renders
duty to that paramount to the love of ease and quiet.
When I was here in May last, I left it without knowing that Francis was
at school in this neighborhood. As soon as I returned, on the present
occasion, I sent for him, but his tutor informed me that he was gone on
a visit to you. I shall hope permission for him always to see me on my
visits to this place, which are three or four times a year.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] [A lapse of memory, not having the letter to recur to.]
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, September 14, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I owe you a thousand thanks for your favor of August 22d and
its enclosures, and for Dr. Priestley's doctrines of Heathen Philosophy
compared with those of Revelation. Your letter to Dr. Rush and the
syllabus, I return enclosed with this according to your injunctions,
though with great reluctance. May I beg a copy of both?
They will do you no harm; me and others much good.
I hope you will pursue your plan, for I am confident you will produce
a work much more valuable than Priestley's, though that is curious, and
considering the expiring powers with which it was written, admirable.
The bill in Parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians, is a great
event, and will form an epoch in ecclesiastical history. The motion was
made by my friend Smith, of Clapham, a friend of the Belshams.
I should be very happy to hear that the bill is passed.
The human understanding is a revelation from its Maker which can never
be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or
incredulity, or infidelity, here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary
to prove the celestial communication.
This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and
that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain
of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle,
or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature,
_i. e._, Nature's God, that two and two are equal to four. Miracles or
prophecies might frighten us out of our wits; might scare us to death;
might induce us to lie, to say that we believe that two and two make
five. But we should not believe it. We should know the contrary.
Had you and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and been admitted
to behold the divine Shekinah, and there told that one was three and
three one, we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not
have believed it.
The thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes, and the transcendent
splendors and glories might have overwhelmed us with terror and amazement,
but we could not have believed the doctrine. We should be more likely to
say in our hearts whatever we might say with our lips,--This is chance.
There is no God, no truth. This is all delusion, fiction, and a lie, or
it is all chance. But what is chance? It is motion, it is action, it is
event, it is phenomenon without cause.
Chance is no cause at all, it is nothing. And nothing has produced all
this pomp and splendor. And nothing may produce our eternal damnation
in the flames of hell-fire and brimstone, for what we know, as well as
this tremendous exhibition of terror and falsehood.
God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power. He created the universe.
His duration is eternal, a parte ante and a parte post.
His presence is as extensive as space. What is space? An infinite
spherical vacuum. He created this speck of dirt and the human species
for his glory, and with the deliberate design of making nine-tenths of
our species miserable forever, for his glory.
This is the doctrine of Christian Theologians in general, ten to one.
Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me, that
infinite benevolence, wisdom and power, created and preserves for a time,
innumerable millions, to make them miserable forever for his own glory?
Wretch! what is his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is
he vain-tickled with adulation? Exulting and triumphing in his power
and the sweetness of his vengeance?
Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is
always ready. I believe no such things. My adoration of the Author of
the Universe is too profound and too sincere.
The love of God and his creation, delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my
own existence, though but an atom, a molecule organique in the universe,
are my religion. Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye Athanasian divines,
if you will. Ye will say I am no Christian. I say ye are no Christians,
and there the account is balanced.
Yet I believe all the honest men among you are Christians, in my sense
of the word.
When I was at college, I was a metaphysician, at least I thought myself
such. And such men as Lock, Hemenway and West, thought me so too; for
we were forever disputing though in great good humor.
When I was sworn as an Attorney, in 1758, in Boston, though I lived in
Braintree, I was in a low state of health--thought in great danger of a
consumption; living on milk, vegetable pudding and water. Not an atom of
meat, or a drop of spirit. My next neighbor, my cousin, my friend Dr.
Savil, was my physician. He was anxious about me, and did not like to
take the sole responsibility of my recovery. He invited me to a ride.
I mounted my horse and rode with him to Hingham, on a visit to Dr.
Ezekiel Hersey, a physician of great fame, who felt my pulse, looked in
my eyes, heard Savil describe my regimen and course of medicine, and
then pronounced his oracle: "Persevere, and as sure as there is a God
in Heaven you will recover."
He was an everlasting talker, and ran out into history, philosophy,
metaphysics, &c., and frequently put questions to me as if he wanted to
sound me, and see if there was anything in me besides hectic fever. I
was young, and then very bashful, however saucy I may have sometimes been
since. I gave him very modest and very diffident answers. But when I got
upon metaphysics, I seemed to feel a little bolder, and ventured into
something like argument with him. I drove him up, as I thought, into a
corner, from which he could not escape. "Sir, it will follow from what
you have now advanced, that the universe, as distinct from God, is both
infinite and eternal." "Very true," said Dr. Hersey, "your inference is
just, the consequence is inevitable, and I believe the universe to be
both eternal and infinite."
Here I was brought up! I was defeated. I was not prepared for this
answer. This was fifty-five years ago.
When I was in England, from 1785 to 1788, I may say I was intimate with
Dr. Price. I had much conversation with him at his own house, at my
house, and at the houses and tables of my friends. In some of our most
unreserved conversations, when we have been alone, he has repeatedly
said to me: "I am inclined to believe that the universe is eternal
and infinite. It seems to me that an eternal and infinite effect must
necessarily flow from an eternal and infinite cause; and an infinite
wisdom, goodness and power, that could have been induced to produce a
universe in time, must have produced it from eternity. It seems to me
the effect must flow from the cause."
Now, my friend Jefferson, suppose an eternal, self-existent being,
existing from eternity, possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and
power, in absolute, total solitude, six thousand years ago, conceiving
the benevolent project of creating a universe! I have no more to say at
present.
It has been long, very long, a settled opinion in my mind, that there
is now, never will be, and never was but one being who can understand
the universe.
And that it is not only vain, but wicked, for insects to pretend to
comprehend it.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, September 15, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--My last sheet would not admit an observation that was material
to my design.
Dr. Price was inclined to think that infinite wisdom and goodness could
not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an
infinite and eternal universe must have necessarily flowed from these
attributes.
Plato's system was "αγαθος" was eternal, self-existent, &c. His ideas,
his word, his reason, his wisdom, his goodness, or in one word his "Logos"
was omnipotent, and produced the universe from all eternity. Now! as far
as you and I can understand Hersey, Price and Plato, are they not of one
theory? Of one mind? What is the difference? I own an eternal solitude
of a self-existent being, infinitely wise, powerful and good, is to me
altogether incomprehensible and incredible. I could as soon believe the
Athanasian creed.
You will ask me what conclusion I draw from all this? I answer, I drop
into myself, and acknowledge myself to be a fool. No mind but one can see
through the immeasurable system. It would be presumption and impiety in
me to dogmatize on such subjects. My duties in my little infinitessimal
circle I can understand and feel. The duties of a son, a brother, a
father, a neighbor, a citizen, I can see and feel, but I trust the Ruler
with his skies.
Si quid novisti rectius, istis
Candidus imperti, si non, his utere, mecum.
This world is a mixture of the sublime and the beautiful, the base and
the contemptible, the whimsical and ridiculous, (according to our narrow
sense and trifling feelings.) It is an enigma and a riddle. You need
not be surprised, then, if I should descend from these heights to the
most egregious trifle. But first let me say, I asked you in a former
letter how far advanced we were in the science of aristocracy since
Theognis' Stallions, Jacks and Rams? Have not Chancellor Livingston and
Major General Humphreys introduced an hereditary aristocracy of Merino
Sheep? How shall we get rid of this aristocracy? It is entailed upon us
forever. And an aristocracy of land jobbers and stock jobbers is equally
and irremediably entailed upon us, to endless generations.
Now for the odd, the whimsical, the frivolous. I had scarcely sealed my
last letter to you upon Theognis' doctrine of well-born Stallions, Jacks
and Rams, when they brought me from the Post Office a packet, without
post mark, without letter, without name, date or place. Nicely sealed
was a printed copy of eighty or ninety pages, and in large full octavo,
entitled: Section first--Aristocracy. I gravely composed my risible
muscles and read it through. It is from beginning to end an attack upon me
by name for the doctrines of aristocracy in my three volumes of Defence,
&c. The conclusion of the whole is that an aristocracy of bank paper
is as bad as the nobility of France or England. I most assuredly will
not controvert this point with this man. Who he is I cannot conjecture.
The honorable John Taylor of Virginia, of all men living or dead, first
occurred to me.
Is it Oberon? Is it Queen Mab, that reigns and sports with us little
beings? I thought my books as well as myself were forgotten. But behold!
I am to become a great man in my expiring moments. Theognis and Plato,
and Hersey and Price, and Jefferson and I, must go down to posterity
together; and I know not, upon the whole, where to wish for better
company. I wish to add Vanderkemp, who has been here to see me, after an
interruption of twenty-four years. I could and ought to add many others,
but the catalogue would be too long. I am, as ever.
P. S. Why is Plato associated with Theognis, &c.? Because no man ever
expressed so much terror of the power of birth. His genius could invent
no remedy or precaution against it, but a community of wives; a confusion
of families; a total extinction of all relations of father, son and
brother. Did the French Revolutionists contrive much better against the
influence of birth?
TO MR. WM. CANBY.
MONTICELLO, September 18, 1813.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of August 27th, am sensible of the
kind intentions from which it flows, and truly thankful for them. The
more so as they could only be the result of a favorable estimate of my
public course. During a long life, as much devoted to study as a faithful
transaction of the trusts committed to me would permit, no subject has
occupied more of my consideration than our relations with all the beings
around us, our duties to them, and our future prospects. After reading
and hearing everything which probably can be suggested respecting them,
I have formed the best judgment I could as to the course they prescribe,
and in the due observance of that course, I have no recollections which
give me uneasiness. An eloquent preacher of your religious society,
Richard Motte, in a discourse of much emotion and pathos, is said to
have exclaimed aloud to his congregation, that he did not believe there
was a Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist in heaven, having
paused to give his hearers time to stare and to wonder. He added, that
in heaven, God knew no distinctions, but considered all good men as his
children, and as brethren of the same family. I believe, with the Quaker
preacher, that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which
all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven,
as to the dogmas in which they all differ. That on entering there, all
these are left behind us, and the Aristides and Catos, the Penns and
Tillotsons, Presbyterians and Baptists, will find themselves united
in all principles which are in concert with the reason of the supreme
mind. Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have
come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.
He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he
cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines
by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites,
would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings
but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God,
denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic
of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one,
and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.
In all essential points you and I are of the same religion; and I am too
old to go into inquiries and changes as to the unessential. Repeating,
therefore, my thankfulness for the kind concern you have been so good
as to express, I salute you with friendship and brotherly esteem.
TO GENERAL DUANE.
MONTICELLO, September 18, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Repeated inquiries on the part of Senator Tracy what has
become of his book, (the MS. I last sent you,) oblige me to ask of you
what I shall say to him. I congratulate you on the brilliant affair of
the Enterprise and Boxer. No heart is more rejoiced than mine at these
mortifications of English pride, and lessons to Europe that the English
are not invincible at sea. And if these successes do not lead us too far
into the navy mania, all will be well. But when are to cease the severe
lessons we receive by land, demonstrating our want of competent officers?
The numbers of our countrymen betrayed into the hands of the enemy by the
treachery, cowardice or incompetence of our high officers, reduce us to
the humiliating necessity of acquiescing in the brutal conduct observed
towards them. When, during the last war, I put Governor Hamilton and
Major Hay into a dungeon and in irons for having themselves personally
done the same to the American prisoners who had fallen into their hands,
and was threatened with retaliation by Philips, then returned to New
York, I declared to him I would load ten of their Saratoga prisoners
(then under my care and within half a dozen miles of my house) with
double irons for every American they should misuse under pretence of
retaliation, and it put an end to the practice. But the ten for one are
now with them. Our present hopes of being able to do something by land
seem to rest on Chauncey. Strange reverse of expectations that our land
force should be under the wing of our little navy. Accept the assurance
of my esteem and respect.
TO MR. ISAAC M'PHERSON.
MONTICELLO, September 18, 1813.
SIR,--I thank you for the communication of Mr. Jonathan Ellicot's letter
in yours of August 28th, and the information it conveys. With respect
to mine of August 13th, I do not know that it contains anything but
what any man of mathematical reading may learn from the same sources;
however, if it can be used for the promotion of right, I consent to
such an use of it. Your inquiry as to the date of Martin's invention
of the drill plough, with a leathern band and metal buckets, I cannot
precisely answer; but I received one from him in 1794, and have used it
ever since for sowing various seeds, chiefly peas, turnips, and benni. I
have always had in mind to use it for wheat; but sowing only a row at a
time, I had proposed to him some years ago to change the construction so
that it should sow four rows at a time, twelve inches apart; and I have
been waiting for this to be done either by him or myself; and have not,
therefore, commenced that use of it. I procured mine at first through
Col. John Taylor of Caroline, who had been long in the use of it, and
my impression was that it was not then a novel thing. Mr. Martin is
still living, I believe. If not, Colonel Taylor, his neighbor, probably
knows its date. If the bringing together under the same roof various
useful things before known, which you mention as one of the grounds of
Mr. Evans' claim, entitles him to an exclusive use of all these, either
separately or combined, every utensil of life might be taken from us by
a patent. I might build a stable, bring into it a cutting-knife to chop
straw, a hand-mill to grind the grain, a curry comb and brush to clean
the horses, and by a patent exclude every one from ever more using these
things without paying me. The elevator, the conveyer, the hopper-boy,
are distinct things, unconnected but by juxtaposition. If no patent
can be claimed for any one of these separately, it cannot be for all
of them,--several nothings put together cannot make a something;--this
would be going very wide of the object of the patent laws. I salute you
with esteem and respect.
TO MR. JAMES MARTIN.
MONTICELLO, September 20, 1813.
SIR,--Your letter of August 20th, enabled me to turn to mine of February
23d, 1798, and your former one of February 22d, 1801, and to recall
to my memory the oration at Jamaica, which was the subject of them.
I see with pleasure a continuance of the same sound principles in the
address to Mr. Quincy. Your quotation from the former paper alludes, as
I presume, to the term of office to our Senate; a term, like that of the
judges, too long for my approbation. I am for responsibilities at short
periods, seeing neither reason nor safety in making public functionaries
independent of the nation for life, or even for long terms of years.
On this principle I prefer the Presidential term of four years, to that
of seven years, which I myself had at first suggested, annexing to it,
however, ineligibility forever after; and I wish it were now annexed to
the 2d quadrennial election of President.
The conduct of Massachusetts, which is the subject of your address to
Mr. Quincy, is serious, as embarrassing the operations of the war, and
jeopardizing its issue; and still more so, as an example of contumacy
against the Constitution. One method of proving their purpose, would
be to call a convention of their State, and to require them to declare
themselves members of the Union, and obedient to its determinations, or
not members, and let them go. Put this question solemnly to their people,
and their answer cannot be doubtful. One half of them are republicans,
and would cling to the Union from principle. Of the other half, the
dispassionate part would consider, 1st. That they do not raise bread
sufficient for their own subsistence, and must look to Europe for the
deficiency, if excluded from our ports, which vital interests would force
us to do. 2d. That they are navigating people without a stick of timber
for the hull of a ship, nor a pound of anything to export in it, which
would be admitted at any market. 3d. That they are also a manufacturing
people, and left by the exclusive system of Europe without a market but
ours. 4th. That as the rivals of England in manufactures, in commerce,
in navigation, and fisheries, they would meet her competition in every
point. 5th. That England would feel no scruples in making the abandonment
and ruin of such a rival the price of a treaty with the producing
States; whose interest too it would be to nourish a navigation beyond
the Atlantic, rather than a hostile one at our own door. And 6th. That in
case of war with the Union, which occurrences between coterminous nations
frequently produce, it would be a contest of one against fifteen. The
remaining portion of the Federal moiety of the State would, I believe,
brave all these obstacles, because they are monarchists in principle,
bearing deadly hatred to their republican fellow-citizens, impatient under
the ascendency of republican principles, devoted in their attachment to
England, and preferring to be placed under her despotism, if they cannot
hold the helm of government here. I see, in their separation, no evil but
the example, and I believe that the effect of that would be corrected
by an early and humiliating return to the Union, after losing much of
the population of their country, insufficient in its own resources to
feed her numerous inhabitants, and inferior in all its allurements to
the more inviting soils, climates, and governments of the other States.
Whether a dispassionate discussion before the public, of the advantages
and disadvantages of separation to both parties, would be the best
medicine for this dialytic fever, or to consider it as sacrilege ever
to touch the question, may be doubted. I am, myself, generally disposed
to indulge, and to follow reason; and believe that in no case would it
be safer than in the present. Their refractory course, however, will
not be unpunished by the indignation of their co-States, their loss
of influence with them, the censures of history, and the stain on the
character of their State. With my thanks for the paper enclosed, accept
the assurance of my esteem and respect.
TO DOCTOR LOGAN.
MONTICELLO, October 3, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I have duly received your favor of September 18th, and I
perceive in it the same spirit of peace which I know you have ever
breathed, and to preserve which you have made many personal sacrifices.
That your efforts did much towards preventing declared war with France,
I am satisfied. Of those with England, I am not equally informed. I have
ever cherished the same spirit with all nations, from a consciousness
that peace, prosperity, liberty, and morals, have an intimate connection.
During the eight years of my administration, there was not a year that
England did not give us such cause as would have provoked a war from
any European government. But I always hoped that time and friendly
remonstrances would bring her to a sounder view of her own interests,
and convince her that these would be promoted by a return to justice
and friendship towards us. Continued impressments of our seamen by her
naval commanders, whose interest it was to mistake them for theirs, her
innovations on the law of nations to cover real piracies, could illy be
borne; and perhaps would not have been borne, had not contraventions of
the same law by France, fewer in number but equally illegal, rendered
it difficult to single the object of war. England, at length, singled
herself, and took up the gauntlet, when the unlawful decrees of France
being revoked as to us, she, by the proclamation of her Prince Regent,
protested to the world that she would never revoke hers until those of
France should be removed as to all nations. Her minister too, about
the same time, in an official conversation with our Chargé, rejected
our substitute for her practice of impressment; proposed no other;
and declared explicitly that no admissible one for this abuse could be
proposed. Negotiation being thus cut short, no alternative remained but
war, or the abandonment of the persons and property of our citizens on
the ocean. The last one, I presume, no American would have preferred.
War was therefore declared, and justly declared; but accompanied with
immediate offers of peace on simply doing us justice. These offers were
made through Russel, through Admiral Warren, through the government of
Canada, and the mediation proposed by her best friend Alexander, and the
greatest enemy of Bonaparte, was accepted without hesitation. An entire
confidence in the abilities and integrity of those now administering the
government, has kept me from the inclination, as well as the occasion,
of intermeddling in the public affairs, even as a private citizen may
justifiably do. Yet if you can suggest any conditions which we ought
to accept, and which have not been repeatedly offered and rejected,
I would not hesitate to become the channel of their communication
to the administration. The revocation of the orders of council, and
discontinuance of impressment, appear to me indispensable. And I think
a thousand ships taken unjustifiably in time of peace, and thousands
of our citizens impressed, warrant expectations of indemnification;
such a Western frontier, perhaps, given to Canada, as may put it out
of their power hereafter to employ the tomahawk and scalping-knife
of the Indians on our women and children; or, what would be nearly
equivalent, the exclusive right to the lakes. The modification, however,
of this indemnification must be effected by the events of the war. No
man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled
tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was
more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign; nor wished, more
sincerely, success to the efforts of the virtuous Alexander. But the
desire of seeing England forced to just terms of peace with us, makes
me equally solicitous for her entire exclusion from intercourse with the
rest of the world, until by this peaceable engine of constraint, she can
be made to renounce her views of dominion over the ocean, of permitting
no other nation to navigate it but with her license, and on tribute to
her; and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens who may choose to
exercise their right of passing over that element. Should the continental
armistice issue in closing Europe against her, she may become willing
to accede to just terms with us; which I should certainly be disposed to
meet, whatever consequences it might produce on our intercourse with the
continental nations. My principle is to do whatever is right, and leave
consequences to Him who has the disposal of them. I repeat, therefore,
that if you can suggest what may lead to a just peace, I will willingly
communicate it to the proper functionaries. In the meantime, its object
will be best promoted by a vigorous and unanimous prosecution of the war.
I am happy in this occasion of renewing the interchange of sentiments
between us, which has formerly been a source of much satisfaction to me;
and with the homage of my affectionate attachment and respect to Mrs.
Logan, I pray you to accept the assurance of my continued friendship
and esteem for yourself.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, October 13, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Since mine of August the 22d, I have received your favors of
August the 16th, September the 2d, 14th, 15th, and--, and Mrs. Adams' of
September the 20th. 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
five or six quarto volumes, of one thousand pages each of Latin closely
printed, to two moderate octavos 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 through all its books
for its precepts, and through all its history for its practices, and the
principles they prove. As commentaries, too, on these, the philosophy
of the Hebrews must be inquired 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 would seem,
has gone deeply into these repositories of their ethics, and Enfield his
epitomizer, concludes in these words: "Ethics were so little understood
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 six hundred and thirteen precepts, which were divided into two
classes, affirmative and negative, two hundred and forty-eight in the
former, and three hundred and sixty-five 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 two hundred and forty-eight
affirmative precepts, only three were considered as obligatory upon
women, and that in order to obtain salvation, it was judged sufficient
to fulfil 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 themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the
Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics,
their essences and emanations, their Logos and Demiurgos, Æons and
Dæmons, male and female, with a long train of &c. &c. &c., 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 amphiboligisms 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, and which is as easily distinguishable
as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six 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 first 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 Grecian 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 Dæmons, and their agency with man; the universe, its
structure, extent and duration; the origin of things from the elements of
fire, water, air and earth; the human soul, its essence and derivation;
the _summum bonum_ and _finis bonorum_; with a thousand idle dreams and
fancies on these and other subjects, the knowledge 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 its
restoration to the primitive simplicity of its 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 September the 14th, that "the human
understanding is a revelation from its maker," gives the best solution
that I believe can be given of the question, "what did Socrates mean by
his Dæmon?" 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 acknowledge 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 its pithiness than its 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 above,
And underneath his feet he cast
On Cherubim and Seraphim
And on the wings of mighty winds
And bowed the heav'ns most high;
The darkness of the sky.
Full royally he rode;
Came flying all abroad."--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,
Ουρανον αγκλινας κατεβη· υπο πὸσσι δ' εοισιν
Αχλύς αμφι μελαινα χυθη και νυξ ερεβεννη.
Ῥιμφα ποτατο χερουβω οχευμενος, ωσπερ εφ' ιππω·
Ἱπτατο δε πτερυγεσσι πολυπλαγκτου ανεμοιο.
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 15th
psalm with Blacklock's _Justum et tenacem propositi virum_ 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 anti-strophe, the sentiment of the first member responded
with amplification or antithesis in the second.
On the subject of the postscript of yours of August the 16th and of Mrs.
Adams' 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 medicine, and these but assuage, they never can
suppress, the deep drawn sigh which recollection forever brings up, until
recollection and life are extinguished together. Ever affectionately
yours.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, October 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
August the 16th and September the 2d.
The passage you quote from Theognis, I think has an ethical rather
than a political object. The whole piece is a moral _exhortation_,
παραινεσις, 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; περι δε τῆς ἐκ τῶν αλληλων ανθρωπων γενεσεως
&c.--ουχ ηδονης ενεκα η μιξις: 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 marriage,
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 Harem 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 ἄριστοι. 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 his Haram, and oblige
us to continue acquiescence under the "Αμαυρωσις γενεος αστων" 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 its ascendency. 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 its 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 co-ordinate 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 co-ordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of
the co-ordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively.
Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States 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 fifteen to twenty legislatures of our own, in
action for thirty years past, have proved that no fears of an equalization
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 really 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 Massachusetts and Connecticut myself, and still more
from what I have heard, and the character given of the former by yourself,
(vol. 1, page 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 those 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 modeled their morality on the story
of Jacob and Laban. But although 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
common principles, "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 its creatures; and they Philipised in all
collisions between the King and the 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 Independence, 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 foot of pseudo-aristocracy. And
had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work
would have been complete. It was a bill for the more general diffusion
of learning. This proposed to divide every county into wards of five
or six 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 receive, at the public expense, 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 completed 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 completely
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 through 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 completed 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
"Ουδεμιαν πω, Κυρν', αγαθοι πολιν ωλεσαν ανδρες." Although 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, crowded 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 chooses; or, preferring the exercise of any
other industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford
a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith 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
may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control
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 everything public and private. The
history of the last twenty-five years of France, and of the last forty
years in America, nay of its last two hundred 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 its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument
used for its 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 enterprise 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
suggestions 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,
through a long and perilous contest for our liberty and independence.
A constitution has been acquired, which, though neither of us thinks
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 its 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
its author, I have heard nothing but through 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 or intemperance of scribblers; but that you
may continue in tranquillity 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 before you. Ever and affectionately yours.
TO JOHN W. EPPES.
MONTICELLO, November 6, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I had not expected to have troubled you again on the subject
of finance; but since the date of my last, I have received from Mr. Law
a letter covering a memorial on that subject, which, from its tenor, I
conjecture must have been before Congress at their two last sessions.
This paper contains two propositions; the one for issuing treasury
notes, bearing interest, and to be circulated as money; the other for
the establishment of a national bank. The first was considered in my
former letter; and the second shall be the subject of the present.
The scheme is for Congress to establish a national bank, suppose of
thirty millions capital, of which they shall contribute ten millions in
new six per cent. stock, the States ten millions, and individuals ten
millions, one half of the two last contributions to be of similar stock,
for which the parties are to give cash to Congress; the whole, however,
to be under the exclusive management of the individual subscribers, who
are to name all the directors; neither Congress nor the States having any
power of interference in its administration. Discounts are to be at five
per cent., but the profits are expected to be seven per cent. Congress
then will be paying six per cent. on twenty millions, and receiving seven
per cent. on ten millions, being its third of the institution; so that on
the ten millions cash which they receive from the States and individuals,
they will, in fact, have to pay but five per cent. interest. This is the
bait. The charter is proposed to be for forty or fifty years, and if any
future augmentations should take place, the individual proprietors are
to have the privilege of being the sole subscribers for that. Congress
are further allowed to issue to the amount of three millions of notes,
bearing interest, which they are to receive back in payment for lands
at a premium of five or ten per cent., or as subscriptions for canals,
roads, and bridges, in which undertakings they are, of course, to be
engaged. This is a summary of the case as I understand it; but it is
very possible I may not understand it in all its parts, these schemes
being always made unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into
them. The advantages and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as
they occur; leaving out the speculation of canals, &c., which, being an
episode only in the scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much
as we can.
1. Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will
enter into this partnership, which few probably will), and five millions
from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per
cent. stock, one per cent. of which, however, they will make on their
ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect,
to a loan of ten millions at five per cent. interest. This is good; but
2. They authorize this bank to throw into circulation ninety millions
of dollars, (three times the capital,) which increases our circulating
medium fifty per cent., depreciates proportionably the present value
of a dollar, and raises the price of all future purchases in the same
proportion.
3. This loan of ten millions at five per cent., is to be once for all,
only. Neither the terms of the scheme, nor their own prudence could ever
permit them to add to the circulation in the same, or any other way,
for the supplies of the succeeding years of the war. These succeeding
years then are to be left unprovided for, and the means of doing it in
a great measure precluded.
4. The individual subscribers, on paying their own five millions of cash
to Congress, become the depositories of ten millions of stock belonging
to Congress, five millions belonging to the States, and five millions
to themselves, say twenty millions, with which, as no one has a right
ever to see their books, or to ask a question, they may choose their
time for running away, after adding to their booty the proceeds of as
much of their own notes as they shall be able to throw into circulation.
5. The subscribers may be one, two, or three, or more individuals, (many
single individuals being able to pay in the five millions,) whereupon
this bank oligarchy or monarchy enters the field with ninety millions
of dollars, to direct and control the politics of the nation; and of the
influence of these institutions on our politics, and into what scale it
will be thrown, we have had abundant experience. Indeed, England herself
may be the real, while her friend and trustee here shall be the nominal
and sole subscriber.
6. This state of things is to be fastened on us, without the power of
relief, for forty or fifty years. That is to say, the eight millions of
people now existing, for the sake of receiving one dollar and twenty-five
cents apiece, at five per cent. interest, are to subject the fifty
millions of people who are to succeed them within that term, to the
payment of forty-five millions of dollars, principal and interest, which
will be payable in the course of the fifty years.
7. But the great and national advantage is to be the relief of the
present _scarcity of money_, which is produced and proved by,
1. The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for
the troops, ammunition, &c.
2. By the cash sent to the frontiers, and the vacuum occasioned in the
trading towns by that.
3. By the late loans.
4. By the necessity of recurring to shavers with _good_ paper, which
the existing banks are not able to take up; and
5. By the numerous applications of bank charters, showing that an increase
of circulating medium is wanting.
Let us examine these causes and proofs of the want of an increase of
medium, one by one.
1. The additional industry created to supply a variety of articles for
troops, ammunition, &c. Now, I had always supposed that war produced
a diminution of industry, by the number of hands it withdraws from
industrious pursuits for employment in arms, &c., which are totally
unproductive. And if it calls for new industry in the articles of
ammunition and other military supplies, the hands are borrowed from
other branches on which the demand is slackened by the war; so that it
is but a shifting of these hands from one pursuit to another.
2. The cash sent to the frontiers occasions a vacuum in the trading
towns, which requires a new supply. Let us examine what are the calls
for money to the frontiers. Not for clothing, tents, ammunition, arms,
which are all bought in the trading towns. Not for provisions; for
although these are bought partly in the immediate country, bank bills
are more acceptable there than even in the trading towns. The pay of
the army calls for some cash, but not a great deal, as bank notes are
as acceptable with the military men, perhaps more so; and what cash
is sent must find its way back again in exchange for the wants of the
upper from the lower country. For we are not to suppose that cash stays
accumulating there forever.
3. This scarcity has been occasioned by the late loans. But does the
government borrow money to keep it in their coffers? Is it not instantly
restored to circulation by payment for its necessary supplies? And are
we to restore a vacuum of twenty millions of dollars by an emission of
ninety millions?
4. The want of medium is proved by the recurrence of individuals with
_good_ paper to brokers at exorbitant interest; and
5. By the numerous applications to the State governments for additional
banks; New York wanting eighteen millions, Pennsylvania ten millions,
&c. But say more correctly, the speculators and spendthrifts of New York
and Pennsylvania, but never consider them as being the States of New
York and Pennsylvania. These two items shall be considered together.
It is a litigated question, whether the circulation of paper, rather
than of specie, is a good or an evil. In the opinion of England and of
English writers it is a good; in that of all other nations it is an evil;
and excepting England and her copyist, the United States, there is not
a nation existing, I believe, which tolerates a paper circulation. The
experiment is going on, however, desperately in England, pretty boldly
with us, and at the end of the chapter, we shall see which opinion
experience approves: for I believe it to be one of those cases where
mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.
In the meantime, however, let us reason on this new call for a national
bank.
After the solemn decision of Congress against the renewal of the charter
of the bank of the United States, and the grounds of that decision, (the
want of constitutional power,) I had imagined that question at rest, and
that no more applications would be made to them for the incorporation
of banks. The opposition on that ground to its first establishment,
the small majority by which it was overborne, and the means practiced
for obtaining it, cannot be already forgotten. The law having passed,
however, by a majority, its opponents, true to the sacred principle of
submission to a majority, suffered the law to flow through its term
without obstruction. During this, the nation had time to consider
the constitutional question, and when the renewal was proposed, they
condemned it, not by their representatives in Congress only, but by
express instructions from different organs of their will. Here then we
might stop, and consider the memorial as answered. But, setting authority
apart, we will examine whether the Legislature ought to comply with it,
even if they had the power.
Proceeding to reason on this subject, some principles must be premised as
forming its basis. The adequate price of a thing depends on the capital
and labor necessary to produce it. [In the term _capital_, I mean to
include science, because capital as well as labor has been employed to
acquire it.] Two things requiring the same capital and labor, should be
of the same price. If a gallon of wine requires for its production the
same capital and labor with a bushel of wheat, they should be expressed
by the same price, derived from the application of a common measure to
them. The comparative prices of things being thus to be estimated and
expressed by a common measure, we may proceed to observe, that were a
country so insulated as to have no commercial intercourse with any other,
to confine the interchange of all its wants and supplies within itself,
the amount of circulating medium, as a common measure for adjusting these
exchanges, would be quite immaterial. If their circulation, for instance,
were of a million of dollars, and the annual produce of their industry
equivalent to ten millions of bushels of wheat, the price of a bushel
of wheat might be one dollar. If, then, by a progressive coinage, their
medium should be doubled, the price of a bushel of wheat might become
progressively two dollars, and without inconvenience. Whatever be the
proportion of the circulating medium to the value of the annual produce
of industry, it may be considered as the representative of that industry.
In the first case, a bushel of wheat will be represented by one dollar;
in the second, by two dollars. This is well explained by Hume, and seems
admitted by Adam Smith, B. 2. c. 2, 436, 441, 490. But where a nation is
in a full course of interchange of wants and supplies with all others,
the proportion of its medium to its produce is no longer indifferent.
Ib. 441. To trade on equal terms, the common measure of values should be
as nearly as possible on a par with that of its corresponding nations,
whose medium is in a sound state; that is to say, not in an accidental
state of excess or deficiency. Now, one of the great advantages of specie
as a medium is, that being of universal value, it will keep itself at a
general level, flowing out from where it is too high into parts where
it is lower. Whereas, if the medium be of local value only, as paper
money, if too little, indeed, gold and silver will flow in to supply the
deficiency; but if too much, it accumulates, banishes the gold and silver
not locked up in vaults and hoards, and depreciates itself; that is too
say, its proportion to the annual produce of industry being raised, more
of it is required to represent any particular article of produce than
in the other countries. This is agreed by Smith, (B. 2. c. 2. 437,) the
principal advocate for a paper circulation; but advocating it on the
sole condition that it be strictly regulated. He admits, nevertheless,
that "the commerce and industry of a country cannot be so secure when
suspended on the Dædalian wings of paper money, as on the solid ground
of gold and silver; and that in time of war, the insecurity is greatly
increased, and great confusion possible where the circulation is for the
greater part in paper." B. 2. c. 2. 484. But in a country where loans
are uncertain, and a specie circulation the only sure resource for them,
the preference of that circulation assumes a far different degree of
importance, as is explained in my former letters.
The only advantage which Smith proposes by substituting paper in the room
of gold and silver money, B. 2. c. 2. 434, is "to replace an expensive
instrument with one much less costly, and _sometimes_ equally convenient;"
that is to say, page 437, "to allow the gold and silver to be sent abroad
and converted into foreign goods," and to substitute paper as being a
cheaper measure. But this makes no addition to the stock or capital of
the nation. The coin sent out was worth as much, while in the country,
as the goods imported and taking its place. It is only, then, a change
of form in a part of the national capital, from that of gold and silver
to other goods. He admits, too, that while a part of the goods received
in exchange for the coin exported may be materials, tools and provisions
for the employment of an additional industry, a part, also, may be
taken back in foreign wines, silks, &c., to be consumed by idle people
who produce nothing; and so far the substitution promotes prodigality,
increases expense and corruption, without increasing production. So far
also, then, it lessens the capital of the nation. What may be the amount
which the conversion of the part exchanged for productive goods may add
to the former productive mass, it is not easy to ascertain, because, as
he says, page 441, "it is impossible to determine what is the proportion
which the circulating money of any country bears to the whole value of
the annual produce. It has been computed by different authors, from a
fifth[6] to a thirtieth of that value." In the United States it must be
less than in any other part of the commercial world; because the great
mass of their inhabitants being in responsible circumstances, the great
mass of their exchanges in the country is effected on credit, in their
merchants' ledger, who supplies all their wants through the year, and at
the end of it receives the produce of their farms, or other articles of
their industry. It is a fact, that a farmer with a revenue of ten thousand
dollars a year, may obtain all his supplies from his merchant, and
liquidate them at the end of the year, by the sale of his produce to him,
without the intervention of a single dollar of cash. This, then, is merely
barter, and in this way of barter a great portion of the annual produce
of the United States is exchanged without the intermediation of cash. We
might safely, then, state our medium at the minimum of one-thirtieth. But
what is one-thirtieth of the value of the annual produce of the industry
of the United States? Or what is the whole value of the annual produce
of the United States? An able writer and competent judge of the subject,
in 1799, on as good grounds as probably could be taken, estimated it,
on the then population of four and a half millions of inhabitants, to be
thirty-seven and a half millions sterling, or one hundred and sixty-eight
and three-fourths millions of dollars. See Cooper's Political Arithmetic,
page 47. According to the same estimate for our present population, it
will be three hundred millions of dollars, one-thirtieth of which, Smith's
minimum, would be ten millions, and one-fifth, his maximum, would be
sixty millions for the quantum of circulation. But suppose that instead
of our needing the least circulating medium of any nation, from the
circumstance before mentioned, we should place ourselves in the middle
term of the calculation, to-wit: at thirty-five millions. One-fifth of
this, at the least, Smith thinks should be retained in specie, which
would leave twenty-eight millions of specie to be exported in exchange
for other commodities; and if fifteen millions of that should be returned
in productive goods, and not in articles of prodigality, that would be
the amount of capital which this operation would add to the existing
mass. But to what mass? Not that of the three hundred millions, which is
only its gross annual produce, but to that capital of which the three
hundred millions are but the annual produce. But this being gross, we
may infer from it the value of the capital by considering that the rent
of lands is generally fixed at one-third of the gross produce, and is
deemed its nett profit, and twenty times that its fee simple value. The
profits on landed capital may, with accuracy enough for our purpose, be
supposed on a par with those of other capital. This would give us then
for the United States, a capital of two thousand millions, all in active
employment, and exclusive of unimproved lands lying in a great degree
dormant. Of this, fifteen millions would be the hundred and thirty-third
part. And it is for this petty addition to the capital of the nation,
this minimum of one dollar, added to one hundred and thirty-three and
a third or three-fourths per cent., that we are to give up our gold
and silver medium, its intrinsic solidity, its universal value, and
its saving powers in time of war, and to substitute for it paper, with
all its train of evils, moral, political and physical, which I will not
pretend to enumerate.
There is another authority to which we may appeal for the proper quantity
of circulating medium for the United States. The old Congress, when
we were estimated at about two millions of people, on a long and able
discussion, June 22d, 1775, decided the sufficient quantity to be two
millions of dollars, which sum they then emitted.[7] According to this,
it should be eight millions, now that we are eight millions of people.
This differs little from Smith's minimum of ten millions, and strengthens
our respect for that estimate.
There is, indeed, a convenience in paper; its easy transmission from one
place to another. But this may be mainly supplied by bills of exchange,
so as to prevent any great displacement of actual coin. Two places
trading together balance their dealings, for the most part, by their
mutual supplies, and the debtor individuals of either may, instead of
cash, remit the bills of those who are creditors in the same dealings; or
may obtain them through some third place with which both have dealings.
The cases would be rare where such bills could not be obtained, either
directly or circuitously, and too unimportant to the nation to overweigh
the train of evils flowing from paper circulation.
From eight to thirty-five millions then being our proper circulation,
and two hundred millions the actual one, the memorial proposes to issue
ninety millions more, because, it says, a great scarcity of money is
proved by the numerous applications for banks; to wit, New York for
eighteen millions, Pennsylvania ten millions, &c. The answer to this
shall be quoted from Adam Smith, B. 2. c. 2. page 462; where speaking of
the complaints of the trader against the Scotch bankers, who had already
gone too far in their issues of paper, he says, "those traders and other
undertakers having got so much assistance from banks, wished to get still
more. The banks, they seem to have thought, could extend their credits
to whatever sum might be wanted, without incurring any other expense
besides that of a few reams of paper. They complained of the contracted
views and dastardly spirit of the directors of those banks, which did
not, they said, extend their credits in proportion to the extension of the
trade of the country; meaning, no doubt, by the extension of that trade,
the extension of their own projects beyond what they could carry on,
either _with their own capital_, or with what they had credit to borrow
of private people in the usual way of bond or mortgage. The banks, they
seem to have thought, were in honor bound to supply the deficiency, and
to provide them with all the capital which they wanted to trade with."
And again, page 470: "when bankers discovered that certain projectors
were trading, not with any capital of their own, but with that which they
advanced them, they endeavored to withdraw gradually, making every day
greater and greater difficulties about discounting. These difficulties
alarmed and enraged in the highest degree those projectors. Their own
distress, of which this prudent and necessary reserve of the banks was
no doubt the immediate occasion, they called the distress of the country;
and this distress of the country, they said, was altogether owing to the
ignorance, pusillanimity, and bad conduct of the banks, which did not
give a sufficiently liberal aid to the spirited undertakings of those
who exerted themselves in order to beautify, improve and enrich the
country. It was the duty of the banks, they seemed to think, to lend
for as long a time, and to as great an extent, as they might wish to
borrow." It is, probably, the _good paper_ of these projectors which the
memorial says, the bank being _unable_ to discount, goes into the hands
of brokers, who (knowing the risk of this _good paper_) discount it at
a much higher rate than legal interest, to the great distress of the
enterprising adventurers, who had rather try trade on borrowed capital,
than go to the plough or other laborious calling. Smith again says,
page 478, "that the industry of Scotland languished for want of money
to employ it, was the opinion of the famous Mr. Law. By establishing a
bank of a particular kind, which, he seems to have imagined might issue
paper to the amount of the whole value of all the lands in the country,
he proposed to remedy this want of money. It was afterwards adopted,
with some variations, by the Duke of Orleans, at that time Regent of
France. The idea of the possibility of multiplying paper to almost any
extent, was the real foundation of what is called the Mississippi scheme,
the most extravagant project both of banking and stock jobbing, that
perhaps the world ever saw. The principles upon which it was founded are
explained by Mr. Law himself, in a discourse concerning money and trade,
which he published in Scotland when he first proposed his project. The
splendid but visionary ideas which are set forth in that and some other
works upon the same principles, still continue to make an impression
upon many people, and have perhaps, in part, contributed to that excess
of banking which has of late been complained of both in Scotland and
in other places." The Mississippi scheme, it is well known, ended in
France in the bankruptcy of the public treasury, the crush of thousands
and thousands of private fortunes, and scenes of desolation and distress
equal to those of an invading army, burning and laying waste all before
it.
At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a
public debt being a public blessing;" that the stock representing it was
a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures
and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers
in dreams, and the gulls of that size entered _bonâ fide_ into it.
But the art and mystery of banks is a wonderful improvement on that.
It is established on the principle that "_private_ debts are a public
blessing." That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes,
become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures,
and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for
instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our
debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who
they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt
when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of
letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from
the repayment of these debts beyond a given proportion, (generally
estimated at one-third.) And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead
of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom
they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see
in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied
again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still
to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let
themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the
same premium of six or eight per cent. interest, and on the same legal
exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt,
when it shall be called for. But let us look at this principle in its
original form, and its copy will then be equally understood. "A public
debt is a public blessing." That our debt was juggled from forty-three
up to eighty millions, and funded at that amount, according to this
opinion was a great public blessing, because the evidences of it could
be vested in commerce, and thus converted into active capital, and then
the more the debt was made to be, the more active capital was created.
That is to say, the creditors could now employ in commerce the money
due them from the public, and make from it an annual profit of five per
cent., or four millions of dollars. But observe, that the public were
at the same time paying on it an interest of exactly the same amount of
four millions of dollars. Where then is the gain to either party, which
makes it a public blessing? There is no change in the state of things,
but of persons only. A has a debt due to him from the public, of which
he holds their certificate as evidence, and on which he is receiving an
annual interest. He wishes, however, to have the money itself, and to
go into business with it. B has an equal sum of money in business, but
wishes now to retire, and live on the interest. He therefore gives it
to A in exchange for A's certificates of public stock. Now, then, A has
the money to employ in business, which B so employed before. B has the
money on interest to live on, which A. lived on before; and the public
pays the interest to B. which they paid to A. before. Here is no new
creation of capital, no additional money employed, nor even a change in
the employment of a single dollar. The only change is of place between A
and B in which we discover no creation of capital, nor public blessing.
Suppose, again, the public to owe nothing. Then A not having lent his
money to the public, would be in possession of it himself, and would
go into business without the previous operation of selling stock. Here
again, the same quantity of capital is employed as in the former case,
though no public debt exists. In neither case is there any creation of
active capital, nor other difference than that there is a public debt
in the first case, and none in the last; and we may safely ask which of
the two situations is most truly a public blessing? If, then, a _public_
debt be no public blessing, we may pronounce, _à fortiori_, that a
private one cannot be so. If the debt which the banking companies owe
be a blessing to any body, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing
a solid interest of eight or ten per cent. on it. As to the public,
these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which,
before their institution, we had without interest, which never could
have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the
hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of
froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it
shall vanish into air, as Morris' notes did. We are warranted, then, in
affirming that this parody on the principle of "a public debt being a
public blessing," and its mutation into the blessing of private instead
of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In
both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and
accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by
legerdemain tricks with paper.
I have called the actual circulation of bank paper in the United States,
two hundred millions of dollars. I do not recollect where I have seen
this estimate; but I retain the impression that I thought it just at
the time. It may be tested, however, by a list of the banks now in
the United States, and the amount of their capital. I have no means of
recurring to such a list for the present day; but I turn to two lists
in my possession for the years of 1803 and 1804.
In 1803, there were thirty-four banks, whose capital
was $28,902,000
In 1804, there were sixty-six, consequently thirty-two
additional ones. Their capital is not stated, but
at the average of the others, (excluding the highest,
that of the United States, which was of ten
millions,) they would be of six hundred thousand
dollars each, and add 19,200,000
Making a total of ----------
$48,102,000
or say of fifty millions in round numbers. Now, every one knows the
immense multiplication of these institutions since 1804. If they have only
doubled, their capital will be of one hundred millions, and if trebled,
as I think probable, it will be one hundred and fifty millions, on which
they are at liberty to circulate treble the amount. I should sooner,
therefore, believe two hundred millions to be far below than above the
actual circulation. In England, by a late parliamentary document, (see
Virginia Argus of October the 18th, 1813, and other public papers of
about that date,) it appears that six years ago the Bank of England had
twelve millions of pounds sterling in circulation, which had increased to
forty-two millions in 1812, or to one hundred and eighty-nine millions
of dollars. What proportion all the other banks may add to this, I do
not know; if we were allowed to suppose they equal it, this would give a
circulation of three hundred and seventy-eight millions, or the double of
ours on a double population. But that nation is essentially commercial,
ours essentially agricultural, and needing, therefore, less circulating
medium, because the produce of the husbandman comes but once a year,
and is then partly consumed at home, partly exchanged by barter. The
dollar, which was of four shilling and sixpence sterling, was, by the same
document, stated to be then six shillings and nine pence, a depreciation
of exactly fifty per cent. The average price of wheat on the continent
of Europe, at the commencement of its present war with England, was about
a French crown, of one hundred and ten cents, the bushel. With us it was
one hundred cents, and consequently we could send it there in competition
with their own. That ordinary price has now doubled with us, and more
than doubled in England; and although a part of this augmentation may
proceed from the war demand, yet from the extraordinary nominal rise in
the prices of land and labor here, both of which have nearly doubled in
that period, and are still rising with every new bank, it is evident that
were a general peace to take place to-morrow, and time allowed for the
re-establishment of commerce, justice, and order, we could not afford
to raise wheat for much less than two dollars, while the continent of
Europe, having no paper circulation, and that of its specie not being
augmented, would raise it at their former price of one hundred and ten
cents. It follows, then, that with our redundancy of paper, we cannot,
after peace, send a bushel of wheat to Europe, unless extraordinary
circumstances double its price in particular places, and that then the
exporting countries of Europe could undersell us.
It is said that our paper is as good as silver, because we may have
silver for it at the bank where it issues. This is not true. One, two,
or three persons might have it; but a general application would soon
exhaust their vaults, and leave a ruinous proportion of their paper in
its intrinsic worthless form. It is a fallacious pretence, for another
reason. The inhabitants of the banking cities might obtain cash for their
paper, as far as the cash of the vaults would hold out, but distance
puts it out of the power of the country to do this. A farmer having a
note of a Boston or Charleston bank, distant hundreds of miles, has no
means of calling for the cash. And while these calls are impracticable
for the country, the banks have no fear of their being made from the
towns; because their inhabitants are mostly on their books, and there
on sufferance only, and during good behavior.
In this state of things, we are called on to add ninety millions more
to the circulation. Proceeding in this career, it is infallible, that
we must end where the revolutionary paper ended. Two hundred millions
was the whole amount of all the emissions of the old Congress, at which
point their bills ceased to circulate. We are now at that sum, but with
treble the population, and of course a longer tether. Our depreciation
is, as yet, but about two for one. Owing to the support its credit
receives from the small reservoirs of specie in the vaults of the
banks, it is impossible to say at what point their notes will stop.
Nothing is necessary to effect it but a general alarm; and that may take
place whenever the public shall begin to reflect on, and perceive the
impossibility that the banks should repay this sum. At present, caution
is inspired no farther than to keep prudent men from selling property
on long payments. Let us suppose the panic to arise at three hundred
millions, a point to which every session of the legislatures hasten us by
long strides. Nobody dreams that they would have three hundred millions
of specie to satisfy the holders of their notes. Were they even to stop
now, no one supposes they have two hundred millions in cash, or even the
sixty-six and two-third millions, to which amount alone the law compels
them to repay. One hundred and thirty-three and one-third millions of
loss, then, is thrown on the public by law; and as to the sixty-six and
two-thirds, which they are legally bound to pay, and ought to have in
their vaults, every one knows there is no such amount of cash in the
United States, and what would be the course with what they really have
there? Their notes are refused. Cash is called for. The inhabitants
of the banking towns will get what is in the vaults, until a few banks
declare their insolvency; when, the general crush becoming evident, the
others will withdraw even the cash they have, declare their bankruptcy
at once, and leave an empty house and empty coffers for the holders of
their notes. In this scramble of creditors, the country gets nothing,
the towns but little. What are they to do? Bring suits? A million
of creditors bring a million of suits against John Nokes and Robert
Styles, wheresoever to be found? All nonsense. The loss is total. And
a sum is thus swindled from our citizens, of seven times the amount of
the real debt, and four times that of the fictitious one of the United
States, at the close of the war. All this they will justly charge on
their legislatures; but this will be poor satisfaction for the two or
three hundred millions they will have lost. It is time, then, for the
public functionaries to look to this. Perhaps it may not be too late.
Perhaps, by giving time to the banks, they may call in and pay off their
paper by degrees. But no remedy is ever to be expected while it rests
with the State legislatures. Personal motive can be excited through so
many avenues to their will, that, in their hands, it will continue to
go on from bad to worse, until the catastrophe overwhelms us. I still
believe, however, that on proper representations of the subject, a great
proportion of these legislatures would cede to Congress their power of
establishing banks, saving the charter rights already granted. And this
should be asked, not by way of amendment to the constitution, because
until three-fourths should consent, nothing could be done; but accepted
from them one by one, singly, as their consent might be obtained. Any
single State, even if no other should come into the measure, would find
its interest in arresting foreign bank paper immediately, and its own
by degrees. Specie would flow in on them as paper disappeared. Their
own banks would call in and pay off their notes gradually, and their
constituents would thus be saved from the general wreck. Should the
greater part of the States concede, as is expected, their power over
banks to Congress, besides insuring their own safety, the paper of the
non-conceding States might be so checked and circumscribed, by prohibiting
its receipt in any of the conceding States, and even in the non-conceding
as to duties, taxes, judgments, or other demands of the United States,
or of the citizens of other States, that it would soon die of itself,
and the medium of gold and silver be universally restored. This is what
ought to be done. But it will not be done. _Carthago non delibitur._
The overbearing clamor of merchants, speculators, and projectors, will
drive us before them with our eyes open, until, as in France, under the
Mississippi bubble, our citizens will be overtaken by the crush of this
baseless fabric, without other satisfaction than that of execrations on
the heads of those functionaries, who, from ignorance, pusillanimity or
corruption, have betrayed the fruits of their industry into the hands
of projectors and swindlers.
When I speak comparatively of the paper emission of the old Congress
and the present banks, let it not be imagined that I cover them under
the same mantle. The object of the former was a holy one; for if ever
there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us
independence. The object of the latter, is to enrich swindlers at the
expense of the honest and industrious part of the nation.
The sum of what has been said is, that pretermitting the constitutional
question on the authority of Congress, and considering this application
on the grounds of reason alone, it would be best that our medium should
be so proportioned to our produce, as to be on a par with that of the
countries with which we trade, and whose medium is in a sound state; that
specie is the most perfect medium, because it will preserve its own level;
because, having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die in our
hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of war; that
the trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience
for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of
the precious metals; that it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and
forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted; that
it is already at a term of abuse in these States, which has never been
reached by any other nation, France excepted, whose dreadful catastrophe
should be a warning against the instrument which produced it; that we
are already at ten or twenty times the due quantity of medium; insomuch,
that no man knows what his property is now worth, because it is bloating
while he is calculating; and still less what it will be worth when the
medium shall be relieved from its present dropsical state; and that it
is a palpable falsehood to say we can have specie for our paper whenever
demanded. Instead, then, of yielding to the cries of scarcity of medium
set up by speculators, projectors and commercial gamblers, no endeavors
should be spared to begin the work of reducing it by such gradual means
as may give time to private fortunes to preserve their poise, and settle
down with the subsiding medium; and that, for this purpose, the States
should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of
chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount
for paper.
To the existence of banks of _discount_ for _cash_, as on the continent
of Europe, there can be no objection, because there can be no danger
of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals.
I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than
legal interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion as
the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of
a year or more. Even banks of _deposit_, where cash should be lodged,
and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled
to a return of the cash on demand, would be convenient for remittances,
travelling persons, &c. But, liable as its cash would be to be pilfered
and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without
deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation. This would
differ from the bank of Amsterdam, in the circumstance that the cash
could be redeemed on returning the note.
When I commenced this letter to you, my dear Sir, on Mr. Law's memorial,
I expected a short one would have answered that. But as I advanced, the
subject branched itself before me into so many collateral questions, that
even the rapid views I have taken of each have swelled the volume of my
letter beyond my expectations, and, I fear, beyond your patience. Yet
on a revisal of it, I find no part which has not so much bearing on the
subject as to be worth merely the time of perusal. I leave it then as
it is; and will add only the assurances of my constant and affectionate
esteem and respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The real cash or money necessary to carry on the circulation
and barter of a State, is nearly one-third part of all the annual
rents of the proprietors of the said State; that is, one-ninth
of the whole produce of the land. Sir William Petty supposes
one-tenth part of the value of the whole produce sufficient.
Postlethwait, voce, Cash.
[7] Within five months after this, they were compelled by the
necessities of the war, to abandon the idea of emitting only
an adequate circulation, and to make those necessities the sole
measure of their emissions.
TO JOHN JACOB ASTOR, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, November 9, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of October 18th has been duly received, and I learn
with great pleasure the progress you have made towards an establishment
on Columbia river. I view it as the germ of a great, free and independent
empire on that side of our continent, and that liberty and self-government
spreading from that as well as this side, will ensure their complete
establishment over the whole. It must be still more gratifying to yourself
to foresee that your name will be handed down with that of Columbus
and Raleigh, as the father of the establishment and founder of such an
empire. It would be an afflicting thing indeed, should the English be
able to break up the settlement. Their bigotry to the bastard liberty
of their own country, and habitual hostility to every degree of freedom
in any other, will induce the attempt; they would not lose the sale of
a bale of furs for the freedom of the whole world. But I hope your party
will be able to maintain themselves. If they have assiduously cultivated
the interests and affections of the natives, these will enable them to
defend themselves against the English, and furnish them an asylum even
if their fort be lost. I hope, and have no doubt our government will
do for its success whatever they have power to do, and especially that
at the negotiations for peace, they will provide, by convention with
the English, for the safety and independence of that country, and an
acknowledgment of our right of patronizing them in all cases of injury
from foreign nations. But no patronage or protection from this quarter
can secure the settlement if it does not cherish the affections of the
natives and make it their interest to uphold it. While you are doing
so much for future generations of men, I sincerely wish you may find a
present account in the just profits you are entitled to expect from the
enterprise. I will ask of the President permission to read Mr. Stuart's
journal. With fervent wishes for a happy issue to this great undertaking,
which promises to form a remarkable epoch in the history of mankind, I
tender you the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, November 12, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--As I owe you more for your letters of October 12th and 28th
than I shall be able to pay, I shall begin with the P. S. to the last.
I am very sorry to say that I cannot assist your memory in the inquiries
of your letter of August 22d. I really know not who was the compositor of
any one of the petitions or addresses you enumerate. Nay, further: I am
certain I never did know. I was so shallow a politician that I was not
aware of the importance of those compositions. They all appeared to me,
in the circumstances of the country, like children's play at marbles or
push-pin, or like misses in their teens, emulating each other in their
pearls, their bracelets, their diamond pins and Brussels lace.
In the Congress of 1774, there was not one member, except Patrick Henry,
who appeared to me sensible of the precipice, or rather the pinnacle on
which we stood, and had candor and courage enough to acknowledge it.
America is in total ignorance, or under infinite deception concerning
that assembly. To draw the characters of them all would require a volume,
and would now be considered as a characatured print. One-third Tories,
another Whigs, and the rest Mongrels.
There was a little aristocracy among us of talents and letters. Mr.
Dickinson was _primus interpares_, the bell-weather, the leader of the
aristocratical flock.
Billy, _alias_ Governor Livingston, and his son-in-law, Mr. Jay, were of
the privileged order. The credit of most if not all those compositions,
was often if not generally given to one or the other of these choice
spirits. Mr. Dickinson, however, was not on any of the original
committees. He came not into Congress till October 17th. He was not
appointed till the 15th by his assembly.
Vol. 1, 30. Congress adjourned October 27th, though our correct secretary
has not recorded any final adjournment or dissolution. Mr. Dickinson
was in Congress but ten days. The business was all prepared, arranged,
and even in a manner finished before his arrival.
R. H. Lee was the chairman of the committee for preparing the loyal and
dutiful address to his majesty. Johnson and Henry were acute spirits, and
understood the controversy very well, though they had not the advantages
of education like Lee and John Rutledge.
The subject had been near a month under discussion in Congress, and most
of the materials thrown out there. It underwent another deliberation
in committee, after which they made the customary compliment to their
chairman, by requesting him to prepare and report a draught, which was
done, and after examination, correction, amelioration or pejoration,
as usual reported to Congress. October 3d, 4th and 5th were taken up in
debating and deliberating on matters proper to be contained in the address
to his majesty, vol. 122. October 21st. The address to the king was, after
debate, re-committed, and Mr. John Dickinson added to the committee. The
first draught was made, and all the essential materials put together by
Lee. It might be embellished and seasoned afterwards with some of Mr.
Dickinson's piety, but I know not that it was. Neat and handsome as the
composition is, having never had any confidence in the utility of it, I
never have thought much about it since it was adopted. Indeed, I never
bestowed much attention on any of those addresses which were all but
repetitions of the same things, the same facts and arguments, dress and
ornament rather than body, soul or substance. My thoughts and cares were
nearly monopolized by the theory of our rights and wrongs, by measures
for the defence of the country, and the means of governing ourselves. I
was in a great error, no doubt, and am ashamed to confess it; for those
things were necessary to give popularity to our cause both at home and
abroad. And to show my stupidity in a stronger light, the reputation
of any one of those compositions has been a more splendid distinction
than any aristocratical star or garter in the escutcheon of every man
who has enjoyed it. Very sorry that I cannot give you more satisfactory
information, and more so that I cannot at present give more attention
to your two last excellent letters. I am, as usual, affectionately yours.
N. B. I am almost ready to believe that John Taylor, of Caroline, or of
Hazlewood, Port Royal, Virginia, is the author of 630 pages of printed
octavo upon my books that I have received. The style answers every
characteristic that you have intimated. Within a week I have received and
looked into his Arator. They must spring from the same brain, as Minerva
issued from the head of Jove, or rather as Venus rose from the froth of
the sea. There is, however, a great deal of good sense in Arator, and
there is some in his Aristocracy.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, November 15, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Accept my thanks for the comprehensive syllabus in your favor
of October 12th.
The Psalms of David, in sublimity, beauty, pathos and originality, or,
in one word, in poetry, are superior to all the odes, hymns and songs
in our language. But I had rather read them in our prose translation,
than in any version I have seen. His morality, however, often shocks
me, like Tristram Shandy's execrations.
Blacklock's translation of Horace's "Justum," is admirable; superior
to Addison's. Could David be translated as well, his superiority would
be universally acknowledged. We cannot compare the sublime poetry.
By Virgil's "Pollio," we may conjecture there was prophecy as well as
sublimity. Why have those verses been annihilated? I suspect Platonic
Christianity, Pharisaical Judaism or Machiavilian politics, in this
case, as in all other cases, of the destruction of records and literary
monuments,
The auri sacra fames, et dominandi sæva cupido.
Among all your researches in Hebrew history and controversy, have you ever
met a book the design of which is to prove that the ten commandments, as
we have them in our Catechisms and hung up in our churches, were not the
ten commandments written by the finger of God upon tables delivered to
Moses on Mount Sinai, and broken by him in a passion with Aaron for his
golden calf, nor those afterwards engraved by him on tables of stone;
but a very different set of commandments?
There is such a book, by J. W. Goethen, Schriften, Berlin 1775-1779. I
wish to see this book. You will perceive the question in Exodus, 20: 1,
17, 22, 28, chapter 24: 3, &c.; chapter 24: 12; chapter 25: 31; chapter
31: 18; chapter 31: 19; chapter 34: 1; chapter 34: 10, &c.
I will make a covenant with all this people. Observe that which I command
this day:
1. Thou shalt not adore any other God. Therefore take heed not to enter
into covenant with the inhabitants of the country; neither take for your
sons their daughters in marriage. They would allure thee to the worship
of false Gods. Much less shall you in any place erect images.
2. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days shalt thou
eat unleavened bread, at the time of the month Abib; to remember that
about that time, I delivered thee from Egypt.
3. Every first born of the mother is mine; the male of thine herd, be
it stock or flock. But you shall replace the first born of an ass with
a sheep. The first born of your sons shall you _redeem_. No man shall
appear before me with empty hands.
4. Six days shalt thou labor. The seventh day thou shalt rest from
ploughing and gathering.
5. The feast of weeks shalt thou keep with the firstlings of the wheat
harvest; and the feast of harvesting at the end of the year.
6. Thrice in every year all male persons shall appear before the Lord.
Nobody shall invade your country, as long as you obey this command.
7. Thou shalt not sacrifice the blood of a sacrifice of mine, upon
leavened bread.
8. The sacrifice of the Passover shall not remain till the next day.
9. The firstlings of the produce of your land, thou shalt bring to the
house of the Lord.
10. Thou shalt not boil the kid, while it is yet sucking.
And the Lord spake to Moses: Write these words, as after these words I
made with you and with Israel a covenant.
I know not whether Goethen translated or abridged from the Hebrew, or
whether he used any translation, Greek, Latin, or German. But he differs
in form and words somewhat from our version, Exodus 34: 10 to 28. The
sense seems to be the same. The tables were the evidence of the covenant,
by which the Almighty attached the people of Israel to himself. By these
laws they were separated from all other nations, and were reminded of
the principal epochs of their history.
When and where originated our ten commandments? The tables and the ark
were lost. Authentic copies in few, if any hands; the ten Precepts could
not be observed, and were little remembered.
If the book of Deuteronomy was compiled, during or after the Babylonian
captivity, from traditions, the error or amendment might come in those.
But you must be weary, as I am at present of problems, conjectures,
and paradoxes, concerning Hebrew, Grecian and Christian and all other
antiquities; but while we believe that the _finis bonorum_ will be happy,
we may leave learned men to their disquisitions and criticisms.
I admire your employment in selecting the philosophy and divinity of
Jesus, and separating it from all mixtures. If I had eyes and nerves
I would go through both Testaments and mark all that I understand. To
examine the Mishna, Gemara, Cabbala, Jezirah, Sohar, Cosri and Talmud of
the Hebrews would require the life of Methuselah, and after all his 969
years would be wasted to very little purpose. The dæmon of hierarchical
despotism has been at work both with the Mishna and Gemara. In 1238 a
French Jew made a discovery to the Pope (Gregory 9th) of the heresies
of the Talmud. The Pope sent thirty-five articles of error to the
Archbishops of France, requiring them to seize the books of the Jews and
burn all that contained any errors. He wrote in the same terms to the
kings of France, England, Arragon, Castile, Leon, Navarre and Portugal.
In consequence of this order, twenty cartloads of Hebrew books were
burnt in France; and how many times twenty cartloads were destroyed in
the other kingdoms? The Talmud of Babylon and that of Jerusalem were
composed from 120 to 500 years after the destruction of Jerusalem.
If Lightfoot derived light from what escaped from Gregory's fury,
in explaining many passages in the New Testament, by comparing the
expressions of the Mishna with those of the Apostles and Evangelists,
how many proofs of the corruptions of Christianity might we find in the
passages burnt?
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, November 15, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I cannot appease my melancholy commiseration for our armies
in this furious snow storm, in any way so well as by studying your letter
of Oct. 28.
