| 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. VII. (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. VII. (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_.
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 paragraph starting "Page 2, column 2" has an unmatched quote.
The following possible inconsistencies/printer errors/archaic
spellings/different names for different entities were identified
but left as printed:
Vanderkemp and Vander Kemp
Potomac and Patomac
Postlethwayte and Postlethwaite
Mecklenburg and Mecklenberg
ascendancy and ascendency.
On page 33, Molliores Spsyke should possibly be Moliére's Psyché.
On page 52, multnomat should possibly be Multnomat.
On page 181, Universary should possibly be University.
On page 192, sculk should possibly be skulk.
On page 537, the price of the Algerine captives is stated as "$34,79,228,",
which is probably a printer's error.
On page 546, termometer should possibly be thermometer.
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. VII.
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.
CONTENTS TO VOL. VII.
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, 25, 37, 43, 54, 61, 81, 199, 217,
243, 254, 264, 274, 280, 307, 313, 337, 435.
Adams, Mrs. A., letter written to, 52.
Adams, J. Q., letter written to, 436.
Barry, Wm. T., letter written to, 255.
Blatchly, C. C., letter written to, 263.
Breckenridge, General, letters written to, 204, 237.
Cabell, Joseph C., letters written to, 201, 329, 350, 392.
Campbell, John, letter written to, 268.
Cartwright, Major John, letter written to, 355.
Cooper, Dr., letter written to, 266.
Corey, M., letter written to, 318.
Crawford, Wm. H., letter written to, 5.
Dearborne, General, letter written to, 214.
Delaplaine, Mr., letter written to, 20.
Denison, Hon. J. Evelyn, letter written to, 415.
Earle, Thomas, letter written to, 310.
Emmet, Dr., letters written to, 438, 441.
Engelbrecht, Isaac, letter written to, 337.
Eppes, Francis, letter written to, 197.
Everett, Edward, letters written to, 232, 270, 340, 380, 437.
Flower, George, letter written to, 83.
Gallatin, Albert, letter written to, 77.
Garnett, Robert J., letter written to, 336.
Giles, Wm. B., letters written to, 424, 426.
Gilmer, Francis W., letter written to, 3.
Gooch, Claiborne W., letter written to, 430.
Hammond, Mr. C., letter written to, 215.
Harding, David H., letter written to, 346.
Hopkins, George F., letter written to, 259.
Humboldt, Baron, letter written to, 74.
Humphreys, Dr. Thomas, letter written to, 57.
Johnson, Judge, letters written to, 276, 290.
Kerchival, Samuel, letters written to, 9, 35.
La Fayette, Marquis de, letters written to, 65, 324, 378.
Lee, H., letters written to, 376, 407.
Lee, Wm., letter written to, 56.
Livingston, Edward, letters written to, 342, 402.
Logan, Dr., letter written to, 19.
Ludlow, Wm., letter written to, 377.
Macon, Nathaniel, letter written to, 222.
Madison, James, letters written to, 304, 373, 422, 432.
Manners, Dr. John, letter written to, 72.
Mansfield, Jared, letter written to, 203.
Marbois, M. de, letter written to, 76.
Mease, Dr. James, letter written to, 410.
Megan, Mr., letter written to, 286.
Mellish, Mr., letter written to, 51.
Morse, Jedediah, letter written to, 233.
Nicholas, Mr., letter written to, 229.
Pickering, Timothy, letter written to, 210.
Pleasants, John Hampden, letter written to, 344.
Plumer, Governor, letter written to, 18.
President, The, letters written to, 287, 299, 315.
Ritchie & Gooch, letters written to, 239, 246.
Roane, Judge, letters written to, 211, 212.
Rodgers, Patrick K., letter written to, 327.
Roscoe, Mr., letter written to, 195.
Rush Richard, letters written to, 347, 379.
Secretary of State, letter written to, 41.
Short, Wm., letters written to, 309, 389.
Sinclair, St. John, letter written to, 22.
Skidman, Thomas, letter written to, 258.
Smith, Mr. M. Harrison, letter written to, 27.
Smith, James, letter written to, 269.
Smith, General Samuel, letters written to, 284.
Smith, T. J., letter written to, 401.
Smyth, General Alexander, letter written to, 394.
Sparks, Jared, letter written to, 332.
Stuart, Josephus B., letter written to, 64.
Summers, George W., &c., letter written to, 230.
Taylor, John, letter written to, 17.
Taylor, Hugh P., letter written to, 2.
Terrel, Dabney, letter written to, 206.
Terril, Chiles, letter written to, 260.
Thweat, Archibald, letters written to, 198.
Tiffany, Isaac H., letter written to, 31.
Ticknor, George, letter written to, 300.
Van Buren, Martin, letter written to, 362.
Vaughan, John, letter written to, 409.
Waterhouse, Dr. Benjamin, letters written to, 252, 257.
Weightman, Mr., letter written to, 450.
Whittemore, Mr. Robert, letter written to, 245.
Wiss, Lewis M., letter written to, 419.
Woodward, Mr., letter written to, 338.
Woodward, Judge Augustus B., letter written to, 405.
Wright, Miss, letter written to, 408.
Address lost, letters written to, 220, 223, 383, 397, 411, 425,
431, 444.
Letters to Thomas Jefferson from John Adams, 29, 38, 47, 58, 68,
70, 85, 219, 261, 279, 302, 396.
BOOK III.--PART I.
REPORTS AND OPINIONS WHILE SECRETARY OF STATE.
1. Report on the method of obtaining fresh water from salt, 455.
2. Opinion on the proposition for establishing a woollen manufactory
in Virginia, 460.
3. Report on copper coinage, 462.
4. Opinion on the question whether the Senate has the right to
negative the _grade_ of persons appointed by the Executive to fill
foreign missions, 465.
5. Opinion on the validity of a grant made by the State of Georgia
to certain companies of individuals, of a tract of country, whereof
the Indian right had never been extinguished, with power to such
individuals to extinguish the Indian right, 467.
6. Opinion in favor of the Resolution of May 21, 1790, directing
that, in all cases where payment had not been already made, the
debts due to the soldiers of Virginia and North Carolina, should
be paid to the original claimants, and not to their assignees, 469.
7. Report on plan for establishing uniformity in the coins, weights
and measures, of the United States, 472.
8. Opinion on the question whether the President should veto the
bill, declaring that the seat of government shall be transferred
to the Potomac in the year 1790, 498.
9. Opinion respecting expenses and salaries of foreign ministers,
501.
10. Opinion in regard to the continuances of the monopoly of the
commerce of the Creek nation enjoyed by Colonel McGillivray, 504.
11. Opinion respecting our foreign debt, 506.
12. Opinion on the question whether Lord Dorchester should be
permitted to march troops through the territories of United States
from Detroit to the Mississippi, 508.
13. Opinion on the question whether the real object of the expedition
of Governor St. Clair, should be notified to Lord Dorchester, 510.
14. Opinion on the proceedings to be had under the Residence Act,
511.
15. Report of the Secretary of State to the President of the United
States on the Report of the Secretary of the Government of the
North-West of the Ohio, 513.
16. Opinion on certain proceedings of the Executive in the
North-Western Territory, 515.
17. Report on certain letters between the President and Governeur
Morris, relative to our difficulties with England, 517.
18. Report on the Mediterranean trade, 519.
19. Report on the Algerine prisoners, 532.
20. Report on the cod and whale fisheries, 538.
21. Opinion against the constitutionality of a National Bank, 555.
22. Opinion relative to the ten mile square for the federal
government, 561.
23. Report on the policy of securing peculiar marks to manufacturers
by law, 563.
24. Opinion relative to the demolition of Mr. Carroll's house by
Major L'Enfant, in laying out the Federal City 564.
25. Opinion relative to certain lands on Lake Erie, sold by the U.
States to Pennsylvania, 567.
26. Report on the negotiations with Spain to secure the navigation
of the Mississippi, and a port on the same, 568.
27. Report on the case of Charles Russell and others, claiming
certain lands, 592.
28. Report relative to negotiations at Madrid, 593.
29. Opinion on bill apportioning representation, 594.
30. Opinion relative to the re-capture of slaves, escaped to Florida,
601.
31. Report on the assays at the mint, 604.
32. Report on the petition of John Rodgers relative to certain
lands on the north-east side of the Tennessee, 605.
33. Report relative to the boundaries of the lands between the Ohio
and the lakes acquired by treaties from the Indians, 608.
34. Report on proceedings of Secretary of State to transfer to
Europe the annual fund of $40,000, appropriated to that department,
610.
35. Opinion on the question whether the United States have the right
to renounce their treaties with France, or hold them suspended,
until the government of that country shall become established, 611.
36. Opinion relative to granting passports to American vessels, 624.
37. Opinion relative to the case of a British vessel captured by
a French vessel, purchased by French citizens, and fitted out as
a privateer in one of our ports, 626.
38. Opinion on the proposition of the Secretary of the Treasury to
open a new loan, 629.
39. Opinion relative to the policy of a new loan, 633.
40. Report on the restrictions and privileges of the commerce of
the United states in foreign countries, 636.
41. Report on the mint, 651.
PART III.--CONTINUED.
LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE U. S. DOWN TO THE TIME OF HIS
DEATH.
1790-1826.
TO FRANCIS W. GILMER.
MONTICELLO, June 7, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--I received a few days ago from Mr. Dupont the enclosed
manuscript, with permission to read it, and a request, when read, to
forward it to you, in expectation that you would translate it. It is well
worthy of publication for the instruction of our citizens, being profound,
sound, and short. Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the
rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and
enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from
us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights
of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him;
every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities
of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him; and, no
man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another,
it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third.
When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled
their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into
society we give up any natural right. The trial of every law by one
of these texts, would lessen much the labors of our legislators, and
lighten equally our municipal codes. There is a work of the first order
of merit now in the press at Washington, by Destutt Tracy, on the subject
of political economy, which he brings into the compass of three hundred
pages, octavo. In a preliminary discourse on the origin of the right of
property, he coincides much with the principles of the present manuscript;
but is more developed, more demonstrative. He promises a future work on
morals, in which I lament to see that he will adopt the principles of
Hobbes, or humiliation to human nature; that the sense of justice and
injustice is not derived from our natural organization, but founded on
convention only. I lament this the more, as he is unquestionably the
ablest writer living, on abstract subjects. Assuming the fact, that
the earth has been created in time, and consequently the dogma of final
causes, we yield, of course, to this short syllogism. Man was created
for social intercourse; but social intercourse cannot be maintained
without a sense of justice; then man must have been created with a
sense of justice. There is an error into which most of the speculators
on government have fallen, and which the well-known state of society of
our Indians ought, before now, to have corrected. In their hypothesis
of the origin of government, they suppose it to have commenced in the
patriarchal or monarchical form. Our Indians are evidently in that state
of nature which has passed the association of a single family; and not
yet submitted to the authority of positive laws, or of any acknowledged
magistrate. Every man, with them, is perfectly free to follow his own
inclinations. But if, in doing this, he violates the rights of another,
if the case be slight, he is punished by the disesteem of his society,
or, as we say, by public opinion; if serious, he is tomahawked as a
dangerous enemy. Their leaders conduct them by the influence of their
character only; and they follow, or not, as they please, him of whose
character for wisdom or war they have the highest opinion. Hence the
origin of the parties among them adhering to different leaders, and
governed by their advice, not by their command. The Cherokees, the only
tribe I know to be contemplating the establishment of regular laws,
magistrates, and government, propose a government of representatives,
elected from every town. But of all things, they least think of subjecting
themselves to the will of one man. This, the only instance of actual
fact within our knowledge, will be then a beginning by republican, and
not by patriarchal or monarchical government, as speculative writers
have generally conjectured.
We have to join in mutual congratulations on the appointment of our
friend Correa, to be minister or envoy of Portugal, here. This, I hope,
will give him to us for life. Nor will it at all interfere with his
botanical rambles or journeys. The government of Portugal is so peaceable
and inoffensive, that it has never any altercations with its friends.
If their minister abroad writes them once a quarter that all is well,
they desire no more. I learn, (though not from Correa himself,) that
he thinks of paying us a visit as soon as he is through his course of
lectures. Not to lose this happiness again by my absence, I have informed
him I shall set out for Poplar Forest the 20th instant, and be back the
first week of July. I wish you and he could concert your movements so
us to meet here, and that you would make this your head quarters. It
is a good central point from which to visit your connections; and you
know our practice of placing our guests at their ease, by showing them
we are so ourselves and that we follow our necessary vocations, instead
of fatiguing them by hanging unremittingly on their shoulders. I salute
you with affectionate esteem and respect.
TO WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD.
MONTICELLO, June 20, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--I am about to sin against all discretion, and knowingly, by
adding to the drudgery of your letter-reading, this acknowledgment of
the receipt of your favor of May the 31st, with the papers it covered.
I cannot, however, deny myself the gratification of expressing the
satisfaction I have received, not only from the general statement of
affairs at Paris, in yours of December the 12th, 1814. (as a matter
of history which I had not before received.) but most especially and
superlatively, from the perusal of your letter of the 8th of the same
month to Mr. Fisk, on the subject of draw-backs. This most heterogeneous
principle was transplanted into ours from the British system, by a man
whose mind was really powerful, but chained by native partialities to
everything English; who had formed exaggerated ideas of the superior
perfection of the English constitution, the superior wisdom of their
government, and sincerely believed it for the good of this country to
make them their model in everything; without considering that what might
be wise and good for a nation essentially commercial, and entangled in
complicated intercourse with numerous and powerful neighbors, might not
be so for one essentially agricultural, and insulated by nature from
the abusive governments of the old world.
The exercise, by our own citizens, of so much commerce as may suffice
to exchange our superfluities for our wants, may be advantageous for the
whole. But it does not follow, that with a territory so boundless, it is
the interest of the whole to become a mere city of London, to carry on
the business of one half the world at the expense of eternal war with
the other half. The agricultural capacities of our country constitute
its distinguishing feature; and the adapting our policy and pursuits to
that, is more likely to make us a numerous and happy people, than the
mimicry of an Amsterdam, a Hamburgh, or a city of London. Every society
has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and
to say to all individuals, that, if they contemplate pursuits beyond
the limits of these principles, and involving dangers which the society
chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that
we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on
such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons
infected with disease. Such is the situation of our country. We have most
abundant resources of happiness within ourselves, which we may enjoy
in peace and safety, without permitting a few citizens, infected with
the mania of rambling and gambling, to bring danger on the great mass
engaged in innocent and safe pursuits at home. In your letter to Fisk,
you have fairly stated the alternatives between which we are to choose: 1,
licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war
for the many; or, 2, restricted commerce, peace, and steady occupations
for all. If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation
with the first alternative, to a continuance in union without it, I have
no hesitation in saying, "let us separate." I would rather the States
should withdraw, which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate
with those alone which are for peace and agriculture. I know that every
nation in Europe would join in sincere amity with the latter, and hold
the former at arm's length, by jealousies, prohibitions, restrictions,
vexations and war. No earthly consideration could induce my consent to
contract such a debt as England has by her wars for commerce, to reduce
our citizens by taxes to such wretchedness, as that laboring sixteen of
the twenty-four hours, they are still unable to afford themselves bread,
or barely to earn as much oatmeal or potatoes as will keep soul and body
together. And all this to feed the avidity of a few millionary merchants,
and to keep up one thousand ships of war for the protection of their
commercial speculations. I returned from Europe after our government
had got under way, and had adopted from the British code the law of
draw-backs. I early saw its effects in the jealousies and vexations of
Britain; and that, retaining it, we must become like her an essentially
warring nation, and meet, in the end, the catastrophe impending over
her. No one can doubt that this alone produced the orders of council,
the depredations which preceded, and the war which followed them. Had
we carried but our own produce, and brought back but our own wants, no
nation would have troubled us. Our commercial dashers, then, have already
cost us so many thousand lives, so many millions of dollars, more than
their persons and all their commerce were worth. When war was declared,
and especially after Massachusetts, who had produced it, took side with
the enemy waging it, I pressed on some confidential friends in Congress
to avail us of the happy opportunity of repealing the draw-back; and I
do rejoice to find that you are in that sentiment. You are young, and
may be in the way of bringing it into effect. Perhaps time, even yet,
and change of tone, (for there are symptoms of that in Massachusetts,)
may not have obliterated altogether the sense of our late feelings and
sufferings; may not have induced oblivion of the friends we have lost,
the depredations and conflagrations we have suffered, and the debts we
have incurred, and have to labor for through the lives of the present
generation. The earlier the repeal is proposed, the more it will be
befriended by all these recollections and considerations. This is one
of three great measures necessary to insure us permanent prosperity.
This preserves our peace. A second should enable us to meet any war, by
adopting the report of the war department, for placing the force of the
nation at effectual command; and a third should insure resources of money
by the suppression of all paper circulation during peace, and licensing
that of the nation alone during war. The metallic medium of which we
should be possessed at the commencement of a war, would be a sufficient
fund for all the loans we should need through its continuance; and if the
national bills issued, be bottomed (as is indispensable) on pledges of
specific taxes for their redemption within certain and moderate epochs,
and be of proper denominations for circulation, no interest on them
would be necessary or just, because they would answer to every one the
purposes of the metallic money withdrawn and replaced by them.
But possibly these may be the dreams of an old man, or that the occasions
of realizing them may have passed away without return. A government
regulating itself by what is wise and just for the many, uninfluenced
by the local and selfish views of the few who direct their affairs, has
not been seen perhaps, on earth. Or if it existed, for a moment, at the
birth of ours, it would not be easy to fix the term of its continuance.
Still, I believe it does exist here in a greater degree than anywhere
else; and for its growth and continuance, as well as for your personal
health and happiness, I offer sincere prayers, with the homage of my
respect and esteem.
TO SAMUEL KERCHIVAL.
MONTICELLO, July 12, 1816.
SIR,--I duly received your favor of June the 13th, with the copy of
the letters on the calling a convention, on which you are pleased to
ask my opinion. I have not been in the habit of mysterious reserve on
any subject, nor of buttoning up my opinions within my own doublet. On
the contrary, while in public service especially, I thought the public
entitled to frankness, and intimately to know whom they employed. But
I am now retired: I resign myself, as a passenger, with confidence to
those at present at the helm, and ask but for rest, peace and good will.
The question you propose, on equal representation, has become a party
one, in which I wish to take no public share. Yet, if it be asked for
your own satisfaction only, and not to be quoted before the public, I
have no motive to withhold it, and the less from you, as it coincides
with your own. At the birth of our republic, I committed that opinion
to the world, in the draught of a constitution annexed to the "Notes
on Virginia," in which a provision was inserted for a representation
permanently equal. The infancy of the subject at that moment, and our
inexperience of self-government, occasioned gross departures in that
draught from genuine republican canons. In truth, the abuses of monarchy
had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we
imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had not yet
penetrated to the mother principle, that "governments are republican
only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute
it." Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in
them. But experience and reflection have but more and more confirmed me
in the particular importance of the equal representation then proposed.
On that point, then, I am entirely in sentiment with your letters; and
only lament that a copy-right of your pamphlet prevents their appearance
in the newspapers, where alone they would be generally read, and produce
general effect. The present vacancy too, of other matter, would give
them place in every paper, and bring the question home to every man's
conscience.
But inequality of representation in both Houses of our legislature, is
not the only republican heresy in this first essay of our revolutionary
patriots at forming a constitution. For let it be agreed that a government
is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal
voice in the direction of its concerns, (not indeed in person, which
would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city, or small township,
but) by representatives chosen by himself, and responsible to him at
short periods, and let us bring to the test of this canon every branch
of our constitution.
In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than
half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose.
The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of
irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely independent
of the choice of the people, and of their control; his Council equally
so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the Judiciary, the
judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves.
In England, where judges were named and removable at the will of an
hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was feared, and has
flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for life, to make
them independent of that executive. But in a government founded on the
public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction, and against
that will. There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the
executive and legislative branches. But we have made them independent of
the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by their own body, for any
depravities of conduct, and even by their own body for the imbecilities
of dotage. The justices of the inferior courts are self-chosen, are for
life, and perpetuate their own body in succession forever, so that a
faction once possessing themselves of the bench of a county, can never
be broken up, but hold their county in chains, forever indissoluble. Yet
these justices are the real executive as well as judiciary, in all our
minor and most ordinary concerns. They tax us at will; fill the office of
sheriff, the most important of all the executive officers of the county;
name nearly all our military leaders, which leaders, once named, are
removable but by themselves. The juries, our judges of all fact, and of
law when they choose it, are not selected by the people, nor amenable to
them. They are chosen by an officer named by the court and executive.
Chosen, did I say? Picked up by the sheriff from the loungings of the
court yard, after everything respectable has retired from it. Where then
is our republicanism to be found? Not in our constitution certainly,
but merely in the spirit of our people. That would oblige even a despot
to govern us republicanly. Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the
form of our constitution, all things have gone well. But this fact, so
triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit
of our constitution, but has prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries
have done well, because generally honest men. If any were not so, they
feared to show it.
But it will be said, it is easier to find faults than to amend them. I
do not think their amendment so difficult as is pretended. Only lay down
true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into
their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth
against the ascendency of the people. If experience be called for, appeal
to that of our fifteen or twenty governments for forty years, and show
me where the people have done half the mischief in these forty years,
that a single despot would have done in a single year; or show half the
riots and rebellions, the crimes and the punishments, which have taken
place in any single nation, under kingly government, during the same
period. The true foundation of republican government is the equal right
of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.
Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see
if it hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature
to a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man
who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.
Submit them to approbation or rejection at short intervals. Let the
executive be chosen in the same way, and for the same term, by those
whose agent he is to be; and leave no screen of a council behind which
to skulk from responsibility. It has been thought that the people are
not competent electors of judges _learned in the law_. But I do not know
that this is true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle. In this,
as in many other elections, they would be guided by reputation, which
would not err oftener, perhaps, than the present mode of appointment. In
one State of the Union, at least, it has long been tried, and with the
most satisfactory success. The judges of Connecticut have been chosen
by the people every six months, for nearly two centuries, and I believe
there has hardly ever been an instance of change; so powerful is the
curb of incessant responsibility. If prejudice, however, derived from a
monarchical institution, is still to prevail against the vital elective
principle of our own, and if the existing example among ourselves of
periodical election of judges by the people be still mistrusted, let us at
least not adopt the evil, and reject the good, of the English precedent;
let us retain amovability on the concurrence of the executive and
legislative branches, and nomination by the executive alone. Nomination
to office is an executive function. To give it to the legislature, as
we do, is a violation of the principle of the separation of powers.
It swerves the members from correctness, by temptations to intrigue
for office themselves, and to a corrupt barter of votes; and destroys
responsibility by dividing it among a multitude. By leaving nomination
in its proper place, among executive functions, the principle of the
distribution of power is preserved, and responsibility weighs with its
heaviest force on a single head.
The organization of our county administrations may be thought more
difficult. But follow principle, and the knot unties itself. Divide the
counties into wards of such size as that every citizen can attend, when
called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them the government of their
wards in all things relating to themselves exclusively. A justice, chosen
by themselves, in each, a constable, a military company, a patrol, a
school, the care of their own poor, their own portion of the public
roads, the choice of one or more jurors to serve in some court, and the
delivery, within their own wards, of their own votes for all elective
officers of higher sphere, will relieve the county administration of
nearly all its business, will have it better done, and by making every
citizen an acting member of the government, and in the offices nearest
and most interesting to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings
to the independence of his country, and its republican constitution. The
justices thus chosen by every ward, would constitute the county court,
would do its judiciary business, direct roads and bridges, levy county
and poor rates, and administer all the matters of common interest to
the whole country. These wards, called townships in New England, are
the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves
the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect
exercise of self-government, and for its preservation. We should thus
marshal our government into, 1, the general federal republic, for all
concerns foreign and federal; 2, that of the State, for what relates to
our own citizens exclusively; 3, the county republics, for the duties
and concerns of the county; and 4, the ward republics, for the small,
and yet numerous and interesting concerns of the neighborhood; and in
government, as well as in every other business of life, it is by division
and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can
be managed to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every
citizen, personally, a part in the administration of the public affairs.
The sum of these amendments is, 1. General suffrage. 2. Equal
representation in the legislature. 3. An executive chosen by the people.
4. Judges elective or amovable. 5. Justices, jurors, and sheriffs
elective. 6. Ward divisions. And 7. Periodical amendments of the
constitution.
I have thrown out these as loose heads of amendment, for consideration
and correction; and their object is to secure self-government by the
republicanism of our constitution, as well as by the spirit of the
people; and to nourish and perpetuate that spirit. I am not among those
who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for
continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let
our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between
_economy and liberty_, or _profusion and servitude_. If we run into
such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in
our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for
our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people,
like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give
the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and
daily expenses: and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread,
we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to
think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to
obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks
of our fellow-sufferers. Our land-holders, too, like theirs, retaining
indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held
really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign
countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory
of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private
fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.
And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from
principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second
for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be
mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning
and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the _bellum omnium in omnia_, which
some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken
it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore
horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and
in its train wretchedness and oppression.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem
them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe
to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose
what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged
to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very
like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty
years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and
this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am
certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and
constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with;
because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find
practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that
laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human
mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries
are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the
change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace
with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat
which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the
regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which
has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely
yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive
accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses,
entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to
seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had
they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of
the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let
us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is
not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its
own affairs. Let us, as our sister States have done, avail ourselves of
our reason and experience, to correct the crude essays of our first and
unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils. And
lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated
periods. What these periods should be, nature herself indicates. By the
European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of
time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that
period then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new
generation. Each generation is as independent of the one preceding, as
that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right
to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive
of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances
in which it finds itself, that received from its predecessors; and
it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of
doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the
constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from
generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so
long endure. It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia was
formed. The same tables inform us, that, within that period, two-thirds
of the adults then living are now dead. Have then the remaining third,
even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their
will, and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds, who,
with themselves, compose the present mass of adults? If they have not,
who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and
nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can
be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong
to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They
alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone,
and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only
be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute
representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they
think will be the best for themselves. But how collect their voice? This
is the real difficulty. If invited by private authority, or county or
district meetings, these divisions are so large that few will attend;
and their voice will be imperfectly, or falsely pronounced. Here, then,
would be one of the advantages of the ward divisions I have proposed.
The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call his
ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members, convey these
to the county court, who would hand on those of all its wards to the
proper general authority; and the voice of the whole people would be
thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed, discussed, and decided by
the common reason of the society. If this avenue be shut to the call of
sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall
go on, as other nations are doing, in the endless circle of oppression,
rebellion, reformation; and oppression, rebellion, reformation, again;
and so on forever.
These, Sir, are my opinions of the governments we see among men, and of
the principles by which alone we may prevent our own from falling into
the same dreadful track. I have given them at greater length than your
letter called for. But I cannot say things by halves; and I confide them
to your honor, so to use them as to preserve me from the gridiron of the
public papers. If you shall approve and enforce them, as you have done
that of equal representation, they may do some good. If not, keep them
to yourself as the effusions of withered age and useless time. I shall,
with not the less truth, assure you of my great respect and consideration.
TO JOHN TAYLOR.
MONTICELLO, July 16, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 10th is received, and I have to acknowledge a
copious supply of the turnip seed requested. Besides taking care myself, I
shall endeavor again to commit it to the depository of the neighborhood,
generally found to be the best precaution against losing a good thing. I
will add a word on the political part of our letters. I believe we do not
differ on either of the points you suppose. On education certainly not;
of which the proofs are my bill for the diffusion of knowledge, proposed
near forty years ago, and my uniform endeavors, to this day, to get our
counties divided into wards, one of the principal objects of which is,
the establishment of a primary school in each. But education not being a
branch of municipal government, but, like the other arts and sciences,
an accident only, I did not place it, with election, as a fundamental
member in the structure of government. Nor, I believe, do we differ as
to the county courts. I acknowledge the value of this institution; that
it is in truth our principal executive and judiciary, and that it does
much for little _pecuniary_ reward. It is their self-appointment I wish
to correct; to find some means of breaking up a cabal, when such a one
gets possession of the bench. When this takes place, it becomes the most
afflicting of tyrannies, because its powers are so various, and exercised
on everything most immediately around us. And how many instances have
you and I known of these monopolies of county administration? I knew a
county in which a particular family (a numerous one) got possession of the
bench, and for a whole generation never admitted a man on it who was not
of its clan or connexion. I know a county now of one thousand and five
hundred militia, of which sixty are federalists. Its court is of thirty
members, of whom twenty are federalists, (every third man of the sect.)