We are now explicitly agreed upon one important point, viz., that there
is a natural aristocracy among men, the grounds of which are virtue and
talents. You very justly indulge a little merriment upon this solemn
subject of aristocracy. I often laugh at it too, for there is nothing
in this laughable world more ridiculous than the management of it by
all the nations of the earth; but while we smile, mankind have reason
to say to us, as the frogs said to the boys, what is sport to you,
are wounds and death to us. When I consider the weakness, the folly,
the pride, the vanity, the selfishness, the artifice, the low craft
and mean cunning, the want of principle, the avarice, the unbounded
ambition, the unfeeling cruelty of a majority of those (in all nations)
who are allowed an aristocratical influence, and, on the other hand,
the stupidity with which the more numerous multitude not only become
their dupes, but even love to be taken in by their tricks, I feel a
stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, than to laugh at their
folly. But though we have agreed in one point, in words, it is not yet
certain that we are perfectly agreed in sense. Fashion has introduced
an indeterminate use of the word talents. Education, wealth, strength,
beauty, stature, birth, marriage, graceful attitudes and motions, gait,
air, complexion, physiognomy, are talents, as well as genius, science, and
learning. Any one of these talents that in fact commands or influences
two votes in society, gives to the man who possesses it the character
of an aristocrat, in my sense of the word. Pick up the first hundred
men you meet, and make a republic. Every man will have an equal vote;
but when deliberations and discussions are opened, it will be found
that twenty-five, by their talents, virtues being equal, will be able
to carry fifty votes. Every one of these twenty-five is an aristocrat
in my sense of the word; whether he obtains his one vote in addition to
his own, by his birth, fortune, figure, eloquence, science, learning,
craft, cunning, or even his character for good fellowship, and a _bon
vivant_.
What gave Sir William Wallace his amazing aristocratical superiority? His
strength. What gave Mrs. Clark her aristocratical influence--to create
generals, admirals, and bishops? Her beauty. What gave Pompadour and Du
Barry the power of making cardinals and popes? And I have lived for years
in the hotel de Valentinois, with Franklin, who had as many virtues as
any of them. In the investigation of the meaning of the word "talents,"
I could write 630 pages as pertinent as John Taylor's, of Hazlewood;
but I will select a single example; for female aristocrats are nearly as
formidable as males. A daughter of a green grocer walks the streets in
London daily, with a basket of cabbage sprouts, dandelions, and spinage,
on her head. She is observed by the painters to have a beautiful face,
an elegant figure, a graceful step, and a _debonair_. They hire her to
sit. She complies, and is painted by forty artists in a circle around
her. The scientific Dr. William Hamilton outbids the painters, sends
her to school for a genteel education, and marries her. This lady not
only causes the triumphs of the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, but
separates Naples from France, and finally banishes the king and queen
from Sicily. Such is the aristocracy of the natural talent of beauty.
Millions of examples might be quoted from history, sacred and profane,
from Eve, Hannah, Deborah, Susanna, Abigail, Judith, Ruth, down to Helen,
Mrs. de Mainbenor, and Mrs. Fitzherbert. For mercy's sake do not compel
me to look to our chaste States and territories to find women, one of
whom let go would in the words of Holopherne's guards, deceive the whole
earth.
The proverbs of Theognis, like those of Solomon, are observations on
human nature, ordinary life, and civil society, with moral reflections on
the facts. I quoted him as a witness of the fact, that there was as much
difference in the races of men as in the breeds of sheep, and as a sharp
reprover and censurer of the sordid, mercenary practice of disgracing
birth by preferring gold to it. Surely no authority can be more expressly
in point to prove the existence of inequalities, not of rights, but of
moral, intellectual, and physical inequalities in families, descents and
generations. If a descent from pious, virtuous, wealthy, literary, or
scientific ancestors, is a letter of recommendation, or introduction in
a man's favor, and enables him to influence only one vote in addition
to his own, he is an aristocrat; for a democrat can have but one vote.
Aaron Burr has 100,000 votes from the single circumstance of his descent
from President Burr and President Edwards.
Your commentary on the proverbs of Theognis, reminded me of two solemn
characters; the one resembling John Bunyan, the other Scarron. The one
John Torrey, the other Ben Franklin. Torrey, a poet, an enthusiast, a
superstitious bigot, once very gravely asked my brother, whether it
would not be better for mankind if children were always begotten by
religious motives only? Would not religion in this sad case have as little
efficacy in encouraging procreation, as it has now in discouraging it?
I should apprehend a decrease of population, even in our country where
it increases so rapidly.
In 1775, Franklin made a morning visit at Mrs. Yard's, to Sam Adams
and John. He was unusually loquacious. "Man, a rational creature!"
said Franklin. "Come, let us suppose a rational man. Strip him of all
his appetites, especially his hunger and thirst. He is in his chamber,
engaged in making experiments, or in pursuing some problem. He is highly
entertained. At this moment a servant knocks. 'Sir, dinner is on the
table.' 'Dinner! pox! pough! but what have you for dinner?' 'Ham and
chickens.' 'Ham, and must I break the chain of my thoughts to go down
and gnaw a morsel of damned hog's arse? Put aside your ham; I will dine
to-morrow.'" Take away appetite, and the present generation would not
live a month, and no future generation would ever exist; and thus the
exalted dignity of human nature would be annihilated and lost, and in my
opinion the whole loss would be of no more importance than putting out
a candle, quenching a torch, or crushing a fire-fly, _if in this world
we only have hope_. Your distinction between natural and artificial
aristocracy, does not appear to me founded. Birth and wealth are conferred
upon some men as imperiously by nature as genius, strength, or beauty.
The heir to honors, and riches, and power, has often no more merit in
procuring these advantages, than he has in obtaining a handsome face,
or an elegant figure. When aristocracies are established by human laws,
and honor, wealth, and power are made hereditary by municipal laws and
political institutions, then I acknowledge artificial aristocracy to
commence; but this never commences till corruption in elections become
dominant and uncontrollable. But this artificial aristocracy can never
last. The everlasting envies, jealousies, rivalries, and quarrels
among them; their cruel rapacity upon the poor ignorant people, their
followers, compel them to set up Cæsar, a demagogue, to be a monarch, a
master; _pour mettre chacun à sa place_. Here you have the origin of all
artificial aristocracy, which is the origin of all monarchies. And both
artificial aristocracy and monarchy, and civil, military, political, and
hierarchical despotism, have all grown out of the natural aristocracy
of virtues and talents. We, to be sure, are far remote from this. Many
hundred years must roll away before we shall be corrupted. Our pure,
virtuous, public-spirited, federative republic will last forever, govern
the globe, and introduce the perfection of man; his perfectibility being
already proved by Price, Priestley, Condorcet, Rousseau, Diderot, and
Godwin. Mischief has been done by the Senate of the United States. I have
known and felt more of this mischief, than Washington, Jefferson, and
Madison, all together. But this has been all caused by the constitutional
power of the Senate, in executive business, which ought to be immediately,
totally, and essentially abolished. Your distinction between the Αριστοι
and ψευδο αριστοι, will not help the matter. I would trust one as well
as the other with unlimited power. The law wisely refuses an oath as a
witness in his own case, to the saint as well as the sinner. No romance
would be more amusing than the history of your Virginian and our New
England aristocratical families. Yet even in Rhode Island there has
been no clergy, no church, and I had almost said no State, and some
people say no religion. There has been a constant respect for certain
old families. Fifty-seven or fifty-eight years ago, in company with
Colonel, Counsellor, Judge, John Chandler, whom I have quoted before,
a newspaper was brought in. The old sage asked me to look for the news
from Rhode Island, and see how the elections had gone there. I read the
list of Wanbous, Watrous, Greens, Whipples, Malboues, &c. "I expected
as much," said the aged gentleman, "for I have always been of opinion
that in the most popular governments, the elections will generally go
in favor of the most ancient families." To this day, when any of these
tribes--and we may add Ellerys, Channings, Champlins, &c.,--are pleased
to fall in with the popular current, they are sure to carry all before
them.
You suppose a difference of opinion between you and me on the subject of
aristocracy. I can find none. I dislike and detest hereditary honors,
offices, emoluments, established by law So do you. I am for excluding
legal, hereditary distinctions from the United States as long as possible.
So are you. I only say that mankind have not yet discovered any remedy
against irresistible corruption in elections to offices of great power
and profit, but making them hereditary.
But will you say our elections are pure? Be it so, upon the whole;
but do you recollect in history a more corrupt election than that of
Aaron Burr to be President, or that of De Witt Clinton last year? By
corruption here, I mean a sacrifice of every national interest and honor
to private and party objects. I see the same spirit in Virginia that
you and I see in Rhode Island and the rest of New England. In New York
it is a struggle of family feuds--a feudal aristocracy. Pennsylvania is
a contest between German, Irish and old England families. When Germans
and Irish unite they give 30,000 majorities. There is virtually a white
rose and a red rose, a Cæsar and a Pompey, in every State in this Union,
and contests and dissensions will be as lasting. The rivalry of Bourbons
and Noaillises produced the French revolution, and a similar competition
for consideration and influence exists and prevails in every village
in the world. Where will terminate the _rabies agri_? The continent
will be scattered over with manors much larger than Livingston's,
Van Rensselaers's, or Philips's; even our Deacon Strong will have a
principality among you Southern folk. What inequality of talents will
be produced by these land jobbers. Where tends the mania of banks? At
my table in Philadelphia, I once proposed to you to unite in endeavors
to obtain an amendment of the constitution prohibiting to the separate
States the power of creating banks; but giving Congress authority to
establish one bank with a branch in each State, the whole limited to
ten millions of dollars. Whether this project was wise or unwise, I know
not, for I had deliberated little on it then, and have never thought it
worth thinking of since. But you spurned the proposition from you with
disdain. This system of banks, begotten, brooded and hatched by Duer,
Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Hamilton and Washington, I have always
considered as a system of national injustice. A sacrifice of public and
private interest to a few aristocratical friends and favorites. My scheme
could have had no such effect. Verres plundered temples, and robbed a
few rich men, but he never made such ravages among private property in
general, nor swindled so much out of the pockets of the poor, and middle
class of people, as these banks have done. No people but this would
have borne the imposition so long. The people of Ireland would not bear
Wood's half-pence. What inequalities of talent have been introduced into
this country by these aristocratical banks! Our Winthrops, Winslows,
Bradfords, Saltonstalls, Quinceys, Chandlers, Leonards, Hutchinsons,
Olivers, Sewalls, &c., are precisely in the situation of your Randolphs,
Carters, and Burwells, and Harrisons. Some of them unpopular for the
part they took in the late revolution, but all respected for their names
and connections; and whenever they fell in with the popular sentiments
are preferred _ceteris paribus_, to all others. When I was young the
_summum bonum_ in Massachusetts was to be worth £10,000 sterling, ride
in a chariot, be Colonel of a regiment of militia, and hold a seat in his
Majesty's council. No man's imagination aspired to anything higher beneath
the skies. But these plumbs, chariots, colonelships, and counsellorships,
are recorded and will never be forgotten. No great accumulations of
land were made by our early settlers. Mr. Baudoin, a French refugee,
made the first great purchases, and your General Dearborne, born under
a fortunate star, is now enjoying a large portion of the aristocratical
sweets of them. As I have no amanuenses but females, and there is so
much about generation in this letter that I dare not ask any of them to
copy it, and I cannot copy it myself, I must beg of you to return it to
me. Your old friend.
TO ----.
November 28, 1813.
I will not fatigue you, my dear Sir, with long and labored excuses for
having been so tardy in writing to you; but I will briefly mention that
the thousand hostile ships which cover the ocean render attempts to pass
it now very unfrequent, and these concealing their intentions from all
that they may not be known to the enemy, are gone before heard of in
such inland situations as mine. To this, truth must add the torpidity
of age as one of the obstacles to punctual correspondence.
Your letters of October 21 and November 15, 1811, and August 29, 1813,
were duly received, and with that of November 15 came the MS. copy of your
work on Economy. The extraordinary merit of the former volume had led
me to anticipate great satisfaction and edification from the perusal of
this, and I can say with truth and sincerity that these expectations were
completely fulfilled, new principles developed, former ones corrected, or
rendered more perspicuous, present us an interesting science, heretofore
voluminous and embarrassed, now happily simplified and brought within a
very moderate compass. After an attentive perusal, which enabled me to
bear testimony to its worth, I took measures for getting it translated
and printed in Philadelphia; the distance from which place prepared me
to expect great and unavoidable delays. But notwithstanding my continual
urgencies these have gone far beyond my calculations. In a letter of
September 26th from the editor, in answer to one of mine, after urging
in excuse the causes of the delay, he expresses his confidence that it
would be ready by the last of October, and that period being now past,
I am in daily expectation of hearing from him. As I write the present
letter without knowing by what conveyance it may go, I am not without
a hope of receiving a copy of the work in time to accompany this. I
shall then be anxious to learn that better health and more encouraging
circumstances enable you to pursue your plan through the two remaining
branches of morals and legislation, which executed in the same lucid,
logical and condensed style, will present such a whole as the age we live
in will not before have received. Should the same motives operate for
their first publication here, I am now offered such means, nearer to me,
as promise a more encouraging promptitude in the execution. And certainly
no effort should be spared on my part to ensure to the world such an
acquisition. The MS. of the first work has been carefully recalled and
deposited with me. That of the second, when done with, shall be equally
taken care of.
If unmerited praise could give pleasure to a candid mind, I should have
been highly exalted, in my own opinion, on the occasion of the first
work. One of the best judges and best men of the age has ascribed it to
myself; and has for some time been employed in translating it into French.
It would be a gratification to which you are highly entitled, could I
transcribe the sheets he has written me in praise, nay in rapture with
the work; and were I to name the man, you would be sensible there is not
another whose suffrage would be more encouraging. But the casualties
which lie between us would render criminal the naming any one. In a
letter which I am now writing him, I shall set him right as to myself,
and acknowledge my humble station far below the qualifications necessary
for that work; and shall discourage his perseverance in retranslating
into French a work the original of which is so correct in its diction
that not a word can be altered but for the worse; and from a translation,
too, where the author's meaning has sometimes been illy understood,
sometimes mistaken, and often expressed in words not the best chosen.
Indeed, when the work, through its translation, becomes more generally
known here, the high estimation in which it is held by all who become
acquainted with it, encourage me to hope I may get it printed in the
original. I sent a copy of it to the late President of William and Mary
College of this State, who adopted it at once as the elementary book
of that institution. From these beginnings it will spread and become
a political gospel for a nation open to reason, and in a situation to
adopt and profit by its results, without a fear of their leading to wrong.
I sincerely wish you all the health, comfort and leisure necessary to
dispose and enable you to persevere in employing yourself so useful for
present and future times, and I pray you to be assured you have not a
more grateful votary for your benefactions to mankind, nor one of higher
sentiments of esteem and affectionate respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, December 3, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--The proverbs of the old Greek poets are as short and pithy
as any of Solomon or Franklin. Hesiod has several. His Αθανατους μὲν
πρῶτα θεους νομω ως διακειται Τιμα. Honor the gods established by law.
I know not how we can escape martyrdom without a discreet attention to
this precept. You have suffered, and I have suffered more than you, for
want of a strict observance of this rule.
There is another oracle of this Hesiod, which requires a kind of dance
upon a tight rope and a slack rope too, in philosophy and theology:
Πιστις δ' αρα ομως και απιστια ωλεσαν ανδρας. If believing too little
or too much is so fatal to mankind, what will become of us all?
In studying the perfectability of human nature and its progress towards
perfection in this world, on this earth, remember that I have met many
curious and interesting characters.
About three hundred years ago, there appeared a number of men of letters,
who appeared to endeavor to believe neither too little nor too much.
They labored to imitate the Hebrew archers, who could shoot to an hair's
breadth. The Pope and his church believed too much. Luther and his
church believed too little. This little band was headed by three great
scholars: Erasmus, Vives and Badens. This triumvirate is said to have
been at the head of the republic of letters in that age. Had Condorcet
been master of his subject, I fancy he would have taken more notice, in
his History of the Progress of Mind, of these characters. Have you their
writings? I wish I had. I shall confine myself at present to Vives. He
wrote commentaries on the City of God of St. Augustine, some parts of
which were censured by the Doctors of the Louvain, as too bold and too
free. I know not whether the following passage of the learned Spaniard
was among the sentiments condemned or not:
"I have been much afflicted," says Vives, "when I have seriously
considered how diligently, and with what exact care, the actions of
Alexander, Hannibal, Scipio, Pompey, Cæsar and other commanders, and the
lives of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers, have been
written and fixed in an everlasting remembrance, so that there is not the
least danger they can ever be lost; but then the acts of the Apostles,
and martyrs and saints of our religion, and of the affairs of the rising
and established church, being involved in much darkness, are almost
totally unknown, though they are of so much greater advantage than the
lives of the philosophers or great generals, both as to the improvement
of our knowledge and practice. For what is written of these holy men,
except a very few things, is very much corrupted and defaced with the
mixture of many fables, while the writer, indulging his own humor, doth
not tell us what the saint did, but what the historian would have had
him do. And the fancy of the writer dictates the life and not the truth
of things." And again Vives says: "There have been men who have thought
it a great piece of piety, to invent lies for the sake of religion."
The great Cardinal Barronius, too, confesses: "There is nothing which
seems so much neglected to this day, as a true and certain account of
the affairs of the church, collected with an exact diligence. And that
I may speak of the more ancient, it is very difficult to find any of
them who have published commentaries on this subject, which have hit
the truth in all points."
Canus, too, another Spanish prelate of great name, says: "I speak it
with grief and not by way of reproach, Laertius has written the lives of
the philosophers with more ease and industry than the Christians have
those of the saints. Suetonius has represented the lives of the Cæsars
with much more truth and sincerity than the Catholics have the affairs
(I will not say of the emperors) but even those of the martyrs, holy
virgins and confessors. For they have not concealed the vice nor the
very suspicions of vice, in good and commendable philosophers or princes,
and in the worst of them they discover the very colors or appearances of
virtue. But the greatest part of our writers either follow the conduct
of their affections, or industriously feign many things; so that I, for
my part, am very often both weary and ashamed of them, because I know
that they have thereby brought nothing of advantage to the church of
Christ, but very much inconvenience." Vives and Canus are moderns, but
Arnobius, the converter of Lætantius, was ancient. He says: "But neither
could all that was done be written, or arrive at the knowledge of all
men--many of our great actions being done by obscure men and those who
had no knowledge of letters. And if some of them are committed to letters
and writings, yet even here, by the malice of the devils and men like
them, whose great design and study is to intercept and ruin this truth,
by interpolating or adding some things to them, or by changing or taking
out words, syllables or letters, they have put a stop to the faith of
wise men, and corrupted the truth of things."
Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient
Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions,
above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public?
Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding
wave in the Catholic church, from the Council of Nice, and long before,
to this day.
Aristotle, no doubt, thought his Ουτε πασι πιστευοντες, ουτε πασιν
απιστουντες, very wise and very profound; but what is its worth? What man,
woman or child ever believed everything or nothing? Oh! that Priestley
could live again, and have leisure and means! An inquirer after truth,
who had neither time nor means, might request him to search and re-search
for answers to a few questions:
1. Have we more than two witnesses of the life of Jesus--Matthew and John?
2. Have we one witness to the existence of Matthew's gospel in the first
century?
3. Have we one witness of the existence of John's gospel in the first
century?
4. Have we one witness of the existence of Mark's gospel in the first
century?
5. Have we one witness of the existence of Luke's gospel in the first
century?
6. Have we any witness of the existence of St. Thomas' gospel, that is
the gospel of the infancy in the first century?
7. Have we any evidence of the existence of the Acts of the Apostles in
the first century?
8. Have we any evidence of the existence of the supplement to the Acts
of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, or Paul and Tecle, in the first century?
Here I was interrupted by a new book, Chateaubriand's Travels in Greece,
Palestine and Egypt, and by a lung fever with which the amiable companion
of my life has been violently and dangerously attacked.
December 13th. I have fifty more questions to put to Priestley, but must
adjourn them to a future opportunity.
I have read Chateaubriand with as much delight as I ever read Bunyan's
Pilgrims' Progress, Robinson Crusoe's Travels, or Gulliver's, or
Whitefield's, or Wesley's Life, or the Life of St. Francis, St.
Anthony, or St. Ignatius Loyola. A work of infinite learning, perfectly
well written, a magazine of information, but enthusiastic, bigoted,
superstitious, Roman Catholic throughout. If I were to indulge in
jealous criticism and conjecture, I should suspect that there had been
an Œcuemenical counsel of Popes, Cardinals and Bishops, and that this
traveller has been employed at their expense to make this tour, to lay
a foundation for the resurrection of the Catholic Hierarchy in Europe.
Have you read La Harpe's Course de Literature, in fifteen volumes? Have
you read St. Pierre's Studies of Nature?
I am now reading the controversy between Voltaire and Monotte.
Our friend Rush has given us for his last legacy, an analysis of some
of the diseases of the mind.
Johnson said, "We are all more or less mad;" and who is or has been more
mad than Johnson?
I know of no philosopher, or theologian, or moralist, ancient or modern,
more profound, more infallible than Whitefield, if the anecdote I heard
be true.
He began: "Father Abraham," with his hands and eyes gracefully directed to
the heavens, as I have more than once seen him; "Father Abraham, who have
you there with you? Have you Catholics?" "No." "Have you Protestants?"
"No." "Have you Churchmen?" "No." "Have you Dissenters?" "No." "Have you
Presbyterians?" "No." "Quakers?" "No." "Anabaptists?" "No." "Who have
you there? Are you alone?" "No."
"My brethren, you have the answer to all these questions in the words
of my text: 'He who feareth God and worketh righteousness, shall be
accepted of Him.'"
Allegiance to the Creator and Governor of the Milky-Way, and the Nebulæ,
and benevolence to all his creatures, is my Religion.
Si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti.
I am as ever.
TO BARON DE 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 the 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 Elysian 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.
TO MADAM DE TESSÉ.
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-cœlestium, 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
to 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 enquiries for the Maronnier or Castanea
Saliva, 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 on 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 ware-houses 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 Tessé 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.
TO DON VALENTIN DE TORONDA CORUNA.
MONTICELLO, December 14, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--I have had the pleasure of receiving several letters from
you, covering printed propositions and pamphlets on the state of your
affairs, and all breathing the genuine sentiments of order, liberty and
philanthropy, with which I know you to be sincerely inspired. We learn
little to be depended on here as to your civil proceedings, or of the
division of sentiments among you; but in this absence of information
I have made whatever you propose the polar star of my wishes. What is
to be the issue of your present struggles we here cannot judge. But we
sincerely wish it may be what is best for the happiness and reinvigoration
of your country. That its divorce from its American colonies, which
is now unavoidable, will be a great blessing, it is impossible not to
pronounce on a review of what Spain was when she acquired them, and of
her gradual descent from that proud eminence to the condition in which
her present war found her. Nature has formed that peninsula to be the
second, and why not the first nation in Europe? Give equal habits of
energy to the bodies, and of science to the minds of her citizens, and
where could her superior be found? The most advantageous relation in
which she can stand with her American colonies is that of independent
friendship, secured by the ties of consanguinity, sameness of language,
religion, manners, and habits, and certain from the influence of these,
of a preference in her commerce, if, instead of the eternal irritations,
thwartings, machinations against their new governments, the insults and
aggressions which Great Britain has so unwisely practised towards us,
to force us to hate her against our natural inclinations, Spain yields,
like a genuine parent, to the forisfamiliation of her colonies, now at
maturity, if she extends to them her affections, her aid, her patronage
in every court and country, it will weave a bond of union indissoluble
by time. We are in a state of semi-warfare with your adjoining colonies,
the Floridas. We do not consider this as affecting our peace with Spain
or any other of her former possessions. We wish her and them well;
and under her present difficulties at home, and her doubtful future
relations with her colonies, both wisdom and interest will, I presume,
induce her to leave them to settle themselves the quarrels they draw
on themselves from their neighbors. The commanding officers in the
Floridas have excited and armed the neighboring savages to war against
us, and to murder and scalp many of our women and children as well as
men, taken by surprise--poor creatures! They have paid for it with the
loss of the flower of their strength, and have given us the right, as
we possess the power, to exterminate or to expatriate them beyond the
Mississippi. This conduct of the Spanish officers will probably oblige
us to take possession of the Floridas, and the rather as we believe the
English will otherwise seize them, and use them as stations to distract
and annoy us. But should we possess ourselves of them, and Spain retain
her other colonies in this hemisphere, I presume we shall consider them
in our hands as subjects of negociation.
We are now at the close of our second campaign with England. During the
first we suffered several checks, from the want of capable and tried
officers; all the higher ones of the Revolution having died off during an
interval of thirty years of peace. But this second campaign has been more
successful, having given us all the lakes and country of Upper Canada,
except the single post of Kingston, at its lower extremity. The two
immediate causes of the war were the Orders of Council, and impressment
of our seamen. The first having been removed after we had declared war,
the war is continued for the second; and a third has been generated by
their conduct during the war, in exciting the Indian hordes to murder
and scalp the women and children on our frontier. This renders peace for
ever impossible but on the establishment of such a meridian boundary to
their possessions, as that they never more can have such influence with
the savages as to excite again the same barbarities. The thousand ships,
too, they took from us in peace, and the six thousand seamen impressed,
call for this indemnification. On the water we have proved to the world
the error of their invincibility, and shown that with equal force and
well-trained officers, they can be beaten by other nations as brave as
themselves. Their lying officers and printers will give to Europe very
different views of the state of their war with us. But you will see now,
as in the Revolutionary war, that they will lie, and conquer themselves
out of all their possessions on this continent.
I pray for the happiness of your nation, and that it may be blessed with
sound views and successful measures, under the difficulties in which
it is involved; and especially that they may know the value of your
counsels, and to yourself I tender the assurances of my high respect
and esteem.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, December 25, 1813.
DEAR SIR,--Answer my letters at your leisure. Give yourself no concern.
I write as for a refuge and protection against _ennui_.
The fundamental principle of all philosophy and all christianity, is
"_Rejoice always in all things!_" "Be thankful at all times for all
good, and all that we call evil." Will it not follow that I ought to
rejoice and be thankful that Priestley has lived? That Gibbon has lived?
That Hume has lived, though a conceited Scotchman? That Bolingbroke has
lived, though a haughty, arrogant, supercilious dogmatist? That Burke
and Johnson have lived, though superstitious slaves, or self-deceiving
hypocrites, both? Is it not laughable to hear Burke call Bolingbroke a
superficial writer? To hear him ask: "Who ever read him through?" Had
I been present, I would have answered him, "I, I myself, I have read
him through more than fifty years ago, and more than five times in my
life, and once within five years past. And in my opinion, the epithet
'superficial,' belongs to you and your friend Johnson more than to him."
I might say much more. But I believe Burke and Johnson to have been as
political christians as Leo Tenth.
I return to Priestley, though I have great complaints against him for
personal injuries and persecution, at the same time that I forgive it
all, and hope and pray that he may be pardoned for it all above.
Dr. Brocklesby, an intimate friend and convivial companion of Johnson,
told me that Johnson died in agonies of horror of annihilation; and all
the accounts we have of his death, corroborate this account of Brocklesby.
Dread of annihilation! Dread of nothing! A dread of nothing, I should
think, would be no dread at all. Can there be any real, substantial,
rational fear of nothing? Were you on your death-bed, and in your last
moments informed by demonstration of revelation, that you would cease
to think and to feel, at your dissolution, should you be terrified?
You might be ashamed of yourself for having lived so long to bear the
proud man's contumely. You might be ashamed of your Maker, and compare
him to a little girl, amusing herself, her brothers and sisters, by
blowing bubbles in soap-suds. You might compare him to boys sporting
with crackers and rockets, or to men employed in making mere artificial
fire-works, or to men and women at fairs and operas, or Sadler's Wells'
exploits, or to politicians in their intrigues, or to heroes in their
butcheries, or to Popes in their devilisms. But what should you fear?
Nothing. _Emori nolo, sed me mortuum esse nihil estimo._
To return to Priestley. You could make a more luminous book than his,
upon the doctrines of heathen philosophers compared with those of
revelation. Why has he not given us a more satisfactory account of the
Pythagorean Philosophy and Theology? He barely names Œileus, who lived
long before Plato. His treatise of kings and monarchy has been destroyed,
I conjecture, by Platonic Philosophers, Platonic Jews or Christians,
or by fraudulent republicans or despots. His treatise of the universe
has been preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of the world. The
Marquis D'Argens translated it, in all its noble simplicity. The Abbé
Batteaux has since given another translation. D'Argens not only explains
the text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His remarks are
so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient opinions.
The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics, and of the
morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their different
doctrines compared with one another and with the modern discoveries. I
wish I owned this book and one hundred thousand more that I want every
day, now when I am almost incapable of making any use of them. No doubt
he informs us that Pythagoras was a great traveller. Priestley barely
mentions Timæus, but it does not appear that he had read him. Why has
he not given us an account of him and his book? He was before Plato,
and gave him the idea of his Timæus, and much more of his philosophy.
After his master, he maintained the existence of matter; that matter was
capable of receiving all sorts of forms; that a moving power agitated
all the parts of it, and that an intelligence produced a regular and
harmonious world. This intelligence had seen a plan, an _idea_ (Logos)
in conformity to which it wrought, and without which it would not have
known what it was about, nor what it wanted to do. This plan was the
_idea_, image or model which had represented to the Supreme Intelligence
the world before it existed, which had directed it in its action upon
the moving power, and which it contemplated in forming the elements, the
bodies and the world. This model was distinguished from the intelligence
which produced the world, as the architect is from his plans. He divided
the productive cause of the world into a spirit which directed the
moving force, and into an image which determined it in the choice of
the directions which it gave to the moving force, and the forms which
it gave to matter. I wonder that Priestley has overlooked this, because
it is the same philosophy with Plato's, and would have shown that the
Pythagorean as well as the Platonic philosophers probably concurred in
the fabrication of the Christian Trinity. Priestley mentions the name of
Achylas, but does not appear to have read him, though he was a successor
of Pythagoras, and a great mathematician, a great statesman and a great
general. John Gram, a learned and honorable Dane, has given a handsome
edition of his works, with a Latin translation and an ample account of his
life and writings. Seleucus, the Legislator of Locris, and Charondas, of
Sybaris, were disciples of Pythagoras, and both celebrated to immortality
for the wisdom of their laws, five hundred years before Christ. Why are
those laws lost? I say _the spirit of party_ has destroyed them; civil,
political and ecclesiastical bigotry.
Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical and democratical fury have all
been employed in this work of destruction of everything that could give
us true light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of these
parties, when possessed of power, or when they have been undermost, and
struggling to get uppermost, has been equally prone to every species of
fraud and violence and usurpation.
Why has not Priestley mentioned these Legislators? The preamble to the
laws of Zaleucus, which is all that remains, is as orthodox christian
theology as Priestley's, and christian benevolence and forgiveness of
injuries almost as clearly expressed.
Priestley ought to have done impartial justice to philosophy and
philosophers. Philosophy, which is the result of reason, is the first,
the original revelation of the Creator to his creature, man. When this
revelation is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no
subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede
it. Philosophy is not only the love of wisdom, but the science of the
universe and its cause.
There is, there was, and there will be but one master of philosophy
in the universe. Portions of it, in different degrees, are revealed to
creatures.
Philosophy looks with an impartial eye on all terrestrial religions. I
have examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means
and my busy life would allow me, and the result is, that the Bible is
the best book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy
than all the libraries I have seen; and such parts of it as I cannot
reconcile to my little philosophy, I postpone for future investigation.
Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals
of Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, of Confucius, and all the founders of
religions before Christ, whose superiority would, from such a comparison,
have appeared the more transcendent.
Priestley ought to have told us that Pythagoras passed twenty years in
his travels in India, in Egypt, in Chaldea, perhaps in Sodom and Gomorrah,
Tyre and Sydon. He ought to have told us that in India he conversed with
the Brahmins, and read the Shasta, five thousand years old, written in
the language of the sacred Sansosistes, with the elegance and sentiments
of Plato. Where is to be found theology more orthodox, or philosophy more
profound, than in the introduction to the Shasta? "God is one creator
of all universal sphere, without beginning, without end. God governs all
the creation by a general providence, resulting from his eternal designs.
Search not the essence and the nature of the eternal, who is one; your
research will be vain and presumptuous. It is enough that, day by day,
and night by night, you adore his power, his wisdom and his goodness,
in his works. The eternal willed in the fullness of time, to communicate
of his essence and of his splendor, to beings capable of perceiving it.
They as yet existed not. The eternal willed and they were. He created
Birma, Vitsnou and Siv." These doctrines, sublime, if ever there were
any sublime, Pythagoras learned in India, and taught them to Zaleucus
and his other disciples. He there learned also his Metempsychosis, but
this never was popular, never made much progress in Greece or Italy,
or any other country besides India and Tartary, the region of the grand
immortal Lama. And how does this differ from the possessions of demons
in Greece and Rome? from the demon of Socrates? from the worship of cows
and crocodiles in Egypt and elsewhere?
After migrating through various animals, from elephants to serpents,
according to their behavior, souls that at last behaved well, became
men and women, and then if they were good, they went to heaven.
All ended in heaven, if they became virtuous. Who can wonder at the widow
of Malabar? Where is the lady, who, if her faith were without doubt that
she should go to heaven with her husband on the one, or migrate into
a toad or a wasp on the other, would not lay down on the pile, and set
fire to the fuel?
Modifications and disguises of the Metempsychosis, has crept into Egypt,
and Greece, and Rome, and other countries. Have you read Farmer on the
Dæmons and possessions of the New Testament? According to the Shasta,
Moisasor, with his companions, rebelled against the eternal, and were
precipitated down to Ondoro, the region of darkness.
Do you know anything of the Prophecy of Enoch? Can you give me a comment
on the 6th, the 9th, the 14th verses of the epistle of Jude?
If I am not weary of writing, I am sure you must be of reading such
incoherent rattle. I will not persecute you so severely in future, if
I can help it.
So farewell.
TO THOMAS LIEPER.
MONTICELLO, January 1, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I had hoped, when I retired from the business of the world,
that I should have been permitted to pass the evening of life in
tranquillity, undisturbed by the peltings and passions of which the
public papers are the vehicles. I see, however, that I have been dragged
into the newspapers by the infidelity of one with whom I was formerly
intimate, but who has abandoned the American principles out of which that
intimacy grew, and become the bigoted partisan of England, and malcontent
of his own government. In a letter which he wrote to me, he earnestly
besought me to avail our country of the good understanding which existed
between the executive and myself, by recommending an offer of such terms
to our enemy as might produce a peace, towards which he was confident
that enemy was disposed. In my answer, I stated the aggressions, the
insults and injuries, which England had been heaping on us for years,
our long forbearance in the hope she might be led by time and reflection
to a sounder view of her own interests, and of their connection with
justice to us, the repeated propositions for accommodation made by us and
rejected by her, and at length her Prince Regent's solemn proclamation
to the world that he would never repeal the orders in council _as to
us_, until France should have revoked her illegal decrees _as to all
the world_, and her minister's declaration to ours, that no admissible
precaution against the impressment of our seamen, could be proposed: that
the unavoidable declaration of war which followed these was accompanied
by advances for peace, on terms which no American could dispense with,
made through various channels, and unnoticed and unanswered through any;
but that if he could suggest any other conditions which we ought to
accept, and which had not been repeatedly offered and rejected, I was
ready to be the channel of their conveyance to the government; and, to
show him that neither that attachment to Bonaparte nor French influence,
which they allege eternally without believing it themselves, affected
my mind, I threw in the two little sentences of the printed extract
enclosed in your friendly favor of the 9th ultimo, and exactly these two
little sentences, from a letter of two or three pages, he has thought
proper to publish, naked, alone, and with my name, although other parts
of the letter would have shown that I wished such limits only to the
successes of Bonaparte, as should not prevent his completely closing
Europe against British manufactures and commerce; and thereby reducing
her to just terms of peace with us.
Thus am I situated. I receive letters from all quarters, some from known
friends, some from those who write like friends, on various subjects.
What am I to do? Am I to button myself up in Jesuitical reserve, rudely
declining any answer, or answering in terms so unmeaning as only to
prove my distrust? Must I withdraw myself from all interchange, of
sentiment with the world? I cannot do this. It is at war with my habits
and temper. I cannot act as if all men were unfaithful because some are
so; nor believe that all will betray me, because some do. I had rather
be the victim of occasional infidelities, than relinquish my general
confidence in the honesty of man.
So far as to the breach of confidence which has brought me into the
newspapers, with a view to embroil me with my friends, by a supposed
separation in opinion and principle from them. But it is impossible that
there can be any difference of opinion among us on the two propositions
contained in these two little sentences, when explained, as they were
explained in the context from which they were insulated. That Bonaparte
is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging the continent of Europe with
blood, there is not a human being, not even the wife of his bosom,
who does not see: nor can there, I think, be a doubt as to the line
we ought to wish drawn between his successes and those of Alexander.
Surely none of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus
at his feet the whole continent of Europe. This done, England would be
but a breakfast; and, although I am free from the visionary fears which
the votaries of England have effected to entertain, because I believe
he cannot effect the conquest of Europe; yet put all Europe into his
hands, and he might spare such a force, to be sent in British ships,
as I would as leave not have to encounter, when I see how much trouble
a handful of British soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It cannot be
to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy.
The true line of interest for us, is, that Bonaparte should be able to
effect the complete exclusion of England from the whole continent of
Europe, in order, as the same letter said, "by this peaceable engine of
constraint, to make her renounce her views of dominion over the ocean,
of permitting no other nation to navigate it but with her license, and
on tribute to her, and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens
who may choose to exercise their right of passing over that element."
And this would be effected by Bonaparte's succeeding so far as to close
the Baltic against her. This success I wished him the last year, this
I wish him this year; but were he again advanced to Moscow, I should
again wish him such disasters as would prevent his reaching Petersburg.
And were the consequences even to be the longer continuance of our war,
I would rather meet them than see the whole force of Europe wielded by
a single hand.
I have gone into this explanation, my friend, because I know you will
not carry my letter to the newspapers, and because I am willing to trust
to your discretion the explaining me to our honest fellow laborers,
and the bringing them to pause and reflect, if any of them have not
sufficiently reflected on the extent of the success we ought to wish to
Bonaparte, with a view to our own interests only; and even were we not
men, to whom nothing human should be indifferent. But is our particular
interest to make us insensible to all sentiments of morality? Is it
then become criminal, the moral wish that the torrents of blood this
man is shedding in Europe, the sufferings of so many human beings, good
as ourselves, on whose necks he is trampling, the burnings of ancient
cities, devastations of great countries, the destruction of law and
order, and demoralization of the world, should be arrested, even if it
should place our peace a little further distant? No. You and I cannot
differ in wishing that Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, and Germany,
and Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may retain their
independence. And if we differ in our opinions about Towers and his
four beasts and ten kingdoms, we differ as friends, indulging mutual
errors, and doing justice to mutual sincerity and honesty. In this spirit
of sincere confidence and affection, I pray God to bless you here and
hereafter.
TO DOCTOR 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 exemplication 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 irritable and 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 began 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._
TO JOHN PINTARD RECORDING SECRETARY OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
MONTICELLO, January 9, 1814.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of December 22d, informing me that
the New York Historical Society had been pleased to elect me an honorary
member of that institution. I am entirely sensible of the honor done me
by this election, and I pray you to become the channel of my grateful
acknowledgments to the society. At this distance, and at my time of life,
I cannot but be conscious how little it will be in my power to further
their establishment, and that I should be but an unprofitable member,
carrying into the institution indeed, my best wishes for its success,
and a readiness to serve it on any occasion which should occur. With
these acknowledgments, be so good as to accept for the society, as well
as for yourself, the assurances of my high respect and consideration.
TO SAMUEL M. BURNSIDE, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY.
MONTICELLO, January 9, 1814.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of the 13th of December, informing
me of the institution of the American Antiquarian Society, and expressing
its disposition to honor me with an admission into it, and the request
of my co-operation in the advancement of its objects. No one can be more
sensible of the honor and the favor of these dispositions, and I pray
you to have the goodness to testify to them all the gratitude I feel
on receiving assurances of them. There has been a time of life when I
should have entered into their views with zeal, and with a hope of not
being altogether unuseful. But, now more than septuagenary, retired
from the active scenes and business of life, I am sensible how little
I can contribute to the advancement of the objects of their views; but
I shall certainly, and with great pleasure, embrace any occasion which
shall occur, of rendering them any services in my power. With these
assurances, be so good as to accept for them and for yourself, those of
my high respect and consideration.
TO DOCTOR THOMAS COOPER.
MONTICELLO, January 16, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of November 8th, if it was rightly dated, did not
come to hand till December 13th, and being absent on a long journey, it
has remained unanswered till now. The copy of your introductory lecture
was received and acknowledged in my letter of July 12, 1812, with which I
sent you Tracy's first volume on Logic. Your Justinian came safely also,
and I have been constantly meaning to acknowledge it, but I wished, at
the same time, to say something more. I possessed Theopilus', Vinnius'
and Harris' editions, but read over your notes and the _addenda et
corrifenda_, and especially the parallels with the English law, with
great satisfaction and edification. Your edition will be very useful
to our lawyers, some of whom will need the translation as well as the
notes. But what I had wanted to say to you on the subject, was that I
much regret that instead of this work, useful as it may be, you had not
bestowed the same time and research rather on a translation and notes
on Bracton, a work which has never been performed for us, and which I
have always considered as one of the greatest desiderata in the law.
The laws of England, in their progress from the earliest to the present
times, may be likened to the road of a traveller, divided into distinct
stages or resting places, at each of which a review is taken of the
road passed over so far. The first of these was Bracton's _De legibus
Angliæ_; the second, Coke's Institutes; the third, the Abridgment of
the law by Matthew Bacon; and the fourth, Blackstone's Commentaries.
Doubtless there were others before Bracton which have not reached us.
Alfred, in the preface to his laws, says they were compiled from those
of Ina, Offa, and Aethelbert, into which, or rather preceding them, the
clergy have interpolated the 20th, 21st, 22d, 23d and 24th chapters of
Exodus, so as to place Alfred's preface to what was really his, awkwardly
enough in the body of the work. An interpolation the more glaring, as
containing laws expressly contradicted by those of Alfred. This pious
fraud seems to have been first noted by Howard, in his _Contumes Anglo
Normandes_ (188), and the pious judges of England have had no inclination
to question it; [of this disposition in these judges, I could give you
a curious sample from a note in my common-place book, made while I was
a student, but it is too long to be now copied. Perhaps I may give it
to you with some future letter.] This digest of Alfred of the laws of
the Heptarchy into a single code, common to the whole kingdom, by him
first reduced into one, was probably the birth of what is called the
common law. He has been styled, "Magnus Juris Anglicani Conditor;" and
his code, the Dom-Dec, or doom-book. That which was made afterwards
under Edward the Confessor, was but a restoration of Alfred's, with
some intervening alterations. And this was the code which the English
so often, under the Norman princes, petitioned to have restored to them.
But, all records previous to the _Magna Charta_ having been early lost,
Bracton's is the first digest of the whole body of law which has come
down to us entire. What materials for it existed in his time we know
not, except the unauthoritative collections of Lambard & Wilkins, and
the treatise of Glanville, tempore H. 2. Bracton's is the more valuable,
because being written a very few years after the _Magna Charta_, which
commences what is called the statute law, it gives us the state of the
common law in its ultimate form, and exactly at the point of division
between the common and statute law. It is a most able work, complete in
its matter and luminous in its method.
2. The statutes which introduced changes began now to be preserved;
applications of the law to new cases by the courts, began soon after to
be reported in the year-books, these to be methodized and abridged by
Fitzherbert, Broke, Rolle, and others; individuals continued the business
of reporting; particular treatises were written by able men, and all
these, by the time of Lord Coke, had formed so large a mass of matter
as to call for a new digest, to bring it within reasonable compass.
This he undertook in his Institutes, harmonizing all the decisions and
opinions which were reconcilable, and rejecting those not so. This work
is executed with so much learning and judgment, that I do not recollect
that a single position in it has ever been judicially denied. And although
the work loses much of its value by its chaotic form, it may still be
considered as the fundamental code of the English law.
3. The same processes re-commencing of statutory changes, new divisions,
multiplied reports, and special treatises, a new accumulation had formed,
calling for new reduction, by the time of Matthew Bacon. His work,
therefore, although not pretending to the textual merit of Bracton's,
or Coke's, was very acceptable. His alphabetical arrangement, indeed,
although better than Coke's jumble, was far inferior to Bracton's. But it
was a sound digest of the materials existing on the several alphabetical
heads under which he arranged them. His work was not admitted as authority
in Westminster Hall; yet it was the manual of every judge and lawyer,
and, what better proves its worth, has been its daily growth in the
general estimation.
4. A succeeding interval of changes and additions of matter produced
Blackstone's Commentaries, the most lucid in arrangement which had yet
been written, correct in its matter, classical in style, and rightfully
taking its place by the side of the Justinian Institutes. But, like them
it was only an elementary book. It did not present all the subjects of
the law in all their details. It still left it necessary to recur to
the original works of which it was the summary. The great mass of law
books from which it was extracted, was still to be consulted on minute
investigations. It wanted, therefore, a species of merit which entered
deeply into the value of those of Bracton, Coke and Bacon. They had in
effect swept the shelves of all the materials preceding them. To give
Blackstone, therefore, a full measure of value, another work is still
wanting, to-wit: to incorporate with his principles a compend of the
particular cases subsequent to Bacon, of which they are the essence.
This might be done by printing under his text a digest like Bacon's
continued to Blackstone's time. It would enlarge his work, and increase
its value peculiarly to us, because just there we break off from the
parent stem of the English law, unconcerned in any of its subsequent
changes or decisions.
Of the four digests noted, the three last are possessed and understood
by every one. But the first, the fountain of them all, remains in
its technical Latin, abounding in terms antiquated, obsolete, and
unintelligible but to the most learned of the body of lawyers. To give it
to us then in English, with a glossary of its old terms, is a work for
which I know nobody but yourself possessing the necessary learning and
industry. The latter part of it would be furnished to your hand from the
glossaries of Wilkins, Lambard, Spelman, Somner in the X. Scriptores, the
index of Coke and the law dictionaries. Could not such an undertaking be
conveniently associated with your new vocation of giving law lectures?
I pray you to think of it.[8] A further operation indeed, would still be
desirable. To take up the doctrines of Bracton, _separatim et seriatim_,
to give their history through the periods of Lord Coke and Bacon, down
to Blackstone, to show when and how some of them have become extinct,
the successive alterations made in others, and their progress to the
state in which Blackstone found them. But this might be a separate work,
left for your greater leisure or for some future pen.[9]
I have long had under contemplation, and been collecting materials for
the plan of an university in Virginia which should comprehend all the
sciences useful to us, and none others. The general idea is suggested in
the Notes on Virginia, Qu. 14. This would probably absorb the functions
of William and Mary College, and transfer them to a healthier and more
central position: perhaps to the neighborhood of this place. The long and
lingering decline of William and Mary, the death of its last president,
its location and climate, force on us the wish for a new institution
more convenient to our country generally, and better adapted to the
present state of science. I have been told there will be an effort in
the present session of our legislature, to effect such an establishment.
I confess, however, that I have not great confidence that this will
be done. Should it happen, it would offer places worthy of you, and of
which you are worthy. It might produce, too, a bidder for the apparatus
and library of Dr. Priestley, to which they might add mine on their
own terms. This consists of about seven or eight thousand volumes, the
best chosen collection of its size probably in America, and containing
a great mass of what is most rare and valuable, and especially of what
relates to America.
You have given us, in your Emporium, Bollman's medley on Political
Economy. It is the work of one who sees a little of everything, and the
whole of nothing; and were it not for your own notes on it, a sentence
of which throws more just light on the subject than all his pages, we
should regret the place it occupies of more useful matter. The bringing
our countrymen to a sound comparative estimate of the vast value of
internal commerce, and the disproportionate importance of what is foreign,
is the most salutary effort which can be made for the prosperity of
these States, which are entirely misled from their true interests by
the infection of English prejudices, and illicit attachments to English
interests and connections. I look to you for this effort. It would
furnish a valuable chapter for every Emporium; but I would rather see
it also in the newspapers, which alone find access to every one.
Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now
coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as
we were formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such
revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious
adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in
manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument
to burthen all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits,
profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Prudent
men must be on their guard in this game of _Robin's alive_, and take
care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy
to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our
whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they
will not stop short of its total and fatal explosion.[10]
Have you seen the memorial to Congress on the subject of Oliver Evans'
patent rights? The memorialists have published in it a letter of mine
containing some views on this difficult subject. But I have opened it no
further than to raise the questions belonging to it. I wish we could have
the benefit of your lights on these questions. The abuse of the frivolous
patents is likely to cause more inconvenience than is countervailed by
those really useful. We know not to what uses we may apply implements
which have been in our hands before the birth of our government, and
even the discovery of America. The memorial is a thin pamphlet, printed
by Robinson of Baltimore, a copy of which has been laid on the desk of
every member of Congress.
You ask if it is a secret who wrote the commentary on Montesquieu? It
must be a secret during the author's life. I may only say at present that
it was written by a Frenchman, that the original MS. in French is now
in my possession, that it was translated and edited by General Duane,
and that I should rejoice to see it printed in its original tongue,
if any one would undertake it. No book can suffer more by translation,
because of the severe correctness of the original in the choice of its
terms. I have taken measures for securing to the author his justly-earned
fame, whenever his death or other circumstances may render it safe for
him. Like you, I do not agree with him in everything, and have had some
correspondence with him on particular points. But on the whole, it is a
most valuable work, one which I think will form an epoch in the science
of government, and which I wish to see in the hands of every American
student, as the elementary and fundamental institute of that important
branch of human science.[11]
I have never seen the answer of Governor Strong to the judges of
Massachusetts, to which you allude, nor the Massachusetts reports in
which it is contained. But I am sure you join me in lamenting the general
defection of lawyers and judges, from the free principles of government.
I am sure they do not derive this degenerate spirit from the father of
our science, Lord Coke. But it may be the reason why they cease to read
him, and the source of what are now called "Blackstone lawyers."
Go on in all your good works, without regard to the eye "of suspicion
and distrust with which you may be viewed by some," and without being
weary in well doing, and be assured that you are justly estimated by
the impartial mass of our fellow citizens, and by none more than myself.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] [Bracton has at length been translated in England.]
[9] [This has been done by Reeves, in his History of the Law.]
[10] [This accordingly took place four years after.]
[11] [The original has since been published in France, with
the name of its author, M. de Tutt Tracy.]
TO OLIVER EVANS, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 16, 1814.
SIR,--In August last I received a letter from Mr. Isaac McPherson of
Baltimore, on the controversies subsisting between yourself and some
persons in that quarter interested in mills. These related to your
patent rights for the elevators, conveyors, and hopper-boys; and he
requested any information I could give him on that subject. Having
been formerly a member of the patent board, as long as it existed,
and bestowed in the execution of that trust much consideration on the
questions belonging to it, I thought it an act of justice, and indeed
of duty, to communicate such facts and principles as had occurred to me
on the subject. I therefore wrote the letter of August 13, which is the
occasion of your favor to me of the 7th instant, just now received, but
without the report of the case tried in the circuit court of Maryland,
or your memorial to Congress, mentioned in the letter as accompanying
it. You request an answer to your letter, which my respect and esteem
for you would of themselves have dictated; but I am not certain that I
distinguish the particular points to which you wish a specific answer.
You agree in the letter, that the chain of buckets and Archimedes screw
are old inventions; that every one had, and still has, a right to use
them and the hopper-boy, if that also existed previously, in the forms
and constructions known before your patent; and that, therefore, you have
neither a grant nor claim, to the exclusive right of using elevators,
conveyors, hopper-boys, or drills, but only of the improved elevator,
the improved hopper-boy, &c. In this, then, we are entirely agreed,
and your right to your own improvements in the construction of these
machines is explicitly recognized in my letter. I think, however, that
your letter claims something more, although it is not so explicitly
defined as to convey to my mind the precise idea which you perhaps meant
to express. Your letter says that your patent is for your improvement in
the manufacture of flour by the application of certain principles, and of
such machinery as will carry those principles into operation, whether of
the improved elevator, improved hopper-boy, or (without being confined to
them) of any machinery known and free to the public. I can conceive how a
machine may improve the manufacture of flour; but not how a _principle_
abstracted from any machine can do it. It must then be the machine, and
the principle of that machine, which is secured to you by your patent.
Recurring now to the words of your definition, do they mean that, while
all are free to use the old string of buckets, and Archimedes' screw for
the purposes to which they had been formerly applied, you alone have the
exclusive right to apply them to the manufacture of flour? that no one
has a right to apply his old machines to all the purposes of which they
are susceptible? that every one, for instance, who can apply the hoe,
the spade, or the axe to any purpose to which they have not been before
applied, may have a patent for the exclusive right to that application?
and may exclude all others, under penalties, from so using their hoe,
spade, or axe? If this be the meaning, my opinion that the legislature
never meant by the patent law to sweep away so extensively the rights
of their constituents, to environ everything they touch with snares,
is expressed in the letter of August 13, from which I have nothing to
retract, nor ought to add but the observation that if a new application
of our old machines be a ground of monopoly, the patent law will take
from us much more good than it will give. Perhaps it may mean another
thing, that while every one has a right to the distinct and separate use
of the buckets, the screw, the hopper-boy, in their old forms, the patent
gives you the exclusive right to combine their uses on the same object.
But if we have a right to use three things separately, I see nothing in
reason, or in the patent law, which forbids our using them all together.
A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane separately; may he not
combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his
knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him
the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead
of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully
abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things
we have.
I have no particular interest, however, in these questions, nor any
inclination to be the advocate of either party; and I hope I shall be
excused from it. I shall acquiesce cheerfully in the decisions in your
favor by those to whom the laws have confided them, without blaming
the other party for being unwilling, when so new a branch of science
has been recently engrafted on our jurisprudence, one with which its
professors have till now had no call to make themselves acquainted, one
bearing little analogy to their professional educations or pursuits. That
they should be unwilling, I say, to admit that one or two decisions,
before inferior and local tribunals, before the questions shall have
been repeatedly and maturely examined in all their bearings, before
the cases shall have presented themselves in all their forms and
attitudes, before a sanction by the greater part of the judges on the
most solemn investigations, and before the industry and intelligence
of many defendants may have excited to efforts for the vindication of
the general rights of the citizen; that one or other of the precedents
should forever foreclose the whole of a new subject.
To the publication of this answer with your letter, as you request, I have
no objection. I wish right to be done to all parties, and to yourself,
particularly and personally, the just rewards of genius; and I tender
you the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 17, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--In your last letter to me you expressed a desire to look into
the question whether, by the laws of nature, one generation of men can,
by any act of theirs, bind those which are to follow them? I say, by the
laws of nature, there being between generation and generation, as between
nation and nation, no other obligatory law; and you requested to see
what I had said on the subject to Mr. Eppes. I enclose, _for your own
perusal_, therefore, three letters which I wrote to him on the course of
our finances, which embrace the question before stated. When I wrote the
first, I had no thought of following it by a second. I was led to that by
his subsequent request, and after the second I was induced, in a third,
to take up the subject of banks, by the communication of a proposition to
be laid before Congress for the establishment of a new bank. I mention
this to explain the total absence of order in these letters as a whole.
I have said above that they are sent for _your own perusal_, not meaning
to debar any use of the matter, but only that my name may in nowise be
connected with it. I am too desirous of tranquillity to bring such a
nest of hornets on me as the fraternities of banking companies, and this
infatuation of banks is a torrent which it would be a folly for me to
get into the way of. I see that it must take its course, until actual
ruin shall awaken us from its delusions. Until the gigantic banking
propositions of this winter had made their appearance in the different
legislatures, I had hoped that the evil might still be checked; but I
see now that it is desperate, and that we must fold our arms and go to
the bottom with the ship. I had been in hopes that good old Virginia, not
yet so far embarked as her northern sisters, would have set the example
this winter, of beginning the process of cure, by passing a law that,
after a certain time, suppose of six months, no bank bill of less than
ten dollars should be permitted. That after some other reasonable term,
there should be none less than twenty dollars, and so on, until those
only should be left in circulation whose size would be above the common
transactions of any but merchants. This would ensure to us an ordinary
circulation of metallic money, and would reduce the quantum of paper
within the bounds of moderate mischief. And it is the only way in which
the reduction can be made without a shock to private fortunes. A sudden
stoppage of this trash, either by law or its own worthlessness, would
produce confusion and ruin. Yet this will happen by its own extinction, if
left to itself. Whereas, by a salutary interposition of the legislature,
it may be withdrawn insensibly and safely. Such a mode of doing it, too,
would give less alarm to the bank-holders, the discreet part of whom must
wish to see themselves secured by some circumscription. It might be asked
what we should do for change? The banks must provide it, first to pay
off their five-dollar bills, next their ten-dollar bills and so on, and
they ought to provide it to lessen the evils of their institution. But
I now give up all hope. After producing the same revolutions in private
fortunes as the old Continental paper did, it will die like that, adding
a total incapacity to raise resources for the war.
Withdrawing myself within the shell of our own State, I have long
contemplated a division of it into hundreds or wards, as the most
fundamental measure for securing good government, and for instilling
the principles and exercise of self-government into every fibre of every
member of our commonwealth. But the details are too long for a letter, and
must be the subject of conversation, whenever I shall have the pleasure
of seeing you. It is for some of you young legislators to immortalize
yourselves by laying this stone as the basis of our political edifice.
I must ask the favor of an early return of the enclosed papers, of which
I have no copy. Ever affectionately yours.
TO MR. R. M. PATTERSON, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
MONTICELLO, January 20, 1814.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of the 7th, informing me that the
American Philosophical Society, at their meeting of that day, had been
pleased unanimously to elect me as President of the Society. I receive
with just sensibility this proof of their continued good will, and pray
you to assure them of my gratitude for these favors, of my devotedness
to their service, and the pleasure with which at all times I should in
any way be made useful to them.
For yourself be pleased to accept the assurance of my great esteem and
respect.
TO PRESIDENT ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, January 24, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I have great need of the indulgence so kindly extended to me
in your favor of December 25, of permitting me to answer your friendly
letters at my leisure. My frequent and long absences from home are a first
cause of tardiness in my correspondence, and a second the accumulation
of business during my absence, some of which imperiously commands first
attentions. I am now in arrear to you for your letters of November 12,
14, 16, December 3, 19, 25.
* * * * *
You ask me if I have ever seen the work of I. W. Goethen's Schriften?
Never; nor did the question ever occur to me before where get we the ten
commandments? The book indeed gives them to us verbatim, but where did
it get them? For itself tells us they were written by the finger of God
on tables of stone, which were destroyed by Moses; it specifies those
on the second set of tables in different form and substance, but still
without saying how the others were recovered. But the whole history of
these books is so defective and doubtful, that it seems vain to attempt
minute inquiry into it; and such tricks have been played with their text,
and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right
from that cause to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.
In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have
proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the
fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as
to pick out diamonds from dunghills. The matter of the first was such
as would be preserved in the memory of the hearers, and handed on by
tradition for a long time; the latter such stuff as might be gathered up,
for imbedding it, anywhere, and at any time. I have nothing of Vives, or
Budæus, and little of Erasmus. If the familiar histories of the Saints,
the want of which they regret, would have given us the histories of those
tricks which these writers acknowledge to have been practised, and of the
lies they agree have been invented for the sake of religion, I join them
in their regrets. These would be the only parts of their histories worth
reading. It is not only the sacred volumes they have thus interpolated,
gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and
even the laws of the land. We have a curious instance of one of these
pious frauds in the laws of Alfred. He composed, you know, from the laws
of the Heptarchy, a digest for the government of the United Kingdom,
and in his preface to that work he tells us expressly the sources from
which he drew it, to wit, the laws of Ina, of Offa and Aethelbert, (not
naming the Pentateuch.) But his pious interpolator, very awkwardly,
_premises_ to his work four chapters of Exodus (from the 20th to the
23d) as a part of the laws of the land; so that Alfred's _preface_ is
made to stand in the body of the work. Our judges too have lent a ready
hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of
their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of
municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these
make a part of the law of the land. In the Year-Book 34, H. 6, p. 38, in
Quære impedit, where the question was how far the common law takes notice
of the ecclesiastical law, Prisot, Chief Justice, in the course of his
argument, says, "a tiels leis que ils de seint eglise ont, en _ancien
scripture_, covient a nous a donner credence; car ces common luy sur
quels touts manners leis sont fondes; et auxy, siv, nous sumus obliges
de canustre lour esy de saint eglise," &c. Finch begins the business of
falsification by mistranslating and mistating the words of Prisot thus:
"to such laws of the church as have warrant in _holy scripture_ our law
giveth credence." Citing the above case and the words of Prisot in the
margin, Finch's law, B. 1, c. 3, here then we find _ancien scripture_,
ancient writing, translated "holy scripture." This, Wingate, in 1658,
erects into a maxim of law in the very words of Finch, but citing Prisot
and not Finch. And Sheppard, tit. Religion, in 1675 laying it down in
the same words of Finch, quotes the Year-Book, Finch and Wingate. Then
comes Sir Matthew Hale, in the case of the King _v._ Taylor, 1 Ventr.
293, 3 Keb. 607, and declares that "Christianity is part and parcel of
the laws of England." Citing nobody, and resting it, with his judgment
against the witches, on his own authority, which indeed was sound and
good in all cases into which no superstition or bigotry could enter.
Thus strengthened, the court in 1728, in the King _v._ Woolston, would
not suffer it to be questioned whether to write against Christianity
was punishable at common law, saying it had been so settled by Hale in
Taylor's case, 2 Stra. 834. Wood, therefore, 409, without scruple, lays
down as a principle, that all blaspheming and profaneness are offences
at the common law, and cites Strange. Blackstone, in 1763, repeats, in
the words of Sir Matthew Hale, that "Christianity is part of the laws of
England," citing Ventris and Strange, _ubi supra_. And Lord Mansfield,
in the case of the Chamberlain of London _v._ Evans, in 1767, qualifying
somewhat the position, says that "the essential principles of revealed
religion are part of the common law." Thus we find this string of
authorities all hanging by one another on a single hook, a mistranslation
by Finch of the words of Prisot, or on nothing. For all quote Prisot,
or one another, or nobody. Thus Finch misquotes Prisot; Wingate also,
but using Finch's words; 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 volunteers
his own _ipse dixit_. And who now can question but that the whole Bible
and Testament are a part of the common law? And that Connecticut, in her
blue laws, laying it down as a principle that the laws of God should be
the laws of their land, except where their own contradicted them, did
anything more than express, with a salvo, what the English judges had
less cautiously declared without any restriction? And what, I dare say,
our cunning Chief Justice would swear to, and find as many sophisms to
twist it out of the general terms of our declarations of rights, and
even the stricter text of the Virginia "act for the freedom of religion,"
as he did to twist Burr's neck out of the halter of treason. May we not
say then with him who was all candor and benevolence, "woe unto you, ye
lawyers, for ye lade men with burthens grievous to bear."
I think with you, that Priestley, in his comparison of the doctrines
of philosophy and revelation, did not do justice to the undertaking.
But he felt himself pressed by the hand of death. Enfield has given us
a more distinct account of the ethics of the ancient philosophers; but
the great work of which Enfield's is an abridgment, Brucker's History of
Philosophy, is the treasure which I would wish to possess, as a book of
reference or of special research only, for who could read six volumes
quarto, of one thousand pages each, closely printed, of modern Latin?
Your account of D'Argens' Œileus makes me wish for him also. Œileus
furnishes a fruitful text for a sensible and learned commentator. The
Abbé Batteaux, which I have, is a meagre thing.
You surprise me with the account you give of the strength of family
distinction still existing in your State. With us it is so totally
extinguished, that not a spark of it is to be found but lurking in the
hearts of some of our old tories; but all bigotries hang to one another,
and this in the Eastern States hangs, as I suspect, to that of the
priesthood. Here youth, beauty, mind and manners, are more valued than
a pedigree.
I do not remember the conversation between us which you mention in yours
of November 15th, on your proposition to vest in Congress the exclusive
power of establishing banks. My opposition to it must have been grounded,
not on taking the power from the States, but on leaving any vestige of
it in existence, even in the hands of Congress; because it would only
have been a change of the organ of abuse. I have ever been the enemy of
banks, not of those discounting for cash, but of those foisting their
own paper into circulation, and thus banishing our cash. My zeal against
those institutions was so warm and open at the establishment of the Bank
of the United States, that I was derided as a maniac by the tribe of
bank-mongers, who were seeking to filch from the public their swindling
and barren gains. But the errors of that day cannot be recalled. The evils
they have engendered are now upon us, and the question is how we are to
get out of them? Shall we build an altar to the old paper money of the
revolution, which ruined individuals but saved the republic, and burn
on that all the bank charters, present and future, and their notes with
them? For these are to ruin both republic and individuals. This cannot
be done. The mania is too strong. It has seized, by its delusions and
corruptions, all the members of our governments, general, special and
individual. Our circulating paper of the last year was estimated at two
hundred millions of dollars. The new banks now petitioned for, to the
several legislatures, are for about sixty millions additional capital,
and of course one hundred and eighty millions of additional circulation,
nearly doubling that of the last year, and raising the whole mass to
near four hundred millions, or forty for one, of the wholesome amount of
circulation for a population of eight millions circumstanced as we are,
and you remember how rapidly our money went down after our forty for one
establishment in the revolution. I doubt if the present trash can hold as
long. I think the three hundred and eighty millions must blow all up in
the course of the present year, or certainly it will be consummated by
the re-duplication to take place of course at the legislative meetings
of the next winter. Should not prudent men, who possess stock in any
monied institution, either draw and hoard the cash now while they can, or
exchange it for canal stock, or such other as being bottomed on immovable
property, will remain unhurt by the crush? I have been endeavoring to
persuade a friend in our legislature to try and save this State from the
general ruin by timely interference. I propose to him, First, to prohibit
instantly, all foreign paper. Secondly, to give our banks six months to
call in all their five-dollar bills (the lowest we allow); another six
months to call in their ten-dollar notes, and six months more to call
in all below fifty dollars. This would produce so gradual a diminution
of medium, as not to shock contracts already made--would leave finally,
bills of such size as would be called for only in transactions between
merchant and merchant, and ensure a metallic circulation for those of
the mass of citizens. But it will not be done. You might as well, with
the sailors, whistle to the wind, as suggest precautions against having
too much money. We must bend then before the gale, and try to hold fast
ourselves by some plank of the wreck. God send us all a safe deliverance,
and to yourself every other species and degree of happiness.
P. S. I return your letter of November 15th, as it requests, and supposing
that the late publication of the life of our good and really great
Rittenhouse may not have reached you, I send a copy for your acceptance.
Even its episodes and digressions may add to the amusement it will furnish
you. But if the history of the world were written on the same scale,
the whole world would not hold it. Rittenhouse, as an astronomer, would
stand on a line with any of his time, and as a mechanician, he certainly
has not been equalled. In this view he was truly great; but, placed
along side of Newton, every human character must appear diminutive, and
none would have shrunk more feelingly from the painful parallel than
the modest and amiable Rittenhouse, whose genius and merit are not the
less for this exaggerated comparison of his over zealous biographer.
TO MR. JOHN CLARKE.
MONTICELLO, January 27, 1814.
SIR,--Your favor of December 2d came to hand some time ago, and I perceive
in it the proofs of a mind worthily occupied on the best interests of our
common country. To carry on our war with success, we want _able_ officers,
and a sufficient number of soldiers. The former, time and trial can alone
give us; to procure the latter, we need only the tender of sufficient
inducements and the assiduous pressure of them on the proper subjects.
The inducement of interest proposed by you, is undoubtedly the principal
one on which any reliance can be placed, and the assiduous pressure of
it on the proper subjects would probably be better secured by making it
the interest and the duty of a given portion of the militia, rather than
that of a mere recruiting officer. Whether, however, it is the best mode,
belongs to the decision of others; but, satisfied that it is one of the
good ones, I forwarded your letter to a member of the government, who
will make it a subject of consideration by those with whom the authority
rests. Whether the late discomfiture of Bonaparte will have the effect
of shortening or lengthening our war, is uncertain. It is cruel that we
should have been forced to wish any success to such a destroyer of the
human race. Yet while it was our interest and that of humanity that he
should not subdue Russia, and thus lay all Europe at his feet, it was
desirable to us that he should so far succeed as to close the Baltic to
our enemy, and force him, by the pressure of internal distress, into a
disposition to return to the paths of justice towards us. If the French
nation stand by Bonaparte, he may rally, rise again, and yet give Great
Britain so much employment as to give time for a just settlement of our
questions with her. We must patiently wait the solution of this doubt
by time. Accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.
TO MR. SAMUEL GREENHOW.
MONTICELLO, January 31, 1814.
SIR,--Your letter on the subject of the Bible Society arrived here while
I was on a journey to Bedford, which occasioned a long absence from
home. Since my return, it has lain, with a mass of others accumulated
during my absence, till I could answer them. I presume the views of the
society are confined to our own country, for with the religion of other
countries my own forbids intermeddling. I had not supposed there was a
family in this State not possessing a Bible, and wishing without having
the means to procure one. When, in earlier life, I was intimate with
every class, I think I never was in a house where that was the case.
However, circumstances may have changed, and the society, I presume,
have evidence of the fact. I therefore enclose you cheerfully, an order
on Messrs. Gibson & Jefferson for fifty dollars, for the purposes of the
society, sincerely agreeing with you that there never was a more pure
and sublime system of morality delivered to man than is to be found in
the four evangelists. Accept the assurance of my esteem and respect.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.
MONTICELLO, January 31, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 23d is received. Say had come to hand safely.
But I regretted having asked the return of him; for I did not find in
him one new idea upon the subject I had been contemplating; nothing more
than a succinct, judicious digest of the tedious pages of Smith.
You ask my opinion on the question, whether the States can add any
qualifications to those which the constitution has prescribed for their
members of Congress? It is a question I had never before reflected on;
yet had taken up an off-hand opinion, agreeing with your first, that they
could not; that to add new qualifications to those of the constitution,
would be as much an alteration as to detract from them. And so I think
the House of Representatives of Congress decided in some case; I believe
that of a member from Baltimore. But your letter having induced me to
look into the constitution, and to consider the question a little, I
am again in your predicament, of doubting the correctness of my first
opinion. Had the constitution been silent, nobody can doubt but that the
right to prescribe all the qualifications and disqualifications of those
they would send to represent them, would have belonged to the State. So
also the constitution might have prescribed the whole, and excluded all
others. It seems to have preferred the middle way. It has exercised the
power in part, by declaring some disqualifications, to wit, those of not
being twenty-five years of age, of not having been a citizen seven years,
and of not being an inhabitant of the State at the time of election. But
it does not declare, itself, that the member shall not be a lunatic, a
pauper, a convict of treason, of murder, of felony, or other infamous
crime, or a non-resident of his district; nor does it prohibit to the
State the power of declaring these, or any other disqualifications which
its particular circumstances may call for; and these may be different in
different States. Of course, then, by the tenth amendment, the power is
reserved to the State. If, wherever the constitution assumes a single
power out of many which belong to the same subject, we should consider
it as assuming the whole, it would vest the General Government with a
mass of powers never contemplated. On the contrary, the assumption of
particular powers seems an exclusion of all not assumed. This reasoning
appears to me to be sound; but, on so recent a change of view, caution
requires us not to be too confident, and that we admit this to be one
of the doubtful questions on which honest men may differ with the purest
motives; and the more readily, as we find we have differed from ourselves
on it.
I have always thought that where the line of demarcation between the
powers of the General and the State governments was doubtfully or
indistinctly drawn, it would be prudent and praiseworthy in both parties,
never to approach it but under the most urgent necessity. Is the necessity
now urgent, to declare that no non-resident of his district shall be
eligible as a member of Congress? It seems to me that, in practice,
the partialities of the people are a sufficient security against such
an election; and that if, in any instance, they should ever choose a
non-resident, it must be one of such eminent merit and qualifications,
as would make it a good, rather than an evil; and that, in any event,
the examples will be so rare, as never to amount to a serious evil. If
the case then be neither clear nor urgent, would it not be better to let
it lie undisturbed? Perhaps its decision may never be called for. But if
it be indispensable to establish this disqualification now, would it not
look better to declare such others, at the same time, as may be proper?
I frankly confide to yourself these opinions, or rather no-opinions, of
mine; but would not wish to have them go any farther. I want to be quiet;
and although some circumstances, now and then, excite me to notice them,
I feel safe, and happier in leaving events to those whose turn it is
to take care of them; and, in general, to let it be understood, that I
meddle little or not at all with public affairs. There are two subjects,
indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe,
the public education, and the sub division of counties into wards. I
consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging
on these two hooks. Of the first, you will, I am sure, be an advocate,
as having already reflected on it, and of the last, when you shall have
reflected. Ever affectionately yours.
TO THOMAS COOPER, ESQ.
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 fondés: et auxy, sin, nous sumus obligès de
conustre nostre ley; et, sin, si poit apperer or á nous que liévesque 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" [_ancient
writing_] 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
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 fondés." 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 ecclesiæ_, 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 about 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 principles of revealed religion are part
of the common law." In the case of the Chamberlain of London _v._ Evans,
1767. But he cites 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 Scriptæ, 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 the
time which divides the common and statute law, and therefore 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'œuvre_ 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 § 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 Cullender 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
concientiæ_; 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.
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 Linnæus 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 Linnæus, 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 Linnæus, 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
Linnæus, 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. Linnæus' 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, Linnæus' 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 Haüy,
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 Linnæus 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 without mammæ, naturalists
are obliged to place it in the class of mammiferæ; and Blumenbach,
particularly, arranges it in his order of Palmipeds and toothless genus,
with the walrus and manatie. In Linnæus' 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 mammæ.
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 Linnæus 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 assurance 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.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, February, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I was nibbing my pen and brushing my faculties, to write a
polite letter of thanks to Mr. Counsellor Barton, for his valuable memoirs
of Dr. Rittenhouse, (though I could not account for his sending it to
me), when I received your favor of January 25th. I now most cordially
endorse my thanks over to you. The book is in the modern American style,
an able imitation of Marshall's Washington, though far more entertaining
and instructive; a Washington Mausoleum; an Egyptian pyramid. I shall
never read it any more than Taylor's aristocracy. Mrs. Adams reads it
with great delight, and reads to me what she finds interesting, and that
is indeed the whole book. I have not time to hear it all.
Rittenhouse was a virtuous and amiable man, an exquisite mechanician,
master of the astronomy known in his time; an expert mathematician, a
patient calculator of numbers. But we have had a Winthrop, an Andrew
Oliver, a Willard, a Webber, his equals, and we have a Bowditch his
superior in all these particulars, except the mechanism. But you know
Philadelphia is the heart, the censorium, the pineal gland of the United
States.
In politics, Rittenhouse was a good, simple, ignorant, well-meaning,
Franklinian democrat, totally ignorant of the world. As an anchorite,
an honest dupe of the French Revolution; a mere instrument of Jonathan
Dickinson Sargent, Dr. Hutchinson, Genet, and Mifflin, I give him all
the credit of his Planetarium. The improvement of the Orrery to the
Planetarium was an easy, natural thought, and nothing was wanting but
calculations of orbits Distranus, and periods of revolutions; all of which
were made to his hands long before he existed. Patience, perseverance,
and sleight of hand, is his undoubted merit and praise. I had read Taylor
in the Senate, till his style was so familiar to me that I had not read
three pages, before I suspected the author. I wrote a letter to him,
and he candidly acknowledged that the six hundred and fifty pages were
sent me with his consent. I wait with impatience for the publication,
and annunciation of the work. Arator ought not to have been adulterated
with politics, but his precept "Gather up the fragments that nothing be
lost," is of inestimable value in agriculture and horticulture. Every
weed, cob, husk, stalk, ought to be saved for manure.
Your researches in the laws of England establishing Christianity as
the law of the land, and part of the common law, are curious and very
important. Questions without number will arise in this country. Religious
controversies, and ecclesiastical contests, are as common, and will be
as sharp as any in civil politics, foreign and domestic. In what sense,
and to what extent the Bible is law, may give rise to as many doubts and
quarrels as any of our civil, political, military, or maritime laws,
and will intermix with them all, to irritate factions of every sort.
I dare not look beyond my nose into futurity. Our money, our commerce,
our religion, our National and State Constitutions, even our arts and
sciences, are so many seed plots, of division, faction, sedition and
rebellion. Everything is transmuted into an instrument of electioneering.
Election is the grand Brahma, the immortal Lama, I had almost said, the
Juggernaut; for wives are almost ready to burn upon the pile, and children
to be thrown under the wheel. You will perceive, by these figures, that
I have been looking into oriental history, and Hindoo religion. I have
read voyages, and travels, and everything I could collect, and the last
is Priestley's "Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of
the Hindoos, and other Ancient Nations," a work of great labor, and
not less haste. I thank him for the labor, and forgive, though I lament
the hurry. You would be fatigued to read, and I, just recruiting from a
little longer confinement and indisposition than I have had for thirty
years, have not strength to write many observations. But I have been
disappointed in the principal points of my curiosity:
1st. I am disappointed by finding that no just comparison can be made,
because the original Shasta, and the original Vedams are not obtained,
or if obtained, not yet translated into any European language.
2d. In not finding such morsels of the sacred books as have been
translated and published, which are more honorable to the original Hindoo
religion than anything he has quoted.
3d. In not finding a full development of the history of the doctrine of
the Metempsichosis which originated--
4th. In the history of the rebellion of innumerable hosts of angels in
Heaven against the Supreme Being, who after some thousands of years
of war, conquered them, and hurled them down to the regions of total
darkness, where they have suffered a part of the punishment of their
crime, and then were mercifully released from prison, permitted to
ascend to earth, and migrate into all sorts of animals, reptiles, birds,
beasts, and men, according to their rank and character, and even into
vegetables, and minerals, there to serve on probation. If they passed
without reproach their several gradations, they were permitted to become
cows and men. If as men they behaved well, _i. e._ to the satisfaction
of the priests, they were restored to their original rank and bliss in
Heaven.
5th. In not finding the Trinity of Pythagoras and Plato, their contempt
of matter, flesh, and blood, their almost adoration of fire and water,
their metempsichosis, and even the prohibition of beans, so evidently
derived from India.
6th. In not finding the prophecy of Enoch deduced from India, in which
the fallen angels make such a figure. But you are weary. Priestley has
proved the superiority of the Hebrews to the Hindoos, as they appear in
the Gentoo laws, and institutes of Menu; but the comparison remains to
be made with the Shasta.
In his remarks on Mr. Dupuis, page 342, Priestley says: "The History
of the fallen angels is another circumstance, on which Mr. Dupuis lays
much stress. According to the Christians, he says, Vol. I, page 336,
there was from the beginning a division among the angels; some remaining
faithful to the light, and others taking the part of darkness, &c.; but
this supposed history is not found in the Scriptures. It has only been
inferred, from a wrong interpretation of one passage in the 2d epistle
of Peter, and a corresponding one in that of Jude, as has been shown by
judicious writers. That there is such a person as the Devil, is not a
part of my faith, nor that of many other Christians, nor am I sure that
it was the belief of any of the Christian writers. Neither do I believe
the doctrine of demoniacal possessions, whether it was believed by the
sacred writers or not; and yet my unbelief in these articles does not
affect my faith in the great facts of which the Evangelists were eye
and ear witnesses. They might not be competent judges in the one case,
though perfectly so with respect to the other."
I will ask Priestley, when I see him, do you believe those passages in
Peter and Jude to be interpolations? If so, by whom made? And when? And
where? And for what end? Was it to support, or found, the doctrine of
the fall of man, original sin, the universal corruption, depravation and
guilt of human nature and mankind; and the subsequent incarnation of God
to make atonement and redemption? Or do you think that Peter and Jude
believed the book of Enoch to have been written by the seventh from Adam,
and one of the sacred canonical books of the Hebrew Prophets? Peter,
2d epistle, c. 2d, v. 4th, says "For if God spared not the angels that
sinned, but cast them down to _hell_, and delivered them into chains of
_darkness_ to be reserved unto Judgment." Jude, v. 6th says, "and the
angels which kept their first estate, but left their own habitations,
he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment
of the great day." Verse 14th, "And Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam,
prophesied of these sayings, behold the Lord cometh with ten thousands of
his saints, to execute judgment upon all," &c. Priestley says, "a wrong
interpretation" has been given to these texts. I wish he had favored
us with his right interpretation of them. In another place, page 326,
Priestley says, "There is no circumstance of which Mr. Dupuis avails
himself so much, or repeats so often, both with respect to the Jewish and
Christian religions, as the history of the _Fall of Man_, in the book of
Genesis." I believe with him, and have maintained in my writings, that
this history is either an allegory, or founded on uncertain tradition,
that it is an hypothesis to account for the origin of evil, adopted by
Moses, which by no means accounts for the facts.
_March 3d._ So far was written almost a month ago; but sickness has
prevented progress. I had much more to say about this work. I shall never
be a disciple of Priestley. He is as absurd, inconsistent, credulous
and incomprehensible, as Athanasius. Read his letter to the Jews in this
volume. Could a rational creature write it? Aye! such rational creatures
as Rochefoucauld, and Condorcet, and John Taylor, in politics, and
Towers' Jurieus, and French Prophets in Theology. Priestley's account
of the philosophy and religion of India, appears to me to be such a
work as a man of busy research would produce--who should undertake to
describe Christianity from the sixth to the twelfth century, when a
deluge of wonders overflowed the world; when miracles were performed
and proclaimed from every convent, and monastery, hospital, churchyard,
mountain, valley, cave and cupola.
There is a book which I wish I possessed. It has never crossed the
Atlantic. It is entitled Acta Sanctorum, in forty-seven volumes in folio.
It contains the lives of the Saints. It was compiled in the beginning
of the sixteenth century by Bollandus, Henschenius and Papebrock. What
would I give to possess in one immense mass, one stupendous draught,
all the legends, true, doubtful and false.
These Bollandists dared to discuss some of the facts, and hint that
some of them were doubtful. E. G. Papebrock doubted the antiquity of the
Carmellites from Elias; and whether the face of Jesus Christ was painted
on the handkerchief of St. Véronique; and whether the prepuce of the
Saviour of the world, which was shown in the church of Antwerp, could
be proved to be genuine? For these bold scepticisms he was libelled in
pamphlets, and denounced by the Pope, and the Inquisition in Spain. The
Inquisition condemned him; but the Pope not daring to acquit or condemn
him, prohibited all writings pro. and con. But as the physicians cure one
disease by exciting another, as a fever by a salivation, this Bull was
produced by a new claim. The brothers of the Order of Charity asserted
a descent from Abraham, nine hundred years anterior to the Carmellites.
A philosopher who should write a description of Christianism from the
Bollandistic Saints of the sixth and tenth century would probably produce
a work tolerably parallel to Priestley's upon the Hindoos.
TO GIDEON GRANGER, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, March 9, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of February 22d came to hand on the 4th instant.
Nothing is so painful to me as appeals to my memory on the subject of
past transactions. From 1775 to 1809, my life was an unremitting course
of public transactions, so numerous, so multifarious, and so diversified
by places and persons, that, like the figures of a magic lanthern,
their succession was with a rapidity that scarcely gave time for fixed
impressions. Add to this the decay of memory consequent on advancing
years, and it will not be deemed wonderful that I should be a stranger as
it were even to my own transactions. Of some indeed I retain recollections
of the particular, as well as general circumstances; of others a strong
impression of the general fact, with an oblivion of particulars; but
of a great mass, not a trace either of general or particular remains in
my mind. I have duly pondered the facts stated in your letter, and for
the refreshment of my memory have gone over the letters which passed
between us while I was in the administration of the government, have
examined my private notes, and such other papers as could assist me in
the recovery of the facts, and shall now state them seriatim from your
letter, and give the best account of them I am able to derive from the
joint sources of memory and papers.
"I have been denounced as a Burrite; but you know that in 1800 I sent
Erving from Boston to inform Virginia of the danger resulting from his
intrigues." I well remember Mr. Erving's visit to this State about that
time, and his suggestions of the designs meditated in the quarter you
mention; but as my duties on the occasion were to be merely passive, he
of course, as I presume, addressed his communications more particularly
to those who were free to use them. I do not recollect his mentioning
you; but I find that in your letter to me of April 26, 1804, you state
your agency on that occasion, so that I have no reason to doubt the fact.
"That in 1803-4, on my advice, you procured Erastus Granger to inform
De Witt Clinton of the plan to elevate Burr in New York." Here I do
not recollect the particulars; but I have a general recollection that
Colonel Burr's conduct had already, at that date rendered his designs
suspicious; that being for that reason laid aside by his constituents
as Vice President, and aiming to become the Governor of New York, it was
thought advisable that the persons of influence in that State should be
put on their guard; and Mr. Clinton being eminent, no one was more likely
to receive intimations from us, nor any one more likely to be confided
in for their communication than yourself. I have no doubt therefore of
the fact, and the less because in your letter to me of October 9, 1806,
you remind me of it.
About the same period, that is, in the winter of 1803-4, another train
of facts took place which, although not specifically stated in your
letter, I think it but justice to yourself that I should state. I mean
the intrigues which were in agitation, and at the bottom of which we
believed Colonel Burr to be; to form a coalition of the five eastern
States, with New York and New Jersey, under the new appellation of the
seven eastern States; either to overawe the Union by the combination of
their power and their will, or by threats of separating themselves from
it. Your intimacy with some of those in the secret gave you opportunities
of searching into their proceedings, of which you made me daily and
confidential reports. This intimacy to which I had such useful recourse,
at the time, rendered you an object of suspicion with many as being
yourself a partisan of Colonel Burr, and engaged in the very combination
which you were faithfully employed in defeating. I never failed to
justify you to all those who brought their suspicions to me, and to assure
them of my knowledge of your fidelity. Many were the individuals, then
members of the legislature, who received these assurances from me, and
whose apprehensions were thereby quieted. This first project of Colonel
Burr having vanished in smoke, he directed to the western country those
views which are the subject of your next article.
"That in 1806, I communicated by the first mail after I had got knowledge
of the fact, the supposed plans of Burr in his western expedition;
upon which communication your council was first called together to
take measures in relation to that subject." Not exactly on that single
communication; on the 15th and 18th of September, I had received letters
from Colonel George Morgan, and from a Mr. Nicholson of New York,
suggesting in a general way the manœuvres of Colonel Burr. Similar
information came to the Secretary of State from a Mr. Williams of
New York. The indications, however, were so vague that I only desired
their increased attention to the subject, and further communications
of what they should discover. Your letter of October 16, conveying
the communications of General Eaton to yourself and to Mr. Ely gave a
specific view of the objects of this new conspiracy, and corroborating
our previous information, I called the Cabinet together, on the 22d of
October, when specific measures were adopted for meeting the dangers
threatened in the various points in which they might occur. I say your
letter of October 16 gave this information, because its date, with the
circumstance of its being no longer on my files, induce me to infer it
was that particular letter, which having been transferred to the bundle
of the documents of that conspiracy, delivered to the Attorney General,
is no longer in my possession.
Your mission of Mr. Pease on the route to New Orleans, at the time of
that conspiracy, with powers to see that the mails were expected, and
to dismiss at once every agent of the Post Office whose fidelity could
be justly doubted, and to substitute others on the spot was a necessary
measure, taken with my approbation; and he executed the trusts to my
satisfaction. I do not know however that my subsequent appointment of
him to the office of Surveyor General was influenced, as you suppose, by
those services. My motives in that appointment were my personal knowledge
of his mathematical qualifications and satisfactory informations of the
other parts of his character.
With respect to the dismission of the prosecutions for sedition in
Connecticut, it is well known to have been a tenet of the republican
portion of our fellow citizens, that the sedition law was contrary to
the constitution and therefore void. On this ground I considered it
as a nullity wherever I met it in the course of my duties; and on this
ground I directed _nolle prosequis_ in all the prosecutions which had
been instituted under it, and as far as the public sentiment can be
inferred from the occurrences of the day, we may say that this opinion
had the sanction of the nation. The prosecutions, therefore, which were
afterwards instituted in Connecticut, of which two were against printers,
two against preachers, and one against a judge, were too inconsistent
with this principle to be permitted to go on. We were bound to administer
to others the same measure of law, not which they had meted to us, but
we to ourselves, and to extend to all equally the protection of the same
constitutional principles. These prosecutions, too, were chiefly for
charges against myself, and I had from the beginning laid it down as a
rule to notice nothing of the kind. I believed that the long course of
services in which I had acted on the public stage, and under the eye of
my fellow citizens, furnished better evidence to them of my character
and principles, than the angry invectives of adverse partisans in whose
eyes the very acts most approved by the majority were subjects of the
greatest demerit and censure. These prosecutions against them, therefore,
were to be dismissed as a matter of duty. But I wished it to be done with
all possible respect to the worthy citizens who had advised them, and
in such way as to spare their feelings which had been justly irritated
by the intemperance of their adversaries. As you were of that State and
intimate with these characters, the business was confided to you, and
you executed it to my perfect satisfaction.
These I think are all the particular facts on which you have asked
my testimony, and I add with pleasure, and under a sense of duty, the
declaration that the increase of rapidity in the movement of the mails
which had been vainly attempted before, were readily undertaken by you
on your entrance into office, and zealously and effectually carried into
execution, and that the affairs of the office were conducted by you with
ability and diligence, so long as I had opportunities of observing them.
With respect to the first article mentioned in your letter, in which I
am neither concerned nor consulted, I will yet, as a friend, volunteer
my advice. I never knew anything of it, nor would ever listen to such
gossiping trash. Be assured, my dear Sir, that the dragging such a
subject before the public will excite universal reprobation, and they
will drown in their indignation all the solid justifications which
they would otherwise have received and weighed with candor. Consult
your own experience, reflect on the similar cases which have happened
within your own knowledge, and see if ever there was a single one in
which such a mode of recrimination procured favor to him who used it.
You may give pain where perhaps you wish it, but be assured it will
re-act on yourself with double though delayed effect, and that it will
be one of those incidents of your life on which you will never reflect
with satisfaction. Be advised, then; erase it even from your memory,
and stand erect before the world on the high ground of your own merits,
without stooping to what is unworthy either of your or their notice.
Remember that we often repent of what we have said, but never, never
of that which we have not. You may have time enough hereafter to mend
your hold, if ever it can be mended by such matter as that. Take time
then, and do not commit your happiness and public estimation by too much
precipitancy. I am entirely uninformed of the state of things which you
say exists, and which will oblige you to make a solemn appeal to the
nation, in vindication of your character. But whatever that be, I feel
it a duty to bear testimony to the truth, and I have suggested with
frankness other considerations occurring to myself, because I wish you
well, and I add sincere assurances of my great respect and esteem.
TO HORATIO G. SPAFFORD.
MONTICELLO, March 17, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I am an unpunctual correspondent at best. While my affairs
permit me to be within doors, I am too apt to take up a book and to forget
the calls of the writing-table. Besides this, I pass a considerable
portion of my time at a possession so distant, and uncertain as to its
mails, that my letters always await my return here. This must apologise
for my being so late in acknowledging your two favors of December 17th
and January 28th, as also that of the Gazetteer, which came safely to
hand. I have read it with pleasure, and derived from it much information
which I did not possess before. I wish we had as full a statement as to
all our States. We should know ourselves better, our circumstances and
resources, and the advantageous ground we stand on as a whole. We are
certainly much indebted to you for this fund of valuable information.
I join in your reprobation of our merchants, priests, and lawyers, for
their adherence to England and monarchy, in preference to their own
country and its constitution. But merchants have no country. The mere
spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that
from which they draw their gains. In every country and in every age, the
priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the
despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is
easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving
them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever
preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind,
and therefore the safer engine for their purposes. With the lawyers it
is a new thing. They have, in the mother country, been generally the
firmest supporters of the free principles of their constitution. But
there too they have changed. I ascribe much of this to the substitution of
Blackstone for my Lord Coke, as an elementary work. In truth, Blackstone
and Hume have made tories of all England, and are making tories of those
young Americans whose native feelings of independence do not place them
above the wily sophistries of a Hume or a Blackstone. These two books,
but especially the former, have done more towards the suppression of the
liberties of man, than all the million of men in arms of Bonaparte and
the millions of human lives with the sacrifice of which he will stand
loaded before the judgment seat of his Maker. I fear nothing for our
liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and
fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and
the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When
I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in
the wide-spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated
minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the
Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us
from England. I see our safety in the extent of our confederacy, and
in the probability that in the proportion of that the sound parts will
always be sufficient to crush local poisons. In this hope I rest, and
tender you the assurance of my esteem and respect.
TO MR. GIRARDIN.
MONTICELLO, March 18, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--According to your request of the other day, I send you my
formula and explanation of Lord Napier's theorem, for the solution of
right-angled spherical triangles. With you I think it strange that the
French mathematicians have not used or noticed this method more than
they have done. Montucla, in his account of Lord Napier's inventions,
expresses a like surprise at this fact, and does justice to the ingenuity,
the elegance, and convenience of the theorem, which, by a single rule
easily preserved in the memory, supplies the whole table of cases given
in the books of spherical trigonometry. Yet he does not state the rule,
but refers for it to Wolf, Cours de Mathematiques. I have not the larger
work of Wolf; and in the French translation of his abridgement, (by
some member of the congregation of St. Maur,) the branch of spherical
trigonometry is entirely omitted. Potter, one of the English authors
of Courses of Mathematics, has given the Catholic proposition, as it
is called, but in terms unintelligible, and leading to error, until, by
repeated trials, we have ascertained the meaning of some of his equivocal
expressions. In Robert Simson's Euclid we have the theorem with its
demonstrations, but less aptly for the memory, divided into two rules, and
these are extended as the original was, only to the cases of right-angled
triangles. Hutton, in his Course of Mathematics, declines giving the
rules, as "too artificial to be applied by young computists." But I do
not think this. It is true that when we use them, their demonstration is
not always present to the mind; but neither is this the case generally in
using mathematical theorems, or in the various steps of an algebraical
process. We act on them, however, mechanically, and with confidence,
as truths of which we have heretofore been satisfied by demonstration,
although we do not at the moment retrace the processes which establish
them. Hutton, however, in his Mathematical Dictionary, under the terms
"circular parts," and "extremes," has given us the rules, and in all
their extensions to oblique spherical, and to plane triangles. I have
endeavored to reduce them to a form best adapted to my own frail memory,
by couching them in the fewest words possible, and such as cannot, I
think, mislead, or be misunderstood. My formula, with the explanation
which may be necessary for your pupils, is as follows:
Lord Napier noted first the parts, or elements of a triangle, to wit,
the sides and angles; and expunging from these the right-angle, as if
it were a non-existence, he considered the other five parts, to wit,
the three sides, and two oblique angles, as arranged in a circle, and
therefore called them the circular parts; but chose, (for simplifying the
result,) instead of the hypothenuse and two oblique angles, themselves,
to substitute their complements. So that his five circular parts are
the two legs themselves, and the complements of the hypothenuse and
of the two oblique angles. If the three of these, given and required,
were all adjacent, he called it the case of conjunct parts, the middle
element the MIDDLE PART, and the two others the EXTREMES disjunct from
the middle or EXTREMES DISJUNCT. He then laid down his catholic rule,
to wit:
"The rectangle of the radius, and sine of the middle part, is equal to
the rectangle of the _tangents_ of the two EXTREMES CONJUNCT, and to
that of the _cosines_ of the two EXTREMES DISJUNCT."
And to aid our recollection in which case the tangents, and in which
the cosines are to be used, preserving the original designations of the
inventor, we may observe that the _tangent_ belongs to the _conjunct_
case, terms of sufficient affinity to be associated in the memory; and
the sine _complement_ remains of course for the _disjunct case_; and
further, if you please, that the initials of radius and sine, which are
to be used together, are alphabetical consecutives.
Lord Napier's rule may also be used for the solution of oblique spherical
triangles. For this purpose a perpendicular must be let fall from an
angle of the given triangle internally on the base, forming it into two
right-angled triangles, one of which may contain two of the data. Or, if
this cannot be done, then letting it fall externally on the prolongation
of the base, so as to form a right-angled triangle comprehending the
oblique one, wherein two of the data will be common to both. To secure
two of the data from mutilation, this perpendicular must always be let
fall from the end of a given side, and opposite to a given angle.
But there will remain yet two cases wherein Lord Napier's rule cannot
be used, to wit, where all the sides, or all the angles alone are given.
To meet these two cases, Lord Buchan and Dr. Minto devised an analogous
rule. They considered the sides themselves, and the supplements of the
angles as circular parts in these cases; and, dropping a perpendicular
from any angle from which it would fall internally on the opposite side,
they assumed that angle, or that side, as the MIDDLE part, and the other
angles, or other sides, as the OPPOSITE or EXTREME parts, disjunct in
both cases. Then "the rectangle under the tangents of half the sum, and
half the difference of the segments of the MIDDLE part, is equal to the
rectangle under the tangents of half the sums, and half the difference
of the OPPOSITE PARTS."
And, since every plane triangle may be considered as described on the
surface of a sphere of an infinite radius, these two rules may be applied
to plane right-angled triangles, and through them to the oblique. But
as Lord Napier's rule gives a direct solution only in the case of two
sides, and an uncomprised angle, one, two, or three operations, with
this combination of parts, may be necessary to get at that required.
[Illustration: Triangular rule]
You likewise requested for the use of your school, an explanation of a
method of platting the courses of a survey, which I mentioned to you as
of my own practice. This is so obvious and simple, that as it occurred
to myself, so I presume it has to others, although I have not seen
it stated in any of the books. For drawing parallel lines, I use the
triangular rule, the hypothenusal side of which being applied to the
side of a common straight rule, the triangle slides on that, as thus,
always parallel to itself. Instead of drawing meridians on his paper,
let the pupil draw a parallel of latitude, or east and west line, and
note in that a point for his first station, then applying to it his
protractor, lay off the first course and distance in the usual way to
ascertain his second station. For the second course, lay the triangular
rule to the east and west line, or first parallel, holding the straight
or guide rule firmly against its hypothenusal side. Then slide up the
triangle (for a northerly course) to the point of his second station,
and pressing it firmly there, lay the protractor to that, and mark off
the second course, and distance as before, for the third station. Then
lay the triangle to the first parallel again, and sliding it as before
to the point of the third station, there apply to it the protractor for
the third course and distance, which gives the fourth station; and so
on. Where a course is southwardly, lay the protractor, as before, to
the northern edge of the triangle, but prick its reversed course, which
reversed again in drawing, gives the true course. When the station has
got so far from the first parallel, as to be out of the reach of the
parallel rule sliding on its hypothenuse, another parallel must be drawn
by laying the edge, or longer leg of the triangle to the first parallel
as before, applying the guide-rule to the end, or short leg, (instead
of the hypothenuse,) as in the margin, and sliding the triangle up to
the point for the new parallel. I have found this, in practice, the
quickest and most correct method of platting which I have ever tried,
and the neatest also, because it disfigures the paper with the fewest
unnecessary lines.
[Illustration: Angle]
If these mathematical trifles can give any facilities to your pupils,
they may in their hands become matters of use, as in mine they have been
of amusement only.
Ever and respectfully yours.
TO M. 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 Création du Monde, un Systême 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.
TO LE CHEVALIER DE ONIS.
MONTICELLO, April 28, 1814.
I thank you, Sir, for the copy of the new constitution of Spain which
you have been so kind as to send me; and I sincerely congratulate
yourself and the Spanish nation on this great stride towards political
happiness. The invasion of Spain has been the most unprecedented and
unprincipled of the transactions of modern times. The crimes of its
enemies, the licentiousness of its associates in defence, the exertions
and sufferings of its inhabitants under slaughter and famine, and its
consequent depopulation, will mark indelibly the baneful ascendancy of
the tyrants of the sea and continent, and characterize with blood and
wretchedness the age in which they have lived. Yet these sufferings of
Spain will be remunerated, her population restored and increased, under
the auspices and protection of this new constitution; and the miseries
of the present generation will be the price, and even the cheap price
of the prosperity of endless generations to come.
There are parts of this constitution, however, in which you would expect
of course that we should not concur. One of these is the intolerance
of all but the Catholic religion; and no security provided against the
re-establishment of an Inquisition, the exclusive judge of Catholic
opinions, and authorized to proscribe and punish those it shall deem
anti-Catholic. Secondly, the aristocracy, _quater sublimata_, of her
legislators; for the ultimate electors of these will themselves have been
three times sifted from the mass of the people, and may choose from the
nation at large persons never named by any of the electoral bodies. But
there is one provision which will immortalize its inventors. It is that
which, after a certain epoch, disfranchises every citizen who cannot read
and write. This is new, and is the fruitful germ of the improvement of
everything good, and the correction of everything imperfect in the present
constitution. This will give you an enlightened people, and an energetic
public opinion which will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of
the government. On the whole I hail your country as now likely to resume
and surpass its ancient splendor among nations. This might perhaps have
been better secured by a just confidence in the self-sufficient strength
of the peninsula itself; everything without its limits being its weakness
not its force. If the mother country has not the magnanimity to part
with the colonies in friendship, thereby making them, what they would
certainly be, her natural and firmest allies, these will emancipate
themselves, after exhausting her strength and resources in ineffectual
efforts to hold them in subjection. They will be rendered enemies of the
mother country, as England has rendered us by an unremitting course of
insulting injuries and silly provocations. I do not say this from the
impulse of national interest, for I do not know that the United States
would find an interest in the independence of neighbor nations, whose
produce and commerce would rivalize ours. It could only be that kind of
interest which every human being has in the happiness and prosperity of
every other. But putting right and reason out of the question, I have
no doubt that on calculations of interest alone, it is that of Spain to
anticipate voluntarily, and as a matter of grace, the independence of
her colonies, which otherwise necessity will enforce.
* * * * *
TO MR. DELAPLAINE.
MONTICELLO, May 3, 1814.
SIR,--Your favors of April 16 and 19, on the subject of the portraits
of Columbus and Americus Vespucius were received on the 30th. While I
resided at Paris, knowing that these portraits and those of some other of
the early American worthies were in the gallery of Medicis at Florence,
I took measures for engaging a good artist to take and send me copies of
them. I considered it as even of some public concern that our country
should not be without the portraits of its first discoverers. These
copies have already run the risks of transportations from Florence to
Paris, to Philadelphia, to Washington, and lastly to this place, where
they are at length safely deposited. You request me "to forward them
to you at Philadelphia for the purpose of having engravings taken from
them for a work you propose to publish, and you pledge your honor that
they shall be restored to me in perfect safety." I have no doubt of
the sincerity of your intentions in this pledge; and that it would be
complied with as far as it would be in your power. But the injuries and
accidents of their transportation to Philadelphia and back again are
not within your control. Besides the rubbing through a land carriage of
six hundred miles, a carriage may overset in a river or creek, or be
crashed with everything in it. The frequency of such accidents to the
stages renders all insurance against them impossible. And were they to
escape the perils of this journey I should be liable to the same calls,
and they to the same or greater hazards from all those in other parts of
the continent who should propose to publish any work in which they might
wish to employ engravings of the same characters. From public, therefore,
as well as private considerations, I think that these portraits ought
not to be hazarded from their present deposit. Like public records, I
make them free to be copied, but, being as originals in this country,
they should not be exposed to the accidents or injuries of travelling
post. While I regret, therefore, the necessity of declining to comply
with your request, I freely and with pleasure offer to receive as a
guest any artist whom you shall think proper to engage, and will make
them welcome to take copies at their leisure for your use. I wish them
to be multiplied for safe preservation, and consider them as worthy a
place in every collection. Indeed I do not know how it happened that Mr.
Peale did not think of copying them while they were in Philadelphia;
and I think it not impossible that either the father or the son might
now undertake the journey for the use of their museum. On the ground of
our personal esteem for them, they would be at home in my family.
When I received these portraits at Paris, Mr. Daniel Parker of
Massachusetts happened to be there, and determined to procure for himself
copies from the same originals at Florence; and I think he did obtain
them, and that I have heard of their being in the hands of some one
in Boston. If so, it might perhaps be easier to get some artist there
to take and send you copies. But be this as it may, you are perfectly
welcome to the benefit of mine in the way I have mentioned.
The two original portraits of myself taken by Mr. Stewart, after which
you enquire, are both in his possession at Boston. One of them only is
my property. The President has a copy from that which Stewart considered
as the best of the two; but I believe it is at his seat in his State.
I thank you for the print of Dr. Rush. He was one of my early and
intimate friends, and among the best of men. The engraving is excellent
as is everything from the hand of Mr. Edwin. Accept the assurance of my
respect, and good wishes for the success of your work.
TO MR. JOHN F. WATSON.
MONTICELLO, May 17, 1814.
SIR,--I have long been a subscriber to the edition of the Edinburgh
Review first published by Mr. Sargeant, and latterly by Eastburn, Kirk
& Co., and already possess from No. 30 to 42 inclusive; except that Nos.
31 and 37 never came to hand. These two and No. 29, I should be glad to
receive, with all subsequently published, through the channel of Messrs.
Fitzwhylson & Potter of Richmond, with whom I originally subscribed,
and to whom it is more convenient to make payment by a standing order
on my correspondent at Richmond. I willingly also subscribe for the
republication of the first twenty-eight numbers to be furnished me through
the same channel, for the convenience of payment. This work is certainly
unrivalled in merit, and if continued by the same talents, information
and principles which distinguish it in every department of science
which it reviews, it will become a real Encyclopedia, justly taking its
station in our libraries with the most valuable depositories of human
knowledge. Of the Quarterly Review I have not seen many numbers. As the
antagonist of the other it appears to me a pigmy against a giant. The
precept "audi alteram partem," on which it is republished here, should be
sacred with the judge who is to decide between the contending claims of
individual and individual. It is well enough for the young who have yet
opinions to make up in questions of principle in ethics or politics. But
to those who have gone through this process with industry, reflection,
and singleness of heart, who have formed their conclusions and acted
on them through life, to be reading over and over again what they have
already read, considered and condemned, is an idle waste of time. It
is not in the history of modern England or among the advocates of the
principles or practices of her government, that the friend of freedom,
or of political morality, is to seek instruction. There has indeed been
a period, during which both were to be found, not in her government, but
in the band of worthies who so boldly and ably reclaimed the rights of
the people, and wrested from their government theoretic acknowledgments
of them. This period began with the Stuarts, and continued but one reign
after them. Since that, the vital principle of the English constitution
is _corruption_, its practices the natural results of that principle, and
their consequences a pampered aristocracy, annihilation of the substantial
middle class, a degraded populace, oppressive taxes, general pauperism,
and national bankruptcy. Those who long for these blessings here will
find their generating principles well developed and advocated by the
antagonist of the Edinburgh Review. Still those who doubt should read
them; every man's reason being his own rightful umpire. This principle,
with that of acquiescence in the will of the majority will preserve us
free and prosperous as long as they are sacredly observed. Accept the
assurances of my respect.
TO MR. ABRAHAM SMALL.
MONTICELLO, May 20, 1814.
SIR,--I thank you for the copy of the American Speaker which you have
been so kind as to send me. It is a judicious selection of what has been
excellently spoken on both sides of the Atlantic; and according to your
request, I willingly add some suggestions, should another edition be
called for. To the speeches of Lord Chatham might be added his reply to
Horace Walpole, on the Seamen's bill, in the House of Commons, in 1740,
one of the severest which history has recorded. Indeed, the subsequent
speeches in order, to which that reply gave rise being few, short and
pithy, well merit insertion in such a collection as this. They are in
the twelfth volume of Chandler's Debates of the House of Commons. But
the finest thing, in my opinion, which the English language has produced,
is the defence of Eugene Aram, spoken by himself at the bar of the York
assizes, in 1759, on a charge of murder, and to be found in the Annual
Register of that date, or a little after. It had been upwards of fifty
years since I had read it, when the receipt of your letter induced me
to look up a MS. copy I had preserved, and on re-perusal at this age
and distance of time, it loses nothing of its high station in my mind
for classical style, close logic, and strong representation. I send you
this copy which was taken for me by a school-boy, replete with errors
of punctuation, of orthography, and sometimes substitutions of one word
for another. It would be better to recur to the Annual Register itself
for correctness, where also I think are stated the circumstances and
issue of the case. To these I would add the short, the nervous, the
unanswerable speech of Carnot, in 1803, on the proposition to declare
Bonaparte consul for life. This creed of republicanism should be well
translated, and placed in the hands and heart of every friend to the
rights of self-government. I consider these speeches of Aram and Carnot,
and that of Logan, inserted in your collection, as worthily standing in
a line with those of Scipio and Hannibal in Livy, and of Cato and Cæsar
in Sallust. On examining the Indian speeches in my possession, I find
none which are not already in your collection, except that my copy of
the corn-planter's has much in it which yours has not. But observing
that the omissions relate to special subjects only, I presume they are
made purposely and indeed properly.
I must add more particular thanks for the kind expressions of your letter
towards myself. These testimonies of approbation from my fellow-citizens,
offered too when the lapse of time may have cooled and matured their
opinions, are an ample reward for such services as I have been able to
render them, and are peculiarly gratifying in a state of retirement and
reflection. I pray you to accept the assurance of my respect.
TO THOMAS LAW, ESQ.
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 question 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 Το καλον 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.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, July 5, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Since mine of January the 24th, yours of March the 14th has
been received. It was not acknowledged in the short one of May the 18th,
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 seventy or eighty 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 ten 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 circle 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
Sente mancar la vita,
Guarda la sua ferita,
Ne s'avilisce ancor.
Cosi fra l'ire estrema
Rugge, minaccia, e freme,
Che fa tremar morendo
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_, eighteen 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 Cæsars, 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, in the deliverance of Europe from the havoc which would never
have 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 of its sides 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 Massachusetts say to this? I mean her
majority, which must be considered as speaking through the organs it has
appointed itself, as the index of its will. She chooses to sacrifice the
liberties 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 Massachusetts. 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, choosing 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 through 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? Although 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 through a mist, can be defined neither in form nor dimensions.
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 mysticism of Plato materials with
which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its
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 antediluvian topics? Because I am glad
to have some one to whom they are familiar, and who will not receive 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
mother's womb, and bring it into the world ready made. The information of
books is no longer necessary; and all knowledge which is not innate, is
in contempt, or neglect at least. Every folly must run its round; and so,
I suppose, must that of self-learning and self-sufficiency; of rejecting
the knowledge 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 knowledge 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 its
highest degree. 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.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, July 16, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I received this morning your favor of the 5th, and as I can
never let a sheet of yours rest, I sit down immediately to acknowledge
it.
Whenever Mr. Reeves, of whom I have heard nothing, shall arrive, he
shall receive all the cordial civilities in my power.
I am sometimes afraid that my "machine" will not "surcease motion" soon
enough; for I dread nothing so much as "dying at top," and expiring
like Dean Swift, "a driveler and a show;" or like Sam Adams, a grief and
distress to his family, a weeping helpless object of compassion for years.
I am bold to say, that neither you nor I will live to see the course which
the "wonders of the times" will take. Many years, and perhaps centuries
must pass, before the current will acquire a settled direction. If the
Christian religion, as I understand it, or as you understand it, should
maintain its ground, as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagonic,
Hindoo, Cabalistical Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and
which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound of
which the monster must finally die; yet so strong is his constitution,
that he may endure for centuries before he expires.
Government has never been much studied by mankind, but their attention
has been drawn to it in the latter part of the last century, and the
beginning of this, more than at any former period; and the vast variety of
experiments that have been made of constitutions in America, in France, in
Holland, in Geneva, in Switzerland, and even in Spain and South America,
can never be forgotten. They will be catastrophes noted. The result, in
time, will be improvements; and I have no doubt that the honors we have
experienced for the last forty years, will ultimately terminate in the
advancement of civil and religious liberty, and ameliorations in the
condition of mankind; for I am a believer in the probable improvability
and improvement, the ameliorability and amelioration in human affairs;
though I never could understand the doctrine of the perfectability of
the human mind. This has always appeared to me like the philosophy, or
theology of the Gentoos, viz., that a Brachman, by certain studies, for
a certain time pursued, and by certain ceremonies, a certain number of
times repeated, becomes omniscient and almighty.
Our hopes, however, of sudden tranquillity, ought not to be too sanguine.
Fanaticism and superstition will still be selfish, subtle, intriguing,
and at times furious. Despotism will still struggle for domination;
monarchy will still study to rival nobility in popularity; aristocracy
will continue to envy all above it, and despise and oppress all below it;
democracy will envy all, contend with all, endeavor to pull down all; and
when by chance it happens to get the upper hand for a short time, it will
be revengeful, bloody, and cruel. These, and other elements of fanaticism
and anarchy, will yet, for a long time, continue a fermentation, which
will excite alarms and require vigilance.
Napoleon is a military fanatic like Achilles, Alexander, Cæsar, Mahomet,
Zingis, Kouli, Charles XII., &c. The maxim and principle of all of them
was the same: "Jura negat sibi lata, nihil non arrogat armis."
But is it strict to call him an usurper? Was not his elevation to the
empire of France as legitimate and authentic a national act as that of
William the III., or the House of Hanover to the throne of the three
kingdoms? or as the election of Washington to the command of our army,
or to the chair of the States?
Human nature, in no form of it, ever could bear prosperity. That peculiar
tribe of men called conquerors, more remarkably than any other, have
been swelled with vanity by any series of victories.
Napoleon won so many mighty battles in such quick succession, and
for so long a time, that it was no wonder his brain became completely
intoxicated, and his enterprises rash, extravagant, and mad.
Though France is humbled, Britain is not. Though Bonaparte is banished,
a greater tyrant and miser usurper still domineers. John Bull is quite
as unfeeling, as unprincipled, more powerful, has shed more blood, than
Bonaparte. John, by his money, his intrigues, and arms, by exciting
coalition after coalition against him, made him what he was, and, at
last, what he is. How shall the tyrant of tyrants be brought low? Aye!
there's the rub! I still think Bonaparte great, at least as any of
the conquerors. The wonders "of his rise and fall," may be seen in the
life of king Theodore, or Pascal Paoli, or Mazionetti, or Jack Cade, or
Wat Tyler, or Rienzi, or Dionicus. The only difference is that between
miniatures and full-length pictures. The schoolmaster at Corinth was
a greater _man_ than the tyrant of Syracuse, upon the principle that
he who conquers himself is greater than he who takes a city. Though
the ferocious roar of the wounded lion may terrify the hunter with the
possibility of another dangerous leap, Bonaparte was shot dead at once
by France. He could no longer roar or struggle, growl or paw; he could
only gasp the death. I wish that France may not still regret him. But
these are speculations in the clouds. I agree with you that the milk
of human kindness in the Bourbons, is safer for mankind than the fierce
ambition of Napoleon.
The Autocrator appears in an imposing light. Fifty years ago, English
writers held up terrible consequences from "thawing out the monstrous
northern snake." If Cossacks, and Tartars, and Goths, and Vandals, and
Huns, and Riparians, should get a taste of European sweets, what may
happen? Could Wellingtons or Bonapartes resist them?
The greatest trait of sagacity that Alexander has yet exhibited to
the world, is his courtship of the United States. But whether this is
a mature, well-digested policy, or only a transient gleam of thought,
still remains to be explained and proved by time.
The refractory siston will not give up the fisheries. Not a man here
dares to hint at so base a thought.
I am very glad you have seriously read Plato; and still more rejoiced to
find that your reflections upon him so perfectly harmonize with mine. Some
thirty years ago I took upon me the severe task of going through all his
works. With the help of two Latin translations, and one English and one
French translation, and comparing some of the most remarkable passages
with the Greek, I labored through the tedious toil. My disappointment
was very great, my astonishment was greater, and my disgust shocking. Two
things only did I learn from him. 1. That Franklin's ideas of exempting
husbandmen, and mariners, &c., from the depredations of war, was borrowed
from him. 2. That sneezing is a cure for the hickups. Accordingly, I
have cured myself, and all my friends, of that provoking disorder, for
thirty years, with a pinch of snuff.
Some parts of some of his dialogues are entertaining like the writings
of Rousseau, but his laws and his republic, from which I expected most,
disappointed me most.
I could scarcely exclude the suspicion that he intended the latter as
a bitter satire upon all republican government, as Xenophon undoubtedly
designed, by his essay on democracy, to ridicule that species of republic.
In a letter to the learned and ingenious Mr. Taylor, of Haslewood,
I suggested to him the project of writing a novel, in which the hero
should be sent upon his travels through Plato's republic, and all his
adventures, with his observations on the principles and opinions, the
arts and sciences, the manners, customs, and habits of the citizens,
should be recorded. Nothing can be conceived more destructive of human
happiness; more infallibly contrived to transform men and women into
brutes, Yahoos, or demons, than a community of wives and property. Yet
in what are the writings of Rousseau and Helvetius, wiser than those
of Plato? The man who first fenced a tobacco yard, and said this is
mine, ought instantly to have been put to death, says Rousseau. The
man who first pronounced the barbarous word _Dieu_, ought to have been
immediately destroyed, says Diderot. In short, philosophers, ancient and
modern, appear to me as mad as Hindoos, Mahometans, and Christians. No
doubt they would all think me mad, and, for anything I know, this globe
may be the bedlam, _Le Bicêtre_ of the universe. After all, as long as
property exists, it will accumulate in individuals and families. As long
as marriage exists, knowledge, property, and influence will accumulate
in families. Your and our equal partition of intestate estates, instead
of preventing, will, in time, augment the evil, if it is one.
The French revolutionists saw this, and were so far consistent. When
they burned pedigrees and genealogical trees, they annihilated, as far
as they could, marriages, knowing that marriage, among a thousand other
things, was an infallible source of aristocracy. I repeat it, so sure
as the idea and existence of _property_ is admitted and established in
society, accumulations of it will be made; the snow-ball will grow as
it rolls.
Cicero was educated in the Groves of Academus, where the name and memory
of Plato were idolized to such a degree, that if he had wholly renounced
the prejudices of his education, his reputation would have been lessened,
if not injured and ruined. In his two volumes of Discourses on Government,
we may presume that he fully examined Plato's laws and republic, as well
as Aristotle's writings on government. But these have been carefully
destroyed, not improbably with the general consent of philosophers,
politicians and priests. The loss is as much to be regretted as that of
any production of antiquity.
Nothing seizes the attention of the staring animal so surely as paradox,
riddle, mystery, invention, discovery, wonder, temerity. Plato and
his disciples, from the fourth-century Christians to Rousseau and Tom
Paine, have been fully sensible of this weakness in mankind, and have
too successfully grounded upon it their pretensions to fame.
I might, indeed, have mentioned Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire,
Turgot, Helvetius, Diderot, Condorcet, Buffon, and fifty others, all a
little cracked. Be to their faults a little blind, to their virtues ever
kind.
Education! Oh Education! The greatest grief of my heart, and the greatest
affliction of my life! To my mortification I must confess that I have
never closely thought, or very deliberately reflected upon the subject
which never occurs to me now without producing a deep sigh, a heavy
groan, and sometimes tears.
My cruel destiny separated me from my children, almost continually
from their birth to their manhood. I was compelled to leave them to
the ordinary routine of reading, writing and Latin school, academy and
college. John, alone, was much with me, and he but occasionally. If I
venture to give you any thoughts at all, they must be very crude. I have
turned over Locke, Milton, Condilac, Rousseau, and even Miss Edgeworth,
as a bird flies through the air. The Preceptor I have thought a good book.
Grammar, rhetoric, logic, ethics, mathematics, cannot be neglected.
Classics, in spite of our friend Rush, I must think indispensable.
Natural history, mechanics and experimental philosophy, chemistry, &c.,
at least their rudiments, cannot be forgotten. Geography, astronomy,
and even history and chronology, (although I am myself afflicted with
a kind of Pyrrhonism in the two latter,) I presume cannot be omitted.
Theology I would leave to Ray, Derham, Nicuentent, and Paley, rather
than to Luther, Zinzindorf, Swedenborg, Wesley or Whitefield, or Thomas
Aquinas or Wollebius. Metaphysics I would leave in the clouds with the
materialists and spiritualists, with Leibnitz, Berkley, Priestley and
Edwards, and I might add Hume and Reed, or if permitted to be read, it
should be with romances and novels. What shall I say of music, drawing,
fencing, dancing and gymnastic exercises? What of languages, oriental
and occidental? Of French, Italian, German or Russian? of Sanscrit or
Chinese?
The task you have prescribed to me of grouping these sciences or arts
under professors, within the views of an enlightened economy, is far
beyond my forces. Loose indeed, and indigested, must be all the hints
I can note. Might grammar, rhetoric, logic, and ethics, be under one
professor? Might mathematics, mechanics, natural philosophy, be under
another? Geography and astronomy under a third? Laws and government,
history and chronology, under a fourth? Classics might require a fifth.
Condilac's Course of Study has excellent parts. Among many systems of
mathematics, English, French and American, there is none preferable to
Besout's Course. La Harpe's Course of Literature is very valuable.
But I am ashamed to add any more to the broken innuendos, except
assurances of my continued friendship.
TO THE BARON DE MOLL, PRIVY COUNSELLOR OF HIS MAJESTY THE KING
OF BAVARIA, SECRETARY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES FOR THE CLASS OF
MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES, AND OF THE AGRONOMIC SOCIETY OF
BAVARIA, AT MUNICH.
MONTICELLO, July 31, 1814.
SIR,--Within a few days only, I have received the letter which you did
me the honor to write on the 22d of July, 1812; a delay which I presume
must be ascribed to the interruption of the intercourse of the world by
the wars which have lately desolated it by sea and land. Still involved
ourselves with a nation possessing almost exclusively the ocean which
separates us, I fear the one I have now the honor of addressing you may
experience equal delay. I receive with much gratification the diploma
of the Agronomic Society of Bavaria, conferring on me the distinction
of being honorary member of their society. For this mark of their good
will, I pray you to be the channel of communicating to them my respectful
thanks. Age and distance will add their obstacles to the services I
shall ardently wish to render the society. Yet sincerely devoted to
this art, the basis of the subsistence, the comforts and the happiness
of man, and sensible of the general interest which all nations have
in communicating freely to each other discoveries of new and useful
processes and implements in it, I shall with zeal at all times meet the
wishes of the society, and especially rejoice in every opportunity which
their commands may present of being useful to them. With the homage of
my respects to them, be pleased to accept for yourself the assurances
of my particular and high consideration.
TO MR. WIRT.
MONTICELLO, August 14, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I have been laying under contribution my memory, my private
papers, the printed records, gazettes and pamphlets in my possession,
to answer the inquiries of your letter of July 27, and I will give you
the result as correctly as I can. I kept no copy of the paper I sent
you on a former occasion on the same subject, nor do I retain an exact
recollection of its contents. But if in that I stated the question on
the loan office to have been in 1762, I did it with too slight attention
to the date, although not to the fact. I have examined the journals of
the House of Burgesses, of 1760-1-2, in my possession, and find no trace
of the proceeding in them. By those of 1764, I find that the famous
address to the king, and memorials to the Houses of Lords and Commons,
on the proposal of the Stamp Act, were of that date; and I know that Mr.
Henry was not a member of the legislature when they were passed. I know
also, because I was present, that Robinson, (who died in May, 1766,) was
in the chair on the question of the loan office. Mr. Henry, then, must
have come in between these two epochs, and consequently in 1765. Of this
year I have no journals to refresh my memory. The first session was in
May, and his first remarkable exhibition there was on the motion for
the establishment of an office for lending money on mortgages of real
property. I find in Royle's Virginia Gazette, of the 17th of that month
this proposition for the loan office brought forward, its advantages
detailed, and the plan explained; and it seems to have been done by a
borrowing member, from the feeling with which the motives are expressed;
and to have been preparatory to the intended motion. This was probably
made immediately after that date, and certainly before the 30th, which
was the date of Mr. Henry's famous resolutions. I had been intimate
with Mr. Henry since the winter of 1759-60, and felt an interest in what
concerned him, and I can never forget a particular exclamation of his in
the debate in which he electrified his hearers. It had been urged that
from certain unhappy circumstances of the colony, men of substantial
property had contracted debts, which, if exacted suddenly, must ruin them
and their families, but, with a little indulgence of time, might be paid
with ease. "What, Sir!" exclaimed Mr. Henry, in animadverting on this,
"is it proposed then to reclaim the spendthrift from his dissipation
and extravagance, by filling his pockets with money." These expressions
are indelibly impressed on my memory. He laid open with so much energy
the spirit of favoritism on which the proposition was founded, and the
abuses to which it would lead, that it was crushed in its birth. Abortive
motions are not always entered on the journals, or rather, they are
rarely entered. It is the modern introduction of yeas and nays which has
given the means of placing a rejected motion on the journals; and it is
likely that the speaker, who, as treasurer, was to be the loan officer,
and had the direction of the journals, would choose to omit an entry of
the motion in this case. This accounts sufficiently for the absence of
any trace of the motion in the journals. There was no suspicion then,
(as far, at least, as I know,) that Robinson had used the public money
in private loans to his friends, and that the secret object of this
scheme was to transfer those debtors to the public, and thus clear his
accounts. I have diligently examined the names of the members on the
journals of 1764, to see if any were still living to whose memory we
might recur on this subject, but I find not a single one now remaining
in life.
Of the parson's cause I remember nothing remarkable. I was at school
with Mr. Maury during the years 1758 and 1759, and often heard them
inveigh against the iniquity of the act of 1758, called the two-penny
act. In 1763, when that cause was decided in Hanover, I was a law-student
in Williamsburg, and remember only that it was a subject of much
conversation, and of great paper-controversy, in which Camm, and Colonel
Bland, were the principal champions.
The disputed election in which Mr. Henry made himself remarkable, must
have been that of Dandridge and Littlepage, in 1764, of which, however, I
recollect no particulars, although I was still a student in Williamsburg,
and paid attention to what was passing in the legislature.
I proceed now to the resolution of 1765. The copies you enclose me, and
that inserted by Judge Marshall in his history, and copied verbatim by
Burke, are really embarrassing by their differences. 1. That of the four
resolutions taken from the records of the House, is the genuine copy
of what they passed, _as amended_ by themselves, cannot be doubted. 2.
That the copy which Mr. Henry left sealed up, is a true copy of these
four resolutions, _as reported_ by the committee, there is no reason to
doubt. 3. That Judge Marshall's version of three of these resolutions,
(for he has omitted one altogether,) is from an unauthentic source
is sufficiently proved by their great variation from the record in
diction, although equivalent in sentiment. But what are we to say of
Mr. Henry's fifth, and Mr. Marshall's two last, which we may call the
sixth and seventh resolutions? The fifth has clearly nothing to justify
the debate and proceedings which one of them produced. But the sixth is
of that character, and perfectly tallies with the idea impressed on my
mind, of that which was expunged. Judge Marshall tells us that two were
disagreed to by the House, which may be true. I do not indeed recollect
it, but I have no recollection to the contrary. My hypothesis, then, is
this, that the two disagreed to were the fifth and seventh. The fifth,
because merely tautologous of the third and fourth, and the seventh,
because leading to individual persecution, for which no mind was then
prepared. And that the sixth was the one passed by the House, by a
majority of a single vote, and expunged from the journals the next day.
I was standing at the door of communication between the house and lobby
during the debates and vote, and well remember, that after the numbers
on the division were told, and declared from the chair, Peyton Randolph
(then Attorney General) came out at the door where I was standing,
and exclaimed, "By God, I would have given one hundred guineas for a
single vote." For one vote would have divided the house, and Robinson
was in the chair, who he knew would have negatived the resolution. Mr.
Henry left town that evening, or the next morning; and Colonel Peter
Randolph, then a member of the Council, came to the House of Burgesses
about 10 o'clock of the forenoon, and sat at the clerk's table till
the House-bell rang, thumbing over the volumes of Journals to find a
precedent of expunging a vote of the House, which he said had taken place
while he was a member or clerk of the House, I do not recollect which.
I stood by him at the end of the table a considerable part of the time,
looking on as he turned over the leaves, but I do not recollect whether
he found the erasure. In the meantime, some of the timid members, who
had voted for the strongest resolution, had become alarmed, and as soon
as the House met, a motion was made, and carried, to expunge it from
the journals. And here I will observe, that Burke's statement with his
opponents, is entirely erroneous. I suppose the original journal was
among those destroyed by the British, or its obliterated face might be
appealed to. It is a pity this investigation was not made a few years
sooner, when some of the members of the day were still living. I think
inquiry should be made of Judge Marshall for the source from which
he derived his copy of the resolutions. This might throw light on the
sixth and seventh, which I verily believe, and especially the sixth, to
be genuine in substance. On the whole, I suppose the four resolutions
which are on the record, were passed and retained by the House; that
the sixth is that which was passed by a single vote and expunged, and
the fifth and seventh, the two which Judge Marshall says were disagreed
to. That Mr. Henry's copy, then, should not have stated all this, is
the remaining difficulty. This copy he probably sealed up long after
the transaction, for it was long afterwards that these resolutions,
instead of the address and memorials of the preceding year, were looked
back to as the commencement of legislative opposition. His own judgment
may, at a later date, have approved of the rejection of the sixth and
seventh, although not of the fifth, and he may have left and sealed up
a copy, in his own handwriting, as approved by his ultimate judgment.