There are large and populous districts in it without a justice, because
without a federalist for appointment; the militia are as disproportionably
under federal officers. And there is no authority on earth which can
break up this junto, short of a general convention. The remaining one
thousand four hundred and forty, free, fighting, and paying citizens,
are governed by men neither of their choice or confidence, and without
a hope of relief. They are certainly excluded from the blessings of a
free government for life, and indefinitely, for aught the constitution
has provided. This solecism may be called anything but republican, and
ought undoubtedly to be corrected. I salute you with constant friendship
and respect.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR PLUMER.
MONTICELLO, July 21, 1816.
I thank you, Sir, for the copy you have been so good as to send me, of
your late speech to the Legislature of your State, which I have read
a second time with great pleasure, as I had before done in the public
papers. It is replete with sound principles, and truly republican. Some
articles, too, are worthy of peculiar notice. The idea that institutions
established for the use of the nation cannot be touched nor modified,
even to make them answer their end, because of rights gratuitously
supposed in those employed to manage them in trust for the public, may
perhaps be a salutary provision against the abuses of a monarch, but
is most absurd against the nation itself. Yet our lawyers and priests
generally inculcate this doctrine, and suppose that preceding generations
held the earth more freely than we do; had a right to impose laws on
us, unalterable by ourselves, and that we, in like manner, can make
laws and impose burthens on future generations, which they will have no
right to alter; in fine, that the earth belongs to the dead and not the
living. I remark also the phenomenon of a chief magistrate recommending
the reduction of his own compensation. This is a solecism of which the
wisdom of our late Congress cannot be accused. I, however, place economy
among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public
debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. We see in England
the consequences of the want of it, their laborers reduced to live on a
penny in the shilling of their earnings, to give up bread, and resort to
oatmeal and potatoes for food; and their landholders exiling themselves
to live in penury and obscurity abroad, because at home the government
must have all the clear profits of their land. In fact, they see the
fee simple of the island transferred to the public creditors, all its
profits going to them for the interest of their debts. Our laborers and
landholders must come to this also, unless they severely adhere to the
economy you recommend. I salute you with entire esteem and respect.
TO DOCTOR LOGAN.
MONTICELLO, July 23, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--I have received and read with great pleasure the account you
have been so kind as to send me of the interview between the Emperor
Alexander and Mr. Clarkson, which I now return, as it is in manuscript.
It shows great condescension of character on the part of the Emperor,
and power of mind also, to be able to abdicate the artificial distance
between himself and other good, able men, and to converse as on equal
ground. This conversation too, taken with his late Christian league,
seems to bespeak in him something like a sectarian piety; his character
is undoubtedly good, and the world, I think, may expect good effects
from it. I have no doubt that his firmness in favor of France, after the
deposition of Bonaparte, has saved that country from evils still more
severe than she is suffering, and perhaps even from partition. I sincerely
wish that the history of the secret proceedings at Vienna may become
known, and may reconcile to our good opinion of him his participation
in the demolition of ancient and independent States, transferring them
and their inhabitants as farms and stocks of cattle at a market to other
owners, and even taking a part of the spoil to himself. It is possible
to suppose a case excusing this, and my partiality for his character
encourages me to expect it, and to impute to others, known to have no
moral scruples, the crimes of that conclave, who, under pretence of
punishing the atrocities of Bonaparte, reached them themselves, and
proved that with equal power they were equally flagitious. But let us
turn with abhorrence from these sceptered Scelerats, and disregarding our
own petty differences of opinion about men and measures, let us cling
in mass to our country and to one another, and bid defiance, as we can
if united, to the plundering combinations of the old world. Present me
affectionately and respectfully to Mrs. Logan, and accept the assurance
of my friendship and best wishes.
TO MR. DELAPLAINE.
MONTICELLO, July 26, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--In compliance with the request of your letter of the 6th inst.,
with respect to Peyton Randolph, I have to observe that the difference
of age between him and myself admitted my knowing little of his early
life, except what I accidentally caught from occasional conversations.
I was a student at college when he was already Attorney General at the
bar, and a man of established years; and I had no intimacy with him until
I went to the bar myself, when, I suppose, he must have been upwards
of forty; from that time, and especially after I became a member of the
legislature, until his death, our intimacy was cordial, and I was with him
when he died. Under these circumstances, I have committed to writing as
many incidents of his life as memory enabled me to do, and to give faith
to the many and excellent qualities he possessed, I have mentioned those
minor ones which he did not possess; considering true history, in which
all will be believed, as preferable to unqualified panegyric, in which
nothing is believed. I avoided, too, the mention of trivial incidents,
which, by not distinguishing, disparage a character; but I have not been
able to state early dates. Before forwarding this paper to you, I received
a letter from Peyton Randolph, his great nephew, repeating the request
you had made. I therefore put the paper under a blank cover, addressed
to you, unsealed, and sent it to Peyton Randolph, that he might see
what dates as well as what incidents might be collected, supplementary
to mine, and correct any which I had inexactly stated; circumstances
may have been misremembered, but nothing, I think, of substance. This
account of Peyton Randolph, therefore, you may expect to be forwarded
by his nephew.
You requested me when here, to communicate to you the particulars of
two transactions in which I was myself an agent, to wit: the _coup de
main_ of Arnold on Richmond, and Tarleton's on Charlottesville. I now
enclose them, detailed with an exactness on which you may rely with an
entire confidence. But, having an insuperable aversion to be drawn into
controversy in the public papers, I must request not to be quoted either
as to these or the account of Peyton Randolph. Accept the assurances of
my esteem and respect.
TO SIR JOHN SINCLAIR.
MONTICELLO, July 31, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of November 1st came but lately to my hand. It
covered a prospectus of your code of health and longevity, a great and
useful work, which I shall be happy to see brought to a conclusion. Like
our good old Franklin, your labors and science go all to the utilities
of human life.
I reciprocate congratulations with you sincerely on the restoration
of peace between our two nations. And why should there have been war?
for the party to which the blame is to be imputed, we appeal to the
"Exposition of the causes and character of the war," a pamphlet which,
we are told, has gone through some editions with you. If that does not
justify us, then the blame is ours. But let all this be forgotten; and
let both parties now count soberly the value of mutual friendship. I am
satisfied both will find that no advantage either can derive from any
act of injustice whatever, will be of equal value with those flowing
from friendly intercourse. Both ought to wish for peace and cordial
friendship; we, because you can do us more harm than any other nation;
and you, because we can do you more good than any other. Our growth is
now so well established by regular enumerations through a course of forty
years, and the same grounds of continuance so likely to endure for a
much longer period, that, speaking in round numbers, we may safely call
ourselves twenty millions in twenty years, and forty millions in forty
years. Many of the statesmen now living saw the commencement of the first
term, and many now living will see the end of the second. It is not then
a mere concern of posterity; a third of those now in life will see that
day. Of what importance then to you must such a nation be, whether as
friends or foes. But is their friendship, dear Sir, to be obtained by
the irritating policy of fomenting among us party discord, and a teasing
opposition; by bribing traitors, whose sale of themselves proves they
would sell their purchasers also, if their treacheries were worth a
price? How much cheaper would it be, how much easier, more honorable,
more magnanimous and secure, to gain the government itself, by a moral,
a friendly, and respectful course of conduct, which is all they would
ask for a cordial and faithful return. I know the difficulties arising
from the irritation, the exasperation produced on both sides by the late
war. It is great with you, as I judge from your newspapers; and greater
with us, as I see myself. The reason lies in the different degrees in
which the war has acted on us. To your people it has been a matter of
distant history only, a mere war in the carnatic; with us it has reached
the bosom of every man, woman and child. The maritime parts have felt it
in the conflagration of their houses, and towns, and desolation of their
farms; the borderers in the massacres and scalpings of their husbands,
wives and children; and the middle parts in their personal labors and
losses in defence of both frontiers, and the revolting scenes they have
there witnessed. It is not wonderful then, if their irritations are
extreme. Yet time and prudence on the part of the two governments may
get over these. Manifestations of cordiality between them, friendly
and kind offices made visible to the people on both sides, will mollify
their feelings, and second the wishes of their functionaries to cultivate
peace, and promote mutual interest. That these dispositions have been
strong on our part, in every administration from the first to the present
one, that we would at any time have gone our full half-way to meet them,
if a single step in advance had been taken by the other party, I can
affirm of my own intimate knowledge of the fact. During the first year
of my own administration, I thought I discovered in the conduct of Mr.
Addington some marks of comity towards us, and a willingness to extend
to us the decencies and duties observed towards other nations. My desire
to catch at this, and to improve it for the benefit of my own country,
induced me, in addition to the official declarations from the Secretary
of State, to write with my own hand to Mr. King, then our Minister
Plenipotentiary at London, in the following words: "I avail myself of
this occasion to assure you of my perfect satisfaction with the manner
in which you have conducted the several matters committed to you by us;
and to express my hope that through your agency, we may be able to remove
everything inauspicious to a cordial friendship between this country,
and the one in which you are stationed; a friendship dictated by too
many considerations not to be felt by the wise and the dispassionate
of both nations. It is, therefore, with the sincerest pleasure I have
observed on the part of the British government various manifestations of
a just and friendly disposition towards us; we wish to cultivate peace
and friendship with all nations, believing that course most conducive to
the welfare of our own; it is natural that these friendships should bear
some proportion to the common interests of the parties. The interesting
relations between Great Britain and the United States are certainly
of the first order, and as such are estimated, and will be faithfully
cultivated by us. These sentiments have been communicated to you from
time to time, in the official correspondence of the Secretary of State;
but I have thought it might not be unacceptable to be assured that they
perfectly concur with my own personal convictions, both in relation to
yourself, and the country in which you are."
My expectation was that Mr. King would show this letter to Mr. Addington,
and that it would be received by him as an overture towards a cordial
understanding between the two countries. He left the ministry, however,
and I never heard more of it, and certainly never perceived any good
effect from it. I know that in the present temper, the boastful, the
insolent, and the mendacious newspapers on both sides, will present
serious impediments. Ours will be insulting your public authorities,
and boasting of victories; and yours will not be sparing of provocations
and abuses of us. But if those at our helms could not place themselves
above these pitiful notices, and throwing aside all personal feelings,
look only to the interests of their nations, they would be unequal
to the trusts confided to them. I am equally confident, on our part,
in the administration now in place, as in that which will succeed it;
and that if friendship is not hereafter sincerely cultivated, it will
not be their fault. I will not, however, disguise that the settlement
of the practice of impressing _our citizens_ is a _sine quâ non_, a
preliminary, without which treaties of peace are but truces. But it is
impossible that reasonable dispositions on both parts should not remove
this stumbling block, which unremoved, will be an eternal obstacle to
peace, and lead finally to the deletion of the one or the other nation.
The regulations necessary to keep your own seamen to yourselves are those
which our interests would lead us to adopt, and that interest would be a
guarantee of their observance; and the transfer of these questions from
the cognizance of their naval commanders to the governments themselves,
would be but an act of mutual as well as of self-respect.
I did not mean, when I began my letter, to have indulged my pen so far on
subjects with which I have long ceased to have connection; but it may do
good, and I will let it go, for although what I write is from no personal
privity with the views or wishes of our government, yet believing them to
be what they ought to be, and confident in their wisdom and integrity, I
am sure I hazard no deception in what I have said of them, and I shall
be happy indeed if some good shall result to both our countries, from
this renewal of our correspondence and ancient friendship. I recall
with great pleasure the days of our former intercourse, personal and
epistolary, and can assure you with truth that in no instant of time
has there been any abatement of my great esteem and respect for you.
TO MR. ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, August 1, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Your two philosophical letters of May 4th and 6th have been
too long in my carton of "letters to be answered." To the question,
indeed, on the utility of grief, no answer remains to be given. You have
exhausted the subject. I see that, with the other evils of life, it is
destined to temper the cup we are to drink.
Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good;
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to these, to those distributes ills;
To most he mingles both.
Putting to myself your question, would I agree to live my seventy-three
years over again forever? I hesitate to say. With Chew's limitations
from twenty-five to sixty, I would say yes; and I might go further back,
but not come lower down. For, at the latter period, with most of us, the
powers of life are sensibly on the wane, sight becomes dim, hearing dull,
memory constantly enlarging its frightful blank and parting with all we
have ever seen or known, spirits evaporate, bodily debility creeps on
palsying every limb, and so faculty after faculty quits us, and where
then is life? If, in its full rigor, of good as well as evil, your friend
Vassall could doubt its value, it must be purely a negative quantity
when its evils alone remain. Yet I do not go into his opinion entirely.
I do not agree that an age of pleasure is no compensation for a moment
of pain. I think, with you, that life is a fair matter of account, and
the balance often, nay generally, in its favor. It is not indeed easy,
by calculation of intensity and time, to apply a common measure, or to
fix the par between pleasure and pain; yet it exists, and is measurable.
On the question, for example, whether to be cut for the stone? The
young, with a longer prospect of years, think these overbalance the
pain of the operation. Dr. Franklin, at the age of eighty, thought his
residuum of life not worth that price. I should have thought with him,
even taking the stone out of the scale. There is a ripeness of time for
death, regarding others as well as ourselves, when it is reasonable we
should drop off, and make room for another growth. When we have lived
our generation out, we should not wish to encroach on another. I enjoy
good health; I am happy in what is around me, yet I assure you I am ripe
for leaving all, this year, this day, this hour. If it could be doubted
whether we would go back to twenty-five, how can it be whether we would
go forward from seventy-three? Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but
of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
Perhaps, however, I might accept of time to read Grimm before I go.
Fifteen volumes of anecdotes and incidents, within the compass of my own
time and cognizance, written by a man of genius, of taste, of point, an
acquaintance, the measure and traverses of whose mind I know, could not
fail to turn the scale in favor of life during their perusal. I must
write to Ticknor to add it to my catalogue, and hold on till it comes.
There is a Mr. Vanderkemp of New York, a correspondent, I believe, of
yours, with whom I have exchanged some letters without knowing who he
is. Will you tell me? I know nothing of the history of the Jesuits you
mention in four volumes. Is it a good one? I dislike, with you, their
restoration, because it marks a retrograde step from light towards
darkness. We shall have our follies without doubt. Some one or more of
them will always be afloat. But ours will be the follies of enthusiasm,
not of bigotry, not of Jesuitism. Bigotry is the disease of ignorance,
of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free
discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier
against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to
lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish
trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a colossus shall we be
when the southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it
secure as a ralliance for the reason and freedom of the globe! I like
the dreams of the future better than the history of the past,--so good
night! I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs. Adams and yourself are
by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.
TO MRS. M. HARRISON SMITH.
MONTICELLO, August 6, 1816.
I have received, dear Madam, your very friendly letter of July 21st, and
assure you that I feel with deep sensibility its kind expressions towards
myself, and the more as from a person than whom no others could be more
in sympathy with my own affections. I often call to mind the occasions
of knowing your worth, which the societies of Washington furnished; and
none more than those derived from your much valued visit to Monticello. I
recognize the same motives of goodness in the solicitude you express on
the rumor supposed to proceed from a letter of mine to Charles Thomson,
on the subject of the Christian religion. It is true that, in writing to
the translator of the Bible and Testament, that subject was mentioned;
but equally so that no adherence to any particular mode of Christianity
was there expressed, nor any change of opinions suggested. A change from
what? the priests indeed have heretofore thought proper to ascribe to
me religious, or rather anti-religious sentiments, of their own fabric,
but such as soothed their resentments against the act of Virginia for
establishing religious freedom. They wished him to be thought atheist,
deist, or devil, who could advocate freedom from their religious
dictations. But I have ever thought religion a concern purely between
our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to him, and
not to the priests. I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that
of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change
another's creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by their
lives, and by this test, my dear Madam, I have been satisfied yours must
be an excellent one, to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue
and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that
our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me.
But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive,
a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is
that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been
a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of
all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power,
revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only
what is really there. These, therefore, they brand with such nick-names
as their enmity choses gratuitously to impute. I have left the world,
in silence, to judge of causes from their effects; and I am consoled
in this course, my dear friend, when I perceive the candor with which
I am judged by your justice and discernment; and that, notwithstanding
the slanders of the saints, my fellow citizens have thought me worthy
of trusts. The imputations of irreligion having spent their force; they
think an imputation of change might now be turned to account as a bolster
for their duperies. I shall leave them, as heretofore, to grope on in
the dark.
Our family at Monticello is all in good health; Ellen speaking of you
with affection, and Mrs. Randolph always regretting the accident which
so far deprived her of the happiness of your former visit. She still
cherishes the hope of some future renewal of that kindness; in which we
all join her, as in the assurances of affectionate attachment and respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, August 9, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--The biography of Mr. Vander Kemp would require a volume which
I could not write if a million were offered me as a reward for the work.
After a learned and scientific education he entered the army in Holland,
and served as captain, with reputation; but loving books more than arms
he resigned his commission and became a preacher. My acquaintance with
him commenced at Leyden in 1790. He was then minister of the Menonist
congregation, the richest in Europe; in that city, where he was celebrated
as the most elegant writer in the Dutch language, he was the intimate
friend of Luzac and De Gysecaar. In 1788, when the King of Prussia
threatened Holland with invasion, his party insisted on his taking a
command in the army of defence, and he was appointed to the command of
the most exposed and most important post in the seven provinces. He was
soon surrounded by the Prussian forces; but he defended his fortress with
a prudence, fortitude, patience, and perseverance, which were admired by
all Europe; till, abandoned by his nation, destitute of provisions and
ammunition, still refusing to surrender, he was offered the most honorable
capitulation. He accepted it; was offered very advantageous proposals;
but despairing of the liberties of his country, he retired to Antwerp,
determined to emigrate to New York; wrote to me in London, requesting
letters of introduction. I sent him letters to Governor Clinton, and
several others of our little great men. His history in this country
is equally curious and affecting. He left property in Holland, which
the revolutions there have annihilated; and I fear is now pinched with
poverty. His head is deeply learned and his heart is pure. I scarcely
know a more amiable character.
* * * * *
He has written to me occasionally, and I have answered his letters in
great haste. You may well suppose that such a man has not always been
able to understand our American politics. Nor have I. Had he been as
great a master of our language as he was of his own, he would have been
at this day one of the most conspicuous characters in the United States.
So much for Vander Kemp; now for your letter of August 1st. Your poet, the
Ionian I suppose, ought to have told us whether Jove, in the distribution
of good and evil from his two urns, observes any rule of equity or not;
whether he thunders out flames of eternal fire on the many, and power,
and glory, and felicity on the few, without any consideration of justice?
Let us state a few questions _sub rosâ_.
1. Would you accept a life, if offered you, of equal pleasure and pain?
For example. One million of moments of pleasure, and one million of
moments of pain! (1,000,000 moments of pleasure = 1,000,000 moments of
pain.) Suppose the pleasure as exquisite as any in life, and the pain
as exquisite as any; for example, stone-gravel, gout, headache, earache,
toothache, cholic, &c. I would not. I would rather be blotted out.
2. Would you accept a life of one year of incessant gout, headache,
&c., for seventy-two years of such life as you have enjoyed? I would
not. (One year of cholic = seventy-two of _Boule de Savon_; pretty,
but unsubstantial.) I had rather be extinguished. You may vary these
Algebraical equations at pleasure and without end. All this ratiocination,
calculation, call it what you will, is founded on the supposition of no
future state. Promise me eternal life free from pain, although in all
other respects no better than our present terrestrial existence, I know
not how many thousand years of Smithfield fevers I would not endure to
obtain it. In fine, without the supposition of a future state, mankind
and this globe appear to me the most sublime and beautiful bubble, and
bauble, that imagination can conceive.
Let us then wish for immortality at all hazards, and trust the Ruler
with his skies. I do; and earnestly wish for his commands, which to the
utmost of my power shall be implicitly and piously obeyed.
It is worth while to live to read Grimm, whom I have read; and La Harpe
and Mademoiselle D'Espinasse the fair friend of D'Alembert, both of whom
Grimm characterizes very distinguished, and are, I am told, in print.
I have not seen them, but hope soon to have them.
My history of the Jesuits is not elegantly written, but is supported
by unquestionable authorities, is very particular and very horrible.
Their restoration is indeed a "step towards darkness," cruelty, perfidy,
despotism, death and ----! I wish we were out of "danger of bigotry and
Jesuitism"! May we be "a barrier against the returns of ignorance and
barbarism"! "What a colossus shall we be"! But will it not be of brass,
iron and clay? Your taste is judicious in liking better the dreams of
the future, than the history of the past. Upon this principle I prophecy
that you and I shall soon meet, and be better friends than ever. So
wishes,
J. A.
TO MR. ISAAC H. TIFFANY.
MONTICELLO, August 26, 1816.
SIR,--In answer to your inquiry as to the merits of Gillies' translation
of the Politics of Aristotle, I can only say that it has the reputation
of being preferable to Ellis', the only rival translation into English.
I have never seen it myself, and therefore do not speak of it from my own
knowledge. But so different was the style of society then, and with those
people, from what it is now and with us, that I think little edification
can be obtained from their writings on the subject of government. They
had just ideas of the value of personal liberty, but none at all of the
structure of government best calculated to preserve it. They knew no
medium between a democracy (the only pure republic, but impracticable
beyond the limits of a town) and an abandonment of themselves to an
aristocracy, or a tyranny independent of the people. It seems not to have
occurred that where the citizens cannot meet to transact their business
in person, they alone have the right to choose the agents who shall
transact it; and that in this way a republican, or popular government, of
the second grade of purity, may be exercised over any extent of country.
The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was
and is still reserved for us. The idea (taken, indeed, from the little
specimen formerly existing in the English constitution, but now lost) has
been carried by us, more or less, into all our legislative and executive
departments; but it has not yet, by any of us, been pushed into all the
ramifications of the system, so far as to leave no authority existing
not responsible to the people; whose rights, however, to the exercise
and fruits of their own industry, can never be protected against the
selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods.
The introduction of this new principle of representative democracy has
rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of
government; and, in a great measure, relieves our regret, if the political
writings of Aristotle, or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are
unfaithfully rendered or explained to us. My most earnest wish is to
see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of
its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may
be pure and perpetual. Accept my respectful salutations.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, September 3, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--Dr. James Freeman is a learned, ingenious, honest and
benevolent man, who wishes to see President Jefferson, and requests me
to introduce him. If you would introduce some of your friends to me, I
could, with more confidence, introduce mine to you. He is a Christian,
but not a Pythagorian, a Platonic, or a Philonic Christian. You will
ken him, and he will ken you; but you may depend he will never betray,
deceive, or injure you.
Without hinting to him anything which had passed between you and me,
I asked him your question, "_What are the uses of grief?_" He stared,
and said "The question was new to him." All he could say at present
was, that he had known, in his own parish, more than one instance of
ladies who had been thoughtless, modish, extravagant in a high degree,
who, upon the death of a child, had become thoughtful, modest, humble;
as prudent, amiable women as any he had known. Upon this I read to him
your letters and mine upon this subject of grief, with which he seemed
to be pleased. You see I was not afraid to trust him, and you need not
be.
Since I am, accidentally, invited to write to you, I may add a few words
upon pleasures and pains of life. Vassall thought, an hundred years, nay,
an eternity of pleasure, was no compensation for one hour of bilious
cholic. Read again Molliores Spsyke, act 2d, scene 1st, on the subject
of grief. And read in another place, "_on est payè de mille maux, par un
heureux moment_." Thus differently do men speak of pleasures and pains.
Now, Sir, I will tease you with another question. What have been the
_abuses_ of grief?
In answer to this question, I doubt not you might write an hundred
volumes. A few hints may convince you that the subject is ample.
1st. The death of Socrates excited a general sensibility of grief at
Athens, in Attica, and in all Greece. Plato and Xenophon, two of his
disciples, took advantage of that sentiment, by employing their enchanting
style to represent their master to be greater and better than he probably
was; and what have been the effects of Socratic, Platonic, which were
Pythagorian, which was Indian philosophy, in the world?
2d. The death of Cæsar, tyrant as he was, spread a general compassion,
which always includes grief, among the Romans. The scoundrel Mark Antony
availed himself of this momentary grief to destroy the republic, to
establish the empire, and to proscribe Cicero.
3d. But to skip over all ages and nations for the present, and descend
to our own times. The death of Washington diffused a general grief.
The old tories, the hyperfederalists, the speculators, set up a general
howl. Orations, prayers, sermons, mock funerals, were all employed, not
that they loved Washington, but to keep in countenance the funding and
banking system; and to cast into the background and the shade, all others
who had been concerned in the service of their country in the Revolution.
4th. The death of Hamilton, under all its circumstances, produced a
general grief. His most determined enemies did not like to get rid of him
in that way. They pitied, too, his widow and children. His party seized
the moment of public feeling to come forward with funeral orations, and
printed panegyrics, reinforced with mock funerals and solemn grimaces,
and all this by people who have buried Otis, Sam Adams, Hancock, and
Gerry, in comparative obscurity. And why? Merely to disgrace the old
Whigs, and keep the funds and banks in countenance.
5th. The death of Mr. Ames excited a general regret. His long consumption,
his amiable character, and reputable talents, had attracted a general
interest, and his death a general mourning. His party made the most of
it, by processions, orations, and a mock funeral. And why? To glorify the
Tories, to abash the Whigs, and maintain the reputation of funds, banks,
and speculation. And all this was done in honor of that insignificant
boy, by people who have let a Dance, a Gerry, and a Dexter, go to their
graves without notice.
6th. I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example
of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--The
Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With
the rational respect which is due to it, knavish priests have added
prostitutions of it, that fill, or might fill, the blackest and bloodiest
pages of human history.
I am with ancient friendly sentiments,
TO SAMUEL KERCHIVAL.
MONTICELLO, September 5, 1816.
SIR,--Your letter of August the 16th is just received. That which I wrote
to you under the address of H. Tompkinson, was intended for the author
of the pamphlet you were so kind as to send me, and therefore, in your
hands, found its true destination. But I must beseech you, Sir, not to
admit a possibility of its being published. Many good people will revolt
from its doctrines, and my wish is to offend nobody; to leave to those
who are to live under it, the settlement of their own constitution,
and to pass in peace the remainder of my time. If those opinions are
sound, they will occur to others, and will prevail by their own weight,
without the aid of names, I am glad to see that the Staunton meeting has
rejected the idea of a limited convention. The article, however, nearest
my heart, is the division of counties into wards. These will be pure and
elementary republics, the sum of all which, taken together, composes the
State, and will make of the whole a true democracy as to the business
of the wards, which is that of nearest and daily concern. The affairs
of the larger sections, of counties, of States, and of the Union, not
admitting personal transaction by the people, will be delegated to agents
elected by themselves; and representation will thus be substituted, where
personal action becomes impracticable. Yet, even over these representative
organs, should they become corrupt and perverted, the division into wards
constituting the people, in their wards, a regularly organized power,
enables them by that organization to crush, regularly and peaceably,
the usurpations of their unfaithful agents, and rescues them from the
dreadful necessity of doing it insurrectionally. In this way we shall
be as republican as a large society can be; and secure the continuance
of purity in our government, by the salutary, peaceable, and regular
control of the people. No other depositories of power have ever yet been
found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings
of those committed to their charge. George the III. in execution of the
trust confided to him, has, within his own day, loaded the inhabitants
of Great Britain with debts equal to the whole fee-simple value of their
island, and under pretext of governing it, has alienated its whole soil
to creditors who could lend money to be lavished on priests, pensions,
plunder and perpetual war. This would not have been so, had the people
retained organized means of acting on their agents. In this example
then, let us read a lesson for ourselves, and not "go and do likewise."
Since writing my letter of July the 12th, I have been told, that on the
question of equal representation, our fellow citizens in some sections
of the State claim peremptorily a right of representation for their
slaves. Principle will, in this, as in most other cases, open the way
for us to correct conclusion. Were our State a pure democracy, in which
all its inhabitants should meet together to transact all their business,
there would yet be excluded from their deliberations, 1, infants, until
arrived at years of discretion. 2. Women, who, to prevent depravation of
morals and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscuously in the public
meetings of men. 3. Slaves, from whom the unfortunate state of things
with us takes away the rights of will and of property. Those then who
have no will could be permitted to exercise none in the popular assembly;
and of course, could delegate none to an agent in a representative
assembly. The business, in the first case, would be done by qualified
citizens only. It is true, that in the general constitution, our State is
allowed a larger representation on account of its slaves. But every one
knows, that that constitution was a matter of compromise; a capitulation
between conflicting interests and opinions. In truth, the condition
of different descriptions of inhabitants in any country is a matter
of municipal arrangement, of which no foreign country has a right to
take notice. All its inhabitants are men as to them. Thus, in the New
England States, none have the powers of citizens but those whom they
call _freemen_; and none are _freemen_ until admitted by a vote of the
freemen of the town. Yet, in the General Government, these non-freemen
are counted in their quantum of representation and of taxation. So,
slaves with us have no powers as citizens; yet, in representation in the
General Government, they count in the proportion of three to five; and
so also in taxation. Whether this is equal, is not here the question.