This, to be sure, is conjecture, and may rightfully be rejected by any
one to whom a more plausible solution may occur; and there I must leave
it. The address of 1764 was drawn by Peyton Randolph. Who drew the
memorial to the Lords I do not recollect, but Mr. Wythe drew that to
the Commons. It was done with so much freedom, that, as he has told me
himself, his colleagues of the committee shrank from it as bearing the
aspect of treason, and smoothed its features to its present form. He
was, indeed, one of the very few, (for I can barely speak of them in the
plural number,) of either character, who, from the commencement of the
contest, hung our connection with Great Britain on its true hook, that
of a common king. His unassuming character, however, made him appear as
a follower, while his sound judgment kept him in a line with the freest
spirit. By these resolutions, Mr. Henry took the lead out of the hands
of those who had heretofore guided the proceedings of the House, that
is to say, of Pendleton, Wythe, Bland, Randolph, Nicholas. These were
honest and able men, had begun the opposition on the same grounds, but
with a moderation more adapted to their age and experience. Subsequent
events favored the bolder spirits of Henry, the Lees, Pages, Mason, &c.,
with whom I went in all points. Sensible, however, of the importance
of unanimity among our constituents, although we often wished to have
gone faster, we slackened our pace, that our less ardent colleagues
might keep up with us; and they, on their part, differing nothing from
us in principle, quickened their gait somewhat beyond that which their
prudence might of itself have advised, and thus consolidated the phalanx
which breasted the power of Britain. By this harmony of the bold with
the cautious, we advanced with our constituents in undivided mass, and
with fewer examples of separation than, perhaps, existed in any other
part of the Union.
I do not remember the topics of Mr. Henry's argument, but those of his
opposers were that the same sentiments had been expressed in the address
and memorials of the preceding session, to which an answer was expected
and not yet received. I well remember the cry of treason, the pause of
Mr. Henry at the name of George the III., and the presence of mind with
which he closed his sentence, and baffled the charge vociferated. I
do not think he took the position in the middle of the floor which you
mention. On the contrary, I think I recollect him standing in the very
place which he continued afterwards habitually to occupy in the house.
The censure of Mr. E. Randolph on Mr. Henry in the case of Philips,
was without foundation. I remember the case, and took my part in it.
Philips was a mere robber, who availing himself of the troubles of the
times, collected a banditti, retired to the Dismal Swamp, and from thence
sallied forth, plundering and maltreating the neighboring inhabitants, and
covering himself, without authority, under the name of a British subject.
Mr. Henry, then Governor, communicated the case to me. We both thought
the best proceeding would be by bill of attainder, unless he delivered
himself up for trial within a given time. Philips was afterwards taken;
and Mr. Randolph being Attorney General, and apprehending he would plead
that he was a British subject, taken in arms, in support of his lawful
sovereign, and as a prisoner of war entitled to the protection of the law
of nations, he thought the safest proceeding would be to indict him at
common law as a felon and robber. Against this I believe Philips urged
the same plea: he was overruled and found guilty.
I recollect nothing of a doubt on the re-eligibility of Mr. Henry to the
government when his term expired in 1779, nor can I conceive on what
ground such a doubt could have been entertained, unless perhaps that
his first election in June, 1776, having been before we were nationally
declared independent, some might suppose it should not be reckoned as
one of the three constitutional elections.
Of the projects for appointing a Dictator there are said to have been two.
I know nothing of either but by hearsay. The first was in Williamsburg
in December, 1776. The Assembly had the month before appointed Mr.
Wythe, Mr. Pendleton, George Mason, Thomas L. Lee, and myself, to revise
the whole body of laws, and adapt them to our new form of government.
I left the House early in December to prepare to join the Committee at
Fredericksburg, the place of our first meeting. What passed, therefore,
in the House in December, I know not, and have not the journals of that
session to look into. The second proposition was in June, 1781, at the
Staunton session of the legislature. No trace of this last motion is
entered on the journals of that date, which I have examined. This is a
further proof that the silence of the journals is no evidence against the
fact of an abortive motion. Among the names of the members found on the
journal of the Staunton session, are John Taylor of Caroline, General
Andrew Moore, and General Edward Stevens of Culpeper, now living. It
would be well to ask information from each of them, that their errors
of memory, or of feeling, may be corrected by collation.
You ask if I would have any objection to be quoted as to the fact of
rescinding the last of Mr. Henry's resolutions. None at all as to that
fact, or its having been passed by a majority of one vote only; the scene
being as present to my mind as that in which I am now writing. But I do
not affirm, although I believe it was the sixth resolution.
It is truly unfortunate that those engaged in public affairs so rarely
make notes of transactions passing within their knowledge. Hence history
becomes fable instead of fact. The great outlines may be true, but the
incidents and coloring are according to the faith or fancy of the writer.
Had Judge Marshall taken half your pains in sifting and scrutinizing
facts, he would not have given to the world, as true history, a false
copy of a record under his eye. Burke again has copied him, and being a
second writer on the spot, doubles the credit of the copy. When writers
are so indifferent as to the correctness of facts, the verification
of which lies at their elbow, by what measure shall we estimate
their relation of things distant, or of those given to us through the
obliquities of their own vision? Our records, it is true, in the case
under contemplation, were destroyed by the malice and Vandalism of the
British military, perhaps of their government, under whose orders they
committed so much useless mischief. But printed copies remained, as your
examination has proved. Those which were apocryphal, then, ought not to
have been hazarded without examination. Should you be able to ascertain
the genuineness of the sixth and seventh resolutions, I would ask a line
of information, to rectify or to confirm my own impressions respecting
them. Ever affectionately yours.
TO THOMAS COOPER.
MONTICELLO, August 25, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--In my letter of January 16th, I mentioned to you that it
had long been in contemplation to get an University established in this
State, in which all the branches of science useful _to us_, and _at this
day_, should be taught in their highest degree, and that this institution
should be incorporated with the College and funds of William and Mary.
But what are the sciences useful to us, and at this day thought useful to
anybody? A glance over Bacon's _arbor scientiæ_ will show the foundation
for this question, and how many of his ramifications of science are now
lopt off as nugatory. To be prepared for this new establishment, I have
taken some pains to ascertain those branches which men of sense, as well
as of science, deem worthy of cultivation. To the statements which I
have obtained from other sources, I should highly value an addition of
one from yourself. You know our country, its pursuits, its faculties,
its relations with others, its means of establishing and maintaining an
institution of general science, and the spirit of economy with which
it requires that these should be administered. Will you then so far
contribute to our views as to consider this subject, to make a statement
of the branches of science which you think worthy of being taught, as I
have before said, at this day, and in this country? But to accommodate
them to our economy, it will be necessary further to distribute them
into groups, each group comprehending as many branches as one industrious
Professor may competently teach, and, as much as may be, a duly associated
family, or class, of kindred sciences. The object of this is to bring
the whole circle of useful science under the direction of the smallest
number of professors possible, and that our means may be so frugally
employed as to effect the greatest possible good. We are about to make
an effort for the introduction of this institution.
On the subject of patent rights, on which something has passed between
us before, you may have noted that the patent board, while it existed,
had proposed to reduce their decisions to a system of rules as fast
as the cases presented should furnish materials. They had done but
little when the business was turned over to the courts of justice, on
whom the same duty has now devolved. A rule has occurred to me, which
I think would reach many of our cases, and go far towards securing the
citizen against the vexation of frivolous patents. It is to consider the
invention of any new mechanical power, or of any new combination of the
mechanical powers already known, as entitled to an exclusive grant; but
that the purchaser of the right to use the invention should be free to
apply it to every purpose of which it is susceptible. For instance, the
combination of machinery for threshing wheat, should be applicable to
the threshing of rye, oats, beans, &c. The spinning machine to everything
of which it may be found capable; the chain of buckets, of which we have
been possessed thousands of years, we should be free to use for raising
water, ore, grains, meals, or anything else we can make it raise. These
rights appear sufficiently distinct, and the distinction sound enough,
to be adopted by the judges, to whom it could not be better suggested
than through the medium of the Emporium, should any future paper of that
furnish place for the hint.
Since the change of government in France, I am in hopes the author of
the Review of Montesquieu will consent to be named, and perhaps may
publish there his original work; not that their press is free, but that
the present government will be restrained by public opinion, whereas
the late military despotism respected that of the army only. I salute
you with friendship and respect.
TO MR. DELAPLAINE.
MONTICELLO, August 28, 1814.
SIR,--Your letter of the 17th is received. I have not the book of
Munoz containing the print of Columbus. That work came out after I left
Europe, and we have not the same facility of acquiring new continental
publications here as there. I have no doubt that entire credit is to be
given to the account of the print rendered by him in the extract from his
work which you have sent me; and as you say that several have attempted
translations of it, each differing from the other, and none satisfactory
to yourself, I will add to your stock my understanding of it, that by a
collation of the several translations, the author's meaning may be the
better elicited.
Translation. "This first volume presents at the beginning the portrait
of the discoverer, designed and engraved with care. Among many paintings
and prints which are falsely sold as his likenesses, I have seen one
only which can be such, and it is that which is preserved in the house of
the most excellent Duke of Berwick and Lina, a descendant of our hero; a
figure of the natural size, painted, as would seem, in the last century,
by an indifferent copyist, in which, nevertheless, appear some catches
from the hand of Antonio del Rincon, a celebrated painter of the Catholic
kings. The description given by Fernando Colon, of the countenance of
his father, has served to render the likeness more resembling, and to
correct the faults which are observable in some of the features either
imperfectly seized by the artist, or disfigured by the injuries of time."
Paraphrase explanatory of the above. Columbus was employed by Ferdinand
and Isabella, on his voyage of discovery in 1492. Debry tells us that
"before his departure, his portrait was taken by order of the king and
queen," and most probably by Rincon, their first painter. Rincon died in
1500, and Columbus in 1506. Fernando, his son, an ecclesiastic, wrote
the life of his father in 1530, and describes in that his father's
countenance. An indifferent hand in the 17th century, copied Rincon's
painting, which copy is preserved in the house of the Duke of Berwick. In
1793, when a print of Columbus was wanting for the history of Munoz, the
artist from this copy, injured as it was by time, but still exhibiting
some catches of Rincon's style, and from the verbal description of the
countenance of Columbus in the history by his son, has been enabled to
correct the faults of the copy, whether those of the copyist or proceeding
from the injuries of time, and thus to furnish the best likeness.
The Spanish text admits this construction, and well-known dates and
historical facts verify it.
I have taken from the second volume of Debry a rough model of the leaf on
which is the print he has given of Columbus and his preface. It gives the
exact size and outline of the print which, with a part of the preface,
is on the first page of the leaf, and the rest on the second. I have
extracted from it what related to the print, which you will perceive
could not be cut out without a great mutilation of the book. This would
not be regarded as to its cost, which was twelve guineas for the three
volumes in Amsterdam, but that it seems to be the only copy of the work
in the United States, and I know from experience the difficulty, if
not impossibility, of getting another. I had orders lodged with several
eminent booksellers in the principal book-marts of Europe, to-wit: London,
Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid, several years before this copy was
obtained at the accidental sale of an old library in Amsterdam, on the
death of its proprietor.
We have, then, three likenesses of Columbus, from which a choice is to
be made.
1. The print in Munoz' work, from a copy of Rincon's original, taken in
the 17th century by an indifferent hand, with conjectural alterations
suggested by the verbal description of the younger Columbus of the
countenance of his father.
2. The miniature of Debry, from a copy taken in the sixteenth century
from the portrait made by order of the king and queen, probably that of
Rincon.
3. The copy in my possession of the size of life, taken for me from the
original, which is in the gallery of Florence. I say from an original,
because it is well known that in collections of any note, and that of
Florence is the first in the world, _no copy_ is ever admitted; and
an original existing in Genoa would readily be obtained for a royal
collection in Florence. Vasari, in his lives of the painters, names this
portrait in his catalogue of the paintings in that gallery, but does
not say by whom it was made. It has the aspect of a man of thirty-five,
still smooth-faced and in the vigor of life, which would place its date
about 1477, fifteen years earlier than that of Rincon. Accordingly, in
the miniature of Debry, the face appears more furrowed by time. On the
whole, I should have no hesitation at giving this the preference over
the conjectural one of Munoz, and the miniature of Debry.
The book from which I cut the print of Vespucius which I sent you, has
the following title and date: "Elogio d'Amerigo Vespucci che ha riportato
il premio dalla nobile accademia Etrusca de Cortona nel dè 15 d'Ottobre
dell' Anno 1788, del P. Stanislao Canovai della scuole prie publico
professore di fisica. Matematica in Firenze 1788, nella stamp di Pietro
Allegrini." This print is unquestionably from the same original in the
gallery of Florence from which my copy was also taken. The portrait is
named in the catalogue of Vasari, and mentioned also by Bandini, in his
life of Americus Vespucius; but neither gives its history. Both tell us
there was a portrait of Vespucius taken by Domenico, and a fine head of
him by Da Vinci, which, however, are lost, so that it would seem that
this of Florence is the only one existing.
With this offering of what occurs to me on the subject of these prints,
accept the assurance of my respect.
TO THOMAS COOPER, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, September 10, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I regret much that I was so late in consulting you on the
subject of the academy we wish to establish here. The progress of that
business has obliged me to prepare an address to the President of the
Board of Trustees,--a plan for its organization. I send you a copy of
it with a broad margin, that, if your answer to mine of August 25th be
not on the way, you may be so good as to write your suggestions either
in the margin or on a separate paper. We shall still be able to avail
ourselves of them by way of amendments.
Your letter of August 17th is received. Mr. Ogilvie left us four days
ago, on a tour of health, which is to terminate at New York, from whence
he will take his passage to Britain to receive livery and seisin of his
new dignities and fortunes. I am in the daily hope of seeing M. Corrica,
and the more anxious as I must in two or three weeks commence a journey
of long absence from home.
A comparison of the conditions of Great Britain and the United States,
which is the subject of your letter of August 17th, would be an
interesting theme indeed. To discuss it minutely and demonstratively
would be far beyond the limits of a letter. I will give you, therefore,
in brief only, the result of my reflections on the subject. I agree
with you in your facts, and in many of your reflections. My conclusion
is without doubt, as I am sure yours will be, when the appeal to
your sound judgment is seriously made. The population of England is
composed of three descriptions of persons, (for those of minor note
are too inconsiderable to affect a general estimate.) These are, 1. The
aristocracy, comprehending the nobility, the wealthy commoners, the high
grades of priesthood, and the officers of government. 2. The laboring
class. 3. The eleemosynary class, or paupers, who are about one-fifth of
the whole. The aristocracy, which has the laws and government in their
hands, have so managed them as to reduce the third description below
the means of supporting life, even by labor; and to force the second,
whether employed in agriculture or the arts, to the maximum of labor
which the construction of the human body can endure, and to the minimum
of food, and of the meanest kind, which will preserve it in life, and in
strength sufficient to perform its functions. To obtain food enough, and
clothing, not only their whole strength must be unremittingly exerted,
but the utmost dexterity also which they can acquire; and those of
great dexterity only can keep their ground, while those of less must
sink into the class of paupers. Nor is it manual dexterity alone, but
the acutest resources of the mind also which are impressed into this
struggle for life; and such as have means a little above the rest, as the
master-workmen, for instance, must strengthen themselves by acquiring as
much of the philosophy of their trade as will enable them to compete with
their rivals, and keep themselves above ground. Hence the industry and
manual dexterity of their journeymen and day-laborers, and the science
of their master-workmen, keep them in the foremost ranks of competition
with those of other nations; and the less dexterous individuals,
falling into the eleemosynary ranks, furnish materials for armies and
navies to defend their country, exercise piracy on the ocean, and carry
conflagration, plunder and devastation, on the shores of all those who
endeavor to withstand their aggressions. A society thus constituted
possesses certainly the means of defence. But what does it defend? The
pauperism of the lowest class, the abject oppression of the laboring, and
the luxury, the riot, the domination and the vicious happiness of the
aristocracy. In their hands, the paupers are used as tools to maintain
their own wretchedness, and to keep down the laboring portion by shooting
them whenever the desperation produced by the cravings of their stomachs
drives them into riots. Such is the happiness of scientific England;
now let us see the American side of the medal.
And, first, we have no paupers, the old and crippled among us, who possess
nothing and have no families to take care of them, being too few to merit
notice as a separate section of society, or to affect a general estimate.
The great mass of our population is of laborers; our rich, who can live
without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate
wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own
lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled
to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to
be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and
raise their families. They are not driven to the ultimate resources of
dexterity and skill, because their wares will sell although not quite
so nice as those of England. The wealthy, on the other hand, and those
at their ease, know nothing of what the Europeans call luxury. They have
only somewhat more of the comforts and decencies of life than those who
furnish them. Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?
Nor in the class of laborers do I mean to withhold from the comparison
that portion whose color has condemned them, in certain parts of our
Union, to a subjection to the will of others. Even these are better fed
in these States, warmer clothed, and labor less than the journeymen or
day-laborers of England. They have the comfort, too, of numerous families,
in the midst of whom they live without want, or fear of it; a solace which
few of the laborers of England possess. They are subject, it is true,
to bodily coercion; but are not the hundreds of thousands of British
soldiers and seamen subject to the same, without seeing, at the end of
their career, when age and accident shall have rendered them unequal
to labor, the certainty, which the other has, that he will never want?
And has not the British seaman, as much as the African, been reduced to
this bondage by force, in flagrant violation of his own consent, and of
his natural right in his own person? and with the laborers of England
generally, does not the moral coercion of want subject their will as
despotically to that of their employer, as the physical constraint does
the soldier, the seaman, or the slave? But do not mistake me. I am not
advocating slavery. I am not justifying the wrongs we have committed
on a foreign people, by the example of another nation committing equal
wrongs on their own subjects. On the contrary, there is nothing I would
not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this
moral and political depravity. But I am at present comparing the condition
and degree of suffering to which oppression has reduced the man of one
color, with the condition and degree of suffering to which oppression
has reduced the man of another color; equally condemning both. Now let
us compute by numbers the sum of happiness of the two countries. In
England, happiness is the lot of the aristocracy only; and the proportion
they bear to the laborers and paupers, you know better than I do. Were
I to guess that they are four in every hundred, then the happiness of
the nation would be to its misery as one in twenty-five. In the United
States it is as eight millions to zero, or as all to none. But it is
said they possess the means of defence, and that we do not. How so? Are
we not men? Yes; but our men are so happy at home that they will not
hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have
no standing armies for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish
the materials. The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they
defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the
spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers
no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to
make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of
his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and
the same remedy will make us so. In the beginning of our government we
were willing to introduce the least coercion possible on the will of the
citizen. Hence a system of military duty was established too indulgent to
his indolence. This is the first opportunity we have had of trying it,
and it has completely failed; an issue foreseen by many, and for which
remedies have been proposed. That of classing the militia according to
age, and allotting each age to the particular kind of service to which
it was competent, was proposed to Congress in 1805, and subsequently;
and, on the last trial, was lost, I believe, by a single vote only. Had
it prevailed, what has now happened would not have happened. Instead
of burning our Capitol, we should have possessed theirs in Montreal and
Quebec. We must now adopt it, and all will be safe. We had in the United
States in 1805, in round numbers of free, able-bodied men,
120,000 of the ages of 18 to 21 inclusive.
200,000 " " 22 " 26 "
200,000 " " 27 " 35 "
200,000 " " 35 " 45 "
-------
In all, 720,000 " " 18 " 45 "
With this force properly classed, organized, trained, armed and subject
to tours of a year of military duty, we have no more to fear for the
defence of our country than those who have the resources of despotism
and pauperism.
But, you will say, we have been devastated in the meantime. True, some
of our public buildings have been burnt, and some scores of individuals
on the tide-water have lost their movable property and their houses.
I pity them, and execrate the barbarians who delight in unavailing
mischief. But these individuals have their lands and their hands left.
They are not paupers, they have still better means of subsistence
than 24/25 of the people of England. Again, the English have burnt our
Capitol and President's house by means of their force. We can burn their
St. James' and St. Paul's by means of our money, offered to their own
incendiaries, of whom there are thousands in London who would do it
rather than starve. But it is against the laws of civilized warfare to
employ secret incendiaries. Is it not equally so to destroy the works
of art by armed incendiaries? Bonaparte, possessed at times of almost
every capital of Europe, with all his despotism and power, injured no
monument of art. If a nation, breaking through all the restraints of
civilized character, uses its means of destruction (power, for example)
without distinction of objects, may we not use our means (_our_ money and
_their_ pauperism) to retaliate their barbarous ravages? Are we obliged
to use for resistance exactly the weapons chosen by them for aggression?
When they destroyed Copenhagen by superior force, against all the laws
of God and man, would it have been unjustifiable for the Danes to have
destroyed their ships by torpedoes? Clearly not; and they and we should
now be justifiable in the conflagration of St. James' and St. Paul's.
And if we do not carry it into execution, it is because we think it more
moral and more honorable to set a good example, than follow a bad one.
So much for the happiness of the people of England, and the morality of
their government, in comparison with the happiness and the morality of
America. Let us pass to another subject.
The crisis, then, of the abuses of banking is arrived. The banks have
pronounced their own sentence of death. Between two and three hundred
millions of dollars of their promissory notes are in the hands of the
people, for solid produce and property sold, and they formally declare
they will not pay them. This is an act of bankruptcy of course, and
will be so pronounced by any court before which it shall be brought.
But _cui bono_? The law can only uncover their insolvency, by opening to
its suitors their empty vaults. Thus by the dupery of our citizens, and
tame acquiescence of our legislators, the nation is plundered of two or
three hundred millions of dollars, treble the amount of debt contracted
in the revolutionary war, and which, instead of redeeming our liberty,
has been expended on sumptuous houses, carriages, and dinners. A fearful
tax! if equalized on all; but overwhelming and convulsive by its partial
fall. The crush will be tremendous; very different from that brought on
by our paper money. That rose and fell so gradually that it kept all on
their guard, and affected severely only early or long-winded contracts.
Here the contract of yesterday crushes in an instant the one or the
other party. The banks stopping payment suddenly, all their mercantile
and city debtors do the same; and all, in short, except those in the
country, who, possessing property, will be good in the end. But this
resource will not enable them to pay a cent on the dollar. From the
establishment of the United States Bank, to this day, I have preached
against this system, but have been sensible no cure could be hoped but in
the catastrophe now happening. The remedy was to let banks drop gradation
at the expiration of their charters, and for the State governments to
relinquish the power of establishing others. This would not, as it should
not, have given the power of establishing them to Congress. But Congress
could then have issued treasury notes payable within a fixed period,
and founded on a specific tax, the proceeds of which, as they came in,
should be exchangeable for the notes of that particular emission only.
This depended, it is true, on the will of the State legislatures, and
would have brought on us the phalanx of paper interest. But that interest
is now defunct. Their gossamer castles are dissolved, and they can no
longer impede and overawe the salutary measures of the government. Their
paper was received on a belief that it was cash on demand. Themselves
have declared it was nothing, and such scenes are now to take place as
will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of
a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.
It is impossible not to deplore our past follies, and their present
consequences, but let them at least be warnings against like follies in
future. The banks have discontinued themselves. We are now without any
medium; and necessity, as well as patriotism and confidence, will make
us all eager to receive treasury notes, if founded on specific taxes.
Congress may now borrow of the public, and without interest, all the
money they may want, to the amount of a competent circulation, by merely
issuing their own promissory notes, of proper denominations for the
larger purposes of circulation, but not for the small. Leave that door
open for the entrance of metallic money. And, to give readier credit
to their bills, without obliging themselves to give cash for them on
demand, let their collectors be instructed to do so, when they have cash;
thus, in some measure, performing the functions of a bank, as to their
own notes. Providence seems, indeed, by a special dispensation, to have
put down for us, without a struggle, that very paper enemy which the
interest of our citizens long since required ourselves to put down, at
whatever risk. The work is done. The moment is pregnant with futurity,
and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our bark
is next to be stranded. The State legislatures should be immediately
urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most
of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions of
the moment; and the non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by
legitimate devices. _Vale, et me, ut amaris, ama._
TO SAMUEL H. SMITH, ESQ.
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 bookstores, 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.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, September 24, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--It is very long since I troubled you with a letter, which
has proceeded from discretion and not want of inclination, because I
have really had nothing to write which ought to have occupied your time.
But in the late events at Washington I have felt so much for you that
I cannot withhold the expression of my sympathies. For although every
reasonable man must be sensible that all you can do is to order that
execution must depend on others, and failures be imputed to them alone,
yet I know that when such failures happen, they afflict even those who
have done everything they could to prevent them. Had General Washington
himself been now at the head of our affairs, the same event would
probably have happened. We all remember the disgraces which befell us
in his time in a trifling war with one or two petty tribes of Indians,
in which two armies were cut off by not half their numbers. Every one
knew, and I personally knew, because I was then of his council, that no
blame was imputable to him, and that his officers alone were the cause
of the disasters. They must now do the same justice. I am happy to turn
to a countervailing event, and to congratulate you on the destruction
of a second hostile fleet on the lakes by McDonough; of which, however,
we have not the details. While our enemies cannot but feel shame for
their barbarous achievements at Washington, they will be stung to the
soul by these repeated victories over them on that element on which they
wish the world to think them invincible. We have dissipated that error.
They must now feel a conviction themselves that we can beat them gun
to gun, ship to ship and fleet to fleet, and that their early successes
on the land have been either purchased from traitors, or obtained from
raw men entrusted of necessity with commands for which no experience
had qualified them, and that every day is adding that experience to
unquestioned bravery.
I am afraid the failure of our banks will occasion embarrassment for
awhile, although it restores to us a fund which ought never to have been
surrendered by the nation, and which now, prudently used, will carry us
through all the fiscal difficulties of the war. At the request of Mr.
Eppes, who was chairman of the committee of finance at the preceding
session, I had written him some long letters on this subject. Colonel
Monroe asked the reading of them some time ago, and I now send him
another, written to a member of our legislature, who requested my ideas on
the recent bank events. They are too long for your reading, but Colonel
Monroe can, in a few sentences, state to you their outline.
Learning by the papers the loss of the library of Congress, I have
sent my catalogue to S. H. Smith, to make to their library committee
the offer of my collection, now of about nine or ten thousand volumes,
which may be delivered to them instantly, on a valuation by persons
of their own naming, and be paid for in any way, and at any term they
please; in stock, for example, of any loan they have unissued, or of any
one they may institute at this session; or in such annual instalments
as are at the disposal of the committee. I believe you are acquainted
with the condition of the books, should they wish to be ascertained of
this. I have long been sensible that my library would be an interesting
possession for the public, and the loss Congress has recently sustained,
and the difficulty of replacing it, while our intercourse with Europe is
so obstructed, renders this the proper moment for placing it at their
service. Accept assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship
and respect.
TO MR. MILES KING.
MONTICELLO, September 26, 1814.
SIR,--I duly received your letter of August 20th, and I thank you for
it, because I believe it was written with kind intentions, and a personal
concern for my future happiness. Whether the particular revelation which
you suppose to have been made to yourself were real or imaginary, your
reason alone is the competent judge. For dispute as long as we will on
religious tenets, our reason at last must ultimately decide, as it is
the only oracle which God has given us to determine between what really
comes from him and the phantasms of a disordered or deluded imagination.
When he means to make a personal revelation, he carries conviction of
its authenticity to the reason he has bestowed as the umpire of truth.
You believe you have been favored with such a special communication.
Your reason, not mine, is to judge of this; and if it shall be his
pleasure to favor me with a like admonition, I shall obey it with the
same fidelity with which I would obey his known will in all cases.
Hitherto I have been under the guidance of that portion of reason which
he has thought proper to deal out to me. I have followed it faithfully
in all important cases, to such a degree at least as leaves me without
uneasiness; and if on minor occasions I have erred from its dictates,
I have trust in him who made us what we are, and know it was not his
plan to make us always unerring. He has formed us moral agents. Not
that, in the perfection of his state, he can feel pain or pleasure in
anything we may do; he is far above our power; but that we may promote
the happiness of those with whom he has placed us in society, by acting
honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way,
respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing
especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own. I must ever
believe that religion substantially good which produces an honest life,
and we have been authorized by one whom you and I equally respect, to
judge of the tree by its fruit. Our particular principles of religion
are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no
man's, and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life
to know whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are exactly
the right. Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or a
Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a Protestant
in heaven; that, on entering that gate, we leave those badges of schism
behind, and find ourselves united in those principles only in which God
has united us all. Let us not be uneasy then about the different roads
we may pursue, as believing them the shortest, to that our last abode;
but, following the guidance of a good conscience, let us be happy in
the hope that by these different paths we shall all meet in the end.
And that you and I may there meet and embrace, is my earnest prayer.
And with this assurance I salute you with brotherly esteem and respect.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, September 30, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--In my letter of the 23d, an important fact escaped me which,
lest it should not occur to you, I will mention. The monies arising from
the sales of the glebe lands in the several counties, have generally,
I believe, and under the sanction of the legislature, been deposited
in some of the banks. So also the funds of the literary society. These
debts, although parcelled among the counties, yet the counties constitute
the State, and their representatives the legislature, united into one
whole. It is right then that owing $300,000 to the banks, they should
stay so much of that sum in their own hands as will secure what the banks
owe to their constituents as divided into counties. Perhaps the loss of
these funds would be the most lasting of the evils proceeding from the
insolvency of the banks. Ever yours with great esteem and respect.
TO THOMAS COOPER, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, October 7, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Your several favors of September 15th, 21st, 22d, came all
together by our last mail. I have given to that of the 15th a single
reading only, because the hand writing (not your own) is microscopic
and difficult, and because I shall have an opportunity of studying it
in the Portfolio in print. According to your request I return it for
that publication, where it will do a great deal of good. It will give
our young men some idea of what constitutes a well-educated man; that
Cæsar and Virgil, and a few books of Euclid, do not really contain the
sum of all human knowledge, nor give to a man figure in the ranks of
science. Your letter will be a valuable source of consultation for us
in our Collegiate courses, when, and if ever, we advance to that stage
of our establishment.
I agree with yours of the 22d, that a professorship of Theology should
have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is
absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views,
have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. Truth
advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men
the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we
can not, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment
for helping them to another step. Perhaps I should concur with you also
in excluding the _theory_ (not the _practice_) of medicine. This is the
charlatanerie of the body, as the other is of the mind. For classical
learning I have ever been a zealous advocate; and in this, as in his
theory of bleeding and mercury, I was ever opposed to my friend Rush,
whom I greatly loved; but who has done much harm, in the sincerest
persuasion that he was preserving life and happiness to all around him.
I have not, however, carried so far as you do my ideas of the importance
of a hypercritical knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages. I have
believed it sufficient to possess a substantial understanding of their
authors.
In the exclusion of Anatomy and Botany from the eleventh grade of
education, which is that of the man of independent fortune, we separate
in opinion. In my view, no knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man
than that of his own frame, its parts, their functions and actions.
And Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider
its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man
and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our
orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our
groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies. To
the gentlemen it is certainly more interesting than mineralogy (which I
by no means, however, undervalue), and is more at hand for his amusement;
and to a country family it constitutes a great portion of their social
entertainment. No country gentleman should be without what amuses every
step he takes into his fields.
I am sorry to learn the fate of your Emporium. It was adding fast to
our useful knowledge. Our artists particularly, and our statesmen,
will have cause to regret it. But my hope is that its suspension will
be temporary only; and that as soon as we get over the crisis of our
disordered circulation, your publishers will resume it among their first
enterprises. Accept my thanks for the benefit of your ideas to our scheme
of education, and the assurance of my constant esteem and respect.
To ----[12].
MONTICELLO, October 15, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the information of your letter of the 10th.
It gives, at length, a fixed character to our prospects. The war,
undertaken, on both sides, to settle the questions of impressment,
and the orders of council, now that these are done away by events, is
declared by Great Britain to have changed its object, and to have become
a war of conquest, to be waged until she conquers from us our fisheries,
the province of Maine, the lakes, States and territories north of the
Ohio, and the navigation of the Mississippi; in other words, till she
reduces us to unconditional submission. On our part, then, we ought to
propose, as a counterchange of object, the establishment of the meridian
of the mouth of the Sorel northwardly, as the western boundary of all
her possessions. Two measures will enable us to effect it, and without
these, we cannot even defend ourselves. 1. To organize the militia into
classes, assigning to each class the duties for which it is fitted,
(which, had it been done when proposed, years ago, would have prevented
all our misfortunes,) abolishing by a declaratory law the doubts which
abstract scruples in some, and cowardice and treachery in others,
have conjured up about passing imaginary lines, and limiting, at the
same time, their services to the _contiguous_ provinces of the enemy.
The 2d is the ways and means. You have seen my ideas on this subject,
and I shall add nothing but a rectification of what either I have ill
expressed, or you have misapprehended. If I have used any expression
restraining the emissions of treasury notes to a _sufficient_ medium,
as your letter seems to imply, I have done it inadvertently, and under
the impression then possessing me, that the war would be very short. A
_sufficient_ medium would not, on the principles of any writer, exceed
thirty millions of dollars, and on those of some not ten millions. Our
experience has proved it may be run up to two or three hundred millions,
without more than doubling what would be the prices of things under
a _sufficient_ medium, or say a metallic one, which would always keep
itself at the _sufficient_ point; and, if they rise to this term, and the
descent from it be gradual, it would not produce sensible revolutions in
private fortunes. I shall be able to explain my views more definitely by
the use of numbers. Suppose we require, to carry on the war, an annual
loan of twenty millions, then I propose that, in the first year, you
shall lay a tax of two millions, and emit twenty millions of treasury
notes, of a size proper for circulation, and bearing no interest, to
the redemption of which the proceeds of that tax shall be inviolably
pledged and applied, by recalling annually their amount of the identical
bills funded on them. The second year lay another tax of two millions,
and emit twenty millions more. The third year the same, and so on,
until you have reached the maximum of taxes which ought to be imposed.
Let me suppose this maximum to be one dollar a head, or ten millions
of dollars, merely as an exemplification more familiar than would be
the algebraical symbols _x_ or _y_. You would reach this in five years.
The sixth year, then, still emit twenty millions of treasury notes,
and continue all the taxes two years longer. The seventh year twenty
millions more, and continue the whole taxes another two years; and so
on. Observe, that although you emit ten millions of dollars a year, you
call in ten millions, and, consequently, add but ten millions annually
to the circulation. It would be in thirty years, then, _primâ facie_,
that you would reach the present circulation of three hundred millions,
or the ultimate term to which we might adventure. But observe, also,
that in that time we shall have become thirty millions of people to
whom three hundred millions of dollars would be no more than one hundred
millions to us now; which sum would probably not have raised prices more
than fifty per cent. on what may be deemed the standard, or metallic
prices. This increased population and consumption, while it would be
increasing the proceeds of the redemption tax, and lessening the balance
annually thrown into circulation, would also absorb, without saturation,
more of the surplus medium, and enable us to push the same process to a
much higher term, to one which we might safely call indefinite, because
extending so far beyond the limits, either in time or expense, of any
supportable war. All we should have to do would be, when the war should
be ended, to leave the gradual extinction of these notes to the operation
of the taxes pledged for their redemption; not to suffer a dollar of
paper to be emitted either by public or private authority, but let the
metallic medium flow back into the channels of circulation, and occupy
them until another war should oblige us to recur, for its support, to
the same resource, and the same process, on the circulating medium.
The citizens of a country like ours will never have unemployed capital.
Too many enterprises are open, offering high profits, to permit them
to lend their capitals on a regular and moderate interest. They are too
enterprizing and sanguine themselves not to believe they can do better
with it. I never did believe you could have gone beyond a first or a
second loan, not from a want of confidence in the public faith, which is
perfectly sound, but from a want of disposable funds in individuals. The
circulating fund is the only one we can ever command with certainty. It
is sufficient for all our wants; and the impossibility of even defending
the country without its aid as a borrowing fund, renders it indispensable
that the nation should take and keep it in their own hands, as their
exclusive resource.
I have trespassed on your time so far, for explanation only. I will
do it no further than by adding the assurances of my affectionate and
respectful attachment.
Years. Emissions. Taxes & Redemptions. Bal. in circulation
at end of year.
1815 20 millions 2 millions 18 millions
1816 20 " 4 " 34 "
1817 20 " 6 " 48 "
1818 20 " 8 " 60 "
1819 20 " 10 " 70 "
1820 20 " 10 " 80 "
1821 20 " 10 " 90 "
----
140
Suppose the war to terminate here, to wit, at the end of seven years,
the reduction will proceed as follows:
Years. Taxes & Redemptions. Bal. in cir. at end of year.
1822 10 millions 80 millions
1823 10 " 70 "
1824 10 " 60 "
1825 10 " 50 "
1826 10 " 40 "
1827 10 " 30 "
1828 10 " 20 "
1829 10 " 10 "
1830 10 " 0 "
----
140
This is a tabular statement of the amount of emission, taxes, redemptions,
and balances left in circulation every year, on the plan above sketched.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Address lost. Probably to the President.
TO JAMES MONROE.
MONTICELLO, October 16, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of the 10th has been duly received. The objects
of our contest being thus entirely changed by England, we must prepare
for interminable war. To this end we should put our house in order, by
providing men and money to indefinite extent. The former may be done
by classing our militia, and assigning each class to the description of
duties for which it is fit. It is nonsense to talk of regulars. They are
not to be had among a people so easy and happy at home as ours. We might
as well rely on calling down an army of angels from heaven. I trust it
is now seen that the refusal to class the militia, when proposed years
ago, is the real source of all our misfortunes in this war. The other
great and indispensable object is to enter on such a system of finance,
as can be permanently pursued to any length of time whatever. Let us
be allured by no projects of banks, public or private, or ephemeral
expedients, which, enabling us to gasp and flounder a little longer,
only increase, by protracting the agonies of death.
Perceiving, in a letter from the President, that either I had ill
expressed my ideas on a particular part of this subject, in the letters
I sent you, or he had misapprehended them, I wrote him yesterday an
explanation; and as you have thought the other letters worth a perusal,
and a communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, I enclose you a
copy of this, lest I should be misunderstood by others also. Only be so
good as to return me the whole when done with, as I have no other copies.
Since writing the letter now enclosed, I have seen the Report of the
committee of finance, proposing taxes to the amount of twenty millions.
This is a dashing proposition. But, if Congress pass it, I shall consider
it sufficient evidence that their constituents generally can pay the tax.
No man has greater confidence than I have, in the spirit of the people,
to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will. But, without either
market or medium, I know not how it is to be done. All markets abroad,
and all at home, are shut to us; so that we have been feeding our horses
on wheat. Before the day of collection, bank-notes will be but as oak
leaves; and of specie, there is not within all the United States, one-half
of the proposed amount of the taxes. I had thought myself as bold as was
safe in contemplating, as possible, an annual taxation of ten millions,
as a fund for emissions of treasury notes; and, when further emissions
should be necessary, that it would be better to enlarge the time, than
the tax for redemption. Our position, with respect to our enemy, and our
markets, distinguishes us from all other nations; inasmuch, as a state
of war, with us, annihilates in an instant all our surplus produce, that
on which we depended for many comforts of life. This renders peculiarly
expedient the throwing a part of the burdens of war on times of peace
and commerce. Still, however, my hope is that others see resources,
which, in my abstraction from the world, are unseen by me; that there
will be both market and medium to meet these taxes, and that there are
circumstances which render it wiser to levy twenty millions at once on
the people, than to obtain the same sum on a tenth of the tax.
I enclose you a letter from Colonel James Lewis, now of Tennessee, who
wishes to be appointed Indian agent, and I do it lest he should have
relied solely on this channel of communication. You know him better than I
do, as he was long your agent. I have always believed him an honest man,
and very good-humored and accommodating. Of his other qualifications for
the office, you are the best judge. Believe me to be ever affectionately
yours.
TO DOCTOR ROBERT PATTERSON.
MONTICELLO, November 23, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I have heretofore confided to you my wishes to retire from the
chair of the Philosophical Society, which, however, under the influence
of your recommendations, I have hitherto deferred. I have never, however,
ceased from the purpose, and from everything I can observe or learn at
this distance, I suppose that a new choice can now be made with as much
harmony as may be expected at any future time. I send therefore, by this
mail, my resignation, with such entreaties to be omitted at the ensuing
election as I must hope will be yielded to, for in truth I cannot be
easy in holding, as a sinecure, an honor so justly due to the talents
and services of others. I pray your friendly assistance in assuring the
society of the sentiments of affectionate respect and gratitude with
which I retire from the high and honorable relation in which I have stood
with them, and that you will believe me to be ever and affectionately
yours.
TO ROBERT M. PATTERSON, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
MONTICELLO, November 23, 1814.
SIR,--I solicited, on a former occasion, permission from the American
Philosophical Society, to retire from the honor of their chair, under
a consciousness that distance as well as other circumstances, denied
me the power of executing the duties of the station, and that those on
whom they devolved were best entitled to the honors they confer. It was
the pleasure of the society at that time, that I should remain in their
service, and they have continued since to renew the same marks of their
partiality. Of these I have been ever duly sensible, and now beg leave
to return my thanks for them with humble gratitude. Still, I have never
ceased, nor can I cease to feel that I am holding honors without yielding
requital, and justly belonging to others. As the period of election is
now therefore approaching, I take the occasion of begging to be withdrawn
from the attention of the society at their ensuing choice, and to be
permitted now to resign the office of president into their hands, which
I hereby do. I shall consider myself sufficiently honored in remaining
a private member of their body, and shall ever avail myself with zeal
of every occasion which may occur, of being useful to them, retaining
indelibly a profound sense of their past favors.
I avail myself of the channel through which the last notification of the
pleasure of the society was conveyed to me, to make this communication,
and with the greater satisfaction, as it gratifies me with the occasion
of assuring you personally of my high respect for yourself, and of the
interest I shall ever take in learning that your worth and talents secure
to you the successes they merit.
TO W. SHORT, ESQ.
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.
TO MR. MELLISH.
MONTICELLO, December 10, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your favor of the map of the _sine quâ non_,
enclosed in your letter of November 12th. It was an excellent idea;
and if, with the Documents distributed by Congress, copies of these
had been sent to be posted up in every street, on every townhouse and
court-house, it would have painted to the eyes of those who cannot read
without reflecting, that reconquest is the ultimate object of Britain.
The first step towards this is to set a limit to their expansion by
taking from them that noble country which the foresight of their fathers
provided for their multiplying and needy offspring; to be followed up by
the compression, land-board and sea-board, of that Omnipotence which the
English fancy themselves now to possess. A vain and foolish imagination!
Instead of fearing and endeavoring to crush our prosperity, had they
cultivated it in friendship, it might have become a bulwark instead of a
breaker to them. There has never been an administration in this country
which would not gladly have met them more than half way on the road to
an equal, a just and solid connection of friendship and intercourse.
And as to repressing our growth, they might as well attempt to repress
the waves of the ocean.
Your American Atlas is a useful undertaking for those who will live to see
and to use it. To me every mail, in the departure of some cotemporary,
brings warning to be in readiness myself also, and to cease from new
engagements. It is a warning of no alarm. When faculty after faculty
is retiring from us, and all the avenues to cheerful sensation closing,
sight failing now, hearing next, then memory, debility of body, trepitude
of mind, nothing remaining but a sickly vegetation, with scarcely the
relief of a little locomotion, the last cannot be but a _coup de grace_.
You propose to me the preparation of a new edition of the Notes on
Virginia. I formerly entertained the idea, and from time to time noted
some new matter, which I thought I would arrange at leisure for a
posthumous edition. But I now begin to see that it is impracticable for
me. Nearly forty years of additional experience in the affairs of mankind
would lead me into dilatations ending I know not where. That experience
indeed has not altered a single principle. But it has furnished matter
of abundant development. Every moment, too, which I have to spare from
my daily exercise and affairs is engrossed by a correspondence, the
result of the extensive relations which my course of life has necessarily
occasioned. And now the act of writing itself is becoming slow, laborious
and irksome. I consider, therefore, the idea of preparing a new copy of
that work as no more to be entertained. The work itself indeed is nothing
more than the measure of a shadow, never stationary, but lengthening as
the sun advances, and to be taken anew from hour to hour. It must remain,
therefore, for some other hand to sketch its appearance at another epoch,
to furnish another element for calculating the course and motion of this
member of our federal system. For this, every day is adding new matter
and strange matter. That of reducing, by impulse instead of attraction,
a sister planet into its orbit, will be as new in our political as in
the planetary system. The operation, however, will be painful rather
than difficult. The sound part of our wandering star will probably, by
its own internal energies, keep the unsound within its course; or if a
foreign power is called in, we shall have to meet it but so much the
nearer, and with a more overwhelming force. It will probably shorten
the war. For I think it probable that the _sine quâ non_ was designedly
put into an impossible form to give time for the development of their
plots and concerts with the factionists of Boston, and that they are
holding off to see the issue, not of the Congress of Vienna, but that
of Hartford. This will begin a new chapter in our history, and with a
wish that you may live in health to see its easy close, I tender you
the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO M. CORREA DE SERRA.
MONTICELLO, December 27, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 9th has been duly received, and I thank you
for the recipe for imitating purrolani, which I shall certainly try on
my cisterns the ensuing summer. The making them impermeable to water
is of great consequence to me. That one chemical subject may follow
another, I enclose you two morsels of ore found in this neighborhood,
and supposed to be of antimony. I am not certain, but I believe both are
from the same piece, and although the very spot where that was found is
not known, yet it is known to be within a certain space not too large
to be minutely examined, if the material be worth it. This you can have
ascertained in Philadelphia, where it is best known to the artists how
great a desideratum antimony is with them.
You will have seen that I resigned the chair of the American Philosophical
Society, not awaiting your further information as to the settlement of
the general opinion on a successor without schism. I did it because the
term of election was too near to admit further delay.
On the subject which entered incidentally into our conversation while
you were here, when I came to reflect maturely, I concluded to be silent.
To do wrong is a melancholy resource, even where retaliation renders it
indispensably necessary. It is better to suffer much from the scalpings,
the conflagrations, the rapes and rapine of savages, than to countenance
and strengthen such barbarisms by retortion. I have ever deemed it more
honorable and more profitable too, to set a good example than to follow
a bad one. The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes,
with the given fulcrum, moves the world. I therefore have never proposed
or mentioned the subject to any one.
I have received a letter from Mr. Say, in which he expresses a thought of
removing to this country, having discontinued the manufactory in which
he was engaged; and he asks information from me of the prices of land,
labor, produce, &c., in the neighborhood of Charlottesville, on which he
has cast his eye. Its neighborhood has certainly the advantages of good
soil, fine climate, navigation to market, and rational and republican
society. It would be a good enough position too for the re-establishment
of his cotton works, on a moderate scale, and combined with the small
plan of agriculture to which he seems solely to look. But when called
on to name prices, what is to be said? We have no fixed prices now. Our
dropsical medium is long since divested of the quality of a medium of
value; nor can I find any other. In most countries a fixed quantity of
wheat is perhaps the best permanent standard. But here the blockade of
our whole coast, preventing all access to a market, has depressed the
price of that, and exalted that of other things, in opposite directions,
and, combined with the effects of the paper deluge, leaves really no
common measure of values to be resorted to. This paper, too, received now
without confidence, and for momentary purposes only, may, in a moment,
be worth nothing. I shall think further on the subject, and give to Mr.
Say the best information in my power. To myself such an addition to our
rural society would be inestimable; and I can readily conceive that it
may be for the benefit of his children and their descendants to remove
to a country where, for enterprise and talents, so many avenues are open
to fortune and fame. But whether, at his time of life, and with habits
formed for the state of society in France, a change for one so entirely
different will be for his personal happiness, you can better judge than
myself.
Mr. Say will be surprised to find, that forty years after the development
of sound financial principles by Adam Smith and the Economists, and a
dozen years after he has given them to us in a corrected, dense, and
lucid form, there should be so much ignorance of them in our country;
that instead of funding issues of paper on the hypothecation of specific
redeeming taxes, (the only method of anticipating, in a time of war,
the resources of times of peace, tested by the experience of nations,)
we are trusting to tricks of jugglers on the cards, to the illusions of
banking schemes for the resources of the war, and for the cure of colic
to inflations of more wind. The wise proposition of the Secretary at War,
too, for filling our ranks with regulars, and putting our militia into
an effective form, seems to be laid aside. I fear, therefore, that, if
the war continues, it will require another year of sufferance for men
and money to lead our legislators into such a military and financial
regimen as may carry us through a war of any length. But my hope is in
peace. The negotiators at Ghent are agreed now on every point save one,
the demand and cession of a portion of Maine. This, it is well known,
cannot be yielded by us, nor deemed by them an object for continuing
a war so expensive, so injurious to their commerce and manufactures,
and so odious in the eyes of the world. But it is a thread to hold by
until they can hear the result, not of the Congress of Vienna, but of
Hartford. When they shall know, as they will know, that nothing will be
done there, they will let go their hold, and complete the peace of the
world, by agreeing to the _status ante bellum_. Indemnity for the past,
and security for the future, which was our motto at the beginning of
this war, must be adjourned to another, when, disarmed and bankrupt, our
enemy shall be less able to insult and plunder the world with impunity.
This will be after my time. One war, such as that of our Revolution, is
enough for one life. Mine has been too much prolonged to make me the
witness of a second, and I hope for a _coup de grace_ before a third
shall come upon us. If, indeed, Europe has matters to settle which may
reduce this _hostis humani generis_ to a state of peace and moral order,
I shall see that with pleasure, and then sing, with old Simeon, _nunc
dimittas Domine_. For yourself, _cura ut valeas, et me, ut amaris, ama_.
TO COLONEL MONROE.
MONTICELLO, January 1, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your letters of November the 30th and December the 21st have
been received with great pleasure. A truth now and then projecting into
the ocean of newspaper lies, serves like head-lands to correct our course.
Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper, makes me
indifferent whether I ever see one. The embarrassments at Washington,
in August last, I expected would be great in any state of things; but
they proved greater than expected. I never doubted that the plans of
the President were wise and sufficient. Their failure we all impute, 1,
to the insubordinate temper of Armstrong; and 2, to the indecision of
Winder. However, it ends well. It mortifies ourselves, and so may check,
perhaps, the silly boasting spirit of our newspapers, and it enlists the
feelings of the world on our side; and the advantage of public opinion
is like that of the weather-gauge in a naval action. In Europe, the
transient possession of our Capital can be no disgrace. Nearly every
Capital there was in possession of its enemy; some often and long. But
diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor
private dwellings. It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte,
in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals. They
are taking his place in the eyes of Europe, and have turned into our
channel all its good will. This will be worth the million of dollars the
repairs of their conflagration will cost us. I hope that to preserve
this weather-gauge of public opinion, and to counteract the slanders
and falsehoods disseminated by the English papers, the government will
make it a standing instruction to their ministers at foreign courts, to
keep Europe truly informed of occurrences here, by publishing in their
papers the naked truth always, whether favorable or unfavorable. For
they will believe the good, if we candidly tell them the bad also.
But you have two more serious causes of uneasiness; the want of men and
money. For the former, nothing more wise or efficient could have been
imagined than what you proposed. It would have filled our ranks with
regulars, and that, too, by throwing a just share of the burthen on the
purses of those whose persons are exempt either by age or office; and it
would have rendered our militia, like those of the Greeks and Romans,
a nation of warriors. But the go-by seems to have been given to your
proposition, and longer sufferance is necessary to force us to what is
best. We seem equally incorrigible to our financial course. Although
a century of British experience has proved to what a wonderful extent
the funding on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to anticipate
in war the resources of peace, and although the other nations of Europe
have tried and trodden every path of force or folly in fruitless quest
of the same object, yet we still expect to find in juggling tricks and
banking dreams, that money can be made out of nothing, and in sufficient
quantity to meet the expenses of a heavy war by sea and land. It is said,
indeed, that money cannot be borrowed from our merchants as from those
of England. But it can be borrowed from our people. They will give you
all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the bankrupt
trash they now are obliged to receive for want of any other, you will
give them a paper promise funded on a specific pledge, and of a size
for common circulation. But you say the merchants will not take this
paper. What the people take the merchants must take, or sell nothing.
All these doubts and fears prove only the extent of the dominion which
the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens,
and especially of those inhabiting cities or other banking places;
and this dominion must be broken, or it will break us. But here, as in
the other case, we must make up our minds to suffer yet longer before
we can get right. The misfortune is, that in the meantime we shall
plunge ourselves in unextinguishable debt, and entail on our posterity
an inheritance of eternal taxes, which will bring our government and
people into the condition of those of England, a nation of pikes and
gudgeons, the latter bred merely as food for the former. But, however
these difficulties of men and money may be disposed of, it is fortunate
that neither of them will affect our war by sea. Privateers will find
their own men and money. Let nothing be spared to encourage them. They
are the dagger which strikes at the heart of the enemy, their commerce.
Frigates and seventy-fours are a sacrifice we must make, heavy as it is,
to the prejudices of a part of our citizens. They have, indeed, rendered
a great moral service, which has delighted me as much as any one in the
United States. But they have had no physical effect sensible to the enemy;
and now, while we must fortify them in our harbors, and keep armies to
defend them, our _privateers_ are bearding and blockading the enemy in
their own seaports. Encourage them to burn all their prizes, and let the
public pay for them. They will cheat us enormously. No matter; they will
make the merchants of England feel, and squeal, and cry out for peace.
I much regretted your acceptance of the war department. Not that I know
a person who I think would better conduct it. But, conduct it ever so
wisely, it will be a sacrifice of yourself. Were an angel from Heaven
to undertake that office, all our miscarriages would be ascribed to
him. Raw troops, no troops, insubordinate militia, want of arms, want of
money, want of provisions, all will be charged to want of management in
you. I speak from experience, when I was Governor of Virginia. Without
a regular in the State, and scarcely a musket to put into the hands
of the militia, invaded by two armies, Arnold's from the sea-board and
Cornwallis' from the southward, when we were driven from Richmond and
Charlottesville, and every member of my council fled from their homes,
it was not the total destitution of means, but the mismanagement of them,
which, in the querulous voice of the public, caused all our misfortunes.
It ended, indeed, in the capture of the whole hostile force, but not till
means were brought us by General Washington's army, and the French fleet
and army. And although the legislature, who were personally intimate
with both the means and measures, acquitted me with justice and thanks,
yet General Lee has put all those imputations among the romances of
his historical novel, for the amusement of credulous and uninquisitive
readers. Not that I have seen the least disposition to censure you.
On the contrary, your conduct on the attack of Washington has met the
praises of every one, and your plan for regulars and militia, their
approbation. But no campaign is as yet opened. No Generals have yet an
interest in shifting their own incompetence on you, no army agents their
rogueries. I sincerely pray you may never meet censure where you will
deserve most praise, and that your own happiness and prosperity may be
the result of your patriotic services.
Ever and affectionately yours.
TO MR. GIRARDIN.
MONTICELLO, January 15, 1815.
I have no document respecting Clarke's expedition, except the letters of
which you are in possession, one of which, I believe, gives some account
of it; nor do I possess Imlay's history of Kentucky.
Of Mr. Wythe's early history I scarcely know anything, except that he
was self-taught; and perhaps this might not have been as to the Latin
language, Dr. Small was his bosom friend, and to me as a father. To his
enlightened and affectionate guidance of my studies while at College,
I am indebted for everything.
He was Professor of Mathematics at William and Mary, and, for some time,
was in the philosophical chair. He first introduced into both schools
rational and elevated courses of study, and, from an extraordinary
conjunction of eloquence and logic, was enabled to communicate them to
the students with great effect. He procured for me the patronage of Mr.
Wythe, and both of them, the attentions of Governor Fauquier, the ablest
man who ever filled the chair of government here. They were inseparable
friends, and at their frequent dinners with the Governor, (after his
family had returned to England,) he admitted me always, to make it a
_partie quarrée_. At these dinners I have heard more good sense, more
rational and philosophical conversations, than in all my life besides.
They were truly Attic societies. The Governor was musical also, and a
good performer, and associated me with two or three other amateurs in
his weekly concerts. He merits honorable mention in your history, if any
proper occasion offers. So also does Dabney Carr, father of Peter Carr,
mover of the proposition of March, 1773, for committees of correspondence,
the first fruit of which was the call of an American Congress. I return
your two pamphlets with my thanks, and salute you with esteem and respect.
TO CHARLES CLAS, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 29, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of December 20th was four weeks on its way to
me. I thank you for it; for although founded on a misconception, it
is evidence of that friendly concern for my peace and welfare, which
I have ever believed you to feel. Of publishing a book on religion,
my dear Sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing
for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of
these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every
one of which believes all wrong but his own. To undertake to bring
them all right, would be like undertaking, single-handed, to fell the
forests of America. Probably you have heard me say I had taken the
four Evangelists, had cut out from them every text they had recorded
of the moral precepts of Jesus, and arranged them in a certain order,
and although they appeared but as fragments, yet fragments of the most
sublime edifice of morality which had ever been exhibited to man. This
I have probably mentioned to you, because it is true; and the idea of
its publication may have suggested itself as an inference of your own
mind. I not only write nothing on religion, but rarely permit myself to
speak on it, and never but in a reasonable society. I have probably said
more to you than to any other person, because we have had more hours
of conversation in _duetto_ in our meetings at the Forest. I abuse the
priests, indeed, who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of
their master, and who have laid me under no obligations of reticence
as to the tricks of their trade. The genuine system of Jesus, and the
artificial structures they have erected, to make them the instruments
of wealth, power, and preëminence to themselves, are as distinct things
in my view as light and darkness; and while I have classed them with
soothsayers and necromancers, I place him among the greatest reformers
of morals, and scourges of priest-craft that have ever existed. They
felt him as such, and never rested until they had silenced him by death.
But his heresies against Judaism prevailing in the long run, the priests
have tacked about, and rebuilt upon them the temple which he destroyed,
as splendid, as profitable, and as imposing as that.
Government, as well as religion, has furnished its schisms, its
persecutions, and its devices for flattering idleness on the earnings of
the people. It has its hierarchy of emperors, kings, princes, and nobles,
as that has of popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests.
In short, cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only,
but are revelling on the blood of every living people. Turning, then,
from this loathsome combination of Church and State, and weeping over
the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes
and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as
desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.
I have received from Philadelphia, by mail, the spectacles you had
desired, and now forward them by the same conveyance, as equally safe
and more in time, than were they to await my own going. In a separate
case is a complete set of glasses, from early use to old age. I think
the pair now in the frames will suit your eyes, but should they not, you
will easily change them by the screws. I believe the largest numbers
are the smallest magnifiers, but am not certain. Trial will readily
ascertain it. You must do me the favor to accept them as a token of my
friendship, and with them the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO GOVERNOR PLUMER.
MONTICELLO, January 31, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of December 30th has been received. In answer to
your question whether in the course of my reading I have ever found that
any country or even considerable island was without inhabitants when first
discovered? I must answer, with Mr. Adams, in the negative. Although the
fact is curious, it had never before struck my attention. Some small
islands have been found, and are at this day, without inhabitants,
but this is easily accounted for. Man being a gregarious animal, will
not remain but where there can be a sufficient herd of his own kind to
satisfy his social propensities. Add to this that insulated settlements,
if small, would be liable to extirpations by occasional epidemics.
I thank you for the pamphlet you have been so kind as to send me, and have
read it with much satisfaction. But with those to whom it is addressed
Moses and the prophets have no authority but when administering to their
worldly gain. The paradox with me is how any friend to the union of
our country can, in conscience, contribute a cent to the maintenance of
any one who perverts the sanctity of his desk to the open inculcation
of rebellion, civil war, dissolution of government, and the miseries
of anarchy. When England took alarm lest France, become republican,
should recover energies dangerous to her, she employed emissaries with
means to engage incendiaries and anarchists in the disorganization of
all government there. These, assuming exaggerated zeal for republican
government and the rights of the people, crowded their inscriptions
into the Jacobin societies, and overwhelming by their majorities the
honest and enlightened patriots of the original institution, distorted
its objects, pursued its genuine founders under the name of Brissotines
and Girondists unto death, intrigued themselves into the municipality
of Paris, controlled by terrorism the proceedings of the legislature,
in which they were faithfully aided by their costipendaries there, the
Dantons and Marats of the Mountain, murdered their king, septembrized
the nation, and thus accomplished their stipulated task of demolishing
liberty and government with it. England now fears the rising force of
this republican nation, and by the same means is endeavoring to effect
the same course of miseries and destruction here; it is impossible
where one sees like courses of events commence, not to ascribe them
to like causes. We know that the government of England, maintaining
itself by corruption at home, uses the same means in other countries of
which she has any jealousy, by subsidizing agitators and traitors among
themselves to distract and paralyze them. She sufficiently manifests
that she has no disposition to spare ours. We see in the proceedings
of Massachusetts, symptoms which plainly indicate such a course, and we
know as far as such practices can ever be dragged into light, that she
has practiced, and with success, on leading individuals of that State.
Nay further, we see those individuals acting on the very plan which our
information had warned us was settled between the parties. These elements
of explanation history cannot fail of putting together in recording the
crime of combining with the oppressors of the earth to extinguish the
last spark of human hope, that here, at length, will be preserved a model
of government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor,
by an organization constantly subject to his own will. The crime indeed,
if accomplished, would immortalize its perpetrators, and their names
would descend in history with those of Robespierre and his associates, as
the guardian genii of despotism, and demons of human liberty. I do not
mean to say that all who are acting with these men are under the same
motives. I know some of them personally to be incapable of it. Nor was
that the case with the disorganizers and assassins of Paris. Delusions
there, and party perversions here, furnish unconscious assistants to the
hired actors in these atrocious scenes. But I have never entertained one
moment's fear on this subject. The people of this country enjoy too much
happiness to risk it for nothing; and I have never doubted that whenever
the incendiaries of Massachusetts should venture openly to raise the
standard of separation, its citizens would rise in mass and do justice
themselves to their own parricides.
I am glad to learn that you persevere in your historical work. I am
sure it will be executed on sound principles of Americanism, and I hope
your opportunities will enable you to make the abortive crimes of the
present, useful as a lesson for future times.
In aid of your general work I possess no materials whatever, or they
should be entirely at your service; and I am sorry that I have not a
single copy of the pamphlet you ask, entitled "A Summary View of the
Rights of British America." It was the draught of an instruction which
I had meant to propose for our delegates to the first Congress. Being
prevented by sickness from attending our convention, I sent it to them,
and they printed without adopting it, in the hope that conciliation was
not yet desperate. Its only merit was in being the first publication
which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted
that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but
that of being under the same king. Haring's collection of our statutes
is published, I know, as far as the third volume, bringing them down to
1710; and I rather believe a fourth has appeared. One more will probably
complete the work of the revolution, and will be to us an inestimable
treasure, as being the only collection of all the acts of our legislatures
now extant in print or manuscript.
Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO JOHN VAUGHAN, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 5, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your very friendly letter of January 4th is but just received,
and I am much gratified by the interest taken by yourself, and others
of my colleagues of the Philosophical Society, in what concerned myself
on withdrawing from the presidency of the Society. My desire to do so
had been so long known to every member, and the continuance of it to
some, that I did not suppose it can be misunderstood by the public.
Setting aside the consideration of distance, which must be obvious to
all, nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they should
get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they
can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform. I rejoice
in the election of Dr. Wistar, and trust that his senior standing in
the society will have been considered as a fair motive of preference of
those whose merits, standing alone, would have justly entitled them to
the honor, and who, as juniors, according to the course of nature, may
still expect their turn.
I have received, with very great pleasure, the visit of Mr. Ticknor,
and find him highly distinguished by science and good sense. He
was accompanied by Mr. Gray, son of the late Lieutenant Governor of
Massachusetts, of great information and promise also. It gives me
ineffable comfort to see such subjects coming forward to take charge of
the political and civil rights, the establishment of which has cost us
such sacrifices. Mr. Ticknor will be fortunate if he can get under the
wing of Mr. Correa; and, if the happiness of Mr. Correa requires (as
I suppose it does) his return to Europe, we must sacrifice it to that
which his residence here would have given us, and acquiesce under the
regrets which our transient acquaintance with his worth cannot fail to
embody with our future recollections of him. Of Michaux's work I possess
three volumes, or rather _catriers_, one on Oaks, another on Beeches
and Birches, and a third on Pines.
I salute you with great friendship and respect.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY MR. CRAWFORD.
MONTICELLO, February 11, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for your letter of June 16th. It presents
those special views of the state of things in Europe, for which we look
in vain into newspapers. They tell us only of the downfall of Bonaparte,
but nothing of the temper, the views, the secret workings of the high
agents in these transactions. Although we neither expected, nor wished
any act of friendship from Bonaparte, and always detested him as a
tyrant, yet he gave employment to much of the force of the nation who
was our common enemy. So far, his downfall was illy timed for us; it
gave to England an opportunity to turn full-handed on us, when we were
unprepared. No matter, we can beat her on our own soil, leaving the laws
of the ocean to be settled by the maritime powers of Europe, who are
equally oppressed and insulted by the usurpations of England on that
element. Our particular and separate grievance is only the impressment
of our citizens. We must sacrifice the last dollar and drop of blood to
rid us of that badge of slavery; and it must rest with England alone to
say whether it is worth eternal war, for eternal it must be if she holds
to the wrong. She will probably find that the six thousand citizens she
took from us by impressment have already cost her ten thousand guineas a
man, and will cost her, in addition, the half of that annually, during
the continuance of the war, besides the captures on the ocean, and the
loss of our commerce. She might certainly find cheaper means of manning
her fleet, or, if to be manned at this expense, her fleet will break
her down. The first year of our warfare by land was disastrous. Detroit,
Queenstown, Frenchtown, and Beaver Dam, witness that. But the second was
generally successful, and the third entirely so, both by sea and land.