It is a capitulation of discordant sentiments and circumstances, and is
obligatory on that ground. But this view shows there is no inconsistency
in claiming representation for them for the other States, and refusing
it within our own. Accept the renewal of assurances of my respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, October 14, 1816.
Your letter, dear Sir, of May the 6th, had already well explained the
uses of grief. That of September the 3d, with equal truth, adduces
instances of its abuse; and when we put into the same scale these abuses,
with the afflictions of soul which even the uses of grief cost us, we
may consider its value in the economy of the human being, as equivocal
at least. Those afflictions cloud too great a portion of life to find
a counterpoise in any benefits derived from its uses. For setting aside
its paroxysms on the occasions of special bereavements, all the latter
years of aged men are overshadowed with its gloom. Whither, for instance,
can you and I look without seeing the graves of those we have known?
And whom can we call up, of our early companions, who has not left us
to regret his loss? This, indeed, may be one of the salutary effects
of grief; inasmuch as it prepares us to loose ourselves also without
repugnance. Doctor Freeman's instances of female levity cured by grief,
are certainly to the point, and constitute an item of credit in the
account we examine. I was much mortified by the loss of the Doctor's
visit, by my absence from home. To have shown how much I feel indebted
to you for making good people known to me, would have been one pleasure;
and to have enjoyed that of his conversation, and the benefits of his
information, so favorably reported by my family, would have been another.
I returned home on the third day after his departure. The loss of such
visits is among the sacrifices which my divided residence costs me.
Your undertaking the twelve volumes of Dupuis, is a degree of heroism
to which I could not have aspired even in my younger days. I have been
contented with the humble achievement of reading the analysis of his work
by Destutt Tracy, in two hundred pages octavo. I believe I should have
ventured on his own abridgment of the work, in one octavo volume, had it
ever come to my hands; but the marrow of it in Tracy has satisfied my
appetite; and even in that, the preliminary discourse of the analyzer
himself, and his conclusion, are worth more in my eye than the body of
the work. For the object of that seems to be to smother all history under
the mantle of allegory. If histories so unlike as those of Hercules and
Jesus, can, by a fertile imagination and allegorical interpretations,
be brought to the same tally, no line of distinction remains between
fact and fancy. As this pithy morsel will not overburthen the mail in
passing and repassing between Quincy and Monticello, I send it for your
perusal. Perhaps it will satisfy you, as it has me; and may save you
the labor of reading twenty-four times its volume. I have said to you
that it was written by Tracy; and I had so entered it on the title page,
as I usually do on anonymous works whose authors are known to me. But
Tracy requested me not to betray his anonyme, for reasons which may not
yet, perhaps, have ceased to weigh. I am bound, then, to make the same
reserve with you. Destutt Tracy is, in my judgment, the ablest writer
living on intellectual subjects, or the operations of the understanding.
His three octavo volumes on Ideology, which constitute the foundation
of what he has since written, I have not entirely read; because I am
not fond of reading what is merely abstract, and unapplied immediately
to some useful science. Bonaparte, with his repeated derisions of
Ideologists (squinting at this author), has by this time felt that true
wisdom does not lie in mere practice without principle. The next work
Tracy wrote was the Commentary on Montesquieu, never published in the
original, because not safe; but translated and published in Philadelphia,
yet without the author's name. He has since permitted his name to be
mentioned. Although called a Commentary, it is, in truth, an elementary
work on the principles of government, comprised in about three hundred
pages octavo. He has lately published a third work, on Political Economy,
comprising the whole subject within about the same compass; in which all
its principles are demonstrated with the severity of Euclid, and, like
him, without ever using a superfluous word. I have procured this to be
translated, and have been four years endeavoring to get it printed; but
as yet, without success. In the meantime, the author has published the
original in France, which he thought unsafe while Bonaparte was in power.
No printed copy, I believe, has yet reached this country. He has his
fourth and last work now in the press at Paris, closing, as he conceives,
the circle of metaphysical sciences. This work, which is on Ethics, I
have not seen, but suspect I shall differ from it in its foundation,
although not in its deductions. I gather from his other works that he
adopts the principle of Hobbes, that justice is founded in contract
solely, and does not result from the construction of man. I believe, on
the contrary, that it is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as
much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing;
as a wise creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined
to live in society; that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good
to another; that the non-existence of justice is not to be inferred from
the fact that the same act is deemed virtuous and right in one society
which is held vicious and wrong in another; because, as the circumstances
and opinions of different societies vary, so the acts which may do them
right or wrong must vary also; for virtue does not consist in the act
we do, but in the end it is to effect. If it is to effect the happiness
of him to whom it is directed, it is virtuous, while in a society under
different circumstances and opinions, the same act might produce pain,
and would be vicious. The essence of virtue is in doing good to others,
while what is good may be one thing in one society, and its contrary
in another. Yet, however we may differ as to the foundation of morals,
(and as many foundations have been assumed as there are writers on the
subject nearly,) so correct a thinker as Tracy will give us a sound
system of morals. And, indeed, it is remarkable, that so many writers,
setting out from so many different premises, yet meet all in the same
conclusions. This looks as if they were guided, unconsciously, by the
unerring hand of instinct.
Your history of the Jesuits, by what name of the author or other
description is it to be inquired for?
What do you think of the present situation of England? Is not this the
great and fatal crush of their funding system, which, like death, has
been foreseen by all, but its hour, like that of death, hidden from
mortal prescience? It appears to me that all the circumstances now
exist which render recovery desperate. The interest of the national debt
is now equal to such a portion of the profits of all the land and the
labor of the island, as not to leave enough for the subsistence of those
who labor. Hence the owners of the land abandon it and retire to other
countries, and the laborer has not enough of his earnings left to him
to cover his back and to fill his belly. The local insurrections, now
almost general, are of the hungry and the naked, who cannot be quieted
but by food and raiment. But where are the means of feeding and clothing
them? The landholder has nothing of his own to give; he is but the
fiduciary of those who have lent him money; the lender is so taxed in
his meat, drink and clothing, that he has but a bare subsistence left.
The landholder, then, must give up his land, or the lender his debt,
or they must compromise by giving up each one-half. But will either
consent, _peaceably_, to such an abandonment of property? Or must it not
be settled by civil conflict? If peaceably compromised, will they agree
to risk another ruin under the same government unreformed? I think not;
but I would rather know what you think; because you have lived with John
Bull, and know better than I do the character of his herd. I salute Mrs.
Adams and yourself with every sentiment of affectionate cordiality and
respect.
TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.
MONTICELLO, October 16, 1816.
DEAR SIR,--If it be proposed to place an inscription on the capitol, the
lapidary style requires that essential facts only should be stated, and
these with a brevity admitting no superfluous word. The essential facts
in the two inscriptions proposed are these:
FOUNDED 1791.--BURNT BY A BRITISH ARMY 1814.--RESTORED BY
CONGRESS 1817.
The reasons for this brevity are that the letters must be of extraordinary
magnitude to be read from below; that little space is allowed them, being
usually put into a pediment or in a frieze, or on a small tablet on the
wall; and in our case, a third reason may be added, that no passion can
be imputed to this inscription, every word being justifiable from the
most classical examples.
But a question of more importance is whether there should be one at all?
The barbarism of the conflagration will immortalize that of the nation.
It will place them forever in degraded comparison with the execrated
Bonaparte, who, in possession of almost every capitol in Europe, injured
no one. Of this, history will take care, which all will read, while
our inscription will be seen by few. Great Britain, in her pride and
ascendency, has certainly hated and despised us beyond every earthly
object. Her hatred may remain, but the hour of her contempt is passed
and is succeeded by dread; not a present, but a distant and deep one.
It is the greater as she feels herself plunged into an abyss of ruin
from which no human means point out an issue. We also have more reason
to hate her than any nation on earth. But she is not now an object for
hatred. She is falling from her transcendent sphere, which all men ought
to have wished, but not that she should lose all place among nations. It
is for the interest of all that she should be maintained, _nearly_ on a
par with other members of the republic of nations. Her power, absorbed
into that of any other, would be an object of dread to all, and to us
more than all, because we are accessible to her alone and through her
alone. The armies of Bonaparte with the fleets of Britain, would change
the aspect of our destinies. Under these prospects should we perpetuate
hatred against her? Should we not, on the contrary, begin to open
ourselves to other and more rational dispositions? It is not improbable
that the circumstances of the war and her own circumstances may have
brought her wise men to begin to view us with other and even with kindred
eyes. Should not our wise men, then, lifted above the passions of the
ordinary citizen, begin to contemplate what _will be_ the interests of
our country on so important a change among the elements which influence
it? I think it would be better to give her time to show her present
temper, and to prepare the minds of our citizens for a corresponding
change of disposition, by acts of comity towards England rather than by
commemoration of hatred. These views might be greatly extended. Perhaps,
however, they are premature, and that I may see the ruin of England
nearer than it really is. This will be matter of consideration with those
to whose councils we have committed ourselves, and whose wisdom, I am
sure, will conclude on what is best. Perhaps they may let it go off on
the single and short consideration that the thing can do no good, and
may do harm. Ever and affectionately yours.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
POPLAR FOREST, November 25, 1816.
I receive here, dear Sir, your favor of the 4th, just as I am preparing
my return to Monticello for winter quarters, and I hasten to answer
to some of your inquiries. The Tracy I mentioned to you is the one
connected by marriage with Lafayette's family. The mail which brought
your letter, brought one also from him. He writes me that he is become
blind, and so infirm that he is no longer able to compose anything. So
that we are to consider his works as now closed. They are three volumes
of Ideology, one on Political Economy, one on Ethics, and one containing
his Commentary on Montesquieu, and a little tract on Education. Although
his commentary explains his principles of government, he had intended
to have substituted for it an elementary and regular treatise on the
subject, but he is prevented by his infirmities. His Analyse de Dupuys
he does not avow.
My books are all arrived, some at New York, some at Boston, and I am
glad to hear that those for Harvard are safe also, and the Uranologia you
mention without telling me what it is. It is something good, I am sure,
from the name connected with it; and if you would add to it your fable
of the bees, we should receive valuable instruction as to the Uranologia
both of the father and son, more valuable than the Chinese will from
our bible societies. These incendiaries, finding that the days of fire
and fagot are over in the Atlantic hemisphere, are now preparing to put
the torch to the Asiatic regions. What would they say were the Pope to
send annually to this country, colonies of Jesuit priests with cargoes
of their missal and translations of their Vulgate, to be put gratis into
the hands of every one who would accept them? and to act thus nationally
on us as a nation?
I proceed to the letter you were so good as to enclose me. It is an
able letter, speaks volumes in few words, presents a profound view of
awful truths, and lets us see truths more awful, which are still to
follow. George the Third then, and his minister Pitt, and successors,
have spent the fee simple of the kingdom, under pretence of governing
it; their sinecures, salaries, pensions, priests, prelates, princes
and eternal wars, have mortgaged to its full value the last foot of
their soil. They are reduced to the dilemma of a bankrupt spendthrift,
who, having run through his whole fortune, now asks himself what he is
to do? It is in vain he dismisses his coaches and horses, his grooms,
liveries, cooks and butlers. This done, he still finds he has nothing
to eat. What was his property is now that of his creditors; if still in
his hands, it is only as their trustee. To them it belongs, and to them
every farthing of its profits must go. The reformation of extravagances
comes too late. All is gone. Nothing left for retrenchment or frugality
to go on. The debts of England, however, being due from the whole nation
to one half of it, being as much the debt of the creditor as debtor, if
it could be referred to a court of equity, principles might be devised
to adjust it peaceably. Dismiss their parasites, ship off their paupers
to this country, let the landholders give half their lands to the money
lenders, and these last relinquish one half of their debts. They would
still have a fertile island, a sound and effective population to labor
it, and would hold that station among political powers, to which their
natural resources and faculties entitle them. They would no longer,
indeed, be the lords of the ocean and paymasters of all the princes
of the earth. They would no longer enjoy the luxuries of pirating and
plundering everything by sea, and of bribing and corrupting everything
by land; but they might enjoy the more safe and lasting luxury of living
on terms of equality, justice and good neighborhood with all nations.
As it is, their first efforts will probably be to quiet things awhile
by the palliatives of reformation; to nibble a little at pensions and
sinecures, to bite off a bit here, and a bite there to amuse the people;
and to keep the government a going by encroachments on the interest of
the public debt, one per cent. of which, for instance, withheld, gives
them a spare revenue of ten millions for present subsistence, and spunges,
in fact, two hundred millions of the debt. This remedy they may endeavor
to administer in broken doses of a small pill at a time. The first may
not occasion more than a strong nausea in the money lenders; but the
second will probably produce a revulsion of the stomach, borborisms,
and spasmodic calls for fair settlement and compromise. But it is not
in the character of man to come to any peaceable compromise of such a
state of things. The princes and priests will hold to the flesh-pots,
the empty bellies will seize on them, and these being the multitude,
the issue is obvious, civil war, massacre, exile as in France, until
the stage is cleaned of everything but the multitude, and the lands get
into their hands by such processes as the revolution will engender. They
will then want peace and a government, and what will it be? certainly
not a renewal of that which has already ruined them. Their habits of
law and order, their ideas almost innate of the vital elements of free
government, of trial by jury, _habeas corpus_, freedom of the press,
freedom of opinion, and representative government, make them, I think,
capable of bearing a considerable portion of liberty. They will probably
turn their eyes to us, and be disposed to tread in our footsteps, seeing
how safely these have led us into port. There is no part of our model
to which they seem unequal, unless perhaps the elective presidency; and
even that might possibly be rescued from the tumult of elections, by
subdividing the electoral assemblages into very small parts, such as of
wards or townships, and making them simultaneous. But you know them so
much better than I do, that it is presumption to offer my conjectures
to you.
While it is much our interest to see this power reduced from its towering
and borrowed height, to within the limits of its natural resources, it is
by no means our interest that she should be brought below that, or lose
her competent place among the nations of Europe. The present exhausted
state of the continent will, I hope, permit them to go through their
struggle without foreign interference, and to settle their new government
according to their own will. I think it will be friendly to us, as the
nation itself would be were it not artfully wrought up by the hatred
their government bears us. And were they once under a government which
should treat us with justice and equity I should myself feel with great
strength the ties which bind us together, of origin, language, laws and
manners; and I am persuaded the two people would become in future, as
it was with the ancient Greeks, among whom it was reproachful for Greek
to be found fighting against Greek in a foreign army. The individuals of
the nation I have ever honored and esteemed, the basis of their character
being essentially worthy; but I consider their government as the most
flagitious which has existed since the days of Philip of Macedon, whom
they make their model. It is not only founded in corruption itself,
but insinuates the same poison into the bowels of every other, corrupts
its councils, nourishes factions, stirs up revolutions, and places its
own happiness in fomenting commotions and civil wars among others, thus
rendering itself truly the _hostis humani generis_. The effect is now
coming home to itself. Its first operation will fall on the individuals
who have been the chief instruments in its corruptions, and will eradicate
the families which have from generation to generation been fattening on
the blood of their brethren; and this scoria once thrown off, I am in
hopes a purer nation will result, and a purer government be instituted,
one which, instead of endeavoring to make us their natural enemies,
will see in us, what we really are, their natural friends and brethren,
and more interested in a fraternal connection with them than with any
other nation on earth. I look, therefore, to their revolution with great
interest. I wish it to be as moderate and bloodless as will effect the
desired object of an honest government, one which will permit the world
to live in peace, and under the bonds of friendship and good neighborhood.
In this tremendous tempest, the distinctions of whig and tory will
disappear like chaff on a troubled ocean. Indeed, they have been
disappearing from the day Hume first began to publish his history. This
single book has done more to sap the free principles of the English
constitution than the largest standing army of which their patriots have
been so jealous. It is like the portraits of our countryman Wright, whose
eye was so unhappy as to seize all the ugly features of his subject, and
to present them faithfully, while it was entirely insensible to every
lineament of beauty. So Hume has concentrated, in his fascinating style,
all the arbitrary proceedings of the English kings, as true evidences of
the constitution, and glided over its whig principles as the unfounded
pretensions of factious demagogues. He even boasts, in his life written
by himself, that of the numerous alterations suggested by the readers
of his work, he had never adopted one proposed by a whig.
But what, in this same tempest, will become of their colonies and their
fleets? Will the former assume independence, and the latter resort to
piracy for subsistence, taking possession of some island as a _point
d'appui_? A pursuit of these would add too much to the speculations on
the situation and prospects of England, into which I have been led by the
pithy text of the letter you so kindly sent me, and which I now return.
It is worthy the pen of Tacitus. I add, therefore, only my affectionate
and respectful souvenirs to Mrs. Adams and yourself.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, December 16, 1816.
Your letter, dear Sir, of November 25th, from Poplar Forest, was sent
to me from the post-office the next day after I had sent "The Analysis,"
with my thanks to you.
"Three vols. of Idiology!" Pray explain to me this Neological title!
What does it mean? When Bonaparte used it, I was delighted with it, upon
the common principle of delight in everything we cannot understand. Does
it mean Idiotism? The science of _non compos mentuism_? The science of
Lunacy? The theory of delirium? or does it mean the science of self-love?
Of _amour propre_? or the elements of vanity?
Were I in France at this time, I could profess blindness and infirmity,
and prove it too. I suppose he does not avow the analysis, as Hume did
not avow his essay on human nature. That analysis, however, does not
show a man of excessive mediocrity. Had I known any of these things two
years ago, I would have written him a letter. Of all things, I wish to
see his Idiology upon Montesquieu. If you, with all your influence,
have not been able to get your own translation of it, with your own
notes upon it, published in four years, where and what is the freedom
of the American press? Mr. Taylor of Hazelwood, Port Royal, can have
his voluminous and luminous works published with ease and despatch.
The Uranologia, as I am told, is a collection of plates, stamps, charts
of the Heavens upon a large scale, representing all the constellations.
The work of some Professor in Sweden. It is said to be the most perfect
that ever has appeared. I have not seen it. Why should I ride fifteen
miles to see it, when I can see the original every clear evening; and
especially as Dupuis has almost made me afraid to inquire after anything
more of it than I can see with my naked eye in a star-light night?
That the Pope will send Jesuits to this country, I doubt not; and the
church of England, missionaries too. And the Methodists, and the Quakers,
and the Moravians, and the Swedenburgers, and the Menonists, and the
Scottish Kirkers, and the Jacobites, and the Jacobins, and the Democrats,
and the Aristocrats, and the Monarchists, and the Despotists of all
denominations: and every emissary of every one of these sects will find
a party here already formed, to give him a cordial reception. No power
or intelligence less than Raphael's moderator, can reduce this chaos to
order.
I am charmed with the fluency and rapidity of your reasoning on the state
of Great Britain. I can deny none of your premises; but I doubt your
conclusion. After all the convulsions that you foresee, they will return
to that constitution which you say has ruined them, and I say has been
the source of all their power and importance. They have, as you say, too
much sense and knowledge of liberty, ever to submit to simple monarchy,
or absolute despotism, on the one hand; and too much of the devil in
them ever to be governed by popular elections of Presidents, Senators,
and Representatives in Congress. Instead of "turning their eyes to us,"
their innate feelings will turn them from us. They have been taught from
their cradles to despise, scorn, insult, and abuse us. They hate us more
vigorously than they do the French. They would sooner adopt the simple
monarchy of France, than our republican institutions. You compliment me
with more knowledge of them than I can assume or pretend. If I should
write you a volume of observations I made in England, you would pronounce
it a satire. Suppose the "Refrain," as the French call it, or the Burthen
of the Song, as the English express it, should be, the Religion, the
Government, the Commerce, the Manufactures, the Army and Navy of Great
Britain, are all reduced to the science of pounds, shillings and pence.
Elections appeared to me a mere commercial traffic; mere bargain and
sale. I have been told by sober, steady freeholders, that "they never had
been, and never would go to the poll, without being paid for their time,
travel and expenses." Now, suppose an election for a President of the
British empire. There must be a nomination of candidates by a national
convention, Congress, or caucus--in which would be two parties--Whigs
and Tories. Of course two candidates at least would be nominated. The
empire is instantly divided into two parties at least. Every man must
be paid for his vote by the candidate of his party. The only question
would be, which party has the deepest purse. The same reasoning will
apply to elections of Senators and Representatives too. A revolution
might destroy the Burroughs and the Inequalities of representation, and
might produce more toleration; and these acquisitions might be worth
all they would cost; but I dread the experiment.
Britain will never be our friend till we are her master.
This will happen in less time than you and I have been struggling with
her power; provided we remain united. Aye! there's the rub! I fear there
will be greater difficulties to preserve our Union, than you and I, our
fathers, brothers, friends, disciples and sons have had, to form it.
Towards Great Britain, I would adopt their own maxim. An English jockey
says, "If I have a wild horse to break, I begin by convincing him I am
his master; and then I will convince him that I am his friend." I am
well assured that nothing will restrain Great Britain from injuring us,
but fear.
You think that "in a revolution the distinction of Whig and Tory would
disappear." I cannot believe this. That distinction arises from nature
and society; is now, and ever will be, time without end, among Negroes,
Indians, and Tartars, as well as federalists and republicans. Instead of
"disappearing since Hume published his history," that history has only
increased the Tories and diminished the Whigs. That history has been
the bane of Great Britain. It has destroyed many of the best effects
of the revolution of 1688. Style has governed the empire. Swift, Pope
and Hume, have disgraced all the honest historians. Rapin and Burnet,
Oldmixen and Coke, contain more honest truth than Hume and Clarendon,
and all their disciples and imitators. But who reads any of them at
this day? Every one of the fine arts from the earliest times has been
enlisted in the service of superstition and despotism. The whole world
at this day gazes with astonishment at the grossest fictions, because
they have been immortalized by the most exquisite artists--Homer and
Milton, Phideas and Raphael. The rabble of the classic skies, and the
hosts of Roman Catholic saints and angels, are still adored in paint,
and marble, and verse. Raphael has sketched the actors and scenes in
all Apuleus's Amours of Psyche and Cupid. Nothing is too offensive to
morals, delicacy, or decency, for this painter. Raphael has painted in
one of the most ostentatious churches in Italy--the Creation--and with
what genius? God Almighty is represented as leaping into chaos, and
boxing it about with his fists, and kicking it about with his feet, till
he tumbles it into order!
Nothing is too impious or profane for this great master, who has painted
so many inimitable virgins and children.
To help me on in my career of improvement, I have now read four volumes of
La Harpe's correspondence with Paul and a Russian minister. Philosophers!
Never again think of annulling superstition per Saltum. _Testine cente._
TO MR. MELLISH.
MONTICELLO, December 31, 1816.
SIR,--Your favor of November 23d, after a very long passage, is received,
and with it the map which you have been so kind as to send me, for
which I return you many thanks. It is handsomely executed, and on a
well-chosen scale; giving a luminous view of the comparative possessions
of different powers in our America. It is on account of the value I set
on it, that I will make some suggestions. By the charter of Louis XIV.
all the country comprehending the waters which flow into the Mississippi,
was made a part of Louisiana. Consequently its northern boundary was
the summit of the highlands in which its northern waters rise. But by
the Xth Art. of the Treaty of Utrecht, France and England agreed to
appoint commissioners to settle the boundary between their possessions
in that quarter, and those commissioners settled it at the 49th degree
of latitude. See Hutchinson's Topographical Description of Louisiana, p.
7. This it was which induced the British Commissioners, in settling the
boundary with us, to follow the northern water line to the Lake of the
Woods, at the latitude of 49°, and then go off on that parallel. This,
then, is the true northern boundary of Louisiana.
The western boundary of Louisiana is, rightfully, the Rio Bravo, (its main
stream,) from its mouth to its source, and thence along the highlands
and mountains dividing the waters of the Mississippi from those of the
Pacific. The usurpations of Spain on the east side of that river, have
induced geographers to suppose the Puerco or Salado to be the boundary.
The line along the highlands stands on the charter of Louis XIV. that of
the Rio Bravo, on the circumstance that, when La Salle took possession
of the Bay of St. Bernard, Panuco was the nearest possession of Spain,
and the Rio Bravo the natural half-way boundary between them.
On the waters of the Pacific, we can found no claim in right of Louisiana.
If we claim that country at all, it must be on Astor's settlement near
the mouth of the Columbia, and the principle of the _jus gentium_ of
America, that when a civilized nation takes possession of the mouth of
a river in a new country, that possession is considered as including
all its waters.
The line of latitude of the southern source of the multnomat might be
claimed as appurtenant to Astoria. For its northern boundary, I believe
an understanding has been come to between our government and Russia,
which might be known from some of its members. I do not know it.
Although the irksomeness of writing, which you may perceive from the
present letter, and its labor, oblige me now to withdraw from letter
writing, yet the wish that your map should set to rights the ideas of our
own countrymen, as well as foreign nations, as to our correct boundaries,
has induced me to make these suggestions, that you may bestow on them
whatever inquiry they may merit. I salute you with esteem and respect.
TO MRS. ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, January 11, 1817.
I owe you, dear Madam, a thousand thanks for the letters communicated
in your favor of December 15th, and now returned. They give me more
information than I possessed before, of the family of Mr. Tracy. But what
is infinitely interesting, is the scene of the exchange of Louis XVIII.
for Bonaparte. What lessons of wisdom Mr. Adams must have read in that
short space of time! More than fall to the lot of others in the course
of a long life. Man, and the man of Paris, under those circumstances,
must have been a subject of profound speculation! It would be a singular
addition to that spectacle, to see the same beast in the cage of St.
Helena, like a lion in the tower. That is probably the closing verse
of the chapter of his crimes. But not so with Louis. He has other
vicissitudes to go through.
I communicated the letters, according to your permission, to my
grand-daughter, Ellen Randolph, who read them with pleasure and
edification. She is justly sensible of, and flattered by your kind
notice of her; and additionally so, by the favorable recollections of our
northern visiting friends. If Monticello has anything which has merited
their remembrance, it gives it a value the more in our estimation; and
could I, in the spirit of your wish, count backwards a score of years,
it would not be long before Ellen and myself would pay our homage
personally to Quincy. But those twenty years! Alas! where are they? With
those beyond the flood. Our next meeting must then be in the country to
which they have flown,--a country for us not now very distant. For this
journey we shall need neither gold nor silver in our purse, nor scrip,
nor coats, nor staves. Nor is the provision for it more easy than the
preparation has been kind. Nothing proves more than this, that the Being
who presides over the world is essentially benevolent. Stealing from
us, one by one, the faculties of enjoyment, searing our sensibilities,
leading us, like the horse in his mill, round and round the same beaten
circle,
----To see what we have seen,
To taste the tasted, and at each return
Less tasteful; o'er our palates to decant
Another vintage--
Until satiated and fatigued with this leaden iteration, we ask our own
_congé_. I heard once a very old friend, who had troubled himself with
neither poets nor philosophers, say the same thing in plain prose, that
he was tired of pulling off his shoes and stockings at night, and putting
them on again in the morning. The wish to stay here is thus gradually
extinguished; but not so easily that of returning once, in awhile, to see
how things have gone on. Perhaps, however, one of the elements of future
felicity is to be a constant and unimpassioned view of what is passing
here. If so, this may well supply the wish of occasional visits. Mercier
has given us a vision of the year 2440; but prophecy is one thing, and
history another. On the whole, however, perhaps it is wise and well to
be contented with the good things which the master of the feast places
before us, and to be thankful for what we have, rather than thoughtful
about what we have not. You and I, dear Madam, have already had more than
an ordinary portion of life, and more, too, of health than the general
measure. On this score I owe boundless thankfulness. Your health was,
some time ago, not so good as it has been; and I perceive in the letters
communicated, some complaints still. I hope it is restored; and that
life and health may be continued to you as many years as yourself shall
wish, is the sincere prayer of your affectionate and respectful friend.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, January 11, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Forty-three volumes read in one year, and twelve of them
quarto! Dear Sir, how I envy you! Half a dozen octavos in that space
of time, are as much as I am allowed. I can read by candlelight only,
and stealing long hours from my rest; nor would that time be indulged
to me, could I by that light see to write. From sunrise to one or two
o'clock, and often from dinner to dark, I am drudging at the writing
table. And all this to answer letters into which neither interest nor
inclination on my part enters; and often from persons whose names I
have never before heard. Yet, writing civilly, it is hard to refuse
them civil answers. This is the burthen of my life, a very grievous one
indeed, and one which I must get rid of. Delaplaine lately requested me
to give him a line on the subject of his book; meaning, as I well knew,
to publish it. This I constantly refuse; but in this instance yielded,
that in saying a word for him, I might say two for myself. I expressed
in it freely my sufferings from this source; hoping it would have the
effect of an indirect appeal to the discretion of those, strangers and
others, who, in the most friendly dispositions, oppress me with their
concerns, their pursuits, their projects, inventions and speculations,
political, moral, religious, mechanical, mathematical, historical, &c.,
&c., &c. I hope the appeal will bring me relief, and that I shall be
left to exercise and enjoy correspondence with the friends I love, and
on subjects which they, or my own inclinations present. In that case,
your letters shall not be so long on my files unanswered, as sometimes
they have been, to my great mortification.