For I set down the _coup de main_ at Washington as more disgraceful to
England than to us. The victories of the last year at Chippewa, Niagara,
Fort Erie, Plattsburg, and New Orleans, the capture of their two fleets
on Lakes Erie and Champlain, and repeated triumphs of our frigates over
hers, whenever engaging with equal force, show that we have officers now
becoming prominent, and capable of making them feel the superiority of
our means, in a war on our own soil. Our means are abundant both as to
men and money, wanting only skilful arrangement; and experience alone
brings skill. As to men, nothing wiser can be devised than what the
Secretary at War (Monroe) proposed in his Report at the commencement of
Congress. It would have kept our regular army always of necessity full,
and by classing our militia according to ages, would have put them into
a form ready for whatever service, distant or at home, should require
them. Congress have not adopted it, but their next experiment will lead
to it. Our financial system is, at least, arranged. The fatal possession
of the whole circulating medium by our banks, the excess of those
institutions, and their present discredit, cause all our difficulties.
Treasury notes of small as well as high denomination, bottomed on a tax
which would redeem them in ten years, would place at our disposal the
whole circulating medium of the United States; a fund of credit sufficient
to carry us through any probable length of war. A small issue of such
paper is now commencing. It will immediately supersede the bank paper;
nobody receiving that now but for the purposes of the day, and never in
payments which are to lie by for any time. In fact, all the banks having
declared they will not give cash in exchange for their own notes, these
circulate merely because there is no other medium of exchange. As soon
as the treasury notes get into circulation, the others will cease to
hold any competition with them. I trust that another year will confirm
this experiment, and restore this fund to the public, who ought never
more to permit its being filched from them by private speculators and
disorganizers of the circulation.
Do they send you from Washington the Historical Register of the United
States? It is published there annually, and gives a succinct and judicious
history of the events of the war, not too long to be inserted in the
European newspapers, and would keep the European public truly informed,
by correcting the lying statements of the British papers. It gives, too,
all the public documents of any value. Niles' Weekly Register is also
an excellent repository of facts and documents, and has the advantage
of coming out weekly, whereas the other is yearly.
This will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman of Boston, of
high education and great promise. After going through his studies here,
he goes to Europe to finish them, and to see what is to be seen there.
He brought me high recommendations from Mr. Adams and others, and from a
stay of some days with me, I was persuaded he merited them, as he will
whatever attentions you will be so good as to show him. I pray you to
accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
P. S. _February 26th._ On the day of the date of this letter the news
of peace reached Washington, and this place two days after. I am glad
of it, although no provision being made against the impressment of our
seamen, it is in fact but an armistice, to be terminated by the first
act of impressment committed on an American citizen. It may be thought
that useless blood was spilt at New Orleans, after the treaty of peace
had been actually signed and ratified. I think it had many valuable
uses. It proved the fidelity of the Orleanese to the United States. It
proved that New Orleans can be defended both by land and water; that the
western country will fly to its relief (of which ourselves had doubted
before); that our militia are heroes when they have heroes to lead them
on; and that, when unembarrassed by field evolutions, which they do not
understand, their skill in the fire-arm, and deadly aim, give them great
advantages over regulars. What nonsense for the manakin Prince Regent
to talk of their conquest of the country east of the Penobscot river!
Then, as in the revolutionary war, their conquests were never more than
of the spot on which their army stood, never extended beyond the range
of their cannon shot. If England is now wise or just enough to settle
peaceably the question of impressment, the late treaty may become one
of peace, and of long peace. We owe to their past follies and wrongs
the incalculable advantage of being made independent of them for every
material manufacture. These have taken such root, in our private families
especially, that nothing now can ever extirpate them.
TO THE MARQUIS DE 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 untried characters had been most unfortunate.
The delivery of the fort and army of Detroit by the traitor Hull; the
disgrace at Queenstown, under Van Rensselaer; 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 conflagrations
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, edited 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 Tessé.
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.
TO M. DUPONT DE NEMOURS.
MONTICELLO, February 28, 1815.
MY DEAR AND RESPECTED FRIEND,--My last to you was of November 29th and
December 13th, 14th, since which I have received yours of July 14th.
I have to congratulate you, which I do sincerely on having got back
from Robespierre and Bonaparte, to your anti-revolutionary condition.
You are now nearly where you were at the _jeu de paume_ on the 20th of
June, 1789. The king would then have yielded, by convention, freedom
of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, _habeas corpus_,
and a representative legislature. These I consider as the essentials
constituting free government, and that the organization of the Executive
is interesting, as it may ensure wisdom and integrity in the first
place, but next as it may favor or endanger the preservation of these
fundamentals. Although I do not think the late capitulation of the king
quite equal to all this, yet believing his dispositions to be moderate
and friendly to the happiness of the people, and seeing that he is
without the bias of issue, I am in hopes your patriots may, by constant
and prudent pressure, obtain from him what is still wanting to give you
a temperate degree of freedom and security. Should this not be done, I
should really apprehend a relapse into discontents, which might again
let in Bonaparte.
Here, at length, we have peace. But I view it as an armistice only,
because no provision is made against the practice of impressment. As
this, then, will revive in the first moment of a war in Europe, its
revival will be a declaration of war here. Our whole business, in the
meantime, ought to be a sedulous preparation for it, fortifying our
seaports, filling our magazines, classing and disciplining our militia,
forming officers, and above all, establishing a sound system of finance.
You will see by the want of system in this last department, and even the
want of principles, how much we are in arrears in that science. With
sufficient means in the hands of our citizens, and sufficient will to
bestow them on the government, we are floundering in expedients equally
unproductive and ruinous; and proving how little are understood here those
sound principles of political economy first developed by the economists,
since commented and dilated by Smith, Say, yourself, and the luminous
reviewer of Montesquieu. I have been endeavoring to get the able paper
on this subject, which you addressed to me in July, 1810, and enlarged
in a copy received the last year, translated and printed here, in order
to draw the attention of our citizens to this subject; but have not as
yet succeeded. Our printers are enterprising only in novels and light
reading. The readers of works of science, although in considerable
number, are so sparse in their situations, that such works are of slow
circulation. But I shall persevere.
This letter will be delivered to you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman
from Massachusetts, of much erudition and great merit. He has completed
his course of law and reading, and, before entering on the practice,
proposes to pass two or three years in seeing Europe, and adding to his
stores of knowledge which he can acquire there. Should he enter the career
of politics in his own country, he will go far in obtaining its honors
and powers. He is worthy of any friendly offices you may be so good
as to render him, and to his acknowledgments of them will be added my
own. By him I send you a copy of the Review of Montesquieu, from my own
shelf, the impression being, I believe, exhausted by the late President
of the College of Williamsburg having adopted it as the elementary book
there. I am persuading the author to permit me to give his name to the
public, and to permit the original to be printed in Paris. Although your
presses, I observe, are put under the leading strings of your government,
yet this is such a work as would have been licensed at any period, early
or late, of the reign of Louis XVI. Surely the present government will
not expect to repress the progress of the public mind further back than
that. I salute you with all veneration and affection.
TO JEAN BATISTE SAY.
MONTICELLO, March 2, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of June 15th came to hand in December, and it is
not till the ratification of our peace, that a safe conveyance for an
answer could be obtained. I thank you for the copy of the new edition
of your work which accompanied your letter. I had considered it in its
first form as superseding all other works on that subject; and shall
set proportional value on any improvement of it. I should have been
happy to have received your son here, as expected from your letter, on
his passage through this State; and to have given proofs through him
of my respect for you. But I live far from the great stage road which
forms the communication of our States from north to south, and such
a deviation was probably not admitted by his business. The question
proposed in my letter of February 1st, 1804, has since become quite a
"question viseuse." I had then persuaded myself that a nation, distant
as we are from the contentions of Europe, avoiding all offences to other
powers, and not over-hasty in resenting offence from them, doing justice
to all, faithfully fulfilling the duties of neutrality, performing all
offices of amity, and administering to their interests by the benefits
of our commerce, that such a nation, I say, might expect to live in
peace, and consider itself merely as a member of the great family of
mankind; that in such case it might devote itself to whatever it could
best produce, secure of a peaceable exchange of surplus for what could
be more advantageously furnished by others, as takes place between one
county and another of France. But experience has shown that continued
peace depends not merely on our own justice and prudence, but on that of
others also; that when forced into war, the interception of exchanges
which must be made across a wide ocean, becomes a powerful weapon in
the hands of an enemy domineering over that element, and to the other
distresses of war adds the want of all those necessaries for which
we have permitted ourselves to be dependent on others, even arms and
clothing. This fact, therefore, solves the question by reducing it to its
ultimate form, whether profit or preservation is the first interest of a
State? We are consequently become manufacturers to a degree incredible
to those who do not see it, and who only consider the short period of
time during which we have been driven to them by the suicidal policy
of England. The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign
manufacture which prudence requires us to establish at home, with the
patriotic determination of every good citizen to use no foreign article
which can be made within ourselves, without regard to difference of
price, secures us against a relapse into foreign dependency. And this
circumstance may be worthy of your consideration, should you continue in
the disposition to emigrate to this country. Your manufactory of cotton,
on a moderate scale combined with a farm, might be preferable to either
singly, and the one or the other might become principal, as experience
should recommend. Cotton ready spun is in ready demand, and if woven,
still more so.
I will proceed now to answer the inquiries which respect your views
of removal; and I am glad that, in looking over our map, your eye has
been attracted by the village of Charlottesville, because I am better
acquainted with that than any other portion of the United States, being
within three or four miles of the place of my birth and residence. It
is a portion of country which certainly possesses great advantages. Its
soil is equal in natural fertility to any high lands I have ever seen;
it is red and hilly, very like much of the country of Champagne and
Burgundy, on the route of Sens, Vermanton, Vitteaux, Dijon, and along
the Cote to Chagny, excellently adapted to wheat, maize, and clover;
like all mountainous countries it is perfectly healthy, liable to no
agues and fevers, or to any particular epidemic, as is evidenced by the
robust constitution of its inhabitants, and their numerous families. As
many instances of nonagenaires exist habitually in this neighborhood
as in the same degree of population anywhere. Its temperature may be
considered as a medium of that of the United States. The extreme of cold
in ordinary winters being about 7° of Reaumur below zero (French. =16°),
and in the severest, 12° (French. =5°), while the ordinary mornings are
above zero. The maximum of heat in summer is about 28° (French. =96°),
of which we have one or two instances in a summer for a few hours. About
ten or twelve days in July and August, the thermometer rises for two
or three hours to about 23° (French. =84°), while the ordinary mid-day
heat of those months is about 21° (French. =80°), the mercury continuing
at that two or three hours, and falling in the evening to about 17°
(French. =70°). White frosts commence about the middle of October, tender
vegetables are in danger from them till nearly the middle of April. The
mercury begins, about the middle of November, to be occasionally at the
freezing point, and ceases to be so about the middle of March. We have
of freezing nights about fifty in the course of the winter, but not
more than ten days in which the mercury does not rise above the freezing
point. Fire is desirable even in close apartments whenever the outward
air is below 10, (=55° Fahrenheit,) and that is the case with us through
the day, one hundred and thirty two days in the year, and on mornings
and evenings sixty-eight days more. So that we have constant fires five
months, and a little over two months more on mornings and evenings.
Observations made at Yorktown in the lower country, show that they need
seven days less of constant fires, and thirty-eight less of mornings and
evenings. On an average of seven years I have found our snows amount
in the whole to fifteen inches depth, and to cover the ground fifteen
days; these, with the rains, give us four feet of water in the year. The
garden pea, which we are now sowing, comes to table about the 12th of
May; strawberries and cherries about the same time; asparagus the 1st
of April. The artichoke stands the winter without cover; lettuce and
endive with a slight one of bushes, and often without any; and the fig,
protected by a little straw, begins to ripen in July; if unprotected,
not till the 1st of September. There is navigation for boats of six tons
from Charlottesville to Richmond, the nearest tide-water, and principal
market for our produce. The country is what we call well inhabited, there
being in our county, Albemarle, of about seven hundred and fifty square
miles, about twenty thousand inhabitants, or twenty-seven to a square
mile, of whom, however, one half are people of color, either slaves or
free. The society is much better than is common in country situations;
perhaps there is not a better _country_ society in the United States.
But do not imagine this a Parisian or an academical society. It consists
of plain, honest, and rational neighbors, some of them well informed and
men of reading, all superintending their farms, hospitable and friendly,
and speaking nothing but English. The manners of every nation are the
standard of orthodoxy within itself. But these standards being arbitrary,
reasonable people in all allow free toleration for the manners, as
for the religion of others. Our culture is of wheat for market, and of
maize, oats, peas, and clover, for the support of the farm. We reckon
it a good distribution to divide a farm into three fields, putting one
into wheat, half a one into maize, the other half into oats or peas,
and the third into clover, and to tend the fields successively in this
rotation. Some woodland in addition, is always necessary to furnish
fuel, fences, and timber for constructions. Our best farmers (such as
Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law) get from ten to twenty bushels of wheat to
the acre; our worst (such as myself) from six to eighteen, with little
or more manuring. The bushel of wheat is worth in common times about
one dollar. The common produce of maize is from ten to twenty bushels,
worth half a dollar the bushel, which is of a cubic foot and a quarter,
or, more exactly, of two thousand one hundred and seventy-eight cubic
inches. From these data you may judge best for yourself of the size of
the farm which would suit your family; bearing in mind, that while you
can be furnished by the farm itself for consumption, with every article
it is adapted to produce, the sale of your wheat at market is to furnish
the fund for all other necessary articles. I will add that both soil and
climate are admirably adapted to the vine, which is the abundant natural
production of our forests, and that you cannot bring a more valuable
laborer than one acquainted with both its culture and manipulation into
wine.
Your only inquiry now unanswered is, the price of these lands. To answer
this with precision, would require details too long for a letter; the
fact being, that we have no metallic measure of values at present, while
we are overwhelmed with bank paper. The depreciation of this swells
nominal prices, without furnishing any stable index of real value. I
will endeavor briefly to give you an idea of this state of things by an
outline of its history.
In 1781 we had 1 bank, its capital $1,000,000
" 1791 " 6 " 13,135,000
" 1794 " 17 " 18,642,000
" 1796 " 24 " 20,472,000
" 1803 " 34 " 29,112,000
" 1804 " 66 their amount of capital not known.
And at this time we have probably one hundred banks, with capitals
amounting to one hundred millions of dollars, on which they are authorized
by law to issue notes to three times that amount, so that our circulating
medium may now be estimated at from two to three hundred millions of
dollars, on a population of eight and a half millions. The banks were
able, for awhile, to keep this trash at par with metallic money, or
rather to depreciate the metals to a par with their paper, by keeping
deposits of cash sufficient to exchange for such of their notes as they
were called on to pay in cash. But the circumstances of the war draining
away all our specie, all these banks have stopped payment, but with a
promise to resume specie exchanges whenever circumstances shall produce a
return of the metals. Some of the most prudent and honest will possibly
do this; but the mass of them never will nor can. Yet, having no other
medium, we take their paper, of necessity, for purposes of the instant,
but never to lay by us. The government is now issuing treasury notes for
circulation, bottomed on solid funds, and bearing interest. The banking
confederacy (and the merchants bound to them by their debts) will endeavor
to crush the credit of these notes; but the country is eager for them,
as something they can trust to, and so soon as a convenient quantity
of them can get into circulation, the bank notes die. You may judge
that, in this state of things, the holders of bank notes will give free
prices for lands, and that were I to tell you simply the present prices
of lands in this medium, it would give you no idea on which you could
calculate. But I will state to you the progressive prices which have
been paid for particular parcels of land for some years back, which may
enable you to distinguish between the real increase of value regularly
produced by our advancement in population, wealth, and skill, and the
bloated value arising from the present disordered and dropsical state
of our medium. There are two tracts of land adjoining me, and another
not far off, all of excellent quality, which happen to have been sold
at different epochs as follows:
One was sold in 1793 for $4 an acre, in 1812, at $10,
and is now rated $16.
The 2d " 1786 " 5⅓ " 1803 " 10
and is now rated $20.
The 3d " 1797 " 7 " 1811 " 16
and is now rated $20.
On the whole, however, I suppose we may estimate that the steady annual
rise of our lands is in a geometrical ratio of 5 per cent.; that were
our medium now in a wholesome state, they might be estimated at from
twelve to fifteen dollars the acre; and I may add, I believe with
correctness, that there is not any part of the Atlantic States where
lands of equal quality and advantages can be had as cheap. When sold
with a dwelling-house on them, little additional is generally asked for
the house. These buildings are generally of wooden materials, and of
indifferent structure and accommodation. Most of the hired labor here is
of people of color, either slaves or free. An able-bodied man has sixty
dollars a year, and is clothed and fed by the employer; a woman half that.
White laborers may be had, but they are less subordinate, their wages
higher, and their nourishment much more expensive. A good horse for the
plough costs fifty or sixty dollars. A draught ox twenty to twenty-five
dollars. A milch cow fifteen to eighteen dollars. A sheep two dollars.
Beef is about five cents, mutton and pork seven cents the pound. A turkey
or goose fifty cents apiece, a chicken eight and one-third cents; a
dozen eggs the same. Fresh butter twenty to twenty-five cents the pound.
And, to render as full as I can the information which may enable you
to calculate for yourself, I enclose you a Philadelphia price-current,
giving the prices in regular times of most of the articles of produce
or manufacture, foreign and domestic.
That it may be for the benefit of your children and their descendants to
remove to a country where, for enterprise and talents, so many avenues
are open to fortune and fame, I have little doubt. But I should be afraid
to affirm that, at your time of life, and with habits formed on the state
of society in France, a change for one so entirely different would be
for your personal happiness. Fearful therefore to persuade, I shall add
with sincere truth, that I shall very highly estimate the addition of
such a neighbor to our society, and that there is no service within my
power which I shall not render with pleasure and promptitude. With this
assurance be pleased to accept that of my great esteem and respect.
P. S. This letter will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman
of Massachusetts, of great erudition and worth, and who will be gratified
by the occasion of being presented to the author of the Traité d'Economie
Politique.
TO FRANCIS C. GRAY, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, March 4, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Despatching to Mr. Ticknor my packet of letters for Paris,
it occurs to me that I committed an error in a matter of information
which you asked of me while here. It is indeed of little importance,
yet as well corrected as otherwise, and the rather as it gives me an
occasion of renewing my respects to you. You asked me in conversation,
what constituted a mulatto by our law? And I believe I told you four
crossings with the whites. I looked afterwards into our law, and found
it to be in these words: "Every person, other than a negro, of whose
grandfathers or grandmothers any one shall have been a negro, shall be
deemed a mulatto, and so every such person who shall have one-fourth
part or more of negro blood, shall in like manner be deemed a mulatto";
L. Virgà 1792, December 17: the case put in the first member of this
paragraph of the law is _exempli gratiâ_. The latter contains the true
canon, which is that one-fourth of negro blood, mixed with any portion
of white, constitutes the mulatto. As the issue has one-half of the
blood of each parent, and the blood of each of these may be made up
of a variety of fractional mixtures, the estimate of their compound in
some cases may be intricate, it becomes a mathematical problem of the
same class with those on the mixtures of different liquors or different
metals; as in these, therefore, the algebraical notation is the most
convenient and intelligible. Let us express the pure blood of the white
in the capital letters of the printed alphabet, the pure blood of the
negro in the small letters of the printed alphabet, and any given mixture
of either, by way of abridgement in MS. letters.
Let the first crossing be of _a_, pure negro, with A, pure white. The
unit of blood of the issue being composed of the half of that of each
parent, will be _a_/2 + A/2. Call it, for abbreviation, _h_ (half blood.)
Let the second crossing be of _h_ and B, the blood of the issue will be
_h_/2 + B/2, or substituting for _h_/2 its equivalent, it will be _a_/4
+ A/4 + B/2 call it _q_ (quarteroon) being 1/4 negro blood.
Let the third crossing be of _q_ and C, their offspring will be _q_/2 +
C/2 = _a_/8 + A/8 + B/4 + C/2, call this _e_ (eighth), who having less
than 1/4 of _a_, or of pure negro blood, to wit 1/8 only, is no longer a
mulatto, so that a third cross clears the blood.
From these elements let us examine their compounds. For example, let
_h_ and _q_ cohabit, their issue will be _h_/2 + _q_/2 = _a_/4 + A/4 +
_a_/8 + A/8 + B/4 = 3_a_/8 + 3A/8 + B/4 wherein we find 3/8 of _a_, or
negro blood.
Let _h_ and _e_ cohabit, their issue will be _h_/2 + _e_/2 = _a_/4 +
A/4 + _a_/16 + A/16 + B/8 + _c_/4 = 5_a_/16 + 5A/16 + B/8 + _c_/4,
wherein 5/16 _a_ makes still a mulatto.
Let _q_ and _e_ cohabit, the half of the blood of each will be _q_/2 +
_e_/2 = _a_/8 + A/8 + B/4 + _a_/16 + A/16 + B/8 + C/4 = 3_a_/16 + 3A/16
+ 3B/8 + C/4, wherein 3/16 of _a_ is no longer a mulatto, and thus may
every compound be noted and summed, the sum of the fractions composing
the blood of the issue being always equal to unit. It is understood in
natural history that a fourth cross of one race of animals with another
gives an issue equivalent for all sensible purposes to the original
blood. Thus a Merino ram being crossed, first with a country ewe, second
with his daughter, third with his granddaughter, and fourth with the
great-granddaughter, the last issue is deemed pure Merino, having in
fact but 1/16 of the country blood. Our canon considers two crosses with
the pure white, and a third with any degree of mixture, however small,
as clearing the issue of the negro blood. But observe, that this does
not re-establish freedom, which depends on the condition of the mother,
the principle of the civil law, _partus sequitur ventrem_, being adopted
here. But if _e_ be emancipated, he becomes a free _white_ man, and a
citizen of the United States to all intents and purposes. So much for
this trifle by way of correction.
I sincerely congratulate you on the peace, and more especially on the
close of our war with so much eclat. Our second and third campaigns
here, I trust, more than redeemed the disgraces of the first, and proved
that although a republican government is slow to move, yet, when once
in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible; and I am persuaded it
would have been found so in the last war, had it continued. Experience
had just begun to elicit those among our officers who had talents for
war, and under the guidance of these one campaign would have planted
our standard on the walls of Quebec, and another on those of Halifax.
But peace is better for us all; and if it could be followed by a cordial
conciliation between us and England, it would ensure the happiness and
prosperity of both. The bag of wind, however, on which they are now
riding, must be suffered to blow out before they will be able soberly to
settle on their true bottom. If they adopt a course of friendship with
us, the commerce of one hundred millions of people, which some now born
will live to see here, will maintain them forever as a great unit of
the European family. But if they go on checking, irritating, injuring
and hostilizing us, they will force on us the motto "_Carthago delenda
est_." And some Scipio Americanus will leave to posterity the problem of
conjecturing where stood once the ancient and splendid city of London!
Nothing more simple or certain than the elements of this circulation. I
hope the good sense of both parties will concur in travelling rather the
paths of peace, of affection, and reciprocations of interest. I salute
you with sincere and friendly esteem, and if the homage offered to the
virtues of your father can be acceptable to him, place mine at his feet.
TO MR. GIRARDIN.
MONTICELLO, March 12, 1815.
I return the three Cativers, which I have perused with the usual
satisfaction. You will find a few pencilled notes merely verbal.
But in one place I have taken a greater liberty than I ever took before,
or ever indeed had occasion to take. It is in the case of Josiah Philips,
which I find strangely represented by Judge Tucker and Mr. Edmund
Randolph, and very negligently vindicated by Mr. Henry. That case is
personally known to me, because I was of the legislature at the time,
was one of those consulted by Mr. Henry, and had my share in the passage
of the bill. I never before saw the observations of those gentlemen,
which you quote on this case, and will now therefore briefly make some
strictures on them.
Judge Tucker, instead of a definition of the functions of bills of
attainder, has given a diatribe against their abuse. The occasion and
proper office of a bill of attainder is this: When a person charged with
a crime withdraws from justice, or resists it by force, either in his
own or a foreign country, no other means of bringing him to trial or
punishment being practicable, a special act is passed by the legislature
adapted to the particular case. This prescribes to him a sufficient time
to appear and submit to a trial by his peers; declares that his refusal
to appear shall be taken as a confession of guilt, as in the ordinary
case of an offender at the bar refusing to plead, and pronounces the
sentence which would have been rendered on his confession or conviction
in a court of law. No doubt that these acts of attainder have been abused
in England as instruments of vengeance by a successful over a defeated
party. But what institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands?
Again, the judge says "the court refused to pass sentence of execution
pursuant to the directions of the act." The court could not refuse
this, because it was never proposed to them; and my authority for this
assertion shall be presently given.
For the perversion of a fact so intimately known to himself, Mr.
Randolph can be excused only by our indulgence for orators who, pressed
by a powerful adversary, lose sight, in the ardor of conflict of the
rigorous accuracies of fact, and permit their imagination to distort
and color them to the views of the moment. He was Attorney General at
the time, and told me himself, the first time I saw him after the trial
of Philips, that when taken and delivered up to justice, he had thought
it best to make no use of the act of attainder, and to take no measure
under it; that he had indicted him at the common law either for murder
or robbery (I forgot which and whether for both); that he was tried on
this indictment in the ordinary way, found guilty by the jury, sentenced
and executed under the common law; a course which every one approves,
because the first object of the act of attainder was to bring him to
fair trial. Whether Mr. Randolph was right in this information to me, or
when in the debate with Mr. Henry, he represents this atrocious offender
as sentenced and executed under the act of attainder, let the record of
the case decide.
"Without being confronted with his accusers and witnesses, without the
privilege of calling for evidence in his behalf, he was sentenced to
death, and afterwards actually executed." I appeal to the universe to
produce one single instance from the first establishment of government
in this State to the present day, where, in a trial at bar, a criminal
has been refused confrontation with his accusers and witnesses, or denied
the privilege of calling for evidence in his behalf; had it been done in
this case, I would have asked of the Attorney General why he proposed or
permitted it. But without having seen the record, I will venture on the
character of our courts, to deny that it was done. But if Mr. Randolph
meant only that Philips had not these advantages on the passage of the
bill of attainder, how idle to charge the legislature with omitting to
confront the culprit with his witnesses, when he was standing out in arms
and in defiance of their authority, and their sentence was to take effect
only on his own refusal to come in and be confronted. We must either
therefore consider this as a mere hyperbolism of imagination in the heat
of debate, or what I should rather, believe a defective statement by
the reporter of Mr. Randolph's argument. I suspect this last the rather
because this point in the charge of Mr. Randolph is equally omitted in
the defence of Mr. Henry. This gentleman must have known that Philips
was tried and executed under the common law, and yet, according to his
report, he rests his defence on a justification of the attainder only.
But all who knew Mr. Henry, know that when at ease in argument, he was
sometimes careless, not giving himself the trouble of ransacking either
his memory or imagination for all the topics of his subject, or his
audience that of hearing them. No man on earth knew better when he had
said enough for his hearers.
Mr. Randolph charges us with having read the bill three times in the
same day. I do not remember the fact, nor whether this was enforced on
us by the urgency of the ravages of Philips, or of the time at which
the bill was introduced. I have some idea it was at or near the close
of the session; the journals, which I have not, will ascertain the fact.
After the particular strictures I will proceed to propose, 1st, that the
word "substantially," page 92, l. 8., be changed for "which has been
charged with," [subjoining a note of reference. 1 Tucker's Blackst.
Append., 292. Debates of Virginia Convention.]
2. That the whole of the quotations from Tucker, Randolph and Henry, be
struck out, and instead of the text beginning page 92 l. 12, with the
words "bills of attainder, &.," to the words "so often merited," page
95 l. 4, be inserted the following, to-wit:
"This was passed on the following occasion. A certain Josiah Philips,
laborer of the parish of Lynhaven, in the county of Princess Anne, a man
of daring and ferocious disposition, associating with other individuals
of a similar cast, spread terror and desolation through the lower country,
committing murders, burning houses, wasting farms, and perpetrating other
enormities, at the bare mention of which humanity shudders. Every effort
to apprehend him proved abortive. Strong in the number of his ruffian
associates, or where force would have failed resorting to stratagem
and ambush, striking the deadly blow or applying the fatal torch at
the midnight hour, and in those places which their insulated situation
left almost unprotected, he retired with impunity to his secret haunts,
reeking with blood, and loaded with plunder. [So far the text of Mr.
Girardin is preserved.] The inhabitants of the counties which were the
theatre of his crimes, never secure a moment by day or by night, in
their fields or their beds, sent representations of their distresses
to the governor, claiming the public protection. He consulted with some
members of the legislature then sitting, on the best method of proceeding
against the atrocious offender. Too powerful to be arrested by the sheriff
and his _posse comitatus_, it was not doubted but an armed force might
be sent to hunt and destroy him and his accomplices in their morasses
and fastnesses wherever found. But the proceeding concluded to be most
consonant with the forms and principles of our government, was that the
legislature should pass an act giving him a reasonable but limited day
to surrender himself to justice, and to submit to a trial by his peers.
According to the laws of the land, to consider a refusal as a confession
of guilt, and divesting him as an outlaw of the character of citizen, to
pass on him the sentence prescribed by the law; and the public officer
being defied, to make every one his deputy, and especially those whose
safety hourly depended on his destruction. The case was laid before the
legislature, the proofs were ample, his outrages as notorious as those
of the public enemy, and well known to the members of both houses from
those counties. No one pretended then that the perpetrator of crimes who
could successfully resist the officers of justice, should be protected
in the continuance of them by the privileges of his citizenship, and
that baffling ordinary process, nothing extraordinary could be rightfully
adopted to protect the citizens against him. No one doubted that society
had a right to erase from the roll of its members any one who rendered
his own existence inconsistent with theirs; to withdraw from him the
protection of their laws, and to remove him from among them by exile,
or even by death if necessary. An enemy in lawful war, putting to death
in cold blood the prisoner he has taken, authorizes retaliation, which
would be inflicted with peculiar justice on the individual guilty of the
deed, were it to happen that he should be taken. And could the murders
and robberies of a pirate or outlaw entitle him to more tenderness? They
passed the law, therefore, and without opposition. He did not come in
before the day prescribed; continued his lawless outrages; was afterwards
taken in arms, but delivered over to the ordinary justice of the county.
The Attorney General for the commonwealth, the immediate agent of the
government, waiving all appeal to the act of attainder, indicted him
at the common law as a murderer and robber. He was arraigned on that
indictment in the usual forms, before a jury of his vicinage, and no use
whatever made of the act of attainder in any part of the proceedings.
He pleaded that he was a British subject, authorized to bear arms by a
commission from Lord Dunmore; that he was therefore a mere prisoner of
war, and under the protection of the law of nations. The court being of
opinion that a commission from an enemy could not protect a citizen in
deeds of murder and robbery, overruled his plea; he was found guilty by
his jury, sentenced by the court, and executed by the ordinary officer
of justice, and all according to the forms and rules of the common law."
I recommend an examination of the records for ascertaining the facts of
this case, for although my memory assures me of the leading ones, I am
not so certain in my recollection of the details. I am not sure of the
character of the particular crimes committed by Philips, or charged in
his indictment, whether his plea of alien enemy was formally put in and
overruled, what were the specific provisions of the act of attainder,
the urgency which caused it to be read three times in one day, if the
fact were, &c., &c.
TO MR. WENDOVER.[13]
MONTICELLO, March 13, 1815.
SIR,--Your favor of January the 30th was received after long delay on
the road, and I have to thank you for the volume of discourses which
you have been so kind as to send me. I have gone over them with great
satisfaction, and concur with the able preacher in his estimate of the
character of the belligerents in our late war, and lawfulness of defensive
war. I consider the war, with him, as "made on good advice," that is,
for just causes, and its dispensation as providential, inasmuch as it
has exercised our patriotism and submission to order, has planted and
invigorated among us arts of urgent necessity, has manifested the strong
and the weak parts of our republican institutions, and the excellence of a
representative democracy compared with the misrule of kings, has rallied
the opinions of mankind to the natural rights of expatriation, and of a
common property in the ocean, and raised us to that grade in the scale
of nations which the bravery and liberality of our citizen soldiers, by
land and by sea, the wisdom of our institutions and their observance of
justice, entitled us to in the eyes of the world. All this Mr. McLeod
has well proved, and from those sources of argument particularly which
belong to his profession. On one question only I differ from him, and it
is that which constitutes the subject of his first discourse, the right
of discussing public affairs _in the pulpit_. I add the last words,
because I admit the right in _general conversation_ and in _writing_;
in which last form it has been exercised in the valuable book you have
now favored me with.
The mass of human concerns, moral and physical, is so vast, the field of
knowledge requisite for man to conduct them to the best advantage is so
extensive, that no human being can acquire the whole himself, and much
less in that degree necessary for the instruction of others. It has of
necessity, then, been distributed into different departments, each of
which, singly, may give occupation enough to the whole time and attention
of a single individual. Thus we have teachers of Languages, teachers of
Mathematics, of Natural Philosophy, of Chemistry, of Medicine, of Law,
of History, of Government, &c. Religion, too, is a separate department,
and happens to be the only one deemed requisite for all men, however
high or low. Collections of men associate together, under the name of
congregations, and employ a religious teacher of the particular sect of
opinions of which they happen to be, and contribute to make up a stipend
as a compensation for the trouble of delivering them, at such periods
as they agree on, lessons in the religion they profess. If they want
instruction in other sciences or arts, they apply to other instructors;
and this is generally the business of early life. But I suppose there
is not an instance of a single congregation which has employed their
preacher for the mixed purposes of lecturing them _from the pulpit_
in Chemistry, in Medicine, in Law, in the science and principles of
Government, or in anything but Religion exclusively. Whenever, therefore,
preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put them off with a discourse
on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction
of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it,
it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of
service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what
they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources
in that particular art or science. In choosing our pastor we look to
his religious qualifications, without inquiring into his physical or
political dogmas, with which we mean to have nothing to do. I am aware
that arguments may be found, which may twist a thread of politics into
the cord of religious duties. So may they for every other branch of human
art or science. Thus, for example, it is a religious duty to obey the
laws of our country; the teacher of religion, therefore, must instruct
us in those laws, that we may know how to obey them. It is a religious
duty to assist our sick neighbors; the preacher must, therefore, teach
us medicine, that we may do it understandingly. It is a religious duty
to preserve our own health; our religious teacher, then, must tell us
what dishes are wholesome, and give us recipes in cookery, that we may
learn how to prepare them. And so, ingenuity, by generalizing more and
more, may amalgamate all the branches of science into any one of them,
and the physician who is paid to visit the sick, may give a sermon
instead of medicine, and the merchant to whom money is sent for a hat,
may send a handkerchief instead of it. But notwithstanding this possible
confusion of all sciences into one, common sense draws lines between
them sufficiently distinct for the general purposes of life, and no one
is at a loss to understand that a recipe in medicine or cookery, or a
demonstration in geometry, is not a lesson in religion. I do not deny
that a congregation may, if they please, agree with their preacher that
he shall instruct them in Medicine also, or Law, or Politics. Then,
lectures in these, from the pulpit, become not only a matter of right,
but of duty also. But this must be with the consent of every individual;
because the association being voluntary, the mere majority has no right
to apply the contributions of the minority to purposes unspecified in the
agreement of the congregation. I agree, too, that on all other occasions,
the preacher has the right, equally with every other citizen, to express
his sentiments, in speaking or writing; on the subjects of Medicine,
Law, Politics, &c., his leisure time being his own, and his congregation
not obliged to listen to his conversation or to read his writings; and
no one would have regretted more than myself, had any scruple as to
this right withheld from us the valuable discourses which have led to
the expression of an opinion as to the true limits of the right. I feel
my portion of indebtment to the reverend author for the distinguished
learning, the logic and the eloquence with which he has proved that
religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles
on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted.
These are my views on this question. They are in opposition to those
of the highly respected and able preacher, and are, therefore, the more
doubtingly offered. Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry
to truth; and that, I am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us
both. We both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our
constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to
ourselves.
Unaccustomed to reserve or mystery in the expression of my opinions, I
have opened myself frankly on a question suggested by your letter and
present. And although I have not the honor of your acquaintance, this
mark of attention, and still more the sentiments of esteem so kindly
expressed in your letter, are entitled to a confidence that observations
not intended for the public will not be ushered to their notice, as has
happened to me sometimes. Tranquillity, at my age, is the balm of life.
While I know I am safe in the honor and charity of a McLeod, I do not
wish to be cast forth to the Marats, the Dantons, and the Robespierres
of the priesthood; I mean the Parishes, the Ogdens, and the Gardiners
of Massachusetts.
I pray you to accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] [This is endorsed "not sent."]
TO CÆSAR A. RODNEY.
MONTICELLO, March 16, 1815.
MY DEAR FRIEND AND ANCIENT COLLEAGUE,--Your letter of February the 19th
has been received with very sincere pleasure. It recalls to memory the
sociability, the friendship, and the harmony of action which united
personal happiness with public duties, during the portion of our lives in
which we acted together. Indeed, the affectionate harmony of our cabinet
is among the sweetest of my recollections. I have just received a letter
of friendship from General Dearborne. He writes me that he is now retiring
from every species of public occupation, to pass the remainder of life
as a private citizen; and he promises me a visit in the course of the
summer. As you hold out a hope of the same gratification, if chance or
purpose could time your visits together, it would make a real jubilee.
But come as you will or as you can, it will always be joy enough to
me. Only you must give me a month's notice; because I go three or four
times a year to a possession ninety miles southwestward, and am absent
a month at a time, and the mortification would be indelible of losing
such a visit by a mistimed absence. You will find me in habitual good
health, great contentedness, enfeebled in body, impaired in memory, but
without decay in my friendships.
Great, indeed, have been the revolutions in the world, since you and I
have had anything to do with it. To me they have been like the howlings
of the winter storm over the battlements, while warm in my bed. The
unprincipled tyrant of the land is fallen, his power reduced to its
original nothingness, his person only not yet in the mad-house, where
it ought always to have been. His equally unprincipled competitor, the
tyrant of the ocean, in the mad-house indeed, in person, but his power
still stalking over the deep. "_Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat._"
The madness is acknowledged; the perdition of course impending. Are we
to be the instruments? A friendly, a just, and a reasonable conduct
on their part, might make us the main pillar of their prosperity and
existence. But their deep-rooted hatred to us seems to be the means
which Providence permits to lead them to their final catastrophe.
"_Nullam enim in terris gentem esse, nullum infestiorem populum, nomini
Romano_," said the General who erased Capua from the list of powers.
What nourishment and support would not England receive from an hundred
millions of industrious descendants, whom some of her people now born
will live to see here? What their energies are, she has lately tried.
And what has she not to fear from an hundred millions of such men, if
she continues her maniac course of hatred and hostility to them. I hope
in God she will change. There is not a nation on the globe with whom I
have more earnestly wished a friendly intercourse on equal conditions.
On no other would I hold out the hand of friendship to any. I know that
their creatures represent me as personally an enemy to England. But fools
only can believe this, or those who think me a fool. I am an enemy to
her insults and injuries. I am an enemy to the flagitious principles of
her administration, and to those which govern her conduct towards other
nations. But would she give to morality some place in her political
code, and especially would she exercise decency, and at least neutral
passions towards us, there is not, I repeat it, a people on earth with
whom I would sacrifice so much to be in friendship. They can do us, as
enemies, more harm than any other nation; and in peace and in war, they
have more means of disturbing us internally. Their merchants established
among us, the bonds by which our own are chained to their feet, and the
banking combinations interwoven with the whole, have shown the extent
of their control, even during a war with her. They are the workers of
all the embarrassments our finances have experienced during the war.
Declaring themselves bankrupt, they have been able still to chain the
government to a dependence on them, and had the war continued, they would
have reduced us to the inability to command a single dollar. They dared
to proclaim that they would not pay their own paper obligations, yet our
government could not venture to avail themselves of this opportunity
of sweeping their paper from the circulation, and substituting their
own notes bottomed on specific taxes for redemption, which every one
would have eagerly taken and trusted, rather than the baseless trash of
bankrupt companies; our government, I say, have still been overawed from
a contest with them, and has even countenanced and strengthened their
influence, by proposing new establishments, with authority to swindle
yet greater sums from our citizens. This is the British influence to
which I am an enemy, and which we must subject to our government, or it
will subject us to that of Britain.
* * * * *
Come, and gratify, by seeing you once more, a friend who assures you
with sincerity of his constant and affectionate attachment and respect.
TO GENERAL DEARBORNE.
MONTICELLO, March 17, 1815.
MY DEAR GENERAL, FRIEND, AND ANCIENT COLLEAGUE,--I have received your
favor of February the 27th, with very great pleasure, and sincerely
reciprocate congratulations on late events. Peace was indeed desirable;
yet it would not have been as welcome without the successes of New
Orleans. These last have established truths too important not to be
valued; that the people of Louisiana are sincerely attached to the
Union; that their city can be defended; that the western States make its
defence their peculiar concern; that the militia are brave; that their
deadly aim countervails the manœuvering skill of their enemy; that we
have officers of natural genius now starting forward from the mass; and
that, putting together all our conflicts, we can beat the British by
sea and by land, with equal numbers. All this being now proved, I am
glad of the pacification of Ghent, and shall still be more so, if, by
a reasonable arrangement against impressment, they will make it truly
a treaty of peace, and not a mere truce, as we must all consider it,
until the principle of the war is settled. Nor, among the incidents of
the war, will we forget your services. After the disasters produced by
the treason or the cowardice, or both, of Hull, and the follies of some
others, your capture of York and Fort George, first turned the tide of
success in our favor; and the subsequent campaigns sufficiently wiped
away the disgrace of the first. If it were justifiable to look to your
own happiness only, your resolution to retire from all public business
could not but be approved. But you are too young to ask a discharge as
yet, and the public counsels too much needing the wisdom of our ablest
citizens, to relinquish their claim on you. And surely none needs your
aid more than your own State. Oh, Massachusetts! how have I lamented
the degradation of your apostasy! Massachusetts, with whom I went
with pride in 1776, whose vote was my vote on every public question,
and whose principles were then the standard of whatever was free or
fearless. But she was then under the counsels of the two Adamses; while
Strong, her present leader, was promoting petitions for submission to
British power and British usurpation. While under her present counsels,
she must be contented to be nothing; as having a vote, indeed, to be
counted, but not respected. But should the State once more buckle on
her republican harness, we shall receive her again as a sister, and
recollect her wanderings among the crimes only of the parricide party,
which would have basely sold what their fathers so bravely won from the
same enemy. Let us look forward, then, to the act of repentance, which,
by dismissing her venal traitors, shall be the signal of return to the
bosom and to the principles of her brethren; and if her late humiliation
can just give her modesty enough to suppose that her southern brethren
are somewhat on a par with her in wisdom, in information, in patriotism,
in bravery, and even in honesty, although not in psalm singing, she
will more justly estimate her own relative momentum in the Union. With
her ancient principles, she would really be great, if she did not think
herself the whole. I should be pleased to hear that you go into her
counsels, and assist in bringing her back to those principles, and to
a sober satisfaction with her proportionable share in the direction of
our affairs.
* * * * *
Be so good as to lay my homage at the feet of Mrs. Dearborne and be
assured that I am ever and affectionately yours.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, March 23, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--I duly received your favor of the 12th, and with it the
pamphlet on the causes and conduct of the war, which I now return. I
have read it with great pleasure, but with irresistible desire that
it should be published. The reasons in favor of this are strong, and
those against it are so easily gotten over, that there appears to me
no balance between them. 1. We need it in Europe. They have totally
mistaken our character. Accustomed to rise at a feather themselves,
and to be always fighting, they will see in our conduct, fairly stated,
that acquiescence under wrong, to a certain degree, is wisdom, and not
pusillanimity; and that peace and happiness are preferable to that false
honor which, by eternal wars, keeps their people in eternal labor, want,
and wretchedness. 2. It is necessary for the people of England, who
have been deceived as to the causes and conduct of the war, and do not
entertain a doubt, that it was entirely wanton and wicked on our part,
and under the order of Bonaparte. By rectifying their ideas, it will
tend to that conciliation which is absolutely necessary to the peace and
prosperity of both nations. 3. It is necessary for our own people, who,
although they have known the details as they went along, yet have been
so plied with false facts and false views by the federalists, that some
impression has been left that all has not been right. It may be said
that it will be thought unfriendly. But truths necessary for our own
character, must not be suppressed out of tenderness to its calumniators.
Although written, generally, with great moderation, there may be some
things in the pamphlet which may perhaps irritate. The characterizing
every act, for example, by its appropriate epithet, is not necessary to
show its deformity to an intelligent reader. The naked narrative will
present it truly to his mind, and the more strongly, from its moderation,
as he will perceive that no exaggeration is aimed at. Rubbing down these
roughnesses, and they are neither many nor prominent, and preserving
the original date, might, I think, remove all the offensiveness, and
give more effect to the publication. Indeed, I think that a soothing
postscript, addressed to the interests, the prospects, and the sober
reason of both nations, would make it acceptable to both. The trifling
expense of reprinting it ought not to be considered a moment. Mr. Gallatin
could have it translated into French, and suffer it to get abroad in
Europe without either avowal or disavowal. But it would be useful to
print some copies of an appendix, containing all the documents referred
to, to be preserved in libraries, and to facilitate to the present and
future writers of history, the acquisition of the materials which test
the truth it contains.
I sincerely congratulate you on the peace, and, more especially on the
eclat with which the war was closed. The affair of New Orleans was fraught
with useful lessons to ourselves, our enemies, and our friends, and will
powerfully influence our future relations with the nations of Europe. It
will show them we mean to take no part in their wars, and count no odds
when engaged in our own. I presume that, having spared to the pride of
England her formal acknowledgment of the atrocity of impressment in an
article of the treaty, she will concur in a convention for relinquishing
it. Without this, she must understand that the present is but a truce,
determinable on the first act of impressment of an American citizen,
committed by any officer of hers. Would it not be better that this
convention should be a separate act, unconnected with any treaty of
commerce, and made an indispensable preliminary to all other treaty? If
blended with a treaty of commerce, she will make it the price of injurious
concessions. Indeed, we are infinitely better without such treaties with
any nation. We cannot too distinctly detach ourselves from the European
system, which is essentially belligerent, nor too sedulously cultivate
an American system, essentially pacific. But if we go into commercial
treaties at all, they should be with all, at the same time, with whom we
have important commercial relations. France, Spain, Portugal, Holland,
Denmark, Sweden, Russia, all should proceed _pari passu_. Our ministers
marching in phalanx on the same line, and intercommunicating freely,
each will be supported by the weight of the whole mass, and the facility
with which the other nations will agree to equal terms of intercourse,
will discountenance the selfish higglings of England, or justify our
rejection of them. Perhaps, with all of them, it would be best to have
but the single article _gentis amicissimæ_, leaving everything else to
the usages and courtesies of civilized nations. But all these things
will occur to yourself, with their counter-consideration.
Mr. Smith wrote to me on the transportation of the library, and,
particularly, that it is submitted to your direction. He mentioned, also,
that Dougherty would be engaged to superintend it. No one will more
carefully and faithfully execute all those duties which would belong
to a wagon master. But it requires a character acquainted with books,
to receive the library. I am now employing as many hours of every day
as my strength will permit, in arranging the books, and putting every
one in its place on the shelves, corresponding with its order on the
catalogue, and shall have them numbered correspondently. This operation
will employ me a considerable time yet. Then I should wish a competent
agent to attend, and, with the catalogue in his hand, see that every
book is on the shelves, and have their lids nailed on, one by one, as
he proceeds. This would take such a person about two days; after which,
Dougherty's business would be the mere mechanical removal, at convenience.
I enclose you a letter from Mr. Milligan, offering his service, which
would not cost more than eight or ten days' reasonable compensation.
This is necessary for my safety and your satisfaction, as a just caution
for the public. You know that there are persons, both in and out of the
public councils, who will seize every occasion of imputation on either of
us, the more difficult to be repelled in this case, in which a negative
could not be proved. If you approve of it, therefore, as soon as I am
through the review, I will give notice to Mr. Milligan, or any other
person you will name, to come on immediately. Indeed it would be well
worth while to add to his duty, that of covering the books with a little
paper, (the good bindings, at least,) and filling the vacancies of the
presses with paper parings, to be brought from Washington. This would
add little more to the time, as he could carry on both operations at once.
Accept the assurance of my constant and affectionate friendship and
respect.
TO MR. GIRARDIN.
MONTICELLO, March 27, 1815.
I return your 14th chapter with only two or three unimportant alterations
as usual, and with a note suggested, of doubtful admissibility. I believe
it would be acceptable to the reader of every nation except England, and
I do not suppose that, even without it, your book will be a popular one
there, however you will decide for yourself.
As to what is to be said of myself, I of course am not the judge. But
my sincere wish is that the faithful historian, like the able surgeon,
would consider me in his hands, while living, as a dead subject, that
the same judgment may now be expressed which will be rendered hereafter,
so far as my small agency in human affairs may attract future notice;
and I would of choice now stand as at the bar of posterity, "_Cum semel
occidaris, et de te ultima Minos Fecerit arbitria_." The only exact
testimony of a man is his actions, leaving the reader to pronounce on
them his own judgment. In anticipating this, too little is safer than
too much; and I sincerely assure you that you will please me most by a
rigorous suppression of all friendly partialities. This candid expression
of sentiments once delivered, passive silence becomes the future duty.
It is with real regret I inform you that the day of delivering the library
is close at hand. A letter by last mail informs me that Mr. Millegan is
ordered to come on the instant I am ready to deliver. I shall complete
the arrangement of the books on Saturday. There will then remain only to
paste on them their numbers, which will be begun on Sunday. Of this Mr.
Millegan has notice, and may be expected every hour after Monday next.
He will examine the books by the catalogue, and nail up the presses,
one by one, as he gets through them. But it is indispensable for me to
have all the books in their places when we begin to number them, and it
would be a great convenience to have all you can do without now, to put
them into the places they should occupy. Ancient history is numbered.
Modern history comes next. The bearer carries a basket to receive what
he can bring of those you are done with. I salute you with friendship
and respect.
TO MR. BARROW.
MONTICELLO, May 1, 1815.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of March 20th, and am truly
thankful for the favorable sentiments expressed in it towards myself.
If, in the course of my life, it has been in any degree useful to the
cause of humanity, the fact itself bears its full reward. The particular
subject of the pamphlet you enclosed me was one of early and tender
consideration with me, and had I continued in the councils of my own
State, it should never have been out of sight. The only practicable
plan I could ever devise is stated under the 14th quære of the Notes on
Virginia, and it is still the one most sound in my judgment. Unhappily it
is a case for which both parties require long and difficult preparation.
The mind of the master is to be apprized by reflection, and strengthened
by the energies of conscience, against the obstacles of self interest
to an acquiescence in the rights of others; that of the slave is to
be prepared by instruction and habit for self government, and for the
honest pursuits of industry and social duty. Both of these courses of
preparation require time, and the former must precede the latter. Some
progress is sensibly made in it; yet not so much as I had hoped and
expected. But it will yield in time to temperate and steady pursuit, to
the enlargement of the human mind, and its advancement in science. We
are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a superior
agent. Our efforts are in his hand, and directed by it; and he will
give them their effect in his own time. Where the disease is most deeply
seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the northern States
it was merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the southern it is
incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, patience, and
perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected,
and its progress hastened, will be the last and fondest prayer of him
who now salutes you with respect and consideration.
TO M. DUPONT DE NEMOURS.
MONTICELLO, May 15, 1815.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--The newspapers tell us you are arrived in the United
States. I congratulate my country on this as a manifestation that you
consider its civil advantages as more than equivalent to the physical
comforts and social delights of a country which possesses both in the
highest degree of any one on earth. You despair of your country, and so
do I. A military despotism is now fixed upon it permanently, especially if
the son of the tyrant should have virtues and talents. What a treat would
it be to me, to be with you, and to learn from you all the intrigues,
apostasies and treacheries which have produced this last death's blow
to the hopes of France. For, although not in the will, there was in the
imbecility of the Bourbons a foundation of hope that the patriots of
France might obtain a moderate representative government. Here you will
find rejoicings on this event, and by a strange _qui pro quo_, not by
the party hostile to liberty, but by its zealous friends. In this they
see nothing but the scourge reproduced for the back of England, they do
not permit themselves to see in it the blast of all the hopes of mankind,
and that however it may jeopardize England, it gives to her self-defence
the lying countenance again of being the sole champion of the rights of
man, to which in all other nations she is most adverse. I wrote to you
on the 28th of February, by a Mr. Ticknor, then proposing to sail for
France, but the conclusion of peace induced him to go first to England.
I hope he will keep my letter out of the post offices of France; for it
was written for the inspection of those now in power. You will now be
a witness of our deplorable ignorance in finance and political economy
generally. I mentioned in my letter of February that I was endeavoring
to get your memoir on that subject printed. I have not yet succeeded. I
am just setting out to a distant possession of mine, and shall be absent
three weeks. God bless you.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, June 10, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--It is long since we have exchanged a letter, and yet what
volumes might have been written on the occurrences even of the last three
months. In the first place, peace, God bless it! has returned to put us
all again into a course of lawful and laudable pursuits; a new trial of
the Bourbons has proved to the world their incompetence to the functions
of the station they have occupied; and the recall of the usurper has
clothed him with the semblance of a legitimate autocrat. If adversity
should have taught him wisdom, of which I have little expectation, he may
yet render some service to mankind, by teaching the ancient dynasties
that they can be changed for misrule, and by wearing down the maritime
power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. But it is not possible
he should love us; and of that our commerce had sufficient proof during
his power. Our military achievements, indeed, which he is capable of
estimating, may, in some degree, moderate the effect of his aversions;
and he may perhaps fancy that we are to become the natural enemies of
England, as England herself has so steadily endeavored to make us, and
as some of our own over-zealous patriots would be willing to proclaim;
and, in this view, he may admit a cold toleration of some intercourse
and commerce between the two nations. He has certainly had time to see
the folly of turning the industry of France from the cultures for which
nature has so highly endowed her, to those of sugar, cotton, tobacco,
and others, which the same creative power has given to other climates;
and, on the whole, if he can conquer the passions of his tyrannical soul,
if he has understanding enough to pursue from motives of interest, what
no moral motives lead him to, the tranquil happiness and prosperity of
his country, rather than a ravenous thirst for human blood, his return
may become of more advantage than injury to us. And if, again, some
great man could arise in England, who could see and correct the follies
of his nation in their conduct as to us, and by exercising justice and
comity towards ours, bring both into a state of temperate and useful
friendship, it is possible we might thus attain the place we ought to
occupy between these two nations, without being degraded to the condition
of mere partisans of either.
A little time will now inform us, whether France, within its proper
limits, is big enough for its ruler, on the one hand, and whether, on the
other, the allied powers are either wicked or foolish enough to attempt
the forcing on the French a ruler and government which they refuse?
Whether they will risk their own thrones to re-establish that of the
Bourbons? If this is attempted, and the European world again committed
to war, will the jealousy of England at the commerce which neutrality
will give us, induce her again to add us to the number of her enemies,
rather than see us prosper in the pursuit of peace and industry? And
have our commercial citizens merited from their country its encountering
another war to protect their gambling enterprises? That the persons
of our citizens shall be safe in freely traversing the ocean, that the
transportation of our own produce, in our own vessels, to the markets
of our choice, and the return to us of the articles we want for our own
use, shall be unmolested, I hold to be fundamental, and the gauntlet
that must be for ever hurled at him who questions it. But whether we
shall engage in every war of Europe, to protect the mere agency of our
merchants and ship-owners in carrying on the commerce of other nations,
even were these merchants and ship-owners to take the side of their
country in the contest, instead of that of the enemy, is a question of
deep and serious consideration, with which, however, you and I shall
have nothing to do; so we will leave it to those whom it will concern.
I thank you for making known to me Mr. Ticknor and Mr. Gray. They are fine
young men, indeed, and if Massachusetts can raise a few more such, it is
probable she would be better counselled as to social rights and social
duties. Mr. Ticknor is, particularly, the best bibliograph I have met
with, and very kindly and opportunely offered me the means of re-procuring
some part of the literary treasures which I have ceded to Congress, to
replace the devastations of British Vandalism at Washington. I cannot
live without books. But fewer will suffice, where amusement, and not
use, is the only future object. I am about sending him a catalogue, to
which less than his critical knowledge of books would hardly be adequate.
Present my high respects to Mrs. Adams, and accept yourself the assurance
of my affectionate attachment.
TO MR. W. H. TORRANCE.
MONTICELLO, June 11, 1815.
SIR,--I received a few days ago your favor of May 5th, stating a question
on a law of the State of Georgia which suspends judgments for a limited
time, and asking my opinion whether it may be valid under the inhibition
of our constitution to pass laws impairing the obligations of contracts.
It is more than forty years since I have quitted the practice of the
law, and been engaged in vocations which furnished little occasion of
preserving a familiarity with that science. I am far, therefore, from
being qualified to decide on the problems it presents, and certainly
not disposed to obtrude in a case where gentlemen have been consulted
of the first qualifications, and of actual and daily familiarity with
the subject, especially too in a question on the law of another State.
We have in this State a law resembling in some degree that you quote,
suspending executions until a year after the treaty of peace; but no
question under it has been raised before the courts. It is also, I
believe, expected that when this shall expire, in consideration of the
absolute impossibility of procuring coin to satisfy judgments, a law
will be passed, similar to that passed in England, on suspending the
cash payments of their bank, that provided that on refusal by a party to
receive notes of the Bank of England in any case either of past or future
contracts, the judgment should be suspended during the continuance of
that act, bearing, however, legal interest. They seemed to consider that
it was not this law which changed the conditions of the contract, but the
circumstances which had arisen, and had rendered its literal execution
impossible; by the disappearance of the metallic medium stipulated by
the contract, that the parties not concurring in a reasonable and just
accommodation, it became the duty of the legislature to arbitrate between
them; and that less restrained than the Duke of Venice by the letter of
decree, they were free to adjudge to Shylock a reasonable equivalent.
And I believe that in our States this umpirage of the legislatures has
been generally interposed in cases where a literal execution of contract
has, by a change of circumstances, become impossible, or, if enforced,
would produce a disproportion between the subject of the contract and its
price, which the parties did not contemplate at the time of the contract.
The second question, whether the judges are invested with exclusive
authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law, has been heretofore
a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties.
Certainly there is not a word in the constitution which has given
that power to them more than to the executive or legislative branches.
Questions of property, of character and of crime being ascribed to the
judges, through a definite course of legal proceeding, laws involving
such questions belong, of course, to them; and as they decide on them
ultimately and without appeal, they of course decide _for themselves_. The
constitutional validity of the law or laws again prescribing executive
action, and to be administered by that branch ultimately and without
appeal, the executive must decide for _themselves_ also, whether, under
the constitution, they are valid or not. So also as to laws governing
the proceedings of the legislature, that body must judge _for itself_
the constitutionality of the law, and equally without appeal or control
from its co-ordinate branches. And, in general, that branch which is to
act ultimately, and without appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor
of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other
co-ordinate authorities. It may be said that contradictory decisions may
arise in such case, and produce inconvenience. This is possible, and is
a necessary failing in all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of the
public functionaries, and authority of public opinion, will generally
produce accommodation. Such an instance of difference occurred between
the judges of England (in the time of Lord Holt) and the House of
Commons, but the prudence of those bodies prevented inconvenience from
it. So in the cases of Duane and of William Smith of South Carolina,
whose characters of citizenship stood precisely on the same ground, the
judges in a question of meum and tuum which came before them, decided
that Duane was not a citizen; and in a question of membership, the
House of Representatives, under the same words of the same provision,
adjudged William Smith to be a citizen. Yet no inconvenience has ensued
from these contradictory decisions. This is what I believe myself to
be sound. But there is another opinion entertained by some men of such
judgment and information as to lessen my confidence in my own. That is,
that the legislature alone is the exclusive expounder of the sense of
the constitution, in every part of it whatever. And they allege in its
support, that this branch has authority to impeach and punish a member
of either of the others acting contrary to its declaration of the sense
of the constitution. It may indeed be answered, that an act may still be
valid although the party is punished for it, right or wrong. However,
this opinion which ascribes exclusive exposition to the legislature,
merits respect for its safety, there being in the body of the nation a
control over them, which, if expressed by rejection on the subsequent
exercise of their elective franchise, enlists public opinion against their
exposition, and encourages a judge or executive on a future occasion to
adhere to their former opinion. Between these two doctrines, every one
has a right to choose, and I know of no third meriting any respect.
I have thus, Sir, frankly, without the honor of your acquaintance,
confided to you my opinion; trusting assuredly that no use will be made
of it which shall commit me to the contentions of the newspapers. From
that field of disquietude my age asks exemption, and permission to enjoy
the privileged tranquillity of a private and unmeddling citizen. In this
confidence accept the assurances of my respect and consideration.
TO MR. LEIPER.
MONTICELLO, June 12, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--A journey soon after the receipt of your favor of April the
17th, and an absence from home of some continuance, have prevented my
earlier acknowledgment of it. In that came safely my letter of January
the 2d, 1814. In our principles of government we differ not at all;
nor in the general object and tenor of political measures. We concur
in considering the government of England as totally without morality,
insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at
the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted
hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show
its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. In our
estimate of Bonaparte, I suspect we differ. I view him as a political
engine only, and a very wicked one; you, I believe, as both political
and religious, and obeying, as an instrument, an unseen hand. I still
deprecate his becoming sole lord of the continent of Europe, which he
would have been, had he reached in triumph the gates of St. Petersburg.
The establishment in our day of another Roman empire, spreading vassalage
and depravity over the face of the globe, is not, I hope, within the
purposes of Heaven. Nor does the return of Bonaparte give me pleasure
unmixed; I see in his expulsion of the Bourbons, a valuable lesson to
the world, as showing that its ancient dynasties may be changed for
their misrule. Should the allied powers presume to dictate a ruler and
government to France, and follow the example he had set of parcelling
and usurping to themselves their neighbor nations, I hope he will give
them another lesson in vindication of the rights of independence and
self-government, which himself had heretofore so much abused; and that
in this contest he will wear down the maritime power of England to
limitable and safe dimensions. So far, good. It cannot be denied, on
the other hand, that his successful perversion of the force (committed
to him for vindicating the rights and liberties of his country) to
usurp its government, and to enchain it under an hereditary despotism,
is of baneful effect in encouraging future usurpations, and deterring
those under oppression from rising to redress themselves. His restless
spirit leaves no hope of peace to the world; and his hatred of us is
only a little less than that he bears to England, and England to us.
Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between
republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from
ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us
and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us,
that is, cotton and tobacco. Whether the war we have had with England,
and the achievements of that war, and the hope that we may become his
instruments and partisans against that enemy, may induce him, in future,
to tolerate our commercial intercourse with his people, is still to be
seen. For my part, I wish that all nations may recover and retain their
independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe
measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among
nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought
and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves
whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want;
and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the
better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over
the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I
hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less
we use our power, the greater it will be.
The federal misrepresentation of my sentiments, which occasioned my
former letter to you, was gross enough; but that and all others are
exceeded by the impudence and falsehood of the printed extract you
sent me from Ralph's paper. That a continuance of the embargo for two
months longer would have prevented our war; that the non-importation law
which succeeded it was a wise and powerful measure, I have constantly
maintained. My friendship for Mr. Madison, my confidence in his wisdom
and virtue, and my approbation of all his measures, and especially of his
taking up at length the gauntlet against England, is known to all with
whom I have ever conversed or corresponded on these measures. The word
_federal_, or its synonyma _lie_, may therefore be written under every
word of Mr. Ralph's paragraph. I have ransacked my memory to recollect
any incident which might have given countenance to any particle of it,
but I find none. For if you will except the bringing into power and
importance those who were enemies to himself as well as to the principles
of republican government, I do not recollect a single measure of the
President which I have not approved. Of those under him, and of some very
near him, there have been many acts of which we have all disapproved,
and he more than we. We have at times dissented from the measures,
and lamented the dilatoriness of Congress. I recollect an instance the
first winter of the war, when, from sloth of proceedings, an embargo was
permitted to run through the winter, while the enemy could not cruise,
nor consequently restrain the exportation of our whole produce, and was
taken off in the spring, as soon as they could resume their stations.
But this procrastination is unavoidable. How can expedition be expected
from a body which we have saddled with an hundred lawyers, whose trade
is talking? But lies, to sow division among us, is so stale an artifice
of the federal prints, and are so well understood, that they need neither
contradiction nor explanation. As to myself, my confidence in the wisdom
and integrity of the administration is so entire, that I scarcely notice
what is passing, and have almost ceased to read newspapers. Mine remain
in our post office a week or ten days, sometimes, unasked for. I find
more amusement in studies to which I was always more attached, and from
which I was dragged by the events of the times in which I have happened
to live.
I rejoice exceedingly that our war with England was single-handed. In
that of the Revolution, we had France, Spain, and Holland on our side,
and the credit of its success was given to them. On the late occasion,
unprepared and unexpecting war, we were compelled to declare it, and to
receive the attack of England, just issuing from a general war, fully
armed, and freed from all other enemies, and have not only made her
sick of it, but glad to prevent, by peace, the capture of her adjacent
possessions, which one or two campaigns more would infallibly have made
ours. She has found that we can do her more injury than any other enemy
on earth, and henceforward will better estimate the value of our peace.