To advert now to the subjects of those of December the 12th and 16th.
Tracy's Commentaries on Montesquieu have never been published in the
original. Duane printed a translation from the original manuscript a
few years ago. It sold, I believe, readily, and whether a copy can now
be had, I doubt. If it can, you will receive it from my bookseller in
Philadelphia, to whom I now write for that purpose. Tracy comprehends,
under the word "Ideology," all the subjects which the French term
_Morale_, as the correlative to _Physique_. His works on Logic,
Government, Political Economy and Morality, he considers as making up the
circle of ideological subjects, or of those which are within the scope
of the understanding, and not of the senses. His Logic occupies exactly
the ground of Locke's work on the Understanding. The translation of that
on Political Economy is now printing; but it is no translation of mine.
I have only had the correction of it, which was, indeed, very laborious.
_Le premier jet_ having been by some one who understood neither French
or English, it was impossible to make it more than faithful. But it is
a valuable work.
The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading, in the
four words, "Be just and good," is that in which all our inquiries must
end; as the riddles of all the priesthoods end in four more, "_ubi panis,
ibi deus_." What all agree in, is probably right. What no two agree in,
most probably wrong. One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints
small men as very great, inquired of me lately, with real affection
too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change in my religion
much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what
had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests,
whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was,
"say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone.
Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has
been _honest and dutiful_ to society, the religion which has regulated
it cannot be a bad one." Affectionately adieu.
TO WILLIAM LEE, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 16, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--I received, three days ago, a letter from M. Martin, 2d Vice
President, and M. Parmantier, Secretary of "the French Agricultural
and Manufacturing Society," dated at Philadelphia the 5th instant. It
covered resolutions proposing to apply to Congress for a grant of two
hundred and fifty thousand acres of land on the Tombigbee, and stating
some of the general principles on which the society was to be founded;
and their letter requested me to trace for them the basis of a social
pact for the local regulations of their society, and to address the
answer to yourself, their 1st Vice President at Washington. No one can
be more sensible than I am of the honor of their confidence in me, so
flatteringly manifested in this resolution; and certainly no one can
feel stronger dispositions than myself to be useful to them, as well in
return for this great mark of their respect, as from feelings for the
situation of strangers, forced by the misfortunes of their native country
to seek another by adoption, so distant and so different from that in all
its circumstances. I commiserate the hardships they have to encounter,
and equally applaud the resolution with which they meet them, as well
as the principles proposed for their government. That their emigration
may be for the happiness of their descendants, I can believe; but from
the knowledge I have of the country they have left, and its state of
social intercourse and comfort, their own personal happiness will undergo
severe trial here. The laws, however, which must effect this must flow
from their own habits, their own feelings, and the resources of their
own minds. No stranger to these could possibly propose regulations
adapted to them. Every people have their own particular habits, ways of
thinking, manners, &c., which have grown up with them from their infancy
are become a part of their nature, and to which the regulations which
are to make them happy must be accommodated. No member of a foreign
country can have a sufficient sympathy with these. The institutions of
Lycurgus, for example, would not have suited Athens, nor those of Solon,
Lacedæmon. The organizations of Locke were impracticable for Carolina,
and those of Rousseau and Mably for Poland. Turning inwardly on myself
from these eminent illustrations of the truth of my observation, I feel
all the presumption it would manifest, should I undertake to do what this
respectable society is alone qualified to do suitably for itself. There
are some preliminary questions, too, which are particularly for their
own consideration. Is it proposed that this shall be a separate State?
or a county of a State? or a mere voluntary association, as those of the
Quakers, Dunkars, Menonists? A separate State it cannot be, because from
the tract it asks it would not be more than twenty miles square; and in
establishing new States, regard is had to a certain degree of equality
in size. If it is to be a county of a State, it cannot be governed by
its own laws, but must be subject to those of the State of which it is
a part. If merely a voluntary association, the submission of its members
will be merely voluntary also; as no act of coercion would be permitted
by the general law. These considerations must control the society, and
themselves alone can modify their own intentions and wishes to them.
With this apology for declining a task to which I am so unequal, I pray
them to be assured of my sincere wishes for their success and happiness,
and yourself particularly of my high consideration and esteem.
TO DOCTOR THOMAS HUMPHREYS.
MONTICELLO, February 8, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of January 2d did not come to my hands until the
5th instant. I concur entirely in your leading principles of gradual
emancipation, of establishment on the coast of Africa, and the patronage
of our nation until the emigrants shall be able to protect themselves. The
subordinate details might be easily arranged. But the bare proposition of
purchase by the United States generally, would excite infinite indignation
in all the States north of Maryland. The sacrifice must fall on the States
alone which hold them; and the difficult question will be how to lessen
this so as to reconcile our fellow citizens to it. Personally I am ready
and desirous to make any sacrifice which shall ensure their gradual but
complete retirement from the State, and effectually, at the same time,
establish them elsewhere in freedom and safety. But I have not perceived
the growth of this disposition in the rising generation, of which I
once had sanguine hopes. No symptoms inform me that it will take place
in my day. I leave it, therefore, to time, and not at all without hope
that the day will come, equally desirable and welcome to us as to them.
Perhaps the proposition now on the carpet at Washington to provide an
establishment on the coast of Africa for voluntary emigrations of people
of color, may be the corner stone of this future edifice. Praying for
its completion as early as may most promote the good of all, I salute
you with great esteem and respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, April 19, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--My loving and beloved friend Pickering, has been pleased to
inform the world that I have "few friends." I wanted to whip the rogue,
and I had it in my power, if it had been in my will to do it, till the
blood came. But all my real friends, as I thought then, with Dexter and
Gray at their head, insisted "that I should not say a word; that nothing
that such a person could write would do me the least injury; that it
would betray the constitution and the government, if a President, out or
in, should enter into a newspaper controversy with one of his ministers,
whom he had removed from his office, in justification of himself for
that removal, or anything else;" and they talked a great deal about the
DIGNITY of the office of President, which I do not find that any other
person, public or private regards very much.
Nevertheless, I fear that Mr. Pickering's information is too true. It
is impossible that any man should run such a gauntlet as I have been
driven through, and have many friends at last. This "all who know me
know," though I cannot say; who love me, tell.
I have, however, either friends who wish to amuse and solace my old age,
or enemies who mean to heap coals of fire on my head, and kill me with
kindness; for they overwhelm me with books from all quarters, enough
to obfuscate all eyes, and smother and stifle all human understanding.
Chateaubriand, Grimm, Tucker, Dupuis, La Harpe, Sismondi, Eustace, a
new translation of Herodotus, by Bedloe, with more notes than text.
What should I do with all this lumber? I make my "woman-kind," as the
antiquary expresses it, read to me all the English, but as they will
not read the French, I am obliged to excruciate my eyes to read it
myself; and all to what purpose? I verily believe I was as wise and
good, seventy years ago, as I am now. At that period Lemuel Bryant was
my parish priest, and Joseph Cleverly my Latin schoolmaster. Lemuel was
a jolly, jocular, and liberal scholar and divine. Joseph a scholar and a
gentleman; but a bigoted Episcopalian, of the school of Bishop Saunders,
and Dr. Hicks,--a downright conscientious, passive obedience man, in
Church and State. The parson and the pedagogue lived much together, but
were eternally disputing about government and religion. One day, when
the schoolmaster had been more than commonly fanatical, and declared "if
he were a monarch, _he would have but one religion in his dominions_;"
the parson coolly replied, "Cleverly! you would be the best man in the
world if you had no religion."
Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of
breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there
were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I should have been
as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would
be something not fit to be mentioned in polite society, I mean hell. So
far from believing in the total and universal depravity of human nature,
I believe there is no individual totally depraved. The most abandoned
scoundrel that ever existed, never yet wholly extinguished his conscience,
and while conscience remains there is some religion. Popes, Jesuits, and
Sorbonists, and Inquisitors, have some conscience and some religion. So
had Marius and Sylla, Cæsar, Catiline and Antony; and Augustus had not
much more, let Virgil and Horace say what they will.
What shall we think of Virgil and Horace, Sallust, Quintilian, Pliny, and
even Tacitus? and even Cicero, Brutus and Seneca? Pompey I leave out of
the question, as a mere politician and soldier. Every one of the great
creatures has left indelible marks of conscience, and consequently of
religion, though every one of them has left abundant proofs of profligate
violations of their consciences by their little and great passions and
paltry interests.
The vast prospect of mankind, which these books have passed in review
before me, from the most ancient records, histories, traditions and
fables, that remain to us to the present day, has sickened my very soul,
and almost reconciled me to Swift's travels among the Yahoos; yet I never
can be a misanthrope--_Homo sum_. I must hate myself before I can hate
my fellow men; and that I cannot, and will not do. No! I will not hate
any of them, base, brutal, and devilish as some of them have been to me.
From the bottom of my soul, I pity my fellow men. Fears and terrors
appear to have produced an universal credulity. Fears of calamities in
life, and punishments after death, seem to have possessed the souls of
all men. But fear of pain and death, here, do not seem to have been so
unconquerable, as fear of what is to come hereafter. Priests, Hierophants,
Popes, Despots, Emperors, Kings, Princes, Nobles, have been as credulous
as shoe-blacks, boots and kitchen scullions. The former seem to have
believed in their divine rights as sincerely as the latter.
_Auto de feés_, in Spain and Portugal, have been celebrated with as
good faith as excommunications have been practised in Connecticut, or
as baptisms have been refused in Philadelphia.
How is it possible that mankind should submit to be governed, as they
have been, is to me an inscrutable mystery. How they could bear to be
taxed to build the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the pyramids of Egypt,
Saint Peter's at Rome, Notre Dame at Paris, St. Paul's in London, with
a million et ceteras, when my navy yards and my quasi army made such a
popular clamor, I know not. Yet all my peccadillos never excited such
a rage as the late compensation law!
I congratulate you on the late election in Connecticut. It is a kind of
epocha. Several causes have conspired. One which you would not suspect.
Some one, no doubt instigated by the devil, has taken it into his head
to print a new edition of the "Independent Whig," even in Connecticut,
and has scattered the volumes through the State. These volumes, it is
said, have produced a burst of indignation against priestcraft, bigotry
and intolerance, and in conjunction with other causes, have produced
the late election.
When writing to you I never know when to subscribe,
J. A.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, May 5, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Absences and avocations had prevented my acknowledging your
favor of February the 2d, when that of April the 19th arrived. I had
not the pleasure of receiving the former by the hands of Mr. Lyman.
His business probably carried him in another direction; for I am far
inland, and distant from the great line of communication between the
trading cities. Your recommendations are always welcome, for indeed,
the subjects of them always merit that welcome, and some of them in
an extraordinary degree. They make us acquainted with what there is
excellent in our ancient sister State of Massachusetts, once venerated
and beloved, and still hanging on our hopes, for what need we despair
of after the resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberality. I
had believed that the last retreat of monkish darkness, bigotry, and
abhorrence of those advances of the mind which had carried the other
States a century ahead of them. They seemed still to be exactly where
their forefathers were when they schismatized from the covenant of works,
and to consider as dangerous heresies all innovations good or bad. I
join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the
priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no
longer to disgrace the American history and character. If by _religion_
we are to understand _sectarian dogmas_, in which no two of them agree,
then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be
the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." But
if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical
constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime doctrines
of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which
all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be,
as you again say, "something not fit to be named, even indeed, a hell."
You certainly acted wisely in taking no notice of what the malice of
Pickering could say of you. Were such things to be answered, our lives
would be wasted in the filth of fendings and provings, instead of
being employed in promoting the happiness and prosperity of our fellow
citizens. The tenor of your life is the proper and sufficient answer. It
is fortunate for those in public trust, that posterity will judge them
by their works, and not by the malignant vituperations and invectives
of the Pickerings and Gardiners of their age. After all, men of energy
of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every
question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect,
those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as
they feel that effect. Thus, in the revolution, Hancock and the Adamses
were the raw-head and bloody bones of tories and traitors who yet knew
nothing of you personally but what was good. I do not entertain your
apprehensions for the happiness of our brother Madison in a state of
retirement. Such a mind as his, fraught with information and with matter
for reflection, can never know _ennui_. Besides, there will always be
work enough cut out for him to continue his active usefulness to his
country. For example, he and Monroe (the President) are now here on the
work of a collegiate institution to be established in our neighborhood,
of which they and myself are three of six visitors. This, if it succeeds,
will raise up children for Mr. Madison to employ his attention through
life. I say if it succeeds; for we have two very essential wants in our
way, first, means to compass our views; and, second, men qualified to
fulfil them. And these, you will agree, are essential wants indeed.