But whether her government has power, in opposition to the aristocracy
of her navy, to restrain their piracies within the limits of national
rights, may well be doubted. I pray, therefore, for peace, as best for
all the world, best for us, and best for me, who have already lived to
see three wars, and now pant for nothing more than to be permitted to
depart in peace. That you also, who have longer to live, may continue to
enjoy this blessing with health and prosperity, through as long a life
as you desire, is the prayer of yours affectionately.
P. S. June the 14th.--Before I had sent my letter to the post office, I
received the new treaty of the allied powers, declaring that the French
nation shall not have Bonaparte, and shall have Louis XVIII. for their
ruler. They are all then as great rascals as Bonaparte himself. While he
was in the wrong, I wished him exactly as much success as would answer
our purposes, and no more. Now that they are wrong and he in the right,
he shall have all my prayers for success, and that he may dethrone every
man of them.
TO MR. MAURY.
MONTICELLO, June 15, 1815.
I congratulate you, my dear and ancient friend, on the return of peace,
and the restoration of intercourse between our two countries. What has
passed may be a lesson to both of the injury which either can do the
other, and the peace now opened may show what would be the value of a
cordial friendship; and I hope the first moments of it will be employed
to remove the stumbling block which must otherwise keep us eternal
enemies. I mean the impressment of our citizens. This was the sole object
of the continuance of the late war, which the repeal of the orders of
council would otherwise have ended at its beginning. If according to our
estimates, England impressed into her navy 6,000 of our citizens, let
her count the cost of the war, and a greater number of men lost in it,
and she will find this resource for manning her navy the most expensive
she can adopt, each of these men having cost her £30,000 sterling, and a
man of her own besides. On that point we have thrown away the scabbard,
and the moment an European war brings her back to this practice, adds us
again to her enemies. But I hope an arrangement is already made on this
subject. Have you no statesmen who can look forward two or three score
years? It is but forty years since the battle of Lexington. One-third of
those now living saw that day, when we were about two millions of people,
and have lived to see this, when we are ten millions. One-third of those
now living, who see us at ten millions, will live another forty years, and
see us forty millions; and looking forward only through such a portion
of time as has passed since you and I were scanning Virgil together,
(which I believe is near three score years,) we shall be seen to have a
population of eighty millions, and of not more than double the average
density of the present. What may not such a people be worth to England
as customers and friends? and what might she not apprehend from such
a nation as enemies? Now, what is the price we ask for our friendship?
Justice, and the comity usually observed between nation and nation. Would
there not be more of dignity in this, more character and satisfaction,
than in her teasings and harassings, her briberies and intrigues, to
sow party discord among us, which can never have more effect here than
the opposition within herself has there; which can never obstruct the
begetting children, the efficient source of growth; and by nourishing a
deadly hatred, will only produce and hasten events which both of us, in
moments of sober reflection, should deplore and deprecate. One half of the
attention employed in decent observances towards our government, would
be worth more to her than all the Yankee duperies played off upon her,
at a great expense on her part of money and meanness, and of nourishment
to the vices and treacheries of the Henrys and Hulls of both nations. As
we never can be at war with any other nation, (for no other nation can
get at us but Spain, and her own people will manage her,) the idea may
be generated that we are natural enemies, and a calamitous one it will
be to both. I hope in God her government will come to a sense of this,
and will see that honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the
public as in the private code of morality. Her ministers have been weak
enough to believe from the newspapers that Mr. Madison and myself are
personally her enemies. Such an idea is unworthy a man of sense; as we
should have been unworthy our trusts could we have felt such a motive of
public action. No two men in the United States have more sincerely wished
for cordial friendship with her; not as her vassals or dirty partisans,
but as members of co-equal States, respecting each other, and sensible
of the good as well as the harm each is capable of doing the other. On
this ground there was never a moment we did not wish to embrace her.
But repelled by their aversions, feeling their hatred at every point
of contact, and justly indignant at its supercilious manifestations,
that happened which has happened, that will follow which must follow,
in progressive ratio, while such dispositions continue to be indulged.
I hope they will see this, and do their part towards healing the minds
and cooling the temper of both nations. The irritation here is great
and general, because the mode of warfare both on the maritime and inland
frontiers has been most exasperating. We perceive the English passions
to be high also, nourished by the newspapers, that first of all human
contrivances for generating war. But it is the office of the rulers on
both sides to rise above these vulgar vehicles of passion; to assuage
angry feelings, and by examples and expressions of mutual regard in
their public intercourse, to lead their citizens into good temper with
each other. No one feels more indignation than myself when reflecting on
the insults and injuries of that country to this. But the interests of
both require that these should be left to history, and in the meantime
be smothered in the living mind. I have indeed little personal concern
in it. Time is drawing her curtain on me. But I should make my bow with
more satisfaction, if I had more hope of seeing our countries shake hands
together cordially. In this sentiment I am sure you are with me, and
this assurance must apologize for my indulging myself in expressing it
to you, with that of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
TO MR. MAURY.
MONTICELLO, June 16, 1815.
MY DEAR SIR,--Just as I was about to close my preceding letter, yours of
April 29th is put into my hands, and with it the papers your kindness
forwards to me. I am glad to see in them expressions of regard for our
friendship and intercourse from one side of the houses of parliament. But
I would rather have seen them from the other, if not from both. What comes
from the opposition is understood to be the converse of the sentiments
of the government, and we would not there, as they do here, give up the
government for the opposition. The views of the Prince and his ministers
are unfortunately to be taken from the speech of Earl Bathurst, in one
of the papers you sent me. But what is incomprehensible to me is that
the Marquis of Wellesley, advocating us, on the ground of opposition,
says that "the aggression which led to the war, was from the United
States, not from England." Is there a person in the world who, knowing
the circumstances, thinks this? The acts which produced the war were,
1st, the impressment of our citizens by their ships of war, and, 2d, the
orders of council forbidding our vessels to trade with any country but
England, without going to England to obtain a special license. On the
first subject the British minister declared to our Chargé, Mr. Russel,
that this practice of their ships of war would not be discontinued, and
that no admissible arrangement could be proposed; and as to the second,
the Prince Regent, by his proclamation of April 21st, 1812, declared in
effect solemnly that he would not revoke the orders of council _as to us_,
on the ground that Bonaparte had revoked his decrees _as to us_; that,
on the contrary, we should continue under them until Bonaparte should
revoke _as to all the world_. These categorical and definite answers
put an end to negotiation, and were a declaration of a continuance of
the war in which they had already taken from us one thousand ships and
six thousand seamen. We determined then to defend ourselves, and to
oppose further hostilities by war on our side also. Now, had we taken
one thousand British ships and six thousand of her seamen without any
declaration of war, would the Marquis of Wellesley have considered a
declaration of war by Great Britain as an aggression on her part? They
say we denied their maritime rights. We never denied a single one. It
was their taking our citizens, native as well as naturalized, for which
we went into war, and because they forbade us to trade with any nation
without entering and paying duties in their ports on both the outward
and inward cargo. Thus to carry a cargo of cotton from Savanna to St.
Mary's, and take returns in fruits, for example, our vessel was to go to
England, enter and pay a duty on her cottons there, return to St. Mary's,
then go back to England to enter and pay a duty on her fruits, and then
return to Savanna, after crossing the Atlantic four times, and paying
tributes on both cargoes to England, instead of the direct passage of a
few hours. And the taking ships for not doing this, the Marquis says, is
no aggression. However, it is now all over, and I hope forever over. Yet
I should have had more confidence in this, had the friendly expressions
of the Marquis come from the ministers of the Prince. On the contrary,
we see them scarcely admitting that the war ought to have been ended.
Earl Bathurst shuffles together chaotic ideas merely to darken and cover
the views of the ministers in protracting the war; the truth being, that
they expected to give us an exemplary scourging, to separate from us
the States east of the Hudson, take for their Indian allies those west
of the Ohio, placing three hundred thousand American citizens under the
government of the savages, and to leave the residuum a powerless enemy,
if not submissive subjects. I cannot conceive what is the use of your
Bedlam when such men are out of it. And yet that such were their views
we have evidence, under the hand of their Secretary of State in Henry's
case, and of their Commissioners at Ghent. Even now they insinuate
the peace in Europe has not suspended the practices which produced the
war. I trust, however, they are speaking a different language to our
ministers, and join in the hope you express that the provocations which
occasioned the late rupture will not be repeated. The interruption of
our intercourse with England has rendered us one essential service in
planting radically and firmly coarse manufactures among us. I make in
my family two thousand yards of cloth a year, which I formerly bought
from England, and it only employs a few women, children and invalids,
who could do little on the farm. The State generally does the same,
and allowing ten yards to a person, this amounts to ten millions of
yards; and if we are about the medium degree of manufacturers in the
whole Union, as I believe we are, the whole will amount to one hundred
millions of yards a year, which will soon reimburse us the expenses of
the war. Carding machines in every neighborhood, spinning machines in
large families and wheels in the small, are too radically established
ever to be relinquished. The finer fabrics perhaps, and even probably,
will be sought again in Europe, except broad-cloth, which the vast
multiplication of merinos among us will enable us to make much cheaper
than can be done in Europe.
Your practice of the cold bath thrice a week during the winter, and at
the age of seventy, is a bold one, which I should not, _à priori_, have
pronounced salutary. But all theory must yield to experience, and every
constitution has its own laws. I have for fifty years bathed my feet in
cold water every morning (as you mention), and having been remarkably
exempted from colds (not having had one in every seven years of my life
on an average), I have supposed it might be ascribed to that practice.
When we see two facts accompanying one another for a long time, we are
apt to suppose them related as cause and effect.
Our tobacco trade is strangely changed. We no longer know how to fit
the plant to the market. Differences of from four to twelve dollars the
hundred are now made on qualities appearing to us entirely whimsical.
The British orders of council had obliged us to abandon the culture
generally; we are now, however, returning to it, and experience will
soon decide what description of lands may continue it to advantage.
Those which produce the qualities under seven or eight dollars, must,
I think, relinquish it finally. Your friends here are well as far as I
have heard. So I hope you are; and that you may continue so as long as
you shall think the continuance of life itself desirable, is the prayer
of yours sincerely and affectionately.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, June 20, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--The fit of recollection came upon both of us so nearly at
the same time, that I may, some time or other, begin to think there
is something in Priestley's and Hartley's vibrations. The day before
yesterday I sent to the post-office a letter to you, and last night I
received your kind favor of the 10th.
The question before the human race is, whether the God of Nature shall
govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall
rule it by fictitious miracles? Or, in other words, whether authority is
originally in the people? or whether it has descended for 1800 years in
a succession of popes and bishops, or brought down from heaven by the
Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, in a phial of holy oil?
Who shall take the side of God and Nature? Brachmans? Mandarins? Druids?
or Tecumseh and his brother the prophet? Or shall we become disciples
of the Philosophers? And who are the Philosophers? Frederic? Voltaire?
Rousseau? Buffon? Diderot? or Condorsett? These philosophers have shown
themselves as incapable of governing mankind, as the Bourbons or the
Guelphs. Condorsett has let the cat out of the bag. He has made precious
confessions. I regret that I have only an English translation of his
"Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human mind." But
in pages 247, 248, and 249, you will find it frankly acknowledged, that
the philosophers of the eighteenth century, adopted all the maxims,
and practiced all the arts of the Pharisees, the ancient priests of all
countries, the Jesuits, the Machiavillians, &c., &c., to overthrow the
institutions that such arts had established. This new philosophy was, by
his own account, as insidious, fraudulent, hypocritical, and cruel, as
the old policy of the priests, nobles, and kings. When and where were
ever found, or will be found, sincerity, honesty, or veracity, in any
sect or party in religion, government, or philosophy? Johnson and Burke
were more of Catholics than Protestants at heart, and Gibbon became an
advocate for the inquisition.
There is no act of uniformity in the Church, or State, philosophic.
As many sects and systems among them, as among Quakers and Baptists.
Bonaparte will not revive inquisitions, Jesuits, or slave trade, for
which habitudes the Bourbons have been driven again into exile.
We shall get along with, or without war. I have at last procured the
Marquis D'Argens' Occellus, Timæus, and Julian. Three such volumes I
never read. They are a most perfect exemplification of Condorsett's
precious confessions. It is astonishing they have not made more noise
in the world. Our Athanasians have printed in a pamphlet in Boston, your
letters and Priestley's from Belsham's Lindsey. It will do you no harm.
Our correspondence shall not again be so long interrupted. Affectionately.
Mrs. Adams thanks Mr. Jefferson for his friendly remembrance of her,
and reciprocates to him a thousand good wishes.
P. S. Ticknor and Gray were highly delighted with their visit; charmed
with the whole family. Have you read Carnot? Is it not afflicting to see
a man of such large views, so many noble sentiments, and such exalted
integrity, groping in the dark for a remedy, a balance, or a mediator
between independence and despotism? How shall his "love of country,"
"his honor," and his "national spirit," be produced?
I cannot write a hundredth part of what I wish to say to you.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, June 22, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Can you give me any information concerning A. G. Camus?
Is he a Chateaubriand? or a Marquis D'Argens? Does he mean to abolish
Christianity? or to restore the Inquisition, the Jesuits, the Pope and
the Devil?
Within a few days I have received a thing as unexpected to me as an
apparition from the dead: Rapport à l'Institut National. Par A. G. Camus,
imprimè par ordre de l'Institut, Pluviose An XI.
In page 55 of this report, he says, "Certain pieces which I found in the
chamber of accounts in Brussels, gave me useful indications concerning
the grand collection of the Bollandists; and conducted me to make
researches into the state of that work, unfortunately interrupted at
this day. It would add to the Institute to propose to government the
means of completing it; as it has done with success for the collection
of the historians of France, of diplomas and ordinances.[14]"
Permit me to dwell a few minutes on this important work.
"Almost all the history of Europe, and a part of that of the east, from
the seventh century to the thirteenth, is in the lives of personages to
whom have been given the title of Saints. Every one may have remarked,
that in reading history, there is no event of any importance, in civil
order, in which some Bishop, some Abbé, some Monk, or some Saint, did not
take a part. It is, therefore, a great service, rendered by the Jesuits
(known under the name of the Bollandists) to those who would write
history, to have formed the immense collection, extended to fifty-two
volumes in folio, known under the title of the Acts of the Saints. The
service they have rendered to literature, is considerably augmented, by
the insertion, in their acts of the Saints, a great number of diplomas
and dissertations, the greatest part of which are models of criticism.
There is no man, among the learned, who does not interest himself in this
great collection. My intention is not to recall to your recollection
the original authors, or their first labors. We may easily know them
by turning over the leaves of the collection, or if we would find the
result already written, it is in the Historical Library of Mensel, T.
1, part 1, p. 306, or in the Manual of Literary History, by Bougine, T.
2, p. 641.
"I shall date what I have to say to you only from the epoch of the
suppression of the society, of which the Bollandists were members.
"At that time, three Jesuits were employed in the collection of the
Acts of the Saints; to wit, the Fathers De Bie, De Bue, and Hubens.
The Father Gesquière, who had also labored at the Acts of the Saints,
reduced a particular collection, entitled Select Fragments from Belgical
Writers, and extracts or references to matters contained in a collection
entitled Museum of Bellarmine. These four monks inhabited the house of
the Jesuits at Antwerp. Independently of the use of the library of the
convent, the Bollandists had their particular library, the most important
portion of which was a state of the Lives of the Saints for every day
of the month, with indications of the books in which were found those
which were already printed, and the original manuscripts, or the copies
of manuscripts, which were not yet printed. They frequently quote this
particular collection in their general collection. The greatest part
of the copies they had assembled, were the fruit of a journey of the
Fathers Papebrock and Henshen, made to Rome in 1660. They remained there
till 1662. Papebrock and his associate brought from Rome copies of seven
hundred Lives of Saints, in Greek or in Latin. The citizen La Serna,
has in his library a copy, taken by himself, from the originals, of the
relation of the journey of Papebrock to Rome, and of the correspondence
of Henshen with his colleagues. The relation and the correspondence are
in Latin. See Catalogue de la Serna, T. 3, N. 3903.
"After the suppression of the Jesuits, the commissioners apposed their
seals upon the library of the Bollandists, as well as on that of the
Jesuits of Antwerp. But Mr. Girard, then Secretary of the Academy at
Brussels, who is still living, and who furnished me a part of the
documents I use, charged with the inventory and sale of the books,
withdrew those of the Bollandists, and transported them to Brussels.
"The Academy of Brussels proposed to continue the Acts of the Saints
under its own name, and for this purpose to admit the four Jesuits
into the number of its members. The Father Gesquière alone consented to
this arrangement. The other Jesuits obtained of government, through the
intervention of the Bishop of Newstadt, the assurance, that they might
continue their collection. In effect, the Empress Maria Theresa approved,
by a decree of the 19th of June, 1778, a plan which was presented to
her, for the continuation of the works, both by the Bollandists and of
Gesquière. This plan is in ample detail. It contains twenty articles,
and would be useful to consult, if any persons should resume the Acts
of the Saints. The establishment of the Jesuits was fixed in the Abby of
Candenberg, at Brussels; the library of the Bollandists was transported
to that place; one of the monks of the Abby was associated with them;
and the Father Hubens being dead, was replaced by the Father Berthod,
a Benedictine, who died in 1789. The Abby of Candenberg having been
suppressed, the government assigned to the Bollandists a place in the
ancient College of the Jesuits, at Brussels. They there placed their
library, and went there to live. There they published the fifty-first
volume of their collection in 1786, the fifth tome of the month of
October, printed at Brussels, at the printing press Imperial and Royal,
(in _typis Cæsario regiis_.) They had then two associates, and they
flattered themselves that the Emperor would continue to furnish the
expense of their labors. Nevertheless, in 1788, the establishment of
the Bollandists was suppressed, and they even proposed to sell the
stock of the printed volumes; but, by an instruction (Avis) of the 6th
of December, 1788, the ecclesiastical commission superseded the sale,
till the result could be known of a negociation which the Father De Bie
had commenced with the Abbé of St. Blaise, to establish the authors,
and transport the stock of the work, as well as the materials for its
continuation at St. Blaise.
"In the meantime, the Abby of Tongerloo offered the government to
purchase the library and stock of the Bollandists, and to cause the
work to be continued by the ancient Bollandists, with the monks of
Tongerloo associated with them. These propositions were accepted. The
Fathers De Bie, De Bue, and Gesquière, removed to Tongerloo; the monks
of Candenberg refused to follow them, though they had been associated
with them. On the entry of the French troops into Belgium, the monks of
Tongerloo quitted their Abby; the Fathers De Bie, and Gesquière, retired
to Germany, where they died; the Father De Bue retired to the City Hall,
heretofore Province of Hainault, his native country. He lives, but is
very aged. One of the monks of Tongerloo, who had been associated with
them, is the Father Heylen; they were not able to inform me of the place
of his residence. Another monk associated with the Bollandists of 1780,
is the Father Fonson, who resides at Brussels.
"In the midst of these troubles, the Bollandists have caused to be printed
the fifty-second volume of the Acts of the Saints, the sixth volume of
the month of October. The fifty-first volume is not common in commerce,
because the sale of it has been interrupted by the continual changes of
the residence of the Bollandists. The fifty-second volume, or the sixth
of the same month of October, is much more rare. Few persons know its
existence.
"The citizen La Serna has given me the two hundred and ninety-six first
pages of the volume, which he believes were printed at Tongerloo. He is
persuaded that the rest of the volume exists, and he thinks it was at
Rome that it was finished (_terminé_).
"The citizen De Herbonville, Prefect of the two Niths at Antwerp, has
made, for about eighteen months, attempts with the ancient Bollandists,
to engage them to resume their labors. They have not had success. Perhaps
the present moment would be the most critical, (opportune,) especially
if the government should consent to give to the Bollandists assurance
of their safety.
"The essential point would be to make sure of the existence of the
manuscripts which I have indicated; and which, by the relation of the
citizen La Serna, filled a body of a library of about three toises in
length, and two in breadth. If these manuscripts still exist, it is
easy to terminate the Acts of the Saints; because we shall have all the
necessary materials. If these manuscripts are lost, we must despair to
see this collection completed.
"I have enlarged a little on this digression on the Acts of the Saints,
because it is a work of great importance; and because these documents,
which cannot be obtained with any exactitude but upon the spots, seem
to me to be among the principal objects which your travellers have to
collect, and of which they ought to give you an account."
Now, my friend Jefferson! I await your observations on this morsel. You
may think I waste my time and yours. I do not think so. If you will look
into the "Nouveau Dictionaire Historique," under the words "Bollandus,
Heinshernius, and Papebrock," you will find more particulars of the rise
and progress of this great work, "The Acts of the Saints."
I shall make only an observation or two.
1. The Pope never suppressed the work, and Maria Theresa established
it. It therefore must be Catholic.
2. Notwithstanding the professions of the Bollandists, to discriminate
the true from the false miracles, and the dubious from both, I suspect
that the false will be found the fewest, the dubious the next, and the
true the most numerous of all.
3. From all that I have read, of the legends, of the lives, and writings
of the saints, and even of the Fathers, and of ecclesiastical history in
general, I have no doubt that the _Acta Sanctorum_ is the most enormous
mass of lies, frauds, hypocrisy, and imposture, that ever was heaped
together on this globe. If it were impartially consulted, it would do
more to open the eyes of mankind, than all the philosophers of the 18th
century, who were as great hypocrites as any of the philosophers or
theologians of antiquity.
FOOTNOTE:
[14] "The Committee of the Institute, for proposing and
superintending the literary labors, in the month of Frimaire,
An XI., wrote to the Minister of the Interior, requesting him to
give orders to the Prefect of the Dyle, and to the Prefect of the
Two Nithes, to summon the citizens De Bue, Fonson, Heyten, and
all others who had taken any part in the sequel of the work of
the Bollandists, to confer with these persons, as well concerning
the continuation of this work, as concerning the cession of the
materials destined for the continuation of it; to promise to
the continuators of the Bollandists the support of the French
Government, and to render an account of their conferences."
TO MR. CORREA.
MONTICELLO, June 28, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--When I learned that you proposed to give a course of Botanical
lectures in Philadelphia, I feared it would retard the promised visit
to Monticello. On my return from Bedford, however, on the 4th instant,
I received a letter from M. Dupont flattering me with the prospect that
he and yourself would be with us as soon as my return should be known. I
therefore in the instant wrote him of my return, and my hope of seeing
you both shortly. I am still without that pleasure, but not without
the hope. Europe has been a second time turned topsy-turvy since we
were together; and so many things have happened there that I have lost
my compass. As far as we can judge from appearances, Bonaparte, from
being a mere military usurper, seems to have become the choice of his
nation; and the allies in their turn, the usurpers and spoliators of the
European world. The right of nations to self-government being my polar
star, my partialities are steered by it, without asking whether it is a
Bonaparte or an Alexander towards whom the helm is directed. Believing
that England has enough on her hands without us, and therefore has by
this time settled the question of impressment with Mr. Adams, I look on
this new conflict of the European gladiators, as from the higher forms
of the amphitheatre, wondering that man, like the wild beasts of the
forest, should permit himself to be led by his keeper into the arena,
the spectacle and sport of the lookers on. Nor do I see the issue of
this tragedy with the sanguine hopes of our friend M. Dupont. I fear,
from the experience of the last twenty-five years, that morals do not
of necessity advance hand in hand with the sciences. These, however, are
speculations which may be adjourned to our meeting at Monticello, where
I will continue to hope that I may receive you with our friend Dupont,
and in the meantime repeat the assurances of my affectionate friendship
and respect.
TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN.
MONTICELLO, July 3, 1815.
DEAR MADAM,--I considered your letter of November 10th, 12th, as an
evidence of the interest you were so kind as to take in the welfare of
the United States, and I was even flattered by your exhortations to
avoid taking any part in the war then raging in Europe, because they
were a confirmation of the policy I had myself pursued, and which I
thought and still think should be the governing canon of our republic.
Distance, and difference of pursuits, of interests, of connections
and other circumstances, prescribe to us a different system, having
no object in common with Europe, but a peaceful interchange of mutual
comforts for mutual wants. But this may not always depend on ourselves;
and injuries may be so accumulated by an European power, as to pass all
bounds of wise forbearance. This was our situation at the date of your
letter. A long course of injuries, systematically pursued by England,
and finally, formal declarations that she would neither redress nor
discontinue their infliction, had fixed the epoch which rendered an appeal
to arms unavoidable. In the letter of May 28th, 1813, which I had the
honor of writing you, I entered into such details of these injuries, and
of our unremitting endeavors to bring them to a peaceable end, as the
narrow limits of a letter permitted. Resistance on our part at length
brought our enemy to reflect, to calculate, and to meet us in peaceable
conferences at Ghent; but the extravagance of the pretensions brought
forward by her negotiators there, when first made known in the United
States, dissipated at once every hope of a just peace, and prepared us
for a war of utter extremity. Our government, in that state of things,
respecting the opinion of the world, thought it a duty to present to it
a justification of the course which was likely to be forced upon us;
and with this view the pamphlet was prepared which I now enclose. It
was already printed, when (instead of their ministers whom they hourly
expected from a fruitless negotiation) they received the treaty of
pacification signed at Ghent and ratified at London. They endeavored to
suppress the pamphlet as now unreasonable--but the proof sheets having
been surreptitiously withdrawn, soon made their appearance in the public
papers, and in the form now sent. This vindication is so exact in its
facts, so cogent in its reasonings, so authenticated by the documents
to which it appeals, that it cannot fail to bring the world to a single
opinion on our case. The concern you manifested on our entrance into this
contest, assures me you will take the trouble of reading it; which I wish
the more earnestly, because it will fully explain the very imperfect views
which my letter had presented; and because we cannot be indifferent as
to the opinion which yourself personally shall ultimately form of the
course we have pursued.
I learned with great pleasure your return to your native country. It is
the only one which offers elements of society analogous to the powers
of your mind, and sensible of the flattering distinction of possessing
them. It is true that the great events which made an opening for your
return, have been reversed. But not so, I hope, the circumstances which
may admit its continuance. On these events I shall say nothing. At
our distance, we hear too little truth and too much falsehood to form
correct judgments concerning them; and they are moreover foreign to
our umpirage. We wish the happiness and prosperity of every nation; we
did not believe either of these promoted by the former pursuits of the
present ruler of France, and hope that his return, if the nation wills
it to be permanent, may be marked by those changes which the solid good
of his own country, and the peace and well-being of the world, may call
for. But these things I leave to whom they belong; the object of this
letter being only to convey to you a vindication of my own country, and
to have the honor on a new occasion of tendering you the homage of my
great consideration, and respectful attachment.
TO ANDREW C. MITCHELL, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, July 16, 1815.
I thank you, Sir, for the pamphlet which you have been so kind as to
send me. I have read it with attention and satisfaction. It is replete
with sound views, some of which will doubtless be adopted. Some may be
checked by difficulties. None more likely to be so than the proposition
to amend the Constitution, so as to authorize Congress to tax exports.
The provision against this in the framing of that instrument, was a _sine
quâ non_ with the States of peculiar productions, as rice, indigo, cotton
and tobacco, to which may now be added sugar. A jealousy prevailing that
to the few States producing these articles, the justice of the others
might not be a sufficient protection in opposition to their interest,
they moored themselves to this anchor. Since the hostile dispositions
lately manifested by the Eastern States, they would be less willing than
before to place themselves at their mercy; and the rather, as the Eastern
States have no exports which can be taxed equivalently. It is possible,
however, that this difficulty might be got over; but the subject looking
forward beyond my time, I leave it to those to whom its burthens and
benefits will belong, adding only my prayers for whatever may be best
for our country, and assurances to yourself of my great respect.
TO WM. WIRT, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, August 5, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of July 24th came to hand on the 31st, and I will
proceed to answer your inquiries in the order they are presented as far
as I am able.
I have no doubt that the fifth of the Rhode Island resolutions of which
you have sent me a copy, is exactly the one erased from our journals. The
Mr. Lees, and especially Richard Henry, who was industrious, had a close
correspondence, I know, with the two Adams', and probably with others in
that and the other Eastern States; and I think it was said at the time
that copies were sent off by them to the northward the very evening of
the day on which they were passed. I can readily enough believe these
resolutions were written by Mr. Henry himself. They bear the stamp of
his mind, strong without precision. That they were written by Johnson
who seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly
unfounded. But how Edmund Randolph should have said they were written
by William Fleming, and Mr. Henry should have written that he showed
them to William Fleming, is to me incomprehensible. There was no William
Fleming then but the judge now living, whom nobody will ever suspect of
taking the lead in rebellion. I am certain he was not then a member, and
I think was never a member until the revolution had made some progress.
Of this, however, he will inform us with candor and truth. His eldest
brother, John Fleming, was a member, and a great speaker in debate.
To him they may have been shown. Yet I should not have expected this,
because he was extremely attached to Robinson, Peyton Randolph, &c., and
at their beck, and had no independence or boldness of mind. However,
he was attentive to his own popularity, might have been overruled by
views to that, and without correction of the christian name, Mr. Henry's
note is sufficient authority to suppose he took the popular side on
that occasion. I remember nothing to the contrary. The opposers of the
resolutions were Robinson, Peyton Randolph, Pendleton, Wythe, Bland, and
all the cyphers of the aristocracy. No longer possessing the journals, I
cannot recollect nominally the others. They opposed them on the ground
that the same principles had been expressed in the petition, &c., of
the preceding year, to which an answer, not yet received, was daily
expected, that they were therein expressed in more conciliatory terms,
and therefore more likely to have good effect. The resolutions were
carried chiefly by the vote of the middle and upper country. To state the
differences between the classes of society and the lines of demarkation
which separated them, would be difficult. The law, you know, admitted
none except as to the twelve counsellors. Yet in a country insulated
from the European world, insulated from its sister colonies, with whom
there was scarcely any intercourse, little visited by foreigners, and
having little matter to act upon within itself, certain families had
risen to splendor by wealth and the preservation of it from generation
to generation under the law entails; some had produced a series of men
of talents; families in general had remained stationary on the grounds
of their forefathers, for there was no emigration to the westward in
those days. The wild Irish, who had gotten possession of the valley
between the Blue Ridge and North Mountain, forming a barrier over which
none ventured to leap, and would still less venture to settle among.
In such a state of things, scarcely admitting any change of station,
society would settle itself down into several strata, separated by no
marked lines, but shading off imperceptibly from top to bottom, nothing
disturbing the order of their repose. There were then aristocrats,
half-breeds, pretenders, a solid independent yeomanry, looking askance
at those above, yet not venturing to jostle them, and last and lowest,
a seculum of beings called overseers, the most abject, degraded and
unprincipled race, always cap in hand to the Dons who employed them,
and furnishing materials for the exercise of their pride, insolence and
spirit of domination. Your characters are inimitably and justly drawn.
I am not certain if more might not be said of Colonel Richard Bland. He
was the most learned and logical man of those who took prominent lead
in public affairs, profound in constitutional lore, a most ungraceful
speaker, (as were Peyton Randolph and Robinson, in a remarkable degree.)
He wrote the first pamphlet on the nature of the connection with Great
Britain which had any pretension to accuracy of view on that subject, but
it was a singular one. He would set out on sound principles, pursue them
logically till he found them leading to the precipice which he had to
leap, start back alarmed, then resume his ground, go over it in another
direction, be led again by the correctness of his reasoning to the same
place, and again back about, and try other processes to reconcile right
and wrong, but finally left his reader and himself bewildered between
the steady index of the compass in their hand, and the phantasm to which
it seemed to point. Still there was more sound matter in his pamphlet
than in the celebrated Farmer's letters, which were really but an _ignus
fatuus_, misleading us from true principles.
Landon Carter's measure you may take from the first volume of the American
Philosophical transactions, where he has one or more long papers on the
weavil, and perhaps other subjects. His speeches, like his writings,
were dull, vapid, verbose, egotistical, smooth as the lullaby of the
nurse, and commanding, like that, the repose only of the hearer.
You ask if you may quote me, first, for the loan office; second, Phillips'
case; and third, the addresses prepared for Congress by Henry and Lee.
For the two first certainly, because within my own knowledge, especially
citing the record in Phillips' case, which of itself refutes the diatribes
published on that subject; but not for the addresses, because I was not
present, nor know anything relative to them but by hearsay from others.
My first and principal information on that subject I know I had from
Ben Harrison, on his return from the first session of the old Congress.
Mr. Pendleton, also, I am tolerably certain, mentioned it to me; but the
transaction is too distant, and my memory too indistinct, to hazard as
with precision, even what I think I heard from them. In this decay of
memory Mr. Edmund Randolph must have suffered at a much earlier period
of life than myself. I cannot otherwise account for his saying to you
that Robert Carter Nicholas came into the Legislature only on the death
of Peyton Randolph, which was in 1776. Seven years before that period, I
went first into the Legislature myself, to-wit: in 1769, and Mr. Nicholas
was then a member, and I think not a new one. I remember it from an
impressive circumstance. It was the first assembly of Lord Botetourt,
being called on his arrival. On receiving the Governor's speech, it
was usual to move resolutions as heads for an address. Mr. Pendleton
asked me to draw the resolutions, which I did. They were accepted by the
house, and Pendleton, Nicholas, myself and some others, were appointed
a committee to prepare the address. The committee desired me to do it,
but when presented it was thought to pursue too strictly the diction of
the resolutions, and that their subjects were not sufficiently amplified.
Mr. Nicholas chiefly objected to it, and was desired by the committee to
draw one more at large, which he did with amplification enough, and it
was accepted. Being a young man as well as a young member, it made on me
an impression proportioned to the sensibility of that time of life. On a
similar occasion some years after, I had reason to retain a remembrance
of his presence while Peyton Randolph was living. On the receipt of
Lord North's propositions, in May or June, 1775, Lord Dunmore called
the assembly. Peyton Randolph, then President of Congress and Speaker of
the House of Burgesses, left the former body and came home to hold the
assembly, leaving in Congress the other delegates who were the ancient
leaders of our house. He therefore asked me to prepare the answer to
Lord North's propositions, which I did. Mr. Nicholas, whose mind had as
yet acquired no tone for that contest, combated the answer from _alpha_
to _omega_, and succeeded in diluting it in one or two small instances.
It was firmly supported however, in committee of the whole, by Peyton
Randolph, who had brought with him the spirit of the body over which he
had presided, and it was carried, with very little alteration, by strong
majorities. I was the bearer of it myself to Congress, by whom, as it
was the first answer given to those propositions by any legislature,
it was received with peculiar satisfaction. I am sure that from 1769,
if not earlier, to 1775, you will find Mr. Nicholas' name constantly
in the journals, for he was an active member. I think he represented
James City county. Whether on the death of Peyton Randolph he succeeded
him for Williamsburg, I do not know. If he did, it may account for Mr.
Randolph's error.
You ask some account of Mr. Henry's mind, information and manners in
1759-'60, when I first became acquainted with him. We met at Nathan
Dandridge's, in Hanover, about the Christmas of that winter, and passed
perhaps a fortnight together at the revelries of the neighborhood and
season. His manners had something of the coarseness of the society he
had frequented; his passion was fiddling, dancing and pleasantry. He
excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him. The occasion
perhaps, as much as his idle disposition, prevented his engaging in
any conversation which might give the measure either of his mind or
information. Opportunity was not wanting, because Mr. John Campbell was
there, who had married Mrs. Spotswood, the sister of Colonel Dandridge.
He was a man of science, and often introduced conversations on scientific
subjects. Mr. Henry had a little before broke up his store, or rather it
had broken him up, and within three months after he came to Williamsburg
for his license, and told me, I think, he had read law not more than six
weeks. I have by this time, probably, tired you with these old histories,
and shall, therefore, only add the assurance of my great friendship and
respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, August 10, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--The simultaneous movements in our correspondence have been
remarkable on several occasions. It would seem as if the state of the
air, or state of the times, or some other unknown cause, produced a
sympathetic effect on our mutual recollections. I had sat down to answer
your letters of June the 19th, 20th and 22d, with pen, ink and paper
before me, when I received from our mail that of July the 30th. You ask
information on the subject of Camus. All I recollect of him is, that he
was one of the deputies sent to arrest Dumourier at the head of his army,
who were, however, themselves arrested by Dumourier, and long detained
as prisoners. I presume, therefore, he was a Jacobin. You will find his
character in the most excellent revolutionary history of Toulongeon. I
believe, also, he may be the same person who has given us a translation
of Aristotle's Natural History, from the Greek into French. Of his report
to the National Institute on the subject of the Bollandists, your letter
gives me the first information. I had supposed them defunct with the
society of Jesuits, of which they were; and that their works, although
above ground, were, from their bulk and insignificance, as effectually
entombed on their shelves, as if in the graves of their authors. Fifty-two
volumes in folio, of the acta sanctorum, in dog-Latin, would be a
formidable enterprise to the most laborious German. I expect, with you,
they are the most enormous mass of lies, frauds, hypocrisy and imposture,
that was ever heaped together on this globe. By what chemical process
M. Camus supposed that an extract of truth could be obtained from such
a farrago of falsehood, I must leave to the chemists and moralists of
the age to divine.
On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who
shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it?
Nobody; except merely its external facts; all its councils, designs and
discussions having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and
no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These,
which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown. Botta,
as you observe, has put his own speculations and reasonings into the
mouths of persons whom he names, but who, you and I know, never made such
speeches. In this he has followed the example of the ancients, who made
their great men deliver long speeches, all of them in the same style,
and in that of the author himself. The work is nevertheless a good one,
more judicious, more chaste, more classical, and more true than the
party diatribe of Marshall. Its greatest fault is in having taken too
much from him. I possessed the work, and often recurred to considerable
portions of it, although I never read it through. But a very judicious and
well-informed neighbor of mine went through it with great attention, and
spoke very highly of it. I have said that no member of the old Congress,
as far as I knew, made notes of the discussion. I did not know of the
speeches you mention of Dickinson and Witherspoon. But on the questions
of Independence, and on the two articles of Confederation respecting
taxes and votings, I took minutes of the heads of the arguments. On
the first, I threw all into one mass, without ascribing to the speakers
their respective arguments; pretty much in the manner of Hume's summary
digests of the reasonings in parliament for and against a measure. On the
last, I stated the heads of the arguments used by each speaker. But the
whole of my notes on the question of Independence does not occupy more
than five pages, such as of this letter; and on the other questions, two
such sheets. They have never been communicated to any one. Do you know
that there exists in manuscript the ablest work of this kind ever yet
executed, of the debates of the constitutional convention of Philadelphia
in 1788? The whole of everything said and done there was taken down by
Mr. Madison, with a labor and exactness beyond comprehension.
I presume that our correspondence has been observed at the post offices,
and thus has attracted notice. Would you believe, that a printer has
had the effrontery to propose to me the letting him publish it? These
people think they have a right to everything, however secret or sacred.
I had not before heard of the Boston pamphlet with Priestley's letters
and mine.
At length Bonaparte has got on the right side of a question. From the
time of his entering the legislative hall to his retreat to Elba, no man
has execrated him more than myself. I will not except even the members
of the Essex Junto; although for very different reasons; I, because he
was warring against the liberty of his own country, and independence
of others; they, because he was the enemy of England, the Pope, and the
Inquisition. But at length, and as far as we can judge, he seems to have
become the choice of his nation. At least, he is defending the cause
of his nation, and that of all mankind, the rights of every people to
independence and self-government. He and the allies have now changed
sides. They are parcelling out among themselves Poland, Belgium, Saxony,
Italy, dictating a ruler and government to France, and looking askance
at our republic, the splendid libel on their governments, and he is
fighting for the principles of national independence, of which his whole
life hitherto has been a continued violation. He has promised a free
government to his own country, and to respect the rights of others; and
although his former conduct inspires little confidence in his promises,
yet we had better take the chance of his word for doing right, than the
certainty of the wrong which his adversaries are doing and avowing. If
they succeed, ours is only the boon of the Cyclops to Ulysses, of being
the last devoured.
Present me affectionately and respectfully to Mrs. Adams, and Heaven
give you both as much more of life as you wish, and bless it with health
and happiness.
P. S. August the 11th.--I had finished my letter yesterday, and this
morning receive the news of Bonaparte's second abdication. Very well. For
him personally, I have no feeling but reprobation. The representatives of
the nation have deposed him. They have taken the allies at their word,
that they had no object in the war but his removal. The nation is now
free to give itself a good government, either with or without a Bourbon;
and France unsubdued, will still be a bridle on the enterprises of the
combined powers, and a bulwark to others.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, August 24, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--If I am neither deceived by the little information I have,
or by my wishes for its truth, I should say that France is the most
_Protestant_ country of Europe at this time, though I cannot think it
the most _reformed_. In consequence of these reveries, I have imagined
that Camus and the Institute, meant, by the revival and continuance
of the _Acta Sanctorum_, to destroy the Pope, and the Catholic church
and Hierarchies, _de fonde en comble_, or in the language of Frederick
Pollair, D'Alembert, &c., "_ecraser le miserable_"--"Crush the wretch."
This great work must contain the most complete history of the corruptions
of Christianity that has ever appeared, Priestley's not excepted and
his history of ancient opinions not excepted.
As to the History of the Revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps
singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part
of the Revolution. It was only an effect, and consequence of it. The
revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from
1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was
drawn at Lexington. The records of thirteen Legislatures, the pamphlets,
newspapers, in all the colonies ought to be consulted, during that period,
to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and
informed, concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies. The
Congress of 1774 resembled in some respects, though I hope not in many,
the council of Nice in ecclesiastical history. It assembled the Priests
from the east and the west, the north and the south, who compared notes,
engaged in discussions and debates, and formed results by one vote, and
by two votes, which went out to the world as unanimous.
Mr. Madison's Notes of the Convention of 1787 or 1788 are consistent
with his indefatigable character. I shall never see them, but I hope
posterity will.
That our correspondence has been observed is no wonder; for your hand
is more universally known than your face. No printer has asked me for
copies; but it is no surprise that you have been requested. These gentry
will print whatever will sell; and our correspondence is thought such an
oddity by both parties, that the printers imagine an edition would soon
go off, and yield them a profit. There has, however, been no tampering
with your letters to me. They have all arrived in good order.
Poor Bonaparte! Poor Devil! What has, and what will become of him? Going
the way of King Theodore, Alexander, Cæsar, Charles XIIth, Cromwell,
Wat Tyler, and Jack Cade, _i.e._, to a bad end. And what will become of
Wellington? Envied, hated, despised, by all the barons, earls, viscounts,
marquises, as an upstart, a parvenue elevated over their heads. For these
people have no idea of any merit, but birth. Wellington must pass the
rest of his days buffeted, ridiculed, scorned and insulted by factions,
as Marlborough and his Duchess did. Military glory dazzles the eyes of
mankind, and for a time eclipses all wisdom and virtue, all laws, human
and divine; and after this it would be bathos to descend to services
merely civil or political.
Napoleon has imposed kings upon Spain, Holland, Sweden, Westphalia,
Saxony, Naples, &c. The combined emperors and kings are about to
retaliate upon France, by imposing a king upon her. These are all
abominable examples, detestable precedents. When will the rights of
mankind, the liberties and independence of nations, be respected? When
the perfectibility of the human mind shall arrive at perfection. When
the progress of Manillius' _Ratio_ shall have not only _eripuit cœlo
fulmen, Jouvisque fulgores_, but made mankind rational creatures.
It remains to be seen whether the allies were honest in their declaration
that they were at war only with Napoleon.
Can the French ever be cordially reconciled to the Bourbons again? If
not, who can they find for a head? the infant, or one of the generals?
Innumerable difficulties will embarrass either project. I am, as ever
TO JUDGE ROANE.
MONTICELLO, October 12, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--I received in a letter from Colonel Monroe the enclosed paper
communicated, as he said, with your permission, and even with a wish to
know my sentiments on the important question it discusses. It is now
more than forty years since I have ceased to be habitually conversant
with legal questions; and my pursuits through that period have seldom
required or permitted a renewal of my former familiarity with them. My
ideas at present, therefore, on such questions, have no claim to respect
but such as might be yielded to the common auditors of a law argument.
I well knew that in certain federal cases the laws of the United States
had given to a foreign party, whether plaintiff or defendant, a right to
carry his cause into the federal court; but I did not know that where he
had himself elected the State judicature, he could, after an unfavorable
decision there, remove his case to the federal court, and thus take the
benefit of two chances where others have but one; nor that the right of
entertaining the question in this case had been exercised, or claimed
by the federal judiciary after it had been postponed on the party's
first election. His failure, too, to place on the record the particular
ground which might give jurisdiction to the federal court, appears to me
an additional objection of great weight. The question is of the first
importance. The removal of it seems to be out of the analogies which
guide the two governments on their separate tracts, and claims the solemn
attention of both judicatures, and of the nation itself. I should fear to
make up a final opinion on it, until I could see as able a development of
the grounds of the federal claim as that which I have now read against
it. I confess myself unable to foresee what those grounds would be. The
paper enclosed must call them forth, and silence them too, unless they
are beyond my ken. I am glad, therefore, that the claim is arrested, and
made the subject of special and mature deliberation. I hope our courts
will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up
under the words "general defence and public welfare." These words only
express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary
legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which
they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to
give them the unspecified also; or why any specification? They could
not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, "all and some." And
should this construction prevail, all limits to the federal government
are done away. This opinion, formed on the first rise of the question,
I have never seen reason to change, whether in or out of power; but,
on the contrary, find it strengthened and confirmed by five and twenty
years of additional reflection and experience: and any countenance given
to it by any regular organ of the government, I should consider more
ominous than anything which has yet occurred.
I am sensible how much these slight observations, on a question which
you have so profoundly considered, need apology. They must find this
in my zeal for the administration of our government according to its
true spirit, federal as well as republican, and in my respect for any
wish which you might be supposed to entertain for opinions of so little
value. I salute you with sincere and high respect and esteem.
TO CAPT. A. PARTRIDGE OF THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS, WEST POINT, NEW YORK.
MONTICELLO, October 12, 1815.
SIR,--I thank you for the statement of altitudes, which you have been
so kind as to send me of our northern mountains. It came opportunely,
as I was about making inquiries for the height of the White Mountains
of New Hampshire, which have the reputation of being the highest in
our maritime States, and purpose shortly to measure geometrically the
height of the Peaks of Otter, which I suppose the highest _from their
base_, of any on the east side of the Mississippi, except the White
Mountains, and not far short of their height, if they are but of 4,885
feet. The method of estimating heights by the barometer, is convenient
and useful, as being ready, and furnishing an approximation to truth. Of
what degree of accuracy it is susceptible we know not as yet; no certain
theory being established for ascertaining the density and weight of that
portion of the column of atmosphere contiguous to the mountain; from
the weight of which, nevertheless, we are to infer the height of the
mountain. The most plausible seems to be that which supposes the mercury
of barometer divided into horizontal lamina of equal _thickness_; and
a similar column of the atmosphere into lamina of equal _weights_. The
former divisions give a set of arithmetical, the latter of geometrical
progressionals, which being the character of Logarithms and their numbers,
the tables of these furnish ready computations, needing, however, the
corrections which the state of the thermometer calls for. It is probable
that in taking heights in the vicinity of each other in this way, there
may be no considerable error, because the passage between them may be
quick and repeated. The height of a mountain from its base, thus taken,
merits, therefore, a very different degree of credit from that of its
height above the level of the sea, where that is distant. According,
for example, to the theory above mentioned, the height of Monticello
from its base is 580 feet, and its base 610 feet 8 inches, above the
level of the ocean; the former, from other facts, I judge to be near the
truth; but a knowledge of the different falls of water from hence to the
tide-water at Richmond, a distance of seventy-five miles, enables us to
say that the whole descent to that place is but 170 or 180 feet. From
thence to the ocean may be a distance of one hundred miles; it is all
tide-water, and through a level country. I know not what to conjecture as
the amount of descent, but certainly not 435 feet, as that theory would
suppose, nor the quarter part of it. I do not know by what rule General
Williams made his computations; he reckons the foot of the Blue Ridge,
twenty miles from here, but 100 feet above the tide-water at Richmond.
We know the descent, as before observed, to be at least 170 feet from
hence, to which is to be added that from the Blue Ridge to this place,
a very hilly country, with constant and great waterfalls. His estimate,
therefore, must be much below truth. Results so different prove that
for distant comparisons of height, the barometer is not to be relied
on according to any theory yet known. While, therefore, we give a good
degree of credit to the results of operations between the summit of a
mountain and its base, we must give less to those between its summit
and the level of the ocean.
I will do myself the pleasure of sending you my estimate of the Peaks
of Otter, which I count on undertaking in the course of the next month.
In the meantime accept the assurance of my great respect.
TO DOCTOR LOGAN.
MONTICELLO, October 15,1815.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the extract in yours of August 16th respecting
the Emperor Alexander. It arrived here a day or two after I had left this
place, from which I have been absent seven or eight weeks. I had from
other information formed the most favorable opinion of the virtues of
Alexander, and considered his partiality to this country as a prominent
proof of them. The magnanimity of his conduct on the first capture of
Paris still magnified everything we had believed of him; but how he will
come out of his present trial remains to be seen. That the sufferings
which France had inflicted on other countries justified severe reprisals,
cannot be questioned; but I have not yet learned what crimes of Poland,
Saxony, Belgium, Venice, Lombardy and Genoa, had merited for them, not
merely a temporary punishment, but that of permanent subjugation and a
destitution of independence and self-government. The fable of Æsop of
the lion dividing the spoils, is, I fear, becoming true history, and
the moral code of Napoleon and the English government a substitute for
that of Grotius, of Puffendorf, and even of the pure doctrine of the
great author of our own religion. We were safe ourselves from Bonaparte,
because he had not the British fleets at his command. We were safe from
the British fleets, because they had Bonaparte at their back; but the
British fleets and the conquerors of Bonaparte being now combined, and
the Hartford nation drawn off to them, we have uncommon reason to look
to our own affairs. This, however, I leave to others, offering prayers to
heaven, the only contribution of old age, for the safety of our country.
Be so good as to present me affectionately to Mrs. Logan, and to accept
yourself the assurance of my esteem and respect.
TO MR. GALLATIN.
MONTICELLO, October 16, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--A long absence from home must apologize for my so late
acknowledgment of your welcome favor of September 6th. Our storm of the
4th of that month gave me great uneasiness for you; for I was certain
you must be on the coast, and your actual arrival was unknown to me.
It was such a wind as I have not witnessed since the year 1769. It did,
however, little damage with us, only prostrating our corn, and tearing
tobacco, without essential injury to either. It could have been nothing
compared with that of the 23d, off the coast of New England, of which we
had not a breath, but on the contrary, fine, fair weather. Is this the
judgment of God between us? I congratulate you sincerely on your safe
return to your own country, and without knowing your own wishes, mine
are that you would never leave it again. I know you would be useful to
us at Paris, and so you would anywhere; but nowhere so useful as here.
We are undone, my dear Sir, if this banking mania be not suppressed.
_Aut Carthago, aut Roma delenda est._ The war, had it proceeded, would
have upset our government; and a new one, whenever tried, will do
it. And so it must be while our money, the nerve of war, is much or
little, real or imaginary, as our bitterest enemies choose to make it.
Put down the banks, and if this country could not be carried through
the longest war against her most powerful enemy, without ever knowing
the want of a dollar, without dependence on the traitorous classes of
her citizens, without bearing hard on the resources of the people, or
loading the public with an indefinite burthen of debt, I know nothing
of my countrymen. Not by any novel project, not by any charlatanerie,
but by ordinary and well-experienced means; by the total prohibition of
all private paper at all times, by reasonable taxes in war aided by the
necessary emissions of public paper of circulating size, this bottomed
on special taxes, redeemable annually as this special tax comes in, and
finally within a moderate period,--even with the flood of private paper
by which we were deluged, would the treasury have ventured its credit in
bills of circulating size, as of five or ten dollars, &c., they would
have been greedily received by the people in preference to bank paper.
But unhappily the towns of America were considered as the nation of
America, the dispositions of the inhabitants of the former as those of
the latter, and the treasury, for want of confidence in the country,
delivered itself bound hand and foot to bold and bankrupt adventurers
and pretenders to be money-holders, whom it could have crushed at any
moment. Even the last half-bold half-timid threat of the treasury, showed
at once that these jugglers were at the feet of government. For it never
was, and is not, any confidence in their frothy bubbles, but the want of
all other medium, which induced, or now induces, the _country_ people to
take their paper; and at this moment, when nothing else is to be had,
no man will receive it but to pass it away instantly, none for distant
purposes. We are now without any common measure of the value of property,
and private fortunes are up or down at the will of the worst of our
citizens. Yet there is no hope of relief from the legislatures who have
immediate control over this subject. As little seems to be known of the
principles of political economy as if nothing had ever been written or
practised on the subject, or as was known in old times, when the Jews
had their rulers under the hammer. It is an evil, therefore, which we
must make up our minds to meet and to endure as those of hurricanes,
earthquakes and other casualties: let us turn over therefore another leaf.
I grieve for France; although it cannot be denied that by the afflictions
with which she wantonly and wickedly overwhelmed other nations, she has
merited severe reprisals. For it is no excuse to lay the enormities to
the wretch who led to them, and who has been the author of more misery
and suffering to the world, than any being who ever lived before him.
After destroying the liberties of his country, he has exhausted all its
resources, physical and moral, to indulge his own maniac ambition, his
own tyrannical and overbearing spirit. His sufferings cannot be too great.
But theirs I sincerely deplore, and what is to be their term? The will of
the allies? There is no more moderation, forbearance, or even honesty in
theirs, than in that of Bonaparte. They have proved that their object,
like his, is plunder. They, like him, are shuffling nations together,
or into their own hands, as if all were right which they feel a power
to do. In the exhausted state in which Bonaparte has left France, I
see no period to her sufferings, until this combination of robbers fall
together by the ears. The French may then rise up and choose their side.
And I trust they will finally establish for themselves a government of
rational and well-tempered liberty. So much science cannot be lost; so
much light shed over them can never fail to produce to them some good,
in the end. Till then we may ourselves fervently pray, with the liturgy
a little parodied, "Give peace till that time, oh Lord, because there
is none other that will fight for us but only thee, oh God." It is rare
that I indulge in these poetical effusions; but your former and latter
relations with both subjects have associated you with them in my mind,
and led me beyond the limits of attention I ordinarily give to them.
Whether you go or stay with us, you have always the prayers of yours
affectionately.
P. S. The two letters you enclosed me were from Warden and De Lormerie,
and neither from La Fayette, as you supposed.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, November 13, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--The fundamental article of my political creed is, that
despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a
majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical
junto, and a single emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in
every respect diabolical.
Accordingly, arbitrary power, wherever it has resided, ha never failed
to destroy all the records, memorials, and histories of former times
which it did not like, and to corrupt and interpolate such as it was
cunning enough to preserve or tolerate. We cannot therefore say with
much confidence, what knowledge or what virtues may have prevailed in
some former ages in some quarters of the world.
Nevertheless, according to the few lights that remain to us, we may say
that the eighteenth century, notwithstanding all its errors and vices,
has been, of all that are past, the most honorable to human nature.
Knowledge and virtues were increased and diffused. Arts, sciences useful
to men, ameliorating their condition, were improved more than in any
former equal period.
But what are we to say now? Is the nineteenth century to be a contrast to
the eighteenth? Is it to extinguish all the lights of its predecessors?
Are the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index Expurgatorius, and the
knights-errant of St. Ignatius Loyola to be revived and restored to all
their salutary powers of supporting and propagating the mild spirit of
Christianity? The proceedings of the allies and their Congress at Vienna,
the accounts from Spain, France, &c., the Chateaubriands and the Genti's,
indicate which way the wind blows. The priests are at their old work
again. The Protestants are denounced, and another St. Bartholomew's day
threatened.
This, however, will probably, twenty-five years hence, be honored with
the character of "_The effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the
sober reflections of an unbiased understanding_." I have received Memoirs
of the Life of Dr. Price, by William Morgan, F.R.S. In pages 151 and 155
Mr. Morgan says: "So well assured was Dr. Price of the establishment
of a free constitution in France, and of the subsequent overthrow of
despotism throughout Europe, as the consequence of it, that he never
failed to express his gratitude to heaven for having extended his life
to the present happy period, in which after sharing the benefits of one
revolution, he has been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions,
both glorious." But some of his correspondents were not quite so sanguine
in their expectations from the last of the revolutions; and among these,
the late American Ambassador, Mr. John Adams. In a long letter which he
wrote to Dr. Price at this time, so far from congratulating him on the
occasion, he expresses himself in terms of contempt, in regard to the
French revolution; and after asking rather too severely what good was
to be expected from a nation of Atheists, he concluded with foretelling
the destruction of a million of human beings as the probable consequence
of it. These harsh censures and gloomy predictions were particularly
ungrateful to Dr. Price, nor can it be denied that they must have then
appeared as the _effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober
reflections_ of an unbiased understanding.
I know not what a candid public will think of this practice of Mr.
Morgan, after the example of Mr. Belsham, who, finding private letters
in the Cabinet of a great and good man, after his decease, written in
the utmost freedom and confidence of intimate friendship, by persons
still living, though after the lapse of a quarter of a century, produces
them before the world.
Dr. Disney had different feelings and a different judgment. Finding some
cursory letters among the papers of Mr. Hollis, he would not publish
them without my consent. In answer to his request, I submitted them to
his discretion, and might have done the same to Mr. Morgan; indeed, had
Mr. Morgan published my letter entire, I should not have given him nor
myself any concern about it. But as in his summary he has not done the
latter justice, I shall give it with all its faults.
Mr. Morgan has been more discreet and complaisant to you than to me. He
has mentioned respectfully your letters from Paris to Dr. Price, but has
given us none of them. As I would give more for these letters than for
all the rest of the book, I am more angry with him for disappointing
me, than for all he says of me and my letter, which, scambling as it
is, contains nothing but the sure words of prophecy. I am, as usual, yours
TO MR. WM. BENTLEY.
MONTICELLO, December 28, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--At the date of your letter of October 30th, I had just left
home on a journey from which I am recently returned. I had many years
ago understood that Professor Ebeling was engaged in a geographical
work which would comprehend the United States, and indeed I expected
it was finished and published. I am glad to learn that his candor and
discrimination have been sufficient to guard him against trusting the
libel of Dr. Morse on this State. I wish it were in my power to give him
the aid you ask, but it is not. The whole forenoon with me is engrossed
by correspondence too extensive and laborious for my age. Health, habit,
and necessary attention to my farms, require me then to be on horseback
until a late dinner, and the society of my family and friends, with some
reading, furnish the necessary relaxations of the rest of the day. Add
to this that the cession of my library to Congress has left me without
materials for such an undertaking. I wish the part of his work which
gives the geography of this country may be translated and published, that
ourselves and the world may at length have something like a dispassionate
account of these States. Poor human nature! when we are obliged to appeal
for the truth of mere facts from an eye-witness to one whose faculties
for discovering it are only an honest candor and caution in sifting the
grain from its chaff!
The Professor's history of Hamburg is doubtless interesting and
instructive, and valuable as a corrective of the false information
we derive from newspapers. I should read it with pleasure, but I
fear its transportation and return would expose it to too much risk.
Notwithstanding all the French and British atrocities, which will forever
disgrace the present era of history, their shameless prostration of all
the laws of morality which constitute the security, the peace and comfort
of man--notwithstanding the waste of human life, and measure of human
suffering which they have inflicted on the world--nations hitherto in
slavery have descried through all this bloody mist a glimmering of their
own rights, have dared to open their eyes, and to see that their own
power and their own will suffice for their emancipation. Their tyrants
must now give them more moderate forms of government, and they seem now
to be sensible of this themselves. Instead of the parricide treason
of Bonaparte in employing the means confided to him as a republican
magistrate to the overthrow of that republic, and establishment of a
military despotism in himself and his descendants, to the subversion of
the neighboring governments, and erection of thrones for his brothers,
his sisters and sycophants, had he honestly employed that power in
the establishment and support of the freedom of his own country, there
is not a nation in Europe which would not at this day have had a more
rational government, one in which the will of the people should have had
a moderating and salutary influence. The work will now be longer, will
swell more rivers with blood, produce more sufferings and more crimes.
But it will be consummated; and that it may be will be the theme of
my constant prayers while I shall remain on the earth beneath, or in
the heavens above. To these I add sincere wishes for your health and
happiness.
TO MR. GEORGE FLEMING.
MONTICELLO, December 29, 1815.
SIR,--At the date of your favor of October 30th, I had just left home on
a journey to a distant possession of mine, from which I am but recently
returned, and I wish that the matter of my answer could compensate for
its delay. But, Sir, it happens that of all the machines which have been
employed to aid human labor, I have made myself the least acquainted with
(that which is certainly the most powerful of all) the steam engine. In
its original and simple form indeed, as first constructed by Newcomen and
Savary, it had been a subject of my early studies; but once possessed of
the principle, I ceased to follow up the numerous modifications of the
machinery for employing it, of which I do not know whether England or
our own country has produced the greatest number. Hence, I am entirely
incompetent to form a judgment of the comparative merit of yours with
those preceding it; and the cession of my library to Congress has left me
without any examples to turn to. I see, indeed, in yours, the valuable
properties of simplicity, cheapness and accommodation to the small and
more numerous calls of life, and the calculations of its power appear
sound and correct. Yet experience and frequent disappointment have taught
me not to be over-confident in theories or calculations, until actual
trial of the whole combination has stamped it with approbation. Should
this sanction be added, the importance of your construction will be
enhanced by the consideration that a smaller agent, applicable to our
daily concerns, is infinitely more valuable than the greatest which can
be used only for great objects. For these interest the few alone, the
former the many. I once had an idea that it might perhaps be possible
to economize the steam of a common pot, kept boiling on the kitchen
fire until its accumulation should be sufficient to give a stroke, and
although the strokes might not be rapid, there would be enough of them
in the day to raise from an adjacent well the water necessary for daily
use; to wash the linen, knead the bread, beat the homony, churn the
butter, turn the spit, and do all other household offices which require
only a regular mechanical motion. The unproductive hands now necessarily
employed in these, might then increase the produce of our fields. I
proposed it to Mr. Rumsey, one of our greatest mechanics, who believed
in its possibility, and promised to turn his mind to it. But his death
soon after disappointed this hope. Of how much more value would this be
to ordinary life than Watts & Bolton's thirty pair of mill-stones to be
turned by one engine, of which I saw seven pair in actual operation. It
is an interesting part of your question, how much fuel would be requisite
for your machine?
Your letter being evidence of your attention to mechanical things, and to
their application to matters of daily interest, I will mention a trifle
in this way, which yet is not without value. I presume, like the rest of
us in the country, you are in the habit of household manufacture, and
that you will not, like too many, abandon it on the return of peace,
to enrich our late enemy, and to nourish foreign agents in our bosom,
whose baneful influence and intrigues cost us so much embarrassment and
dissension. The shirting for our laborers has been an object of some
difficulty. Flax is injurious to our lands, and of so scanty produce
that I have never attempted it. Hemp, on the other hand, is abundantly
productive, and will grow forever on the same spot. But the breaking and
beating it, which has been always done by hand, is so slow, so laborious,
and so much complained of by our laborers, that I had given it up and
purchased and manufactured cotton for their shirting. The advanced
price of this, however, now makes it a serious item of expense; and
in the meantime, a method of removing the difficulty of preparing hemp
occurred to me, so simple and so cheap, that I return to its culture and
manufacture. To a person having a threshing machine, the addition of a
hemp-break will not cost more than twelve or fifteen dollars. You know
that the first mover in that machine is a horizontal horse-wheel with
cogs on its upper face. On these is placed a wallower and shaft, which
give motion to the threshing apparatus. On the opposite side of this
same wheel I place another wallower and shaft, through which, and near
its outer end, I pass a cross-arm of sufficient strength, projecting on
each side fifteen inches in this form: [Illustration] nearly under the
cross-arm is placed a very strong hemp-break, much stronger and heavier
than those for the hand. Its head block particularly is massive, and four
feet high, and near its upper end in front, is fixed a strong pin (which
we may call its horn), by this the cross-arm lifts and lets fall the
break twice in every revolution of the wallower. A man feeds the break
with hemp stalks, and a little person holds under the head block a large
twist of the hemp which has been broken, resembling a twist of tobacco
but larger, where it is more perfectly beaten than I have ever seen done
by hand. If the horse-wheel has one hundred and forty-four cogs, the
wallower eleven rounds, and the horse goes three times round in a minute,
it will give about eighty strokes in a minute. I had fixed a break to be
moved by the gate of my saw-mill, which broke and beat at the rate of
two hundred pounds a day. But the inconveniences of interrupting that,
induced me to try the power of a horse, and I have found it to answer
perfectly. The power being less, so also probably will be the effect,
of which I cannot make a fair trial until I commence on my new crop.
I expect that a single horse will do the breaking and beating of ten
men. Something of this kind has been so long wanted by the cultivators
of hemp, that as soon as I can speak of its effect with certainty, I
shall probably describe it anonymously in the public papers, in order
to forestall the prevention of its use by some interloping patentee. I
shall be happy to learn that an actual experiment of your steam engine
fulfils the expectations we form of it, and I pray you to accept the
assurances of my esteem and respect.
TO M. DUPONT DE NEMOURS.
MONTICELLO, December 31, 1815.
Nothing, my very dear and ancient friend, could have equalled the
mortification I felt on my arrival at home, and receipt of the information
that I had lost the happiness of your visit. The season had so far
advanced, and the weather become so severe, that together with the
information given me by Mr. Correa, so early as September, that your
friends even then were dissuading the journey, I had set it down as
certain it would be postponed to a milder season of the ensuing year.
I had yielded, therefore, with the less reluctance to a detention in
Bedford by a slower progress of my workmen than had been counted on. I
have never more desired anything than a full and free conversation with
you. I have not understood the transactions in France during the years
'14 and '15. From the newspapers we cannot even conjecture the secret
and real history; and I had looked for it to your visit. A pamphlet
(_Le Conciliateur_) received from M. Jullien, had given me some idea
of the obliquities and imbecilities of the Bourbons, during their first
restoration. Some manœuvres of both parties I had learnt from Lafayette,
and more recently from Gallatin. But the note you referred me to at page
360 of your letter to Say, has possessed me more intimately of the views,
the conduct and consequences of the last apparition of Napoleon. Still
much is wanting. I wish to know what were the intrigues which brought
him back, and what those which finally crushed him? What parts were acted
by A, B, C, D., &c, some of whom I know, and some I do not? How did the
body of the nation stand affectioned, comparatively, between the fool
and the tyrant? &c., &c., &c. From the account my family gives me of
your sound health, and of the vivacity and vigor of your mind, I will
still hope we shall meet again, and that the fine temperature of our
early summer, to wit, of May and June, may suggest to you the salutary
effects of exercise, and change of air and scene. _En attendant_, we
will turn to other subjects.
That your opinion of the hostile intentions of Great Britain towards us
is sound, I am satisfied, from her movements north and south of us, as
well as from her temper. She feels the gloriole of her late _golden_
achievements tarnished by our successes against her by sea and land;
and will not be contented until she has wiped it off by triumphs over us
also. I rely, however, on the volcanic state of Europe to present other
objects for her arms and her apprehensions; and am not without hope we
shall be permitted to proceed peaceably in making children, and maturing
and moulding our strength and resources. It is impossible that France
should rest under her present oppressions and humiliations. She will
rise in that gigantic strength which cannot be annihilated, and will
fatten her fields with the blood of her enemies. I only wish she may
exercise patience and forbearance until divisions among them may give
her a choice of sides. To the overwhelming power of England I see but
two chances of limit. The first is her bankruptcy, which will deprive
her of the _golden_ instrument of all her successes. The other in that
ascendency which nature destines for us by immutable laws. But to hasten
this last consummation, we too must exercise patience and forbearance.
For twenty years to come we should consider peace as the _summum bonum_
of our country. At the end of that period we shall be twenty millions in
number, and forty in energy, when encountering the starved and rickety
paupers and dwarfs of English workshops. By that time I hope your grandson
will have become one of our High-admirals, and bear distinguished part
in retorting the wrongs of both his countries on the most implacable
and cruel of their enemies. In this hope, and because I love you, and
all who are dear to you, I wrote to the President in the instant of
reading your letter of the 7th, on the subject of his adoption into
our navy. I did it because I was gratified in doing it, while I knew it
was unnecessary. The sincere respect and high estimation in which the
President holds you, is such that there is no gratification, within the
regular exercise of his functions, which he would withhold from you. Be
assured then that, if within that compass, this business is safe.
Were you any other than whom you are, I should shrink from the task you
have proposed to me, of undertaking to judge of the merit of your own
translation of the excellent letter on education. After having done all
which good sense and eloquence could do on the original, you must not
ambition the double need of English eloquence also. Did you ever know an
instance of one who could write in a foreign language with the elegance
of a native? Cicero wrote Commentaries of his own Consulship in Greek;
they perished unknown, while his native compositions have immortalized
him with themselves. No, my dear friend; you must not risk the success
of your letter on foreignisms of style which may weaken its effect. Some
native pen must give it to our countrymen in a native dress, faithful
to its original. You will find such with the aid of our friend Correa,
who knows everybody, and will readily think of some one who has time and
talent for this work. I have neither. Till noon I am daily engaged in a
correspondence much too extensive and laborious for my age. From noon to
dinner health, habit, and business, require me to be on horseback; and
render the society of my family and friends a necessary relaxation for
the rest of the day. These occupations scarcely leave time for the papers
of the day; and to renounce entirely the sciences and belles-lettres is
impossible. Had not Mr. Gilmer just taken his place in the ranks of the
bar, I think we could have engaged him in this work. But I am persuaded
that Mr. Correa's intimacy with the persons of promise in our country,
will leave you without difficulty in laying this work of instruction
open to our citizens at large.
I have not yet had time to read your Equinoctial republics, nor the
letter of Say; because I am still engrossed by the letters which had
accumulated during my absence. The latter I accept with thankfulness, and
will speedily read and return the former. God bless you, and maintain
you in strength of body, and mind, until your own wishes shall be to
resign both.
TO CAPT. A. PARTRIDGE.
MONTICELLO, January 2d, 1816.
SIR,--I am but recently returned from my journey to the neighborhood of
the Peaks of Otter, and find here your favors of November 23d and December
9th. I have therefore to thank you for your meteorological table and the
corrections of Colonel Williams' altitudes of the mountains of Virginia,
which I had not before seen; but especially for the very able extract on
Barometrical measures. The precision of the calculations, and soundness
of the principles on which they are founded, furnish, I am satisfied, a
great approximation towards truth, and raise that method of estimating
heights to a considerable degree of rivalship with the trigonometrical.
The last is not without some sources of inaccuracy, as you have truly
stated. The admeasurement of the base is liable to errors which can be
rendered insensible only by such degrees of care as have been exhibited
by the mathematicians who have been employed in measuring degrees on
the surface of the earth. The measure of the angles by the wonderful
perfection to which the graduation of instruments has been brought by
a Bird, a Ramsden, a Troughton, removes nearly all distrust from that
operation; and we may add that the effect of refraction, rarely worth
notice in short distances, admits of correction by well-established laws;
these sources of error once reduced to be insensible, their geometrical
employment is certainty itself. No two men can differ on a principle of
trigonometry. Not so as to the theories of Barometrical mensuration. On
these have been great differences of opinion, and among characters of
just celebrity.
Dr. Halley reckoned one-tenth inch of Mercury equal to 90 feet altitude
of the atmosphere. Derham thought it equal to something less than 90
feet. Cassini's tables to 24° of the Barometer allowed 676 toises of
altitudes.
Mariole's, to the same 544 toises.
Schruchzer's " 559 "
Nettleton's tables applied to a difference of .5975 of mercury, in a
particular instance gave 512.17 feet of altitude, and Bonguor's and De
Luc's rules, to the same difference gave 579.5 feet. Sir Isaac Newton
had established that at heights in arithmetrical progression the ratio
of rarity in the air would be geometrical, and this being the character
of the natural numbers and their Logarithms, Bonguor adopted the ratio
in his mensuration of the mountains of South America, and stating in
French lignes the height of the mercury of different stations, took their
Logarithms to five places only, including the index, and considered the
resulting difference as expressing that of the altitudes in French toises.
He then applied corrections required by the effect of the temperature
of the moment on the air and mercury. His process, on the whole, agrees
very exactly with that established in your excellent extract. In 1776
I observed the height of the mercury at the base and summit of the
mountain I live on, and by Nettleton's tables, estimated the height at
512.17 feet, and called it about 500 feet in the Notes on Virginia. But
calculating it since on the same observations, according to Bonguor's
method with De Luc's improvements, the result was 579.5 feet; and lately
I measured the same height trigonometrically, with the aid of a base
of 1,175 feet in a vertical plane with the summit, and at the distance
of about 1,500 yards from the axis of the mountain, and made it 599.35
feet. I consider this as testing the advance of the barometrical process
towards truth by the adoption of the Logarithmic ratio of heights and
densities; and continued observations and experiments will continue to
advance it still more. But the first character of a common measure of
things being that of invariability, I can never suppose that a substance
so heterogeneous and variable as the atmospheric fluid, changing daily and
hourly its weight and dimensions to the amount, sometimes, of one-tenth
of the whole, can be applied as a standard of measure to anything, with
as much mathematical exactness, as a trigonometrical process. It is
still, however, a resource of great value for these purposes, because
its use is so easy, in comparison with the other, and especially where
the grounds are unfavorable for a base; and its results are so near the
truth as to answer all the common purposes of information. Indeed, I
should in all cases prefer the use of both, to warn us against gross
error, and to put us, when that is suspected, on a repetition of our
process. When lately measuring trigonometrically the height of the Peaks
of Otter (as my letter of October 12th informed you I was about to do),
I very much wished for a barometer, to try the height of that also. But
it was too far and hazardous to carry my own, and there was not one in
that neighborhood. On the subject of that admeasurement, I must premise
that my object was only to gratify a common curiosity as to the height
of those mountains, which we deem our highest, and to furnish an _à
peu près_, sufficient to satisfy us in a comparison of them with the
other mountains of our own, or of other countries. I therefore neither
provided such instruments, nor aimed at such extraordinary accuracy in
the measures of my base, as abler operators would have employed in the
more important object of measuring a degree, or of ascertaining the
relative position of different places for astronomical or geographical
purposes. My instrument was a theodolite by Ramsden, whose horizontal
and vertical circles were of 3½ inches radius, its graduation subdivided
by noniuses to one-third, admitting however by its intervals, a further
subdivision by the eye to a single minute, with two telescopes, the one
fixed, the other movable, and a Gunter's chain of four poles, accurately
adjusted in its length, and carefully attended on its application to the
base line. The Sharp, or southern peak, was first measured by a base of
2806.32 feet in the vertical plane of the axis of the mountain. A base
then nearly parallel with the two mountains of 6,589 feet was measured,
and observations taken at each end, of the altitudes and horizontal
angles of each apex, and such other auxiliary observations made as to the
stations, inclination of the base, &c., as a good degree of correctness
in the result would require. The ground of our bases was favorable,
being an open plain of close grazed meadow on both sides of the Otter
river, declining so uniformly with the descent of the river as to give no
other trouble than an observation of its angle of inclination, in order
to reduce the base to the plane of the horizon. From the summit of the
Sharp peak I took also the angle of altitude of the flat or northern one
above it, my other observations sufficing to give their distance from
one another. The result was, the mean height of the Sharp peak above
the surface of Otter river
2946.5 inches.
Mean height of the flat peak above the surface of Otter
river 3103.5 inches.
The distance between the two summits 9507.73 inches.
Their rhumb N. 33° 50´ E. the distance of the stations of observation
from the points in the bases of the mountains vertically under their
summits was, the shortest 19002.2 feet, the longest 24523.3 feet. These
mountains are computed to be visible to fifteen counties of the State,
without the advantage of counter-elevations, and to several more with
that advantage. I must add that I have gone over my calculations but
once, and nothing is more possible than the mistake of a figure, now
and then, in calculating so many triangles, which may occasion some
variation in the result. I mean, therefore, when I have leisure, to go
again over the whole. The ridge of mountains of which Monticello is one,
is generally low; there is one in it, however, called Peter's mountain,
considerably higher than the general ridge. This being within a dozen
miles of me, north-eastwardly, I think in the spring of the year to
measure it by both processes, which may serve as another trial of the
Logarithmic theory. Should I do this you shall know the result. In the
meantime accept assurances of my great respect and esteem.
TO COLONEL YANCEY.
MONTICELLO, January 6, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--I am favored with yours of December 24th, and perceive you
have many matters before you of great moment. I have no fear but that
the legislature will do on all of them what is wise and just. On the
particular subject of our river, in the navigation of which our county
has so great an interest, I think the power of permitting dams to be
erected across it, ought to be taken from the courts, so far as the
stream has water enough for navigation. The value of our property is
sensibly lessened by the dam which the court of Fluvana authorized not
long since to be erected, but a little above its mouth. This power over
the value and convenience of our lands is of much too high a character
to be placed at the will of a county court, and that of a county, too,
which has not a common interest in the preservation of the navigation
for those above them. As to the existing dams, if any conditions are
proposed more than those to which they were subjected on their original
erection, I think they would be allowed the alternative of opening a
sluice for the passage of navigation, so as to put the river into as
good a condition for navigation as it was before the erection of their
dam, or as it would be if their dam were away. Those interested in the
navigation might then use the sluices or make locks as should be thought
best. Nature and reason, as well as all our constitutions, condemn
retrospective conditions as mere acts of power against right.
I recommend to your patronage our Central College. I look to it as a
germ from which a great tree may spread itself.
There is before the assembly a petition of a Captain Miller which I have
at heart, because I have great esteem for the petitioner as an honest
and useful man. He is about to settle in our county, and to establish
a brewery, in which art I think him as skilful a man as has ever come
to America. I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the
whiskey which kills one-third of our citizens and ruins their families.
He is staying with me until he can fix himself, and I should be thankful
for information from time to time of the progress of his petition.
Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens
are clamoring for more banks, more banks. The American mind is now in
that state of fever which the world has so often seen in the history
of other nations. We are under the bank bubble, as England was under
the South Sea bubble, France under the Mississippi bubble, and as every
nation is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design, or delusion may
puff up in moments when off their guard. We are now taught to believe
that legerdemain tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth as hard
labor in the earth. It is vain for common sense to urge that _nothing_
can produce but _nothing_; that it is an idle dream to believe in a
philosopher's stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem
man from the original sentence of his Maker, "in the sweat of his brow
shall he eat his bread." Not Quixot enough, however, to attempt to reason
Bedlam to rights, my anxieties are turned to the most practicable means
of withdrawing us from the ruin into which we have run. Two hundred
millions of paper in the hands of the people, (and less cannot be from the
employment of a banking capital known to exceed one hundred millions,)
is a fearful tax to fall at hap-hazard on their heads. The debt which
purchased our independence was but of eighty millions, of which twenty
years of taxation had in 1809 paid but the one half. And what have we
purchased with this tax of two hundred millions which we are to pay
by wholesale but usury, swindling, and new forms of demoralization.
Revolutionary history has warned us of the probable moment when this
baseless trash is to receive its fiat. Whenever so much of the precious
metals shall have returned into the circulation as that every one can
get some in exchange for his produce, paper, as in the revolutionary
war, will experience at once an universal rejection. When public opinion
changes, it is with the rapidity of thought. Confidence is already on the
totter, and every one now handles this paper as if playing at Robin's
alive. That in the present state of the circulation the banks should
resume payments in specie, would require their vaults to be like the
widow's cruise. The thing to be aimed at is, that the excesses of their
emissions should be withdrawn as gradually, but as speedily, too, as is
practicable, without so much alarm as to bring on the crisis dreaded.
Some banks are said to be calling in their paper. But ought we to let
this depend on their discretion? Is it not the duty of the legislature
to endeavor to avert from their constituents such a catastrophe as the
extinguishment of two hundred millions of paper in their hands? The
difficulty is indeed great; and the greater, because the patient revolts
against all medicine. I am far from presuming to say that any plan can be
relied on with certainty, because the bubble may burst from one moment
to another; but if it fails, we shall be but where we should have been
without any effort to save ourselves. Different persons, doubtless, will
devise different schemes of relief. One would be to suppress instantly
the currency of all paper not issued under the authority of our own
State or of the General Government; to interdict after a few months the
circulation of all bills of five dollars and under; after a few months
more, all of ten dollars and under; after other terms, those of twenty,
fifty, and so on to one hundred dollars, which last, if any must be
left in circulation, should be the lowest denomination. These might be
a convenience in mercantile transactions and transmissions, and would be
excluded by their size from ordinary circulation. But the disease may be
too pressing to await such a remedy. With the legislature I cheerfully
leave it to apply this medicine, or no medicine at all. I am sure their
intentions are faithful; and embarked in the same bottom, I am willing
to swim or sink with my fellow citizens. If the latter is their choice,
I will go down with them without a murmur. But my exhortation would
rather be "not to give up the ship."
I am a great friend to the improvements of roads, canals, and schools.
But I wish I could see some provision for the former as solid as that
of the latter,--something better than fog. The literary fund is a solid
provision, unless lost in the impending bankruptcy. If the legislature
would add to that a perpetual tax of a cent a head on the population of
the State, it would set agoing at once, and forever maintain, a system
of primary or ward schools, and an university where might be taught,
in its highest degree, every branch of science useful in our time and
country; and it would rescue us from the tax of toryism, fanaticism, and
indifferentism to their own State, which we now send our youth to bring
from those of New England. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at
will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe
deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe
with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man
able to read, all is safe. The frankness of this communication will, I am
sure, suggest to you a discreet use of it. I wish to avoid all collisions
of opinion with all mankind. Show it to Mr. Maury, with expressions of
my great esteem. It pretends to convey no more than the opinions of one
of your thousand constituents, and to claim no more attention than every
other of that thousand.
I will ask you once more to take care of Miller and our College, and to
accept assurances of my esteem and respect.
TO CHARLES THOMPSON.
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° 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 corvée 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.
TO BENJAMIN AUSTIN, ESQ.
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 of 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 pennyweights 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.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, January 11, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Of the last five months I have passed 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
acknowledgments. This has been the fate of your favor of November 13th.
I agree with you in all its eulogies on the eighteenth 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 æra of the Borgias, by which time the barbarous ages had
reduced national morality to its lowest point of depravity, and observe
that the arts and sciences, rising from that point, advanced gradually
through all the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth 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 seventeenth and eighteenth 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 its integrity. A wound indeed was inflicted on this character
of honor in the eighteenth 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 its 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 all 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 apostasy 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 three hundred 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, although he was the head and mouth, the nation furnished the hands
which executed his enormities. England, although 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 eight or ten 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 although 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 powers. Belgium, Prussia, Poland, Lombardy,
&c., 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, although 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, bigoted 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 perceive 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 neutral 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 embryo, 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.
TO DABNEY CARR.
MONTICELLO, January 19, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--At the date of your letter of December the 1st, I was in
Bedford, and since my return, so many letters, accumulated during my
absence, have been pressing for answers, that this is the first moment
I have been able to attend to the subject of yours. While Mr. Girardin
was in this neighborhood writing his continuation of Burke's history,
I had suggested to him a proper notice of the establishment of the
committee of correspondence here in 1773, and of Mr. Carr, your father,
who introduced it. He has doubtless done this, and his work is now in
the press. My books, journals of the times, &c., being all gone, I have
nothing now but an impaired memory to resort to for the more particular
statement you wish. But I give it with the more confidence, as I find
that I remember old things better than new. The transaction took place
in the session of Assembly of March 1773. Patrick Henry, Richard Henry
Lee, Frank Lee, your father and myself, met by agreement, one evening,
about the close of the session, at the Raleigh Tavern, to consult on
the measures which the circumstances of the times seemed to call for.
We agreed, in result, that concert in the operations of the several
colonies was indispensable; and that to produce this, some channel of
correspondence between them must be opened; that therefore, we would
propose to our House the appointment of a committee of correspondence,
which should be authorized and instructed to write to the Speakers of
the House of Representatives of the several Colonies, recommending the
appointment of similar committees on their part, who, by a communication
of sentiment on the transactions threatening us all, might promote a
harmony of action salutary to all. This was the substance, not pretending
to remember the words. We proposed the resolution, and your father was
agreed on to make the motion. He did it the next day, March the 12th,
with great ability, reconciling all to it, not only by the reasonings,
but by the temper and moderation with which it was developed. It was
adopted by a very general vote. Peyton Randolph, some of us who proposed
it, and who else I do not remember, were appointed of the committee.
We immediately despatched letters by expresses to the Speakers of all
the other Assemblies. I remember that Mr. Carr and myself, returning
home together, and conversing on the subject by the way, concurred in
the conclusion that that measure must inevitably beget the meeting of a
Congress of Deputies from all the colonies, for the purpose of uniting
all in the same principles and measures for the maintenance of our
rights. My memory cannot deceive me, when I affirm that we did it in
consequence of no such proposition from any other colony. No doubt the
resolution itself and the journals of the day will show that ours was
original, and not merely responsive to one from any other quarter. Yet,
I am certain I remember also, that a similar proposition, and nearly
cotemporary, was made by Massachusetts, and that our northern messenger
passed theirs on the road. This, too, may be settled by recurrence to the
records of Massachusetts. The proposition was generally acceded to by the
other colonies, and the first effect, as expected, was the meeting of a
Congress at New York the ensuing year. The committee of correspondence
appointed by Massachusetts, as quoted by you from Marshall, under
the date of 1770, must have been for a special purpose, and _functus
officio_ before the date of 1773, or Massachusetts herself would not
then have proposed another. Records should be examined to settle this
accurately. I well remember the pleasure expressed in the countenance
and conversation of the members generally, on this _debut_ of Mr. Carr,
and the hopes they conceived as well from the talents as the patriotism
it manifested. But he died within two months after, and in him we lost a
powerful fellow-laborer. His character was of a high order. A spotless
integrity, sound judgment, handsome imagination, enriched by education
and reading, quick and clear in his conceptions, of correct and ready
elocution, impressing every hearer with the sincerity of the heart from
which it flowed. His firmness was inflexible in whatever he thought was
right; but when no moral principle stood in the way, never had man more
of the milk of human kindness, of indulgence, of softness, of pleasantry
of conversation and conduct. The number of his friends, and the warmth
of their affection, were proofs of his worth, and of their estimate of
it. To give to those now living, an idea of the affliction produced by
his death in the minds of all who knew him, I liken it to that lately
felt by themselves on the death of his eldest son, Peter Carr, so like
him in all his endowments and moral qualities, and whose recollection
can never recur without a deep-drawn sigh from the bosom of any one who
knew him. You mention that I showed you an inscription I had proposed
for the tomb stone of your father. Did I leave it in your hands to be
copied? I ask the question, not that I have any such recollection, but
that I find it no longer in the place of its deposit, and think I never
took it out but on that occasion. Ever and affectionately yours.
TO DR. PETER WILSON, PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES, COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK.
MONTICELLO, January 20, 1816.
SIR,--Of the last five months, I have been absent four from home, which
must apologize for so very late an acknowledgment of your favor of
November 22d, and I wish the delay could be compensated by the matter
of the answer. But an unfortunate accident puts that out of my power.
During the course of my public life, and from a very early period of
it, I omitted no opportunity of procuring vocabularies of the Indian
languages, and for that purpose formed a model expressing such objects
in nature as must be familiar to every people, savage or civilized.
This being made the standard to which all were brought, would exhibit
readily whatever affinities of language there be between the several
tribes. It was my intention, on retiring from public business, to have
digested these into some order, so as to show not only what relations of
language existed among our own aborigines, but by a collation with the
great Russian vocabulary of the languages of Europe and Asia, whether
there were any between them and the other nations of the continent. On my
removal from Washington, the package in which this collection was coming
by water, was stolen and destroyed. It consisted of between thirty and
forty vocabularies, of which I can, from memory, say nothing particular;
but that I am certain more than half of them differed as radically,
each from every other, as the Greek, the Latin, and Islandic. And even
of those which seemed to be derived from the same radix, the departure
was such that the tribes speaking them could not probably understand
one another. Single words, or two or three together, might perhaps be
understood, but not a whole sentence of any extent or construction. I
think, therefore, the pious missionaries who shall go to the several
tribes to instruct them in the Christian religion, will have to learn
a language for every tribe they go to; nay, more, that they will have
to create a new language for every one, that is to say, to add to
theirs new words for the new ideas they will have to communicate. Law,
medicine, chemistry, mathematics, every science has a language of its
own, and divinity not less than others. Their barren vocabularies cannot
be vehicles for ideas of the fall of man, his redemption, the triune
composition of the Godhead, and other mystical doctrines considered
by most Christians of the present date as essential elements of faith.
The enterprise is therefore arduous, but the more inviting perhaps to
missionary zeal, in proportion as the merit of surmounting it will be
greater. Again repeating my regrets that I am able to give so little
satisfaction on the subject of your inquiry, I pray you to accept the
assurance of my great consideration and esteem.
TO MR. AMOS J. COOK, PRECEPTOR OF FRYEBURG ACADEMY IN THE DISTRICT OF
MAINE.
MONTICELLO, January 21, 1816.
SIR,--Your favor of December 18th was exactly a month on its way to
this place; and I have to thank you for the elegant and philosophical
lines communicated by the Nestor of our Revolution. Whether the style
or sentiment be considered, they were well worthy the trouble of being
copied and communicated by his pen. Nor am I less thankful for the happy
translation of them. It adds another to the rare instances of a rival
to its original: superior indeed in one respect, as the same outline
of sentiment is brought within a compass of better proportion. For if
the original be liable to any criticism, it is that of giving too great
extension to the same general idea. Yet it has a great authority to
support it, that of a wiser man than all of us. "I sought in my heart
to give myself unto wine; I made me great works; I builded me houses;
I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens, and orchards, and pools to
water them; I got me servants and maidens, and great possessions of
cattle; I gathered me also silver and gold, and men singers and women
singers, and the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments
of all sorts; and whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them;
I withheld not my heart from any joy. Then I looked on all the works
that my hands had wrought, and behold! all was vanity and vexation of
spirit! I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth
darkness." The Preacher, whom I abridge, has indulged in a much larger
amplification of his subject. I am not so happy as my friend and ancient
colleague, Mr. Adams, in possessing anything original, _inedited_, and
worthy of comparison with the epigraph of the Spanish monk. I can offer
but humble prose, from the hand indeed of the father of eloquence and
philosophy; a moral morsel, which our young friends under your tuition
should keep ever in their eye, as the ultimate term of your instructions,
and of their labors. "Hic, quisquis est, qui moderatione et constantia
quietus animo est, sibique ipse placatus; ut nec tabescat molestiis,
nec frangatur timore, nec sitienter quid expectens ardeat desiderio, nec
alacritate futili gestiens deliquescat; is est sapiens, quem quaerimus;
is est beatus; cui nihil humanarum rerum aut intolerabile ad dimittendum
animum, aut nimis lactabile ad efferendum, videri potest." Or if a
poetical dress will be more acceptable to the fancy of the juvenile
student:
"Quisnam igitur liber? Sapiens, sibique imperiosus:
Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent:
Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores
Fortis, et in scipso totus teres, atque rotundus;
Externi ne quid valeat per laeve morari:
In quem manea ruit semper Fortuna."
And if the Wise be the happy man, as these sages say, he must be virtuous
too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true
scope of all academical emulation.
You request something in the handwriting of General Washington. I enclose
you a letter which I received from him while in Paris, covering a copy
of the new Constitution; it is offered merely as what you ask, a specimen
of his handwriting.
On the subject of your Museum, I fear I cannot flatter myself with being
useful to it. Were the obstacle of distance out of the way, age and
retirement have withdrawn me from the opportunities of procuring objects
in that line. With every wish for the prosperity of your institution,
accept the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO MR. THOMAS RITCHIE.
MONTICELLO, January 21, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--In answering the letter of a northern correspondent lately,
I indulged in a tirade against a pamphlet recently published in this
quarter. On revising my letter, however, I thought it unsafe to commit
myself so far to a stranger. I struck out the passage therefore, yet I
think the pamphlet of such a character as not to be unknown, or unnoticed
by the people of the United States. It is the most bold and impudent
stride New England has ever made in arrogating an ascendency over the
rest of the Union. The first form of the pamphlet was an address from
the Reverend Lyman Beecher, chairman of the Connecticut Society for the
education of _pious_ young men for the ministry. Its matter was then
adopted and published in a sermon by Reverend Mr. Pearson of Andover in
Massachusetts, where they have a _theological_ college; and where the
address "with circumstantial variations to adopt it to more general use"
is reprinted on a sheet and a half of paper, in so cheap a form as to
be distributed, I imagine, gratis, for it has a final note indicating
six thousand copies of the first edition printed. So far as it respects
Virginia, the extract of my letter gives the outline. I therefore send
it to you to publish or burn, abridge or alter, as you think best.
You understand the public palate better than I do. Only give it such
a title as may lead to no suspicion from whom you receive it. I am the
more induced to offer it to you because it is possible mine may be the
only copy in the State, and because, too, it may be _à propos_ for the
petition for the establishment of _a theological society_ now before the
legislature, and to which they have shown the unusual respect of hearing
an advocate for it at their bar. From what quarter this theological
society comes forward I know not; perhaps from our own tramontaine clergy,
of New England religion and politics; perhaps it is the entering wedge
from its _theological_ sister in Andover, for the body of "qualified
religious instructors" proposed by their pious brethren of the East "to
evangelize and catechize," to edify our daughters by weekly lectures, and
our wives by "family visits" from these pious young monks from Harvard
and Yale. However, do with this what you please, and be assured of my
friendship and respect.
TO NATHANIEL MACON.
MONTICELLO, January 22, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 7th, after being a fortnight on the road,
reached this the last night. On the subject of the statue of General
Washington, which the legislature of North Carolina has ordered to be
procured, and set up in their capitol, I shall willingly give you my
best information and opinions.
1. Your first inquiry is whether one worthy the character it is to
represent, and the State which erects it, can be made in the United
States? Certainly it cannot. I do not know that there is a single marble
statuary in the United States, but I am sure there cannot be one who would
offer himself as qualified to undertake this monument of gratitude and
taste. Besides, no quarry of statuary marble has yet, I believe, been
opened in the United States, that is to say, of a marble pure white,
and in blocks of sufficient size, without vein or flaw. The quarry of
Carara, in Italy, is the only one in the accessible parts of Europe which
furnishes such blocks. It was from thence we brought to Paris that for
the statue of General Washington, made there on account of this State;
and it is from there that all the southern and maritime parts of Europe
are supplied with that character of marble.
2. Who should make it? There can be but one answer to this. Old Canova,
of Rome. No artist in Europe would place himself in a line with him;
and for thirty years, within my own knowledge, he has been considered
by all Europe as without a rival. He draws his blocks from Carara, and
delivers the statue complete, and packed for transportation, at Rome;
from thence it descends the Tiber, but whether it must go to Leghorn,
or some other shipping port, I do not know.
3. Price, time, size, and style? It will probably take a couple of years
to be ready. I am not able to be exact as to the price. We gave Houdon,
at Paris, one thousand guineas for the one he made for this State; but
he solemnly and feelingly protested against the inadequacy of the price,
and evidently undertook it on motives of reputation alone. He was the
first artist in France, and being willing to come over to take the model
of the General, which we could not have got Canova to have done, that
circumstance decided on his employment. We paid him additionally for
coming over about five hundred guineas; and when the statue was done,
we paid the expenses of one of his under workmen to come over and set
it up, which might, perhaps, be one hundred guineas more. I suppose,
therefore, it cost us, in the whole, eight thousand dollars. But this
was only of the size of life. Yours should be something larger. The
difference it makes in the impression can scarcely be conceived. As to
the style or costume, I am sure the artist, and every person of taste in
Europe, would be for the Roman, the effect of which is undoubtedly of
a different order. Our boots and regimentals have a very puny effect.
Works of this kind are about one-third cheaper at Rome than Paris; but
Canova's eminence will be a sensible ingredient in price. I think that for
such a statue, with a plain pedestal, you would have a good bargain from
Canova at seven or eight thousand dollars, and should not be surprised
were he to require ten thousand dollars, to which you would have to add
the charges of bringing over and setting up. The one-half of the price
would probably have to be advanced, and the other half paid on delivery.
4. From what model? Ciracchi made the bust of General Washington in
plaster. It was the finest which came from his hand, and my own opinion
of Ciracchi was, that he was second to no sculptor living except Canova;
and, if he had lived, would have rivalled him. His style had been
formed on the fine models of antiquity in Italy, and he had caught their
ineffable majesty of expression. On his return to Rome, he made the bust
of the General in marble, from that in plaster; it was sent over here,
was universally considered as the best effigy of him ever executed, was
bought by the Spanish Minister for the king of Spain, and sent to Madrid.
After the death of Ciracchi, Mr. Appleton, our Consul at Leghorn, a man
of worth and taste, purchased of his widow the original plaster, with
a view to profit by copies of marble and plaster from it. He still has
it at Leghorn; and it is the only original from which the statue can be
formed. But the exterior of the figure will also be wanting, that is
to say, the outward lineaments of the body and members, to enable the
artist to give to them also their true forms and proportions. There are,
I believe, in Philadelphia, whole length paintings of General Washington,
from which, I presume, old Mr. Peale or his son would sketch on canvas
the mere outlines at no great charge. This sketch, with Ciracchi's bust,
will suffice.
5. Through whose agency? None so ready or so competent as Mr. Appleton
himself; he has had relations with Canova, is a judge of price, convenient
to engage the work, to attend to its progress, to receive and forward
it to North Carolina. Besides the accommodation of the original bust to
be asked from him, he will probably have to go to Rome himself, to make
the contract, and will incur a great deal of trouble besides, from that
time to the delivery in North Carolina; and it should therefore be made
a matter of interest with him to act in it, as his time and trouble is
his support. I imagine his agency from beginning to end would not be
worth less than from one to two hundred guineas. I particularize all
these things, that you may not be surprised with after-claps of expense,
not counted on beforehand. Mr. Appleton has two nephews at Baltimore,
both in the mercantile line, and in correspondence with him. Should the
Governor adopt this channel of execution, he will have no other trouble
than that of sending to them his communications for Mr. Appleton, and
making the remittances agreed on as shall be convenient to himself. A
letter from the Secretary of State to Mr. Appleton, informing him that
any service he can render the State of North Carolina in this business,
would be gratifying to his government, would not be without effect.
Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.
MONTICELLO, January 24, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 16th experienced great delay on the road,
and to avoid that of another mail, I must answer very briefly.
My letter to Peter Carr contains all I ever wrote on the subject of the
College, a plan for the institution being the only thing the trustees
asked or expected from me. Were it to go into execution, I should
certainly interest myself further and strongly in procuring proper
professors.
The establishment of a Proctor is taken from the practice of Europe,
where an equivalent officer is made a part, and is a very essential
one, of every such institution; and as the nature of his functions
requires that he should always be a man of discretion, understanding,
and integrity above the common level, it was thought that he would never
be less worthy of being trusted with the powers of a justice, within
the limits of institution here, than the neighboring justices generally
are; and the vesting him with the conservation of the peace within
that limit, was intended, while it should equally secure its object, to
shield the young and unguarded student from the disgrace of the common
prison, except where the case was an aggravated one. A confinement to
his own room was meant as an act of tenderness to him, his parents and
friends; in fine, it was to give them a complete police of their own,
tempered by the paternal attentions of their tutors. And, certainly,
in no country is such a provision more called for than in this, as has
been proved from times of old, from the regular annual riots and battles
between the students of William and Mary with the town boys, before the
revolution, _quorum pars fui_, and the many and more serious affrays of
later times. Observe, too, that our bill proposes no exclusion of the
ordinary magistrate, if the one attached to the institution is thought
to execute his power either partially or remissly.
The transfer of the power to give commencement to the Ward or Elementary
Schools from the court and aldermen to the visitors, was proposed because
the experience of twenty years has proved that no court will ever begin
it. The reason is obvious. The members of the courts are the wealthy
members of the counties; and as the expenses of the schools are to be
defrayed by a contribution proportioned to the aggregate of other taxes
which every one pays, they consider it as a plan to educate the poor at
the expense of the rich. It proceeded, too, from a hope that the example
and good effects being exhibited in one county, they would spread from
county to county and become general. The modification of the law, by
authorizing the alderman to require the expense of tutorage from such
parents as are able, would render trifling, if not wholly prevent, any
call on the county for pecuniary aid. You know that nothing better than a
log-house is required for these schools, and there is not a neighborhood
which would not meet and build this themselves for the sake of having
a school near them.
I know of no peculiar advantage which Charlottesville offers for Mr.
Braidwood's school of deaf and dumb. On the contrary, I should think
the vicinity of the seat of government most favorable to it. I should
not like to have it made a member of our College. The objects of the two
institutions are fundamentally distinct. The one is science, the other
mere charity. It would be gratuitously taking a boat in tow which may
impede, but cannot aid the motion of the principal institution.
Ever and affectionately yours.
TO REV. MR. WORCESTER.
MONTICELLO, January 29, 1816.
SIR,--Your letter bearing date October 18th, 1815, came only to hand the
day before yesterday, which is mentioned to explain the date of mine. I
have to thank you for the pamphlets accompanying it, to wit, the Solemn
Review, the Friend of Peace or Special Interview, and the Friend of
Peace, No. 2; the first of these I had received through another channel
some months ago. I have not read the two last steadily through, because
where one assents to propositions as soon as announced it is loss of
time to read the arguments in support of them. These numbers discuss the
first branch of the causes of war, that is to say, wars undertaken for
the _point of honor_, which you aptly analogize with the act of duelling
between individuals, and reason with justice from the one to the other.
Undoubtedly this class of wars is, in the general, what you state them to
be, "needless, unjust and inhuman, as well as anti-Christian." The second
branch of this subject, to wit, wars undertaken on account of _wrong
done_, and which may be likened to the act of robbery in private life, I
presume will be treated of in your future numbers. I observe this class
mentioned in the Solemn Review, p. 10, and the question asked, "Is it
common for a nation to obtain a _redress_ of wrongs by war?" The answer
to this question you will of course draw from history. In the meantime,
reason will answer it on grounds of probability, that where the wrong has
been done by a weaker nation, the stronger one has generally been able
to enforce redress; but where by a stronger nation, redress by war has
been neither obtained nor expected by the weaker. On the contrary, the
loss has been increased by the expenses of the war in blood and treasure.
Yet it may have obtained another object equally securing itself from
future wrong. It may have retaliated on the aggressor losses of blood
and treasure far beyond the value to him of the wrong he had committed,
and thus have made the advantage of that too dear a purchase to leave
him in a disposition to renew the wrong in future. In this way the loss
by the war may have secured the weaker nation from loss by future wrong.
The case you state of two boxers both of whom get a "terrible bruising,"
is opposite to this. He of the two who committed the aggression on the
other, although victor in the scuffle, yet probably finds his aggression
not worth the bruising it has cost him. To explain this by numbers,
it is alleged that Great Britain took from us before the late war near
one thousand vessels, and that during the war we took from her fourteen
hundred. That before the war she seized and made slaves of six thousand
of our citizens, and that in the war we killed more than six thousand
of her subjects, and caused her to expend such a sum as amounted to four
or five thousand guineas a head for every slave she made. She might have
purchased the vessels she took for less than the value of those she lost,
and have used the six thousand of her men killed for the purposes to
which she applied ours, have saved the four or five thousand guineas a
head, and obtained a character of justice which is valuable to a nation
as to an individual. These considerations, therefore, leave her without
inducement to plunder property and take men in future on such dear
terms. I neither affirm nor deny the truth of these allegations, nor is
their truth material to the question. They are possible, and therefore
present a case which will claim your consideration in a discussion of
the general question whether any degree of injury can render a recourse
to war expedient? Still less do I propose to draw to myself any part in
this discussion. Age and its effects both on body and mind, has weaned
my attentions from public subjects, and left me unequal to the labors
of correspondence beyond the limits of my personal concerns. I retire,
therefore, from the question, with a sincere wish that your writings
may have effect in lessening this greatest of human evils, and that
you may retain life and health to enjoy the contemplation of this happy
spectacle; and pray you to be assured of my great respect.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 2d, 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 in 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 State 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 Cæsar 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.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, February 2, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--I know not what to think of your letter of the 11th of January,
but that it is one of the most consolatory I ever received.
To trace the commencement of the Reformation, I suspect we must go
farther back than Borgia, or even Huss or Wickliff, and I want the _Acta
Sanctorum_ to assist me in this research. That stupendous monument of
human hypocrisy and fanaticism, the church of St. Peter at Rome, which
was a century and a half in building, excited the ambition of Leo the
Xth, who believed no more of the Christian religion than Diderot, to
finish it; and finding St. Peter's pence insufficient, he deluged all
Europe with indulgences for sale, and excited Luther to controvert his
authority to grant them. Luther, and his associates and followers, went
less than half way in detecting the corruptions of Christianity, but
they acquired reverence and authority among their followers almost as
absolute as that of the Popes had been.
To enter into details would be endless; but I agree with you, that the
natural effect of science and arts is to erect public opinion into a
censor, which must in some degree be respected by all.
There is no difference of opinion or feeling between us, concerning the
partition of Poland, the intended partitions of Pilnitz, or the more
daring partitions of Vienna.
Your question "How the apostasy from national rectitude can be accounted
for?"--is too deep and wide for my capacity to answer. I leave Fisher Ames
to dogmatize up the affairs of Europe and mankind. I have done too much
in this way. A burned child dreads the fire. I can only say at present,
that it should seem that human reason, and human conscience, though I
believe there are such things, are not a match for human passions, human
imaginations, and human enthusiasm. You, however, I believe, have hit
one. Mark, "the fires the governments of Europe felt kindling under their
seats;" and I will hazard a shot at another, the priests of all nations
imagined they felt approaching such flames, as they had so often kindled
about the bodies of honest men. Priests and politicians, never before,
so suddenly and so unanimously concurred in re-establishing darkness
and ignorance, superstition and despotism. The morality of Tacitus is
the morality of patriotism, and Britain and France have adopted his
creed; _i. e._, that all things were made for Rome. "_Jura negat sibi
lata, nihil non arrogat armis_," said Achilles. "Laws were not made for
me," said the Regent of France, and his cardinal minister Du Bois. The
universe was made for me, says man. Jesus despised and condemned such
patriotism; but what nation, or what christian, has adopted his system?
He was, as you say, "the most benevolent Being that ever appeared on
earth." France and England, Bourbons and Bonaparte, and all the sovereigns
at Vienna, have acted on the same principle. "All things were made for
my use. So man for mine, replies a pampered goose." The philosophers of
the eighteenth century have acted on the same principle. When it is to
combat evil, 'tis lawful to employ the devil. _Bonus populus vult decipi,
decipiatur._ They have employed the same falsehood, the same deceit,
which philosophers and priests of all ages have employed for their own
selfish purposes. We now know how their efforts have succeeded. The
old deceivers have triumphed over the new. Truth must be more respected
than it has ever been, before any great improvement can be expected in
the condition of mankind. As Rochfaucauld his maxims drew "from history
and from practice," I believe them true. From the whole nature of man,
moral, intellectual, and physical, he did not draw them.
We must come to the principles of Jesus. But when will all men and
all nations do as they would be done by? Forgive all injuries, and
love their enemies as themselves? I leave those profound philosophers,
whose sagacity perceives the perfectibility of human nature; and those
illuminated theologians, who expect the Apocalyptic reign;--to enjoy
their transporting hopes, provided always that they will not engage us
in crusades and French Revolutions, nor burn us for doubting. My spirit
of prophecy reaches no farther than, _New England_ GUESSES.
You ask, how it has happened that all Europe has acted on the principle,
"that Power was Right." I know not what answer to give you, but this,
that Power always sincerely, conscientiously, _de tres bon foi_, believes
itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views,
beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God service,
when it is violating all his laws. Our passions, ambition, avarice,
love, resentment, &c., possess so much metaphysical subtlety, and so
much overpowering eloquence, that they insinuate themselves into the
understanding and the conscience, and convert both to their party; and
I may be deceived as much as any of them, when I say, that Power must
never be trusted without a check.
Morgan has misrepresented my guess. There is not a word in my letter
about "a million of human beings." Civil wars, of an hundred years,
throughout Europe, were guessed at; and this is broad enough for your
ideas; for eighteen or twenty millions would be a moderate computation
for a century of civil wars throughout Europe. I still pray that a century
of civil wars, may not desolate Europe and America too, south and north.
Your speculations into futurity in Europe are so probable, that I can
suggest no doubt to their disadvantage. All will depend on the progress of
knowledge. But how shall knowledge advance? Independent of temporal and
spiritual power, the course of science and literature is obstructed and
discouraged by so many causes that it is to be feared their motions will
be slow. I have just finished reading four volumes of D'Israeli's--two
on the "Calamities," and two on the "Quarrels of Authors." These would
be sufficient to show that, slow rises genius by poverty and envy
oppressed. Even Newton, and Locke, and Grotius could not escape. France
could furnish four other volumes of the woes and wars of authors.
My compliments to Mrs. Randolph, her daughter Ellen, and all her other
children; and believe me, as ever.
To which Mrs. Adams adds her affectionate regard, and a wish that distance
did not separate souls congenial.
TO THOMAS W. MAURY.
MONTICELLO, February 3, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 24th ultimo was a week on its way to me,
and this is our first subsequent mail day. Mr. Cabell had written to
me also on the want of the deeds in Captain Miller's case; and as the
bill was in that house, I enclosed them immediately to him. I forgot,
however, to desire that they might be returned when done with, and must,
therefore, ask this friendly attention of you.
You ask me for observations on the memorandum you transcribe, relating
to a map of the States, a mineralogical survey and statistical tables.
The field is very broad, and new to me. I have never turned my mind to
this combination of objects, nor am I at all prepared to give an opinion
on it. On what principles the association of objects may go that far and
not farther, whether we could find a character who would undertake the
mineralogical survey, and who is qualified for it, whether there would
be room for its designations on a well-filled geographical map, and
also for the statistical details, I cannot say. The best mineralogical
charts I have seen, have had nothing geographical but the water courses,
ranges of hills, and most remarkable places, and have been colored,
so as to present to the eye the mineralogical ranges. For the articles
of a statistical table, I think the last census of Congress presented
what was proper, as far as it went, but did not go far enough. It
required detailed accounts of our manufactures, and an enumeration of
our people, according to ages, sexes, and colors. But to this should be
added an enumeration according to their occupations. We should know what
proportion of our people are employed in agriculture, what proportion
are carpenters, smiths, shoemakers, tailors, bricklayers, merchants,
seamen, &c. No question is more curious than that of the distribution of
society into occupations, and none more wanting. I have never heard of
such tables being effected but in the instance of Spain, where it was
first done under the administration, I believe, of Count D'Aranda, and
a second time under the Count de Florida Blanca, and these have been
considered as the most curious and valuable tables in the world. The
combination of callings with us would occasion some difficulty, many of
our tradesmen being, for instance, agriculturalists also; but they might
be classed under their principal occupation. On the geographical branch
I have reflected occasionally. I suppose a person would be employed in
every county to put together the private surveys, either taken from the
surveyors' books or borrowed from the proprietors, to connect them by
supplementary surveys, and to survey the public roads, noting towns,
habitations, and remarkable places, by which means a special delineation
of watercourses, roads, &c., will be obtained. But it will be further
indispensable to obtain the latitudes and longitudes of principal points
in every county, in order to correct the errors of the topographical
surveys, to bring them together, and to assign to each county its exact
space on the map. These observations of latitude and longitude might be
taken for the whole State, by a single person well qualified, in the
course of a couple of years. I could offer some ideas on that subject
to abridge and facilitate the operations, and as to the instruments
to be used; but such details are probably not within the scope of your
inquiries,--they would be in time if communicated to those who will have
the direction of the work. I am sorry I am so little prepared to offer
anything more satisfactory to your inquiries than these extempore hints.
But I have no doubt that what is best will occur to those gentlemen of
the legislature who have had the subject under their contemplation, and
who, impressed with its importance, are exerting themselves to procure
its execution. Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO JAMES MONROE.
MONTICELLO, February 4, 1816
DEAR SIR,--Your letter concerning that of General Scott is received, and
his is now returned. I am very thankful for these communications. From
forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers
of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as
to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth
notice. A ray, therefore, now and then, from the fountain of light, is
like sight restored to the blind. It tells me where I am; and that to a
mariner who has long been without sight of land or sun, is a rallying
of reckoning which places him at ease. The ground you have taken with
Spain is sound in every part. It is the true ground, especially, as to
the South Americans. When subjects are able to maintain themselves in
the field, they are then an independent power as to all neutral nations,
are entitled to their commerce, and to protection within their limits.
Every kindness which can be shown the South Americans, every friendly
office and aid within the limits of the law of nations, I would extend
to them, without fearing Spain or her Swiss auxiliaries. For this is
but an assertion of our own independence. But to join in their war, as
General Scott proposes, and to which even some members of Congress seem
to squint, is what we ought not to do as yet. On the question of our
interest in their independence, were that alone a sufficient motive of
action, much may be said on both sides. When they are free, they will
drive every article of our produce from every market, by underselling
it, and change the condition of our existence, forcing us into other
habits and pursuits. We shall, indeed, have in exchange some commerce
with them, but in what I know not, for we shall have nothing to offer
which they cannot raise cheaper; and their separation from Spain seals
our everlasting peace with her. On the other hand, so long as they are
dependent, Spain, from her jealousy, is our natural enemy, and always in
either open or secret hostility with us. These countries, too, in war,
will be a powerful weight in her scale, and, in peace, totally shut to us.
Interest then, on the whole, would wish their independence, and justice
makes the wish a duty. They have a right to be free, and we a right to
aid them, as a strong man has a right to assist a weak one assailed by
a robber or murderer. That a war is brewing between us and Spain cannot
be doubted. When that disposition is matured on both sides, and open
rupture can no longer be deferred, then will be the time for our joining
the South Americans, and entering into treaties of alliance with them.
There will then be but one opinion, at home or abroad, that we shall be
justifiable in choosing to have them with us, rather than against us. In
the meantime, they will have organized regular governments, and perhaps
have formed themselves into one or more confederacies; more than one I
hope, as in single mass they would be a very formidable neighbor. The
geography of their country seems to indicate three: 1. What is north of
the Isthmus. 2. What is south of it on the Atlantic; and 3. The southern
part on the Pacific. In this form, we might be the balancing power. _À
propos_ of the dispute with Spain, as to the boundary of Louisiana. On our
acquisition of that country, there was found in possession of the family
of the late Governor Messier, a most valuable and original MS. history
of the settlement of Louisiana by the French, written by Bernard de la
Harpe, a principal agent through the whole of it. It commences with the
first permanent settlement of 1699, (that by de la Salle in 1684, having
been broken up,) and continues to 1723, and shows clearly the continual
claim of France to the Province of Texas, as far as the Rio Bravo, and
to all the waters running into the Mississippi, and how, by the roguery
of St. Denis, an agent of Crozat the merchant, to whom the colony was
granted for ten years, the settlements of the Spaniards at Nacadoches,
Adais, Assinays, and Natchitoches, were fraudulently invited and connived
at. Crozat's object was commerce, and especially contraband, with the
Spaniards, and these posts were settled as convenient smuggling stages
on the way to Mexico. The history bears such marks of authenticity as
place it beyond question. Governor Claiborne obtained the MS. for us,
and thinking it too hazardous to risk its loss by the way, unless a copy
were retained, he had a copy taken. The original having arrived safe
at Washington, he sent me the copy, which I now have. Is the original
still in your office? or was it among the papers burnt by the British?
If lost, I will send you my copy; if preserved, it is my wish to deposit
the copy for safe keeping with the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia,
where it will be safer than on my shelves. I do not mean that any part
of this letter shall give to yourself the trouble of an answer; only
desire Mr. Graham to see if the original still exists in your office,
and to drop me a line saying yea or nay; and I shall know what to do.
Indeed the MS. ought to be printed, and I see a note to my copy which
shows it has been in contemplation, and that it was computed to be of
twenty sheets at sixteen dollars a sheet, for three hundred and twenty
copies, which would sell at one dollar apiece, and reimburse the expense.
On the question of giving to La Motte the consulship of Havre, I know
the obstacle of the Senate. Their determination to appoint natives only
is generally proper, but not always. These places are for the most part
of little consequence to the public; and if they can be made resources
of profit to our ex-military worthies, they are so far advantageous. You
and I, however, know that one of these new novices, knowing nothing of
the laws or authorities of his port, nor speaking a word of its language,
is of no more account than the fifth wheel of a coach. Had the Senate a
power of removing as well as of rejecting, I should have fears, from their
foreign antipathies, for my old friend Cathalan, Consul at Marseilles.
His father was appointed by Dr. Franklin, early in the revolutionary war,
but being old, the business was done by the son. On the establishment of
our present government, the commission was given by General Washington
to the son, at the request of the father. He has been the consul now
twenty-six years, and has done its duties nearly forty years. He is a
man of understanding, integrity and zeal, of high mercantile standing,
an early citizen of the United States, and speaks and writes our language
as fluently as French. His conduct in office has been without a fault. I
have known him personally and intimately for thirty years, have a great
and affectionate esteem for him, and should feel as much hurt were he
to be removed as if removed myself from an office. But I trust he is out
of the reach of the Senate, and secure under the wings of the executive
government. Let me recommend him to your particular care and patronage,
as well deserving it, and end the trouble of reading a long letter with
assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship.
TO BENJAMIN AUSTIN, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 9, 1816.
SIR,--Your favor of January 25th is just now received. I am in general
extremely unwilling to be carried into the newspapers, no matter what
the subject; the whole pack of the Essex kennel would open upon me. With
respect, however, to so much of my letter of January 9th as relates to
manufactures, I have less repugnance, because there is perhaps a degree of
duty to avow a change of opinion called for by a change of circumstances,
and especially on a point now become peculiarly interesting.
What relates to Bonaparte stands on different ground. You think it
will silence the misrepresentations of my enemies as to my opinions of
him. No, Sir; it will not silence them. They had no ground either in my
words or actions for these misrepresentations before, and cannot have
less afterwards; nor will they calumniate less. There is, however, a
consideration respecting our own friends, which may merit attention. I
have grieved to see even good republicans so infatuated as to this man,
as to consider his downfall as calamitous to the cause of liberty. In
their indignation against England which is just, they seem to consider
all _her_ enemies as _our_ friends, when it is well known there was
not a being on earth who bore us so deadly a hatred. In fact, he saw
nothing in this world but himself, and looked on the people under him as
his cattle, beasts for burthen and slaughter. Promises cost him nothing
when they could serve his purpose. On his return from Elba, what did he
not promise? But those who had credited them a little, soon saw their
total insignificance, and, satisfied they could not fall under worse
hands, refused every effort after the defeat of Waterloo. Their present
sufferings will have a term; his iron despotism would have had none.
France has now a family of fools at its head, from whom, whenever it
can shake off its foreign riders, it will extort a free constitution,
or dismount them and establish some other on the solid basis of national
right. To whine after this exorcised demon is a disgrace to republicans,
and must have arisen either from want of reflection, or the indulgence
of passion against principle. If anything I have said could lead them
to take correcter views, to rally to the polar principles of genuine
republicanism, I could consent that that part of my letter also should
go into a newspaper. This I leave to yourself and such candid friends
as you may consult. There is one word in the letter, however, which
decency towards the allied sovereigns requires should be softened.
Instead of _despots_, call them _rulers_. The first paragraph, too, of
seven or eight lines, must be wholly omitted. Trusting all the rest to
your discretion, I salute you with great esteem and respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, March 2, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--I cannot be serious! I am about to write you the most frivolous
letter you ever read.
Would you go back to your cradle and live over again your seventy years?
I believe you would return me a New England answer, by asking me another
question. Would you live your eighty years over again?
I am prepared to give you an explicit answer, the question involves so
many considerations of metaphysics and physics, of theology and ethics,
of philosophy and history, of experience and romance, of tragedy, comedy
and farce, that I would not give my opinion without writing a volume to
justify it.
I have lately lived over again, in part, from 1753, when I was junior
sophister at college, till 1769, when I was digging in the mines as a
barrister at law, for silver and gold, in the town of Boston; and got
as much of the shining dross for my labor as my utmost avarice at that
time craved.
At the hazard of all the little vision that is left me, I have read the
history of that period of sixteen years, in the volumes of the Baron de
Grimm. In a late letter to you, I expressed a wish to see a history of
quarrels and calamities of authors in France, like that of D'Israeli in
England. I did not expect it so soon; but now I have it in a manner more
masterly than I ever hoped to see it. It is not only a narration of the
incessant great wars between the ecclesiastics and the philosophers, but
of the little skirmishes and squabbles of Poets, Musicians, Sculptors,
Painters, Architects, Tragedians, Comedians, Opera-Singers and Dancers,
Chansons, Vaudevilles, Epigrams, Madrigals, Epitaphs, Anagrams, Sonnets,
&c. No man is more sensible than I am of the service to science and
letters, Humanity, Fraternity and Liberty, that would have been rendered
by the Encyclopedists and Economists, by Voltaire, D'Alembert, Buffon,
Diderot, Rousseau La Lande, Frederick and Catherine, if they had possessed
common sense. But they were all totally destitute of it. They all seemed
to think that all christendom was convinced as they were, that all
religion was "visions Judaicques," and that their effulgent lights had
illuminated all the world. They seemed to believe, that whole nations
and continents had been changed in their principles, opinions, habits
and feelings, by the sovereign grace of their Almighty philosophy,
almost as suddenly as Catholics and Calvinists believe in instantaneous
conversion. They had not considered the force of early education on the
millions of minds who had never heard of their philosophy. And what
was their philosophy? Atheism; pure, unadulterated Atheism. Diderot,
D'Alembert, Frederick, De La Lande and Grimm, were indubitable Atheists.
The universe was matter only, and eternal; spirit was a word without a
meaning; liberty was a word without a meaning. There was no liberty in
the Universe; liberty was a word void of sense. Every thought, word,
passion, sentiment, feeling, all motion and action was necessary. All
beings and attributes were of eternal necessity; conscience, morality,
were all nothing but fate.
This was their creed, and this was to perfect human nature, and convert
the earth into a paradise of pleasure.
Who, and what is this fate? He must be a sensible fellow. He must be
a master of science. He must be a master of spherical Trigonometry
and great circle sailing. He must calculate eclipses in his head by
intuition. He must be master of the science of infinitesimal--"_Le science
des infinimens petits_." He must involve and extract all the roots by
intuition, and be familiar with all possible or imaginable sections of
the cone. He must be a master of arts, mechanical and imitative. He must
have more eloquence than Demosthenes, more wit than Swift or Voltaire,
more humor than Butler or Trumbull, and what is more comfortable than
all the rest, he must be good natured; for this is upon the whole a good
world. There is ten times as much pleasure as pain in it.
Why then should we abhor the word God, and fall in love with the word
Fate? We know there exists energy and intellect enough to produce
such a world as this, which is a sublime and beautiful one, and a very
benevolent one, notwithstanding all our snarling; and a happy one, if
it is not made otherwise by our own fault. Ask a mite, in the centre of
your mammoth cheese, what he thinks of the "το παν."
I should prefer the philosophy of Timæus, of Locris, before that of
Grimm and Diderot, Frederick and D'Alembert. I should even prefer the
Shasta of Hindostan, or the Chaldean, Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Christian,
Mahometan, Tubonic, or Celtic Theology. Timæus and Picellus taught that
three principles were eternal, God, Matter and Form. God was good, and
had ideas. Matter was necessity. Fate dead--without ideas--without form,
without feeling--perverse, untractable; capable, however, of being cut
into forms, spheres, circles, triangles, squares, cubes, cones, &c. The
ideas of the good God labored upon matter to bring it into form; but
matter was fate, necessity, dulness, obstinacy--and would not always
conform to the ideas of the good God who desired to make the best of
all possible worlds; but Matter, Fate, Necessity, resisted, and would
not let him complete his idea. Hence all the evil and disorder, pain,
misery and imperfection of the Universe.
We all curse Robespierre and Bonaparte, but were they not both such
restless, vain, extravagant animals as Diderot and Voltaire? Voltaire
was the greatest literary character, and Bonaparte the greatest military
character of the eighteenth century. There is all the difference between
them. Both equally heroes and equally cowards.
When you ask my opinion of a University--it would have been easy to advise
Mathematics, experimental Philosophy, Natural History, Chemistry and
Astronomy, Geography and the Fine Arts; to the exclusion of Metaphysics
and Theology. But knowing the eager impatience of the human mind to
search into eternity and infinity, the first cause and last end of all
things--I thought best to leave it its liberty to inquire till it is
convinced, as I have been these fifty years, that there is but one Being
in the Universe who comprehends it; and our last resource is resignation.
This Grimm must have been in Paris when you were there. Did you know
him, or hear of him?
I have this moment received two volumes more, but these are from 1777
to 1782,--leaving the chain broken from 1769 to 1777. I hope hereafter
to get the two intervening volumes. I am your old friend.
March 13, 1816.
A writer in the National Intelligencer of February 24th, who signs
himself B., is endeavoring to shelter under the cloak of General
Washington, the present enterprise of the Senate to wrest from the
House of Representatives the power, given them by the constitution, of
participating with the Senate in the establishment and continuance of
laws on specified subjects. Their aim is, by associating an Indian chief,
or foreign government, in form of a treaty, to possess themselves of the
power of repealing laws become obnoxious to them, without the assent of
the third branch, although that assent was necessary to make it a law.
We are then to depend for the secure possession of our laws, not on our
immediate representatives chosen by ourselves, and amenable to ourselves
every other year, but on Senators chosen by the legislatures, amenable
to them only, and that but at intervals of six years, which is nearly
the common estimate for a term for life. But no act of that sainted
worthy, no thought of General Washington, ever countenanced a change of
our constitution so vital as would be the rendering insignificant the
popular, and giving to the aristocratical branch of our government, the
power of depriving us of our laws.
The case for which General Washington is quoted is that of his treaty
with the Creeks, wherein was a stipulation that their supplies of goods
should continue to be imported duty free. The writer of this article
was then a member of the legislature, as he was of that which afterwards
discussed the British treaty, and recollects the facts of the day, and
the ideas which were afloat. The goods for the supplies of the Creeks
were always imported into the Spanish ports of St. Augustine, Pensacola,
Mobile, New Orleans, &c., (the United States not owning then one foot
of coast on the gulf of Mexico, or south of St. Mary's,) and from these
ports they were carried directly into the Creek country, without ever
entering the jurisdiction of the United States. In that country their
laws pretended to no more force than in Florida or Canada. No officer of
their customs could go to levy duties in the Spanish or Creek countries,
out of which these goods never came. General Washington's stipulation in
that treaty therefore, was nothing more than that our laws should not
levy duties where we have no right to levy them, that is, in foreign
ports, or foreign countries. These transactions took place while the
Creek deputation was in New York, in the month of July 1790, and in March
preceding we had passed a law delineating specially the line between
their country and ours. The only subject of curiosity is how so nugatory
a stipulation should have been placed in a treaty? It was from the fears
of Mr. Gillevray, who was the head of the deputation, who possessed from
the Creeks themselves the exclusive right to supply them with goods,
and to whom this monopoly was the principle source of income.
The same writer quotes from a note in Marshal's history, an opinion of
Mr. Jefferson, given to General Washington on the same occasion of the
Creek treaty. Two or three little lines only of that opinion are given
us, which do indeed express the doctrine in broad and general terms. Yet
we know how often a few words withdrawn from their place may seem to bear
a general meaning, when their context would show that their meaning must
have been limited to the subject with respect to which they were used.
If we could see the whole opinion, it might probably appear that its
foundation was the peculiar circumstances of the Creek nation. We may
say too, on this opinion, as on that of a judge whose positions beyond
the limits of the case before him are considered as obiter sayings,
never to be relied on as authority.
In July '90, moreover, the government was but just getting under way.
The duty law was not passed until the succeeding month of August. This
question of the effect of a treaty was then of the first impression;
and none of us, I suppose, will pretend that on our first reading of the
constitution we saw at once all its intentions, all the bearings of every
word of it, as fully and as correctly as we have since understood them,
after they have become subjects of public investigation and discussion;
and I well remember the fact that, although Mr. Jefferson had retired
from office before Mr. Jay's mission, and the question on the British
treaty, yet during its discussion we were well assured of his entire
concurrence in opinion with Mr. Madison and others who maintained the
rights of the House of Representatives, so that, if on a _primâ facie_
view of the question, his opinion had been too general, on stricter
investigation, and more mature consideration, his ultimate opinion was
with those who thought that the subjects which were confided to the
House of Representatives in conjunction with the President and Senate,
were exceptions to the general treaty power given to the President and
Senate alone; (according to the general rule that an instrument is to
be so construed as to reconcile and give meaning and effect to all its
parts;) that whenever a treaty stipulation interferes with a law of the
three branches, the consent of the third branch is necessary to give
it effect; and that there is to this but the single exception of the
question of war and peace. There the constitution expressly requires
the concurrence of the three branches to commit us to the state of war,
but permits two of them, the President and Senate, to change it to that
of peace, for reasons as obvious as they are wise. I think then I may
affirm, in contradiction to B., that the present attempt of the Senate
is not sanctioned by the opinion either of General Washington or of Mr.
Jefferson.
I meant to confine myself to the case of the Creek treaty, and not to
go into the general reasoning, for after the logical and demonstrative
arguments of Mr. Wilde of Georgia, and others on the floor of Congress,
if any man remains unconvinced I pretend not the powers of convincing him.
TO GOVERNOR NICHOLAS.
MONTICELLO, April 2, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of March 22d has been received. It finds me
more laboriously and imperiously engaged than almost on any occasion
of my life. It is not, therefore, in my power to take into immediate
consideration all the subjects it proposes; they cover a broad surface,
and will require some development. They respect,
I. Defence.
II. Education.
III. The map of the State.
This last will comprise,
1. An astronomical survey, to wit, Longitudes and Latitudes.
2. A geometrical survey of the external boundaries, the mountains and
rivers.
3. A typographical survey of the counties.
4. A mineralogical survey.
Each of these heads require distinct consideration. I will take them up
one at a time, and communicate my ideas as leisure will permit.
I. On the subject of Defence, I will state to you what has been heretofore
contemplated and proposed. Some time before I retired from office, when
the clouds between England and the United States thickened so as to
threaten war at hand, and while we were fortifying various assailable
points on our sea-board, the defence of the Chesapeake became, as it
ought to have been, a subject of serious consideration, and the problem
occurred, whether it could be defended at its mouth? its effectual defence
in detail being obviously impossible. My idea was that we should find
or prepare a station near its mouth for a very great force of vessels of
annoyance of such a character as to assail, when the weather and position
of an enemy suited, and keep or withdraw themselves into their station
when adverse. These means of annoyance were to consist of gun-boats,
row-boats, floating batteries, bomb-ketches, fire-ships, rafts, turtles,
torpedoes, rockets, and whatever else could be desired to destroy a
ship becalmed, to which could now be added Fulton scows. I thought it
possible that a station might be made on the middle grounds, (which
are always shallow, and have been known to be uncovered by water,) by a
circumvallation of stones dropped loosely on one another, so as to take
their own level, and raised sufficiently high to protect the vessels
within them from the waves and boat attacks. It is by such a wall that
the harbor of Cherbury has been made. The middle grounds have a firmer
bottom, and lie two or three miles from the ship channel on either side,
and so near the Cape as to be at hand for any enemy moored or becalmed
within them. A survey of them was desired, and some officer of the navy
received orders on the subject, who being opposed to our possessing
anything below a frigate or line of battle ship, either visited or did
not visit them, and verbally expressed his opinion of impracticability.
I state these things from memory, and may err in small circumstances,
but not in the general impression.
A second station offering itself was the mouth of Lynhaven river, which
having but four or five feet water, the vessels would be to be adapted
to that, or its entrance deepened; but there it would be requisite to
have, first, a fort protecting the vessels within it, and strong enough
to hold out until a competent force of militia could be collected for
its relief. And, second, a canal uniting the tide waters of Lynhaven
river and the eastern branch, three or four miles apart only of low
level country. This would afford to the vessels a retreat for their own
safety, and a communication with Norfolk and Albemarle Sound, so as to
give succor to these places if attacked, or receive it from them for a
special enterprise. It was believed that such a canal would then have
cost about thirty thousand dollars.
This being a case of personal as well as public interest, I thought
a private application not improper, and indeed preferable to a more
general one, with an executive needing no stimulus to do what is right;
and therefore, in May and June, 1813, I took the liberty of writing to
them on this subject, the defence of Chesapeake; and to what is before
stated I added some observations on the importance and pressure of the
case. A view of the map of the United States shows that the Chesapeake
receives either the whole or important waters of five of the most
producing of the Atlantic States, to wit: North Carolina, (for the Dismal
canal makes Albemarle Sound a water of the Chesapeake, and Norfolk its
port of exportation,) Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York. We
know that the waters of the Chesapeake, from the Genesee to the Sawra
towns and Albemarle Sound, comprehend two-fifths of the population of
the Atlantic States, and furnish probably more than half their exported
produce; that the loss of James river alone, in that year, was estimated
at two hundred thousand barrels of flour, fed away to horses or sold at
half-price, which was a levy of a million of dollars on a single one of
these numerous waters, and that levy to be repeated every year during
the war; that this important country can all be shut up by two or three
ships of the enemy, lying at the mouth of the bay; that an injury so vast
to us and so cheap to the enemy, must forever be resorted to by them,
and maintained constantly through every war; that this was a hard trial
of the spirit of the Middle States, a trial which, backed by impossible
taxes, might produce a demand for peace on any terms; that when it was
considered that the Union had already expended four millions of dollars
for the defence of the single city of Norfolk, and the waters of a
single river, the Hudson, (which we entirely approved, and now we might
probably add four more since expended on the same spot,) we thought it
very moderate for so great a portion of the country, the population, the
wealth, and contributing industry and strength of the Atlantic States,
to ask a few hundred thousand dollars, to save the harassment of their
militia, conflagrations of their towns and houses, devastations of their
farms, and annihilation of all the annual fruits of their labor. The idea
of defending the bay at its mouth was approved, but the necessary works
were deemed inexecutable during a war, and an answer more cogent was
furnished by the fact that our treasury and credit were both exhausted.
Since the war, I have learned (I cannot say how) that the Executive
has taken up the subject and sent on an engineer to examine and report
the localities, and that this engineer thought favorably of the middle
grounds. But my recollection is too indistinct but to suggest inquiry
to you. After having once taken the liberty of soliciting the Executive
on this subject, I do not think it would be respectful for me to do
it a second time, nor can it be necessary with persons who need only
suggestions of what is right, and not importunities to do it. If the
subject is brought before them, they can readily recall or recur to my
letters, if worth it. But would it not be advisable in the first place,
to have surveys made of the middle grounds and the grounds between the
tidewaters of Lynhaven and the Eastern branch, that your representations
may be made on known facts? These would be parts only of the surveys you
are authorized to make, and might, for so good a reason, be anticipated
and executed before the general work can be done.
Perhaps, however, the view is directed to a defence by frigates or ships
of the line, stationed at York or elsewhere. Against this, in my opinion,
both reason and experience declaim. Had we half a dozen seventy-fours
stationed at York, the enemy would place a dozen at the capes. This great
force called there would enable them to make large detachments against
Norfolk when it suited them, to harass and devastate the bay coasts
incessantly, and would oblige us to keep large armies of militia at York
to defend the ships, and at Norfolk to defend that. The experience of
New London proves how certain and destructive this blockade would be;
for New London owed its blockade and the depredations on its coasts to
the presence of a frigate sent there for its defence; and did the frigate
at Norfolk bring us defence or assault?
II. _Education._--The President and Directors of the literary fund are
desired to digest and report a system of public education, comprehending
the establishment of an university, additional colleges or academies,
and schools. The resolution does not define the portions of science to
be taught in each of these institutions, but the first and last admit no
doubt. The university must be intended for all useful sciences, and the
schools mean elementary ones, for the instruction of the people, answering
to our present English schools; the middle-term colleges or academies may
be more conjectural. But we must understand from it some middle-grade of
education. Now, when we advert that the ancient classical languages are
considered as the foundation preparatory for all the sciences; that we
have always had schools scattered over the country for teaching these
languages, which often were the ultimate term of education; that these
languages are entered on at the age of nine or ten years, at which age
parents would be unwilling to send their children from every part of
the State to a central and distant university, and when we observe that
the resolution supposes there are to be a plurality of them, we may well
conclude that the Greek and Latin are the objects of these colleges. It
is probable, also, that the legislature might have under their eye the
bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge, printed in the revised
code of 1779, which proposed these three grades of institution, to-wit:
an university, district colleges, or grammar schools, and county or ward
schools. I think, therefore, we may say that the object of these colleges
is the classical languages, and that they are intended as the portico
of entry to the university. As to their numbers, I know no better rule
to be assumed than to place one within a day's ride of every man's door,
in consideration of the infancy of the pledges he has at it. This would
require one for every eight miles square.
Supposing this the object of the Colleges, the Report will have to
present the plan of an University, analyzing the sciences, selecting
those which are useful, grouping them into professorships, commensurate
each with the time and faculties of one man, and prescribing the regimen
and all other necessary details. On this subject I can offer nothing
new. A letter of mine to Peter Carr, which was published during the last
Session of Assembly, is a digest of all the information I possess on
the subject, from which the Board will judge whether they can extract
anything useful; the professorship of the classical languages being of
course to be expunged, as more effectually supplied by the establishment
of the colleges.
As the buildings to be erected will also enter into their Report, 1
would strongly recommend to their consideration, instead of one immense
building, to have a small one for every professorship, arranged at proper
distances around a square, to admit extension, connected by a piazza,
so that they may go dry from one school to another. This village form is
preferable to a single great building for many reasons, particularly on
account of fire, health, economy, peace and quiet. Such a plan had been
approved in the case of the Albemarle college, which was the subject of
the letter above mentioned; and should the idea be approved by the Board,
more may be said hereafter on the opportunity these small buildings
will afford, of exhibiting models in architecture of the purest forms
of antiquity, furnishing to the student examples of the precepts he will
be taught in that art.
The Elementary or Ward schools is the last branch of this subject; on
this, too, my ideas have been long deposited in the Bill for the diffusion
of knowledge, before mentioned, and time and reflection have continued
to strengthen them as to the general principle, that of a division of
every county into wards, with a school in each ward. The details of the
bill will of course be varied as the difference of present circumstances
from those of that day will require.
My partiality for that division is not founded in views of education
solely, but infinitely more as the means of a better administration
of our government, and the eternal preservation of its republican
principles. The example of this most admirable of all human contrivances
in government, is to be seen in our Eastern States; and its powerful
effect in the order and economy of their internal affairs, and the
momentum it gives them as a nation, is the single circumstance which
distinguishes them so remarkably from every other national association.
In a letter to Mr. Adams a few years ago, I had occasion to explain to
him the structure of our scheme of education as proposed in the bill for
the diffusion of knowledge, and the views of this particular section of
it; and in another lately to Mr. Cabell, on the occasion of the bill for
the Albemarle College, I also took a view of the political effects of
the proposed division into wards, which being more easily copied than
thrown into new form here, I take the liberty of enclosing extracts from
them. Should the Board of Directors approve of the plan, and make ward
divisions the substratum of their elementary schools, their report may
furnish a happy occasion of introducing them, leaving all their other
uses to be adopted from time to time hereafter as occasions shall occur.
With these subjects I shall close the present letter, but that it may be
necessary to anticipate on the next one so far as respects proper persons
for carrying into execution the astronomical and geometrical surveys. I
know no one in the State equal to the first who could be engaged in it;
but my acquaintance in the State is very limited. There is a person near
Washington possessing every quality which could be desired, among our
first mathematicians and astronomers, of good bodily activity, used to
rough living, of great experience in field operations, and of the most
perfect integrity. I speak of Isaac Briggs, who was Surveyor-General
south of Ohio, and who was employed to trace the route from Washington
to New Orleans, below the mountains, which he did with great accuracy
by observations of longitude and latitude only, on a journey thither. I
do not know that he would undertake the present work, but I have learnt
that he is at this time disengaged; I know he is poor, and was always
moderate in his views. This is the most important of all the surveys,
and if done by him, I will answer for this part of your work standing
the test of time and criticism. If you should desire it, I could write
and press him to undertake it; but it would be necessary to say something
about compensation.
John Wood, of the Petersburg Academy, has written to me that he would be
willing to undertake the geometrical survey of the external boundaries,
and internal divisions. We have certainly no abler mathematician; and he
informs me he has had good experience in the works of the field. He is
a great walker, and is, therefore, probably equal to the bodily fatigue,
which is a material qualification. But he is so much better known where
you are, that I need only mention his readiness to undertake, and your
own personal knowledge or inquiries will best determine what should be
done. It is the part of the work above the tide waters which he would
undertake; that below, where soundings are to be taken, requiring nautical
apparatus and practice.
Whether he is a mineralogist or not, I do not know. It would be a
convenient and economical association with that of the geometrical survey.
I am obliged to postpone for some days the consideration of the remaining
subjects of your letter. Accept the assurance of my great esteem and
high consideration.
TO MR. JOSEPH MILLIGAN.
MONTICELLO, April 6, 1816.
SIR,--Your favor of March 6th did not come to hand until the 15th. I
then expected I should finish revising the translation of Tracy's book
within a week, and could send the whole together. I got through it, but,
on further consideration, thought I ought to read it over again, lest
any errors should have been left in it. It was fortunate I did so, for
I found several little errors. The whole is now done and forwarded by
this mail, with a title, and something I have written which may serve for
a Prospectus, and indeed for a Preface also, with a little alteration.
You will see from the face of the work what a horrible job I have had
in the revisal. It is so defaced that it is absolutely necessary you
should have a fair copy taken, and by a person of good understanding, for
that will be necessary to decipher the erasures, interlineations, &c.,
of the translation. The translator's orthography, too, will need great
correction, as you will find a multitude of words shamefully misspelt;
and he seems to have had no idea of the use of stops: he uses the comma
very commonly for a full stop; and as often the full stop, followed by a
capital letter, for a comma. Your copyist will, therefore, have to stop
it properly quite through the work. Still, there will be places where
it cannot be stopped correctly without reference to the original; for
I observed many instances where a member of a sentence might be given
either to the preceding or following one, grammatically, which would
yet make the sense very different, and could, therefore, be rectified
only by the original. I have, therefore, thought it would be better for
you to send me the proof sheets as they come out of the press. We have
two mails a week, which leave this Wednesdays and Saturdays, and you
should always receive it by return of the first mail. Only observe that
I set out for Bedford in five or six days, and shall not be back till
the first week in May.
The original construction of the style of the translation was so bungling,
that although I have made it render the author's sense faithfully, yet
it was impossible to change the structure of the sentences to anything
good. I have endeavored to apologize for it in the Prospectus; as also
to prepare the reader for the dry, and to most of them, uninteresting
character of the preliminary tracts, advising him to pass at once to the
beginning of the main work, where, also, you will see I have recommended
the beginning the principal series of pages. In this I have departed
from the order of pages adopted by the author.
My name must in nowise appear connected with the work. I have no objection
to your naming me _in conversation_, but not in print, as the person
to whom the original was communicated. Although the author puts his
name to the work, yet, if called to account for it by his government,
he means to disavow it, which its publication at such a distance will
enable him to do. But he would not think himself at liberty to do this
if avowedly sanctioned by me here. The best open mark of approbation I
can give is to subscribe for a dozen copies; or if you would prefer it,
you may place on your subscription paper a letter in these words: "Sir,
I subscribe with pleasure for a dozen copies of the invaluable book you
are about to publish on Political Economy. I should be happy to see it
in the hands of every American citizen."
The Ainsworth, Ovid, Cornelius Nepos and Virgil, as also of the two
books below mentioned,[15] and formerly written for. I fear I shall not
get the Ovid and Nepos I sent to be bound, in time for the pocket in my
Bedford trip. Accept my best wishes and respects.
TITLE.--"A Treatise on Political Economy by the Count Dustutt Tracy,
member of the Senate and Institute of France, and of the American
Philosophical Society, to which is prefixed a supplement to a preceding
work on the Understanding or Elements of Ideology, by the same author,
with an analytical table and an introduction on the faculty of the will,
translated from the unpublished French original."
_Prospectus._--Political economy in modern times assumed the form of
a regular science first in the hands of the political sect in France,
called the Economists. They made it a branch only of a comprehensive
system on the natural order of societies. Quesnai first, Gournay, Le
Frosne, Turgot and Dupont de Nemours, the enlightened, philanthropic,
and venerable citizen, now of the United States, led the way in these
developments, and gave to our inquiries the direction they have since
observed. Many sound and valuable principles established by them, have
received the sanction of general approbation. Some, as in the infancy of
a science might be expected, have been brought into question, and have
furnished occasion for much discussion. Their opinions on production, and
on the proper subjects of taxation, have been particularly controverted;
and whatever may be the merit of their principles of taxation, it is
not wonderful they have not prevailed; not on the questioned score of
correctness, but because not acceptable to the people, whose will must
be the supreme law. Taxation is in fact the most difficult function of
government--and that against which their citizens are most apt to be
refractory. The general aim is therefore to adopt the mode most consonant
with the circumstances and sentiments of the country.
Adam Smith, first in England, published a rational and systematic work
on Political Economy, adopting generally the ground of the Economists,
but differing on the subjects before specified. The system being novel,
much argument and detail seemed then necessary to establish principles
which now are assented to as soon as proposed. Hence his book, admitted
to be able, and of the first degree of merit, has yet been considered
as prolix and tedious.
In France, John Baptist Say has the merit of producing a very superior
work on the subject of political economy. His arrangement is luminous,
ideas clear, style perspicuous, and the whole subject brought within
half the volume of Smith's work. Add to this considerable advances in
correctness and extension of principles.
The work of Senator Tracy, now announced, comes forward with all the
lights of his predecessors in the science, and with the advantages of
further experience, more discussion, and greater maturity of subjects.
It is certainly distinguished by important traits; a cogency of logic
which has never been exceeded in any work, a rigorous enchainment of
ideas, and constant recurrence to it to keep it in the reader's view,
a fearless pursuit of truth whithersoever it leads, and a diction so
correct that not a word can be changed but for the worse; and, as happens
in other cases, that the more a subject is understood, the more briefly
it may be explained, he has reduced, not indeed all the details, but
all the elements and the system of principles within the compass of an
8vo, of about 400 pages. Indeed we might say within two-thirds of that
space, the one-third being taken up with some preliminary pieces now to
be noticed.
Mr. Tracy is the author of a treatise on the Elements of Ideology, justly
considered as a production of the first order in the science of our
thinking faculty, or of the understanding. Considering the present work
but as a second section to those Elements under the titles of Analytical
Table, Supplement, and Introduction, he gives in these preliminary
pieces a supplement to the Elements, shows how the present work stands
on that as its basis, presents a summary view of it, and, before
entering on the formation, distribution, and employment of property and
personality, a question not new indeed, yet one which has not hitherto
been satisfactorily settled. These investigations are very metaphysical,
profound, and demonstrative, and will give satisfaction to minds in the
habit of abstract speculation. Readers, however, not disposed to enter
into them, after reading the summary view, entitled, "on our actions,"
will probably pass on at once to the commencement of the main subject
of the work, which is treated of under the following heads:
Of Society.
Of Production, or the formation of our riches.
Of Value, or the measure of utility.
Of change of form, or fabrication.
Of change of place, or commerce.
Of money.
Of the distribution of our riches.
Of population.
Of the employment of our riches, or consumption.
Of public revenue, expenses and debts.
Although the work now offered is but a translation, it may be considered
in some degree as the original, that having never been published
in the country in which it was written. The author would there have
been submitted to the unpleasant alternative either of mutilating his
sentiments, where they were either free or doubtful, or of risking himself
under the unsettled regimen of the press. A manuscript copy communicated
to a friend here has enabled him to give it to a country which is afraid
to read nothing, and which may be trusted with anything, so long as its
reason remains unfettered by law.
In the translation, fidelity has been chiefly consulted. A more correct
style would sometimes have given a shade of sentiment which was not the
author's, and which, in a work standing in the place of the original,
would have been unjust towards him. Some gallicisms have, therefore, been
admitted, where a single word gives an idea which would require a whole
phrase of dictionary-English. Indeed, the horrors of Neologism, which
startle the purist, have given no alarm to the translator. Where brevity,
perspicuity, and even euphony can be promoted by the introduction of a
new word, it is an improvement to the language. It is thus the English
language has been brought to what it is; one half of it having been
innovations, made at different times, from the Greek, Latin, French, and
other languages. And is it the worse for these? Had the preposterous idea
of fixing the language been adopted by our Saxon ancestors, of Pierce
Plowman, of Chaucer, of Spenser, the progress of ideas must have stopped
with that of the language. On the contrary, nothing is more evident than
that as we advance in the knowledge of new things, and of new combinations
of old ones, we must have new words to express them. Were Van Helmont,
Stane, Scheele, to rise from the dead at this time, they would scarcely
understand one word of their own science. Would it have been better,
then, to have abandoned the science of Chemistry, rather than admit
innovations in its terms? What a wonderful accession of copiousness and
force has the French language attained, by the innovations of the last
thirty years! And what do we not owe to Shakspeare for the enrichment
of the language, by his free and magical creation of words? In giving
a loose to neologism, indeed, uncouth words will sometimes be offered;
but the public will judge them, and receive or reject, as sense or sound
shall suggest, and authors will be approved or condemned according to
the use they make of this license, as they now are from their use of
the present vocabulary. The claim of the present translation, however,
is limited to its duties of fidelity and justice to the sense of its
original; adopting the author's own word only where no term of our own
language would convey his meaning.
(_A Note communicated to the Editor._)
Our author's classification of taxes being taken from those practised in
France, will scarcely be intelligible to an American reader, to whom the
nature as well as names of some of them must be unknown. The taxes with
which we are familiar, class themselves readily according to the basis
on which they rest. 1. Capital. 2. Income. 3. Consumption. These may be
considered as commensurate; Consumption being generally equal to Income,
and Income the annual profit of Capital. A government may select either
of these bases for the establishment of its system of taxation, and so
frame it as to reach the faculties of every member of the society, and
to draw from him his equal proportion of the public contributions; and,
if this be correctly obtained, it is the perfection of the function of
taxation. But when once a government has assumed its basis, to select
and tax special articles from either of the other classes, is double
taxation. For example, if the system be established on the basis of
Income, and his just proportion on that scale has been already drawn
from every one, to step into the field of Consumption, and tax special
articles in that, as broadcloth or homespun, wine or whiskey, a coach or
a wagon, is doubly taxing the same article. For that portion of Income
with which these articles are purchased, having already paid its tax as
Income, to pay another tax on the thing it purchased, is paying twice
for the same thing, it is an aggrievance on the citizens who use these
articles in exoneration of those who do not, contrary to the most sacred
of the duties of a government, to do equal and impartial justice to all
its citizens.
How far it may be the interest and the duty of all to submit to this
sacrifice on other grounds, for instance, to pay for a time an impost
on the importation of certain articles, in order to encourage their
manufacture at home, or an excise on others injurious to the morals or
health of the citizens, will depend on a series of considerations of
another order, and beyond the proper limits of this note. The reader,
in deciding which basis of taxation is most eligible for the local
circumstances of his country, will, of course, avail himself of the
weighty observations of our author.
To this a single observation shall yet be added. Whether property
alone, and the whole of what each citizen possesses, shall be subject
to contribution, or only its surplus after satisfying his first wants,
or whether the faculties of body and mind shall contribute also from
their annual earnings, is a question to be decided. But, when decided,
and the principle settled, it is to be equally and fairly applied to
all. To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and
that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others,
who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to
violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "the _guarantee_
to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired
by it." If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to
the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all
in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while
extra-taxation violates it.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] Moore's Greek Grammar, translated by Ewen. Mair's Tyro's
Dictionary.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, April 8, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--I have to acknowledge your two favors of February the 16th
and March the 2d, 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 seventy or rather seventy-three
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 hypochondriac 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 acknowledge, 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 conversable 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 its
language; his forte was Belles-lettres, painting and sculpture. In these
he was the oracle of society, and as such, was the Empress Catharine's
private correspondent and factor, in all things not diplomatic. It was
through 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 two hundred miles of Kamschatka, had him seized, brought
back, and set down in Poland. Although 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 his 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 through 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 non-existence 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 the Memoirs of Grimm. Their
volume has kept them out of our market.
I have lately been 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 petulant to his adversary, and his reasoning flimsy
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 the bodies to be only of the original stamen of
Leibnitz, or the human _calus_ 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 alleges 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 annointed prince was prophesied and promised;
but denies that the character and history of Jesus had any analogy with
that of the person promised. He must be fearfully embarrassing to the
Hierophants of fabricated Christianity; because it is their own armor 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, ellipse,
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, he avails himself all his advantage over his
adversaries by his superior knowledge 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 yours of March the 2d, 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.
TO GOVERNOR NICHOLAS.
POPLAR FOREST, April 19, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--In my letter of the 2d instant, I stated, according to your
request, what occurred to me on the subjects of Defence and Education;
and I will now proceed to do the same on the remaining subject of yours
of March 22d, the construction of a general map of the State. For this
the legislature directs there shall be,
I. A topographical survey of each county.
II. A general survey of the outlines of the State, and its leading
features of rivers and mountains.
III. An astronomical survey for the correction and collection of the
others, and
IV. A mineralogical survey.
I. Although the topographical survey of each county is referred to its
court in the first instance, yet such a control is given to the Executive
as places it effectively under his direction; that this control must
be freely and generally exercised, I have no doubt. Nobody expects
that the justices of the peace in every county are so familiar with the
astronomical and geometrical principles to be employed in the execution
of this work, as to be competent to decide what candidate possesses
them in the highest degree, or in any degree; and indeed I think it
would be reasonable, considering how much the other affairs of the
State must engross of the time of the Governor and Council, for them to
make it a pre-requisite for every candidate to undergo an examination
by the mathematical professor of William and Mary College, or some
other professional character, and to ask for a special and confidential
report of the grade of qualification of each candidate examined. If one,
completely qualified, can be found for every half dozen counties, it
will be as much, perhaps, as can be expected.
Their office will be to survey the Rivers, Roads, and Mountains.
1. A proper division of the surveys of the Rivers between them and
the general surveyor, might be to ascribe to the latter so much as is
navigable, and to the former the parts not navigable, but yet sufficient
for working machinery, which the law requires. On these they should
note confluences, other natural and remarkable objects, towns, mills or
other machines, ferries, bridges, crossings of roads, passages through
mountains, mines, quarries, &c.
2. In surveying the Roads, the same objects should be noted, and every
permanent stream crossing them, and these streams should be laid down
according to the best information they can obtain, to their confluence
with the main stream.
3. The Mountains, others than those ascribed to the general surveyor,
should be laid down by their names and bases, which last will be generally
designated by the circumscription of water courses and roads on both
sides, without a special survey around them. Their gaps are also required
to be noted.
4. On the Boundaries, the same objects should be noted. Where a boundary
falls within the operations of the general surveyor, its survey by them
should be dispensed with, and where it is common to two counties, it might
be ascribed wholly to one, or divided between the surveyors respectively.
All these surveys should be delineated on the same scale, which the law
directs, I believe, (for I have omitted to bring the copy of it with
me to this place,) if it has not fixed the scale. I think about half an
inch to the mile would be a convenient one, because it would generally
bring the map of a county within the compass of a sheet of paper. And
here I would suggest what would be a great desideratum for the public,
to wit, that a single sheet map of each county separately, on a scale
of half an inch to the mile, be engraved and struck off. There are few
housekeepers who would not wish to possess a map of their own county,
many would purchase those of their circumjacent counties, and many
would take one of every county, and form them into an atlas, so that
I question if as many copies of each particular map would not be sold
as of the general one. But these should not be made until they receive
the astronomical corrections, without which they can never be brought
together and joined into larger maps, at the will of the purchaser.
Their instrument should be a Circumferentor, with cross spirit levels
on its face, a graduated rim, and a double index, the one fixed, the
other movable, with a nonius on it. The needle should never be depended
on for an angle.
II. The General Survey divides itself into two distinct operations; the
one on the tide waters, the other above them.
On the tide waters the State will have little to do. Some time before
the war, Congress authorized the Executive to have an accurate survey
made of the whole sea-coast of the United States, comprehending, as
well as I remember, the principal bays and harbors. A Mr. Hassler,
a mathematician of the first order from Geneva, was engaged in the
execution, and was sent to England to procure proper instruments. He has
lately returned with such a set as never before crossed the Atlantic,
and is scarcely possessed by any nation on the continent of Europe.
We shall be furnished, then, by the General Government, with a better
survey than we can make, of our sea-coast, Chesapeake Bay, probably the
Potomac, to the Navy Yard at Washington, and possibly of James' River
to Norfolk, and York River to Yorktown. I am not, however, able to say
that these, or what other, are the precise limits of their intentions.
The Secretary of the Treasury would probably inform us. Above these
limits, whatever they are, the surveys and soundings will belong to the
present undertaking of the State; and if Mr. Hassler has time, before
he commences his general work, to execute this for us, with the use of
the instruments of the United States, it is impossible we can put it
into any train of execution equally good; and any compensation he may
require, will be less than it would cost to purchase instruments of our
own, and have the work imperfectly done by a less able hand. If we are
to do it ourselves, I acknowledge myself too little familiar with the
methods of surveying a coast and taking soundings, to offer anything
on the subject approved by practice. I will pass on, therefore, to the
general survey of the Rivers above the tide waters, the Mountains, and
the external Boundaries.
I. _Rivers._--I have already proposed that the general survey shall
comprehend these from the tide waters as far as they are navigable only,
and here we shall find one-half of the work already done, and as ably
as we may expect to do it. In the great controversy between the Lords
Baltimore and Fairfax, between whose territories the Potomac, from its
mouth to its source, was the chartered boundary, the question was which
branch, from Harper's ferry upwards, was to be considered as the Potomac?
Two able mathematicians, therefore, were brought over from England at the
expense of the parties, and under the sanction of the sentence pronounced
between them, to survey the two branches, and ascertain which was to
be considered as the main stream. Lord Fairfax took advantage of their
being here to get a correct survey by them of his whole territory, which
was bounded by the Potomac, the Rappahanoc, as was believed, in the most
accurate manner. Their survey was doubtless filed and recorded in Lord
Fairfax's office, and I presume it still exists among his land papers.
He furnished a copy of that survey to Colonel Fry and my father, who
entered it, on a reduced scale, into their map, as far as latitudes and
admeasurements accurately horizontal could produce exactness. I expect
this survey is to be relied on. But it is lawful to doubt whether its
longitudes may not need verification; because at that day the corrections
had not been made in the lunar tables, which have since introduced the
method of ascertaining the longitude by the lunar distances; and that
by Jupiter's satellites was impracticable in ambulatory survey. The most
we can count on is, that they may have employed some sufficient means to
ascertain the longitude of the first source of the Potomac, the meridian
of which was to be Lord Baltimore's boundary. The longitudes, therefore,
should be verified and corrected, if necessary, and this will belong to
the Astronomical survey.
The other rivers only, then, from their tide waters up as far as
navigable, remain for this operator, and on them the same objects should
be noted as proposed in the county surveys; and, in addition, their
breadth at remarkable parts, such as the confluence of other streams,
falls, and ferries, the soundings of their main channels, bars, rapids,
and principal sluices through their falls, their current at various
places, and, if it can be done without more cost than advantage, their
fall between certain stations.
II. _Mountains._--I suppose the law contemplates, in the general survey,
only the principal continued ridges, and such insulated mountains as
being correctly ascertained in their position, and visible from many
and distant places, may, by their bearings, be useful correctives
for all the surveys, and especially for those of the counties. Of the
continued ridges, the Alleghany, North Mountain, and Blue Ridge, are
principal; ridges of partial lengths may be left to designation in the
county surveys. Of insulated mountains, there are the Peaks of Otter, in
Bedford, which I believe may be seen from about twenty counties; Willis'
Mountains, in Buckingham, which from their detached situation, and so
far below all other mountains, may be seen over a great space of country;
Peters' Mountain, in Albemarle, which, from its eminence above all others
of the south-west ridge, may be seen to a great distance, probably to
Willis' Mountain, and with that and the Peaks of Otter, furnishes a very
extensive triangle; and doubtless there are many unknown to me, which,
being truly located, offer valuable indications and correctives for the
county surveys. For example, the sharp peak of Otter being precisely
fixed in position by its longitude and latitude, a simple observation
of latitude taken at any place from which that peak is visible, and an
observation of the angle it makes with the meridian of the place, furnish
a right-angled spherical triangle, of which the portion of meridian
intercepted between the latitudes of the place and peak, will be on
one side. With this and the given angles, the other side, constituting
the difference of longitude, may be calculated, and thus by a correct
position of these commanding points, that of every place from which any
one of them is visible, may, by observations of latitude and bearing,
be ascertained in longitude also. If two such objects be visible from
the same place, it will afford, by another triangle, a double correction.
The gaps in the continued ridges, ascribed to the general surveyor,
are required by the law to be noted; and so also are their heights.
This must certainly be understood with some limitation, as the height
of every knob in these ridges could never be desired. Probably the law
contemplated only the eminent mountains in each ridge, such as would be
conspicuous objects of observation to the country at great distances,
and would offer the same advantages as the insulated mountains. Such
eminences in the Blue Ridge will be more extensively useful than those
of the more western ridges. The height of gaps also, over which roads
pass, were probably in view.
But how are these heights to be taken, and from what base? I suppose
from the plain on which they stand. But it is difficult to ascertain
the precise horizontal line of that plain, or to say where the ascent
above the general face of the country begins. Where there is a river or
other considerable stream, or extensive meadow plains near the foot of
a mountain, which is much the case in the valleys dividing the western
ridges, I suppose that may be fairly considered in the level of its base,
in the intendment of the law. Where there is no such term of commencement,
the surveyor must judge, as well as he can from his view, what point is
in the general level of the adjacent country. How are these heights to
be taken, and with what instrument? Where a good base can be found, the
geometrical admeasurement is the most satisfactory. For this, a theodolite
must be provided of the most perfect construction, by Ramsden, Troughton
if possible; and for horizontal angles it will be the better of two
telescopes. But such bases are rarely to be found. When none such, the
height may still be measured geometrically, by ascending or descending the
mountain with the theodolite, measuring its face from station to station,
noting its inclination between these stations, and the hypothenusal
difference of that inclination, as indicated on the vertical arc of
the theodolite. The sum of the perpendiculars corresponding with the
hypothenusal measures, is the height of the mountain. But a barometrical
admeasurement is preferable to this; since the late improvements in the
theory, they are to be depended on nearly as much as the geometrical,
and are much more convenient and expeditious. The barometer should have
a sliding nonius, and a thermometer annexed, with a screw at the bottom
to force up the column of mercury solidly. Without this precaution they
cannot be transported at all; and even with it they are in danger from
every severe jolt. They go more safely on a baggage-horse than in a
carriage. The heights should be measured on both sides, to show the rise
of the country at every ridge.
Observations of longitude and latitude should be taken by the surveyor
at all confluences of considerable streams, and on all mountains of
which he measures the heights, whether insulated or in ridges; for this
purpose, he should be furnished with a good Hadley's circle of Borda's
construction, with three limbs of nonius indexes; if not to be had, a
sextant of brass, and of the best construction, may do, and a chronometer;
to these is to be added a Gunter's chain, with some appendix for plumbing
the chain.
III. The External Boundaries of the State, to-wit: Northern, Eastern,
Southern and Western. The Northern boundary consists of, 1st, the
Potomac; 2d, a meridian from its source to Mason & Dixon's line; 3d, a
continuation of that line to the meridian of the north-western corner
of Pennsylvania, and 4th, of that meridian to its intersection with the
Ohio. 1st. The Potomac is supposed, as before mentioned, to be surveyed
to our hand. 2d, The meridian, from its source to Mason & Dixon's line,
was, I believe, surveyed by them when they run the dividing line between
Lord Baltimore and Penn. I presume it can be had from either Annapolis
or Philadelphia, and I think there is a copy of it, which I got from
Dr. Smith, in an atlas of the library of Congress. Nothing better can
be done by us. 3d. The continuation of Mason & Dixon's line and the
meridian from its termination to the Ohio, was done by Mr. Rittenhouse
and others, and copies of their work are doubtless in our offices as
well as in those of Pennsylvania. What has been done by Rittenhouse can
be better done by no one.
The Eastern boundary being the sea-coast, we have before presumed will
be surveyed by the general government.
The Southern boundary. This has been extended and marked in different
parts in the chartered latitude of 36° 31´ by three different sets of
Commissioners. The eastern part by Dr. Byrd and other commissioners
from Virginia and North Carolina: the middle by Fry and Jefferson from
Virginia, and Churton and others from North Carolina; and the western
by Dr. Walker and Daniel Smith, now of Tennessee. Whether Byrd's survey
now exists, I do not know. His journal is still in possession of some
one of the Westover family, and it would be well to seek for it, in
order to judge of that portion of the line. Fry and Jefferson's journal
was burnt in the Shadwell house about fifty years ago, with all the
materials of their map. Walker and Smith's survey is probably in our
offices; there is a copy of it in the atlas before mentioned; but that
survey was made on the spur of a particular occasion, and with a view to
a particular object only. During the revolutionary war, we were informed
that a treaty of peace was on the carpet in Europe, on the principle
of _uti possidetis_; and we despatched those gentlemen immediately to
ascertain the intersection of our Southern boundary with the Mississippi,
and ordered Colonel Clarke to erect a hasty fort on the first bluff
above the line, which was done as an act of possession. The intermediate
line, between that and the termination of Fry and Jefferson's line, was
provisionary only, and not made with any particular care. That, then,
requires to be re-surveyed as far as the Cumberland mountain. But the
eastern and middle surveys will only need, I suppose, to have their
longitudes rectified by the astronomical surveyor.
The Western boundary, consisting of the Ohio, Big Sandy and Cumberland
mountain, having been established while I was out of the country, I
have never had occasion to inquire whether they were actually surveyed,
and with what degree of accuracy. But this fact being well known to
yourself particularly, and to others who have been constantly present
in the State, you will be more competent to decide what is to be done
in that quarter. I presume, indeed, that this boundary will constitute
the principal and most difficult part of the operations of the General
Surveyor.
The injunctions of the act to note the magnetic variations merit diligent
attention. The law of those variations is not yet sufficiently known
to satisfy us that sensible changes do not sometimes take place at
small intervals of time and place. To render these observations of the
variations easy, and to encourage their frequency, a copy of a table of
amplitudes should be furnished to every surveyor, by which, wherever
he has a good Eastern horizon, he may, in a few seconds, at sunrise,
ascertain the variation. This table is to be found in the book called the
"Mariner's Compass Rectified;" but more exactly in the "Connaissance des
Tems" for 1778 and 1788, all of which are in the library of Congress.
It may perhaps be found in other books more easily procured, and will
need to be extracted only from 36½° to 40° degrees of latitude.
III. _The Astronomical Survey._ This is the most important of all
the operations; it is from this alone we are to expect real truth.
Measures and rhumbs taken on the special surface of the earth, cannot
be represented on a plain surface of paper without astronomical
corrections; and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is nevertheless true,
that we cannot know the relative position of two places on the earth,
but by interrogating the sun, moon, and stars. The observer must,
therefore, correctly fix, in longitude and latitude, all remarkable
points from distance to distance. Those to be selected of preference are
the confluences, rapids, falls and ferries of water courses, summits of
mountains, towns, court-houses, and angles of counties, and where these
points are more than a third or half a degree distant, they should be
supplied by observations of other points, such as mills, bridges, passes
through mountains, &c., for in our latitudes, half a degree makes a
difference of three-eighths of a mile in the length of the degree of
longitude. These points first laid down, the intermediate delineations
to be transferred from the particular surveys to the general map, are
adapted to them by contractions or dilatations. The observer will need a
best Hadley's circle of Broda's construction, by Troughton, if possible,
(for they are since Ramsden's time,) and a best chronometer.
Very possibly an equatorial may be needed. This instrument set to
the observed latitude, gives the meridian of the place. In the lunar
observations _at sea_ this element cannot be had, and in Europe _by
land_, these observations are not resorted to for longitudes, because
at their numerous fixed observations they are prepared for the better
method of Jupiter's satellites. But here, where our geography is still
to be fixed by a portable apparatus only, we are obliged to resort, as
at sea, to the lunar observations, with the advantage, however, of a
fixed meridian. And although the use of a meridian in these observations
is a novelty, yet, placed under new circumstances, we must countervail
their advantages by whatever new resources they offer. It is obvious
that the observed distance of the moon from the meridian of the place,
and her calculated distance from that of Greenwich at the same instant,
give the difference of meridians, without dependence on any measure of
time; by addition of the observations, if the moon be between the two
meridians, by subtraction if east or west of both; the association,
therefore, of this instrument with the circular one, by introducing
another element, another process and another instrument, furnishes a test
of the observations with the Hadley, adds to their certainty, and, by
its corroborations, dispenses with that multiplication of observations
which is necessary with the Hadley when used alone. This idea, however,
is suggested by theory only; and it must be left to the judgment of the
observer who will be employed, whether it would be practicable and useful.
To him, when known, I shall be glad to give further explanations. The
cost of the equatorial is about the same with that of the circle, when
of equal workmanship.
Both the surveyor and astronomer should journalize their proceedings
daily, and send copies of their journals monthly to the Executive, as
well to prevent loss by accident, as to make known their progress.
IV. _Mineralogical Survey._--I have never known in the United States but
one eminent mineralogist, who could have been engaged on hire. This was a
Mr. Goudon from France, who came over to Philadelphia six or seven years
ago. Being zealously devoted to the science, he proposed to explore the
new field which this country offered; but being scanty in means, as I
understood, he meant to give lectures in the winter which might enable
him to pass the summer in mineralogical rambles. It is long since I
have heard his name mentioned, and therefore do not know whether he is
still at Philadelphia, or even among the living. The literary gentlemen
of that place can give the information, or perhaps point out some other
equal to the undertaking.
I believe I have now, Sir, gone over all the subjects of your
letter,--which I have done with less reserve to multiply the chances of
offering here and there something which might be useful. Its greatest
merit, however, will be that of evidencing my respect for your commands,
and of adding to the proofs of my great consideration and esteem.
TO M. DUPONT DE NEMOURS.
POPLAR FOREST, April 24, 1816.
I received, my dear friend, your letter covering the constitution for
your Equinoctial republics, just as I was setting 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, _primá 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 possesses 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,
TO MR. FR. ADR. VANDERKEMP.
POPLAR FOREST, April 25, 1816.
SIR,--Your favor of March 24th was handed to me just as I was setting out
on a journey of time and distance, which will explain the date of this
both as to time and place. The Syllabus, which is the subject of your
letter, was addressed to a friend to whom I had promised a more detailed
view. But finding I should never have time for that, I sent him what I
thought should be the outlines of such a work; the same subject entering
sometimes into the correspondence between Mr. Adams and myself, I sent
him a copy of it. The friend to whom it had been first addressed, dying
soon after, I asked from his family the return of the original, as a
confidential communication, which they kindly sent me. So that no copy
of it, but that in the possession of Mr. Adams, now exists out of my
own hands. I have used this caution lest it should get out in connection
with my name; and I was unwilling to draw on myself a swarm of insects,
whose buzz is more disquieting than their bite. As an abstract thing,
and without any intimation from what quarter derived, I can have no
objection to its being committed to the consideration of the world. I
believe it may even do good by producing discussion, and finally a true
view of the merits of this great reformer. Pursuing the same ideas after
writing the Syllabus, I made, for my own satisfaction, an extract from
the Evangelists of his morals, selecting those only whose style and
spirit proved them genuine, and his own; and they are as distinguishable
from the matter in which they are imbedded as diamonds in dunghills. A
more precious morsel in ethics was never seen. It was too hastily done,
however, being the work of one or two evenings only, while I lived at
Washington, overwhelmed with other business, and it is my intention to
go over it again at more leisure. This shall be the work of the ensuing
winter. I gave it the title of "the Philosophy of Jesus extracted from
the text of the Evangelists." To this Syllabus and extract, if a history
of his life can be added, written with the same view of the subject, the
world will see, after the fogs shall be dispelled, in which for fourteen
centuries he has been enveloped by jugglers to make money of him, when
the genuine character shall be exhibited, which they have dressed up
in the rags of an imposter, the world, I say, will at length see the
immortal merit of this first of human sages. I rejoice that you think
of undertaking this work. It is one I have long wished to see written
of the scale of a Laertius or a Nepos. Nor can it be a work of labor,
or of volume, for his journeyings from Judea to Samaria, and Samaria
to Galilee, do not cover much country; and the incidents of his life
require little research. They are all at hand, and need only to be put
into human dress; noticing such only as are within the physical laws
of nature, and offending none by a denial or even a mention of what is
not. If the Syllabus and Extract (which is short) either in substance,
or at large, are worth a place under the same cover with your biography,
they are at your service. I ask one only condition, that no possibility
shall be admitted of my name being even intimated with the publication.
If done in England, as you seem to contemplate, there will be the less
likelihood of my being thought of. I shall be much gratified to learn
that you pursue your intention of writing the life of Jesus, and pray
you to accept the assurances of my great respect and esteem.
TO M. CORREA DE SERRA.
POPLAR FOREST, April 26, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of March 29th was received, 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 Captain Lewis' 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 journalized all occurrences,
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 gentleman who published his travels must
have had these MS. volumes, and perhaps now has 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,
although 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 forty
vocabularies of the Indians on this side of the Mississippi, and Captain
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 Doctor Barton, who was particularly curious on
this subject, and published on it occasionally, would willingly receive
and take care of these papers after Captain Lewis' 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 although,
having with him the nautical almanacs, he could and 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 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 a 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 Captain Lewis, the distance and occupations
of General Clarke, and the bankruptcy of their bookseller, have retarded
the publication, and rendered it necessary that the government should
attend to the reclamation and security of the 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, 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 and properly publish
them; otherwise they must be restored to the government, and 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.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, May 3, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of April 8th has long since been received.
_J._ "Would you agree to live your eighty years over again?"
_A._ ----.
_J._ "Would you agree to live your eighty years over again forever?"
_A._ I once heard our acquaintance, Chew, of Philadelphia, say, "he
should like to go back to twenty-five, to all eternity;" but I own my
soul would start and shrink back on itself at the prospect of an endless
succession of _Boules de Savon_, almost as much as at the certainty of
annihilation. For what is human life? I can speak only for one. I have
had more comfort than distress, more pleasure than pain ten to one,
nay, if you please, an hundred to one. A pretty large dose, however,
of distress and pain. But after all, what is human life? A vapor, a
fog, a dew, a cloud, a blossom, a flower, a rose, a blade of grass, a
glass bubble, a tale told by an idiot, a _Boule de Savon_, vanity of
vanities, an eternal succession of which would terrify me almost as much
as annihilation.
_J._ "Would you prefer to live over again, rather than accept the offer
of a better life in a future state?"
_A._ Certainly not.
_J._ "Would you live again rather than change for the worse in a future
state, for the sake of trying something new?"
_A._ Certainly yes.
_J._ "Would you live over again once or forever, rather than run the
risk of annihilation, or of a better or a worse state at or after death?"
_A._ Most certainly I would not.
_J._ "How valiant you are!"
_A._ Aye, at this moment, and at all other moments of my life that I
can recollect; but who can tell what will become of his bravery when
his flesh and his heart shall fail him? Bolingbroke said "his philosophy
was not sufficient to support him in his last hours." D'Alembert said:
"Happy are they who have courage, but I have none." Voltaire, the greatest
genius of them all, behaved like the greatest coward of them all at his
death, as he had like the wisest fool of them all in his lifetime. Hume
awkwardly affected to sport away all sober thoughts. Who can answer
for his last feelings and reflections, especially as the priests are in
possession of the custom of making them the greatest engines of their
craft. _Procul est prophani!_
_J._ "How shall we, how can we estimate the real value of human life?"
_A._ I know not; I cannot weigh sensations and reflections, pleasures and
pains, hopes and fears, in money-scales. But I can tell you how I have
heard it estimated by philosophers. One of my old friends and clients,
a mandamus counsellor against his will, a man of letters and virtues,
without one vice that I ever knew or suspected, except garrulity, William
Vassall, asserted to me, and strenuously maintained, that "_pleasure is
no compensation for pain_." "An hundred years of the keenest delights
of human life could not atone for one hour of bilious cholic that he
had felt." The sublimity of this philosophy my dull genius could not
reach. I was willing to state a fair account between pleasure and pain,
and give credit for the balance, which I found very great in my favor.
Another philosopher, who, as we say, believed nothing, ridiculed the
notion of a future state. One of the company asked, "Why are you an enemy
to a future state? Are you weary of life? Do you detest existence?" "Weary
of life? Detest existence?" said the philosopher. "No! I love life so
well, and am so attached to existence, that to be sure of immortality, I
would consent to be pitched about with forks by the devils, among flames
of fire and brimstone, to all eternity."
I find no resources in my courage for this exalted philosophy. I had
rather be blotted out.
_Il faut trancher cet mot!_ What is there in life to attach us to it
but the hope of a future and a better? It is a cracker, a rocket, a
fire-work at best.
I admire your navigation, and should like to sail with you, either in
your bark, or in my own along side of yours. Hope with her gay ensigns
displayed at the prow, fear with her hobgoblins behind the stern. Hope
springs eternal, and hope is all that endures. Take away hope and what
remains? What pleasure, I mean? Take away fear and what pain remains?
Ninety-nine one hundredths of the pleasures and pains of life are nothing
but hopes and fears.
All nations known in history or in travels, have hoped, believed and
expected a future and a better state. The Maker of the Universe, the
cause of all things, whether we call it _fate_, or _chance_, or God,
has inspired this hope. If it is a _fraud_, we shall never know it.
We shall never resent the imposition, be grateful for the illusion,
nor grieve for the disappointment. We shall be no more. Credit Grimm,
Diderot, Buffon, La Lande, Condorcet, D'Holbach, Frederick, Catharine;
_non ego_. Arrogant as it may be, I shall take the liberty to pronounce
them all _Idiologians_. Yet I would not persecute a hair of their heads.
The world is wide enough for them and me.
Suppose the cause of the universe should reveal to all mankind at once
a _certainty_ that they must all die within a century, and that death
is an eternal extinction of all living powers, of all sensation and
reflection. What would be the effect? Would there be one man, woman or
child existing on this globe, twenty years hence? Would not every human
being be a Madame Deffand, Voltaire's "Aveugle clairvoyante," all her
lifetime regretting her existence, bewailing that she had ever been
born, grieving that she had ever been dragged, without her consent, into
being. Who would bear the gout, the stone, the cholic, for the sake of a
_Boule de Savon_, when a pistol, a cord, a pond, or a phial of laudanum
was at hand? What would men say to their Maker? Would they thank him?
No; they would reproach him; they would curse him to his face. Voila!
A sillier letter than my last. For a wonder, I have filled a sheet, and
a greater wonder, I have read fifteen volumes of Grimm. _Digito comesse
labellum_. I hope to write you more upon this and other topics of your
letter. I have read also a History of the Jesuits, in four volumes. Can
you tell me the author, or anything of this work?
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, May 6, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Neither eyes, fingers or paper held out to despatch all the
trifles I wished to write in my last letter.
In your favor of April 8th you "wonder for what good end the sensations
of grief could be intended?" "You wish the Pathologists would tell us,
what the use of grief in our economy, and of what good it is the cause
proximate or remote." When I approach such questions as this, I consider
myself, like one of those little eels in Vinaigre, or one of those
animalcules in black or red paper, or in the horse-radish root, that
bite our tongues so cruelly, reasoning upon the το παν. Of what use is
this sting upon the tongue? Why might we not have the benefit of these
stimulants, without the sting? Why might we not have the fragrance and
beauty of the rose without the thorn?
In the first place, however, we know not the connection between pleasure
and pain. They seem to be mechanical and inseparable. How can we conceive
a strong passion, a sanguine hope suddenly disappointed, without producing
pain, or grief? Swift at seventy, recollected the fish he had angled out
of water when a boy, which broke loose from his hook; and said I feel
the disappointment at this moment. A merchant places all his fortune
and all his credit in a single India or China ship. She arrives at the
vineyard with a cargo worth a million, in order. Sailing round a Cape
for Boston, a sudden storm wrecks her--ship, cargo and crew, all lost.
Is it possible that the merchant ruined, bankrupt, sent to prison by his
creditors--his wife and children starving--should not grieve? Suppose a
young couple, with every advantage of persons, fortunes and connections,
on the point of indissoluble union. A flash of lightning, or any one of
those millions of accidents which are allotted to humanity, proves fatal
to one of the lovers. Is it possible that the other, and all the friends
of both, should not grieve? It seems that grief, as a mere passion, must
be in proportion to sensibility.
Did you ever see a portrait, or a statue of a great man, without
perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety? These furrows were all
ploughed in the countenance, by grief. Our juridical oracle, Sir Edward
Coke, thought that none were fit for legislators and magistrates, but
"_sad men_" And who were these sad men? They were aged men, who had been
tossed and buffeted in the vicissitudes of life--forced upon profound
reflection by grief and disappointments--and taught to command their
passions and prejudices.
But all this you will say is nothing to the purpose. It is only repeating
and exemplifying a _fact_, which my question supposed to be well known,
viz., the existence of grief; and is no answer to my question, "what
are the uses of grief." This is very true, and you are very right; but
may not the uses of grief be inferred, or at least suggested by such
exemplifications of known facts? Grief compels the India merchant to
think; to reflect upon the plans of his voyage. Have I not been rash,
to trust my fortune, my family, my liberty, to the caprices of winds and
waves in a single ship? I will never again give a loose to my imagination
and avarice. It had been wiser and more honest to have traded on a
smaller scale upon my own capital.
The desolated lover, and disappointed connections, are compelled by their
grief to reflect on the vanity of human wishes and expectations; to learn
the essential lesson of resignation; to review their own conduct towards
the deceased; to correct any errors or faults in their future conduct
towards their remaining friends, and towards all men; to recollect the
virtues of the lost friend, and resolve to imitate them; his follies
and vices if he had any, and resolve to avoid them.
Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the
understanding, and softens the heart; it compels them to arouse their
reason, to assert its empire over their passions, propensities and
prejudices; to elevate them to a superiority over all human events; to
give them the _felicis annimi immota tranquilitatum_; in short, to make
them stoics and Christians. After all, as grief is a pain, it stands in
the predicament of all other evil, and the great question occurs, what
is the origin, and what the final cause of evil. This perhaps is known
only to omniscience. We poor mortals have nothing to do with it--but
to fabricate all the good we can out of all inevitable evils--and to
avoid all that are avoidable, and many such there are, among which are
our own unnecessary apprehensions and imaginary fears. Though stoical
apathy is impossible, yet patience, and resignation, and tranquillity
may be acquired by consideration, in a great degree, very much for the
happiness of life.
I have read Grimm, in fifteen volumes, of more than five hundred pages
each. I will not say like uncle Toby, "You shall not die till you have
read him." But you ought to read him, if possible. It is the most
entertaining work I ever read. He appears exactly as you represent
him. What is most remarkable of all is his impartiality. He spares
no characters but Necker and Diderot. Voltaire, Buffon, D'Alembert,
Helvetius, Rousseau, Marmontel, Condorcet, La Harpe, Beaumarchais, and all
others, are lashed without ceremony. Their portraits as faithfully drawn
as possible. It is a complete review of French literature and fine arts
from 1753 to 1790. No politics. Criticisms very just. Anecdotes without
number, and very merry. One ineffably ridiculous, I wish I could send
you, but it is immeasurably long. D'Argens, a little out of health and
shivering with the cold in Berlin, asked leave of the King to take a ride
to Gascony, his native province. He was absent so long that Frederick
concluded the air of the south of France was like to detain his friend;
and as he wanted his society and services, he contrived a trick to bring
him back. He fabricated a mandement in the name of the Archbishop of
Aix, commanding all the faithful to seize the Marquis D'Argens, author
of Ocellus, Timæus and Julian, works atheistical, deistical, heretical
and impious in the highest degree. This mandement, composed in a style
of ecclesiastical eloquence that never was exceeded by Pope, Jesuit,
Inquisitor, or Sorbonite, he sent in print by a courier to D'Argens,
who, frightened out of his wit, fled by cross roads out of France and
back to Berlin, to the greater joy of the philosophical court; for the
laugh of Europe, which they had raised at the expense of the learned
Marquis.
I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. They have a general
now in Russia, in correspondence with the Jesuits in the United States,
who are more numerous than everybody knows. Shall we not have swarms
of them here? In as many shapes and disguises as ever a king of the
Gypsies--Bamfield Morecarew himself, assumed? In the shape of printers,
editors, writers, schoolmasters, &c. I have lately read Pascal's letters
over again, and four volumes of the history of the Jesuits. If ever any
congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth and in hell,
according to these historians, though like Pascal true Catholics, it
is this company Loyola. Our system, however, of religious liberty must
afford them an asylum. But if they do not put the purity of our elections
to a severe trial, it will be a wonder.
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 State
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.
INDEX TO VOL. VI.
ADAMS, JOHN--His friendly relations with Jefferson restored, 30,
31, 36, 125.
His political principles, 152, 162, 166, 208, 357, 473, 500.
Terrorism excited against him, 155.
His religious opinions, 150, 159, 168, 171, 172, 174, 204, 208,
251, 264, 325, 357, 473, 545, 599, 601.
Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries compared, 501, 545.
The French Encyclopedists, 555.
Different systems of philosophy, 556.
His views on aristocracy, 160, 222, 254, 360.
ALBEMARLE, COUNTY OF--Its climate, soil, and natural advantages, 431.
ALMANACS--Improvements in, suggested, 29.
ARISTOCRACY--Views on, 160, 222, 254, 360.
ASTRONOMY--Astronomical observations, 27, 28.
BANK, NATIONAL--Views of the one proposed in 1813, 228.
BANKS--Evil of the system of, 295, 300, 381, 434, 498, 515.
Jefferson's hostility to, 305, 381, 605.
Suspension of, in 1814, 381.
Number of, at different periods, 434.
BOLLANDISTS, THE--Their collection, 475, 489.
BONAPARTE--Views of his character and career, 283, 352, 358.
His fall, 352, 421.
His restoration, 458, 463, 480, 490.
His final abdication, 467, 490, 492, 553.
His feelings towards U. States, 464.
CANADA--Attack on, 130.
CAPITOL--Burnt by English, 383.
CARR, MR.--His character, 529.
CHARITIES--Principle on which should be dispensed, 44.
CHEMISTRY--The science of, 73.
CHESAPEAKE BAY--Defence of mouth of, 111, 123, 134, 561.
COLUMBUS--Portrait of, 343, 373.
COMMITTEES OF CORRESPONDENCE--Origin of, 527.
CONGRESS--Power of States to prescribe new qualifications for
members of, 309.
CONTRACTS--Law impairing obligation of, 461.
CURRENCY--Relative merits of paper and metallic currency, 231.
DEBT, PUBLIC--Evils of, 239.
ECLIPSE, Solar--16, 28.
ECONOMY, POLITICAL--New work on, 261.
EDINBURGH REVIEW--Merits of, 345.
EDUCATION--Views on, 355, 362, 510, 517.
System of common schools, 512.
General system of, 564.
ELOQUENCE--Specimens of, 346.
EMBARGO, THE--48, 50.
ENGLAND--Her maritime encroachments, 5.
Death of King of, 15.
Condition of, 33, 52.
Jefferson's sentiments towards, 53, 463.
Character of government of, 346, 468.
Social condition of, compared with that of U. States, 376.
Tendency to revolution in, 423.
Relations of with U. States, 467, 470.
EUROPE--Condition of, 114, 497, 503.
Relations with U. States, 114.
Moral condition of 18th and 19th centuries contrasted, 524.
EXPORTS--Why exempted from taxation, 483.
FEDERALISTS--Their opposition to the war, 63.
FINANCE--Views on, by Mr. Jefferson, 136, 194.
FRANCE--French revolution, 41, 162, 227, 421.
Restoration of Bourbons, 428, 499.
Her revolutions, 499, 507, 520.
Prospects of, 526.
GENERATIONS--Right of one to bind another, 138, 196.
GLEBES--Monies arising from sale of, 389.
GOVERNMENT--Principles of, 45.
Views on, 222, 413, 543, 589, 604.
Should be local, 543.
Definition of republican government, 605.
GRAMMAR--Views on, 184.
GRANGER, GIDEON--Relative to certain charges against, 329.
GRIEF--Its uses, 601.
GRIMM, BARON--His character, 576.
GUN-BOATS--133.
HARTFORD CONVENTION--425.
HEMP-BREAKER--New invention, 506.
HENRY--His mission to eastern States, 50.
HENRY, PATRICK--Early reminiscences of, 364, 368, 369.
Resolutions of, 1765, by, 366.
Case of Josiah Philips, 369.
His manners and habits, 487.
HISTORY, NATURAL--Systems of classification, 319.
HULL'S DEFEAT--101, 103.
IMPRESSMENT--420, 426, 428, 467.
INDIANS--The Wabash prophet, 49.
Traditions of, 59.
Their religion, 60, 147.
Civilization of, 62.
Origin of, 120, 146.
Our policy towards, 269.
Languages of, 529.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS--His bodily decay, 4, 519.
His devotion to agriculture, 6.
Efforts to extort money from, 9, 10.
His declining faculties, 107, 403.
His relations with Mr. Adams, 125.
Complains of publication of his letters, 282.
His views of merchants, priests, and lawyers, 334.
Made member of Agronomic Society of Bavaria, 363.
Tenders his library to Congress, 384, 387.
Resigns Presidency of Philosophical Society, 396, 397.
His feelings towards England, 449.
Estimate of his public services, 455.
Calumnies against, 465.
His estimate of life, 575.
JUDICIARY--Limits between powers of State and federal, 494.
Cannot bind legislature or executive by its decisions, 462.
KINGS--Character of European Kings, 271.
LA FAYETTE--His journal of his campaign in Virginia, 426.
LANGUAGE--Introduction of new words in, 185, 572.
Is progressive, 185, 572.
LAW, COMMON--Christianity no part of common law, 303, 311.
Interpolation on, 311.
How far binding, 65.
Works on, 291.
LEWIS AND CLARKE--Publication of their journal delayed, 270.
Journal of their western expedition, 595.
LINCOLN, LEVI--Declines seat on bench of Supreme Court, 8.
MANUFACTURES--Domestic, in U. States, 36, 69, 94, 472.
Growth of, during war, 430.
Mr. Jefferson's views on manufacturing system, 521, 553.
MEDICINE--Science of, 33, 105.
MINISTERS--Should not preach on politics, 445.
MONROE, JAMES--Made Secretary of War, 410.
MORALITY--Its basis, 348.
MORAL SENSE--The existence of, 349.
MOUNTAINS--Method of measuring the height of, 492, 510.
MULATTO--Who mulattos under our laws, 437.
NAPIER, LORD--His theorem, 335.
NAVY--Success of, 122, 211.
ORDERS IN COUNCIL--Repeal of, 78, 117.
ORLEANS, NEW--Case of the Batture, 42.
Battle of, 420.
ORTHOGRAPHY--Improvements in, 190.
PACIFIC OCEAN--American settlements on shore of, 55, 248.
PARTIES IN UNITED STATES--95, 96.
Original division of, 143.
PATENTS--When should be granted, 175, 181, 295, 297, 372.
How long should last, 180, 295.
PERPETUAL MOTION--83.
PHILIPS, JOSIAH--His case, 439.
PHILOSOPHY--The true, 531.
Of the ancients, 147, 277.
PLATO--His writings, 354, 360.
POISONS--164.
PORTRAITS--Of Columbus and Americus Vespucius, 343, 373.
Of Jefferson, 344.
PRESS--Corruption of, 285.
Censorship of, intolerable, 340.
PRESIDENT--Should be elected for four years, 213.
PRIVATEERING--Success of, 409.
RELIGION--Views of J. Adams on, 150, 159, 168, 171, 172, 174, 204,
208, 251, 264, 325, 357, 473, 545, 599, 601.
Views of Jefferson on, 191, 210, 217, 302, 305, 387, 519.
The Christian system, 217, 412.
Platonic Christianity, 354.
The Jewish creed, 577.
The character of Jesus, 593.
REVOLUTION--History of American, 489, 492.
Revolutionary men and documents, 249, 484.
Of South American States, 268, 274.
Reminiscences of, 364, 412, 484, 527.
Committees of correspondence, 527.
RITTENHOUSE, DR.--His character, 324.
RIVANNA RIVER--Navigation of, 514, 541.
RIVERS--Right to navigate, 541.
SAINTS--Lives of, 479.
SAY, M.--Contemplates emigrating to U. States, 405.
SCIENCE, POLITICAL--160.
SLAVERY--How to be abolished, 456.
SOUTH AMERICAN PROVINCES--Independence of, recognized, 550.
SPAIN--Her new constitution, 341.
Our relations with, 550.
Revolt of her South American colonies, 550.
STEAM-ENGINES--504.
SURVEYING--New method of platting, 338.
TAXATION--Principles of, 573.
TERRORISM--The era of, 155.
TEXAS--Included in the Louisiana purchase, 551.
THEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES--Should not be incorporated, 533.
TRACY, DESTUTT--His works, 109.
Prospectus of his works, 568.
TREATIES--With European nations, 453.
Power of Senate over, 557.
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA--Establishment of, 193, 371.
What chairs should be established, 389.
Organization of, 537.
UNITED STATES--Social condition of, compared with that of
England, 376.
Relations of, with Europe, 13, 430.
Survey and census of, 548.
VIRGINIA--Relative powers of Governor and Council, 38.
Aristocracy of, 225, 485.
New edition of notes on Virginia contemplated, but not executed,
403.
Invasion of, by Arnold and Cornwallis, 410.
Patrick Henry's resolutions, 485.
Height of her mountains, 496.
Survey of, 578.
WAR--With England inevitable, 51, 57, 91, 215.
Efforts to avoid, 215.
Declared against England, 67, 215.
Causes for which declared, 398, 481, 452, 470.
Benefits resulting from, 444, 452.
Popularity of, and means of maintaining, 70, 391, 394.
Progress and History of, 76, 81, 100, 128, 211, 275, 307,
385, 408, 418, 423, 438.
Opposition to, in N. England, 79, 213.
Defection of Massachusetts, 402, 414, 451.
Hull's surrender, 80, 83.
Financial arrangements to meet expenses of, 137, 391, 395,
406, 408, 419.
Prospects of termination of, 353.
Purposes for which waged, 391, 394, 403, 452.
Internal effects produced by, 399.
Peace declared, 420, 426, 428, 438, 450.
Successful termination of, 453, 466.
Upon what principles war is justifiable, 539.
WASHINGTON, GEN.--His political principles, 97.
Adams' view of his administration, 157.
A sketch of his character by Jefferson, 186.
Statue of, for North Carolina, 534.
WASHINGTON CITY--Attack on, by English, 424.
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES--Standard of, 11, 17, 26.
WILKINSON, GEN.--His relations with Mr. Jefferson, 34.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. VI. (of 9) - Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, - Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.