I am glad to find you have a copy of Sismondi, because his is a field
familiar to you, and on which you can judge him. His work is highly
praised, but I have not yet read it. I have been occupied and delighted
with reading another work, the title of which did not promise much
useful information or amusement, "_l'Italia avanti il dominio dei Romani
dal Micali_." It has often, you know, been a subject of regret, that
Carthage had no writer to give her side of her own history, while her
wealth, power and splendor, prove she must have had a very distinguished
policy and government. Micali has given the counterpart of the Roman
history, for the nations over which they extended their dominion. For
this he has gleaned up matter from every quarter, and furnished materials
for reflection and digestion to those who, thinking as they read, have
perceived that there was a great deal of matter behind the curtain, could
that be fully withdrawn. He certainly gives new views of a nation whose
splendor has masked and palliated their barbarous ambition. I am now
reading Botta's history of our own Revolution. Bating the ancient practice
which he has adopted, of putting speeches into mouths which never made
them, and fancying motives of action which we never felt, he has given
that history with more detail, precision and candor, than any writer I
have yet met with. It is, to be sure, compiled from those writers; but
it is a good secretion of their matter, the pure from the impure, and
presented in a just sense of right, in opposition to usurpation.
Accept assurances for Mrs. Adams and yourself of my affectionate esteem
and respect.
TO DR. JOSEPHUS B. STUART.
MONTICELLO, May 10, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of April 2d is duly received. I am very sensible of
the partiality with which you are so good as to review the course I have
held in public life, and I have also to be thankful to my fellow-citizens
for a like indulgence generally shown to my endeavors to be useful to
them. They give quite as much credit as is merited to the difficulties
supposed to attend the public administration. There are no mysteries in
it. Difficulties indeed sometimes arise; but common sense and honest
intentions will generally steer through them, and, where they cannot
be surmounted, I have ever seen the well-intentioned part of our fellow
citizens sufficiently disposed not to look for impossibilities. We all
know that a farm, however large, is not more difficult to direct than
a garden, and does not call for more attention or skill.
I hope with you that the policy of our country will settle down with as
much navigation and commerce only as our own exchanges will require, and
that the disadvantage will be seen of our undertaking to carry on that
of other nations. This, indeed, may bring gain to a few individuals, and
enable them to call off from our farms more laborers to be converted into
lackeys and grooms for them, but it will bring nothing to our country
but wars, debt, and dilapidation. This has been the course of England,
and her examples have fearful influence on us. In copying her we do
not seem to consider that like premises induce like consequences. The
bank mania is one of the most threatening of these imitations. It is
raising up a monied aristocracy in our country which has already set the
government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little
on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded
and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class
from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable
has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf
of the bad, and thus those whom the constitution had placed as guards
to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties. That
paper money has some advantages, is admitted. But that its abuses also
are inevitable, and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery
of all private property, cannot be denied. Shall we ever be able to put
a constitutional veto on it?
You say I must go to writing history. While in public life I had not time,
and now that I am retired, I am past the time. To write history requires
a whole life of observation, of inquiry, of labor and correction. Its
materials are not to be found among the ruins of a decayed memory. At
this day I should begin where I ought to have left off. The "_solve senes
centem equum_," is a precept we learn in youth but for the practice of
age; and were I to disregard it, it would be but a proof the more of its
soundness. If anything has ever merited to me the respect of my fellow
citizens, themselves, I hope, would wish me not to lose it by exposing
the decay of faculties of which it was the reward. I must then, dear Sir,
leave to yourself and your brethren of the rising generation, to arraign
at your tribunal the actions of your predecessors, and to pronounce the
sentence they may have merited or incurred. If the sacrifices of that
age have resulted in the good of this, then all is well, and we shall
be rewarded by their approbation, and shall be authorized to say, "go
ye and do likewise." To yourself I tender personally the assurance of
my great esteem and respect.
TO MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.
MONTICELLO, May 14, 1817.
Although, dear Sir, much retired from the world, and meddling little
in its concerns, yet I think it almost a religious duty to salute at
times my old friends, were it only to say and to know that "all's well."
Our hobby has been politics; but all here is so quiet, and with you so
desperate, that little matter is furnished us for active attention. With
you too, it has long been forbidden ground, and therefore imprudent for a
foreign friend to tread, in writing to you. But although our speculations
might be intrusive, our prayers cannot but be acceptable, and mine are
sincerely offered for the well-being of France. What government she can
bear, depends not on the state of science, however exalted, in a select
band of enlightened men, but on the condition of the general mind.
That, I am sure, is advanced and will advance; and the last change of
government was fortunate, inasmuch as the new will be less obstructive
to the effects of that advancement. For I consider your foreign military
oppressions as an ephemeral obstacle only.
Here all is quiet. The British war has left us in debt; but that is
a cheap price for the good it has done us. The establishment of the
necessary manufactures among ourselves, the proof that our government
is solid, can stand the shock of war, and is superior even to civil
schism, are precious facts for us; and of these the strongest proofs
were furnished, when, with four eastern States tied to us, as dead to
living bodies, all doubt was removed as to the achievements of the war,
had it continued. But its best effect has been the complete suppression
of party. The federalists who were truly American, and their great mass
was so, have separated from their brethren who were mere Anglomen, and
are received with cordiality into the republican ranks. Even Connecticut,
as a State, and the last one expected to yield its steady habits (which
were essentially bigoted in politics as well as religion), has chosen a
republican governor, and republican legislature. Massachusetts indeed
still lags; because most deeply involved in the parricide crimes and
treasons of the war. But her gangrene is contracting, the sound flesh
advancing on it, and all there will be well. I mentioned Connecticut as
the most hopeless of our States. Little Delaware had escaped my attention.
That is essentially a Quaker State, the fragment of a religious sect
which, there, in the other States, in England, are a homogeneous mass,
acting with one mind, and that directed by the mother society in England.
Dispersed, as the Jews, they still form, as those do, one nation, foreign
to the land they live in. They are Protestant Jesuits, implicitly devoted
to the will of their superior, and forgetting all duties to their country
in the execution of the policy of their order. When war is proposed with
England, they have religious scruples; but when with France, these are
laid by, and they become clamorous for it. They are, however, silent,
passive, and give no other trouble than of whipping them along. Nor is
the election of Monroe an inefficient circumstance in our felicities.
Four and twenty years, which he will accomplish, of administration in
republican forms and principles, will so consecrate them in the eyes of
the people as to secure them against the danger of change. The evanition
of party dissensions has harmonized intercourse, and sweetened society
beyond imagination. The war then has done us all this good, and the
further one of assuring the world, that although attached to peace from
a sense of its blessings, we will meet war when it is made necessary.
I wish I could give better hopes of our southern brethren. The achievement
of their independence of Spain is no longer a question. But it is a very
serious one, what will then become of them? Ignorance and bigotry, like
other insanities, are incapable of self-government. They will fall under
military despotism, and become the murderous tools of the ambition of
their respective Bonapartes; and whether this will be for their greater
happiness, the rule of one only has taught you to judge. No one, I hope,
can doubt my wish to see them and all mankind exercising self-government,
and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish,
but what is practicable? As their sincere friend and brother then, I do
believe the best thing for them, would be for themselves to come to an
accord with Spain, under the guarantee of France, Russia, Holland, and
the United States, allowing to Spain a nominal supremacy, with authority
only to keep the peace among them, leaving them otherwise all the powers
of self-government, until their experience in them, their emancipation
from their priests, and advancement in information, shall prepare them for
complete independence. I exclude England from this confederacy, because
her selfish principles render her incapable of honorable patronage or
disinterested co-operation; unless, indeed, what seems now probable, a
revolution should restore to her an honest government, one which will
permit the world to live in peace. Portugal grasping at an extension
of her dominion in the south, has lost her great northern province of
Pernambuco, and I shall not wonder if Brazil should revolt in mass, and
send their royal family back to Portugal. Brazil is more populous, more
wealthy, more energetic, and as wise as Portugal. I have been insensibly
led, my dear friend, while writing to you, to indulge in that line of
sentiment in which we have been always associated, forgetting that these
are matters not belonging to my time. Not so with you, who have still
many years to be a spectator of these events. That these years may indeed
be many and happy, is the sincere prayer of your affectionate friend.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, May 18, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Lyman was mortified that he could not visit Monticello. He
is gone to Europe a second time. I regret that he did not see you, he
would have executed any commission for you in the literary line, at any
pain or any expense. I have many apprehensions for his health, which is
very delicate and precarious, but he is seized with the mania of all
our young clerical spirits for foreign travel; I fear they will lose
more than they acquire, they will lose that unadulterated enthusiasm for
their native country, which has produced the greatest characters among
us.
Oh! Lord! Do you think that Protestant Popedom is annihilated in America?
Do you recollect, or have you ever attended to the ecclesiastical strifes
in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and every part of New England? What
a mercy it is that these people cannot whip, and crop, and pillory,
and roast, _as yet_ in the United States! If they could, they would.
Do you know the General of the Jesuits, and consequently all his host,
have their eyes on this country? Do you know that the Church of England
is employing more means and more art, to propagate their demi-popery
among us, than ever? Quakers, Anabaptists, Moravians, Swedenborgians,
Methodists, Unitarians, Nothingarians in all Europe are employing
underhand means to propagate their sectarian system in these States.
The multitude and diversity of them, you will say, is our security against
them all. God grant it. But if we consider that the Presbyterians and
Methodists are far the most numerous and the most likely to unite, let
a George Whitefield arise, with a military cast, like Mahomet or Loyola,
and what will become of all the other sects who can never unite?
My friends or enemies continue to overwhelm me with books. Whatever may
be their intention, charitable or otherwise, they certainly contribute
to continue me to vegetate, much as I have done for the sixteen years
last past.
Sir John Malcolm's history of Persia, and Sir William Jones' works, are
now poured out upon me, and a little cargo is coming from Europe. What
can I do with all this learned lumber? Is it necessary to salvation to
investigate all these Cosmogonies and Mythologies? Are Bryant, Gebelin,
Dupuis, or Sir William Jones, right? What a frown upon mankind was the
premature death of Sir William Jones! Why could not Jones and Dupuis
have conversed or corresponded with each other? Had Jones read Dupuis,
or Dupuis Jones, the works of both would be immensely improved, though
each would probably have adhered to his system.
I should admire to see a counsel composed of Gebelin, Bryant, Jones and
Dupuis. Let them live together and compare notes. The human race ought
to contribute to furnish them with all the books in the Universe, and
the means of subsistence.
I am not expert enough in Italian to read Botta, and I know not that
he has been translated. Indeed, I have been so little satisfied with
histories of the American revolution, that I have long since ceased to
read them. The truth is lost, in adulatory panegyrics, and in vituperary
insolence. I wish you, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe, success in your
collegiate institution. And I wish that superstition in religion, exciting
superstition in politics, and both united in directing military force,
alias glory, may never blow up all your benevolent and philanthropic
lucubrations. But the history of all ages is against you.
It is said that no effort in favor of virtue is ever lost. I doubt whether
it was ever true; whether it is now true; but hope it will be true. In
the moral government of the world, no doubt it was, is, and ever will
be true; but it has not yet appeared to be true on this earth.
I am, Sir, sincerely your friend.
P. S. Have you seen the Philosophy of Human Nature, and the History of
the War in the western States, from Kentucky? How vigorously science
and literature spring up, as well as patriotism and heroism, in
transalleganian regions? Have you seen Wilkinson's history? &c., &c.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, May 26, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Mr. Leslie Combes of Kentucky has sent me a history of the
late war, in the western country, by Mr. Robert B. M'Siffee, and the
Philosophy of Human Nature, by Joseph Buchanan. The history I am glad
to see, because it will preserve facts to the honor and immortal glory
of the western people. Indeed, I am not sorry that the Philosophy has
been published, because it has been a maxim with me for sixty years at
least, never to be afraid of a book.
Nevertheless, I cannot foresee much utility in reviewing, in this
country, the controversy between the Spiritualists and the Materialists.
Why should time be wasted in disputing about two substances, when both
parties agree that neither knows anything about either.
If spirit is an abstraction, a conjecture, a chimera; matter is an
abstraction, a conjecture, a chimera; for we know as much, or rather as
little, about one as the other. We may read Cudworth, Le Clerc, Leibnitz,
Berkley, Hume, Bolingbroke and Priestley, and a million other volumes in
all ages, and be obliged at last to confess that we have learned nothing.
Spirit and matter still remain riddles. Define the terms, however, and
the controversy is soon settled. If spirit is an active something, and
matter an inactive something, it is certain that one is not the other. We
can no more conceive that extension, or solidity, can think, or feel, or
see, or hear, or taste, or smell; than we can conceive that perception,
memory, imagination, or reason, can remove a mountain, or blow a rock.
This enigma has puzzled mankind from the beginning, and probably will
to the end. Economy of time requires that we should waste no more in so
idle an amusement.
In the eleventh discourse of Sir William Jones, before the Asiatic
Society, vol. iii., page 229, of his works, we find that Materialists
and Immaterialists existed in India, and that they accused each other of
atheism, before Berkley, or Priestley, or Dupuis, or Plato, or Pythagoras,
were born.
Indeed, Newton himself appears to have discovered nothing that was
not known to the ancient Indians. He has only furnished more complete
demonstrations of the doctrines they taught. Sir John Malcolm agrees
with Jones and Dupuis, in the Astrological origin of heathen mythologies.
Vain man! mind your own business! Do no wrong;--do all the good you can!
Eat your canvas-back ducks! Drink your Burgundy! Sleep your siesta when
necessary, and TRUST IN GOD!
What a mighty bubble, what a tremendous waterspout, has Napoleon been,
according to his life, written by himself! He says he was the creature
of the principles and manners of the age; by which, no doubt, he means
the age of Reason; the progress of Manilius' Ratio, of Plato's Logos,
&c. I believe him. A whirlwind raised him, and a whirlwind blowed him
away to St. Helena. He is very confident that the age of Reason is not
past, and so am I; but I hope that Reason will never again rashly and
hastily create such creatures as him. Liberty, equality, fraternity,
and humanity, will never again, I hope, blindly surrender themselves
to an unbounded ambition for national conquests, nor implicitly commit
themselves to the custody and guardianship of arms and heroes. If they
do, they will again end in St. Helena, Inquisitions, Jesuits, and _sacre
liques_.
Poor Laureate Southey is writhing in torments under the laugh of the
three kingdoms, all Europe, and America, upon the publication of his "Wat
Tyler." I wonder whether he or Bonaparte suffers most. I congratulate
you, and Madison, and Monroe, on your noble employment in founding a
university. From such a noble Triumvirate, the world will expect something
very great and very new; but if it contains anything quite original, and
very excellent, I fear the prejudices are too deeply rooted to suffer
it to last long, though it may be accepted at first. It will not always
have three such colossal reputations to support it.
The Pernambuco Ambassador, his Secretary of legation, and private
Secretary, respectable people, have made me a visit. Having been some
year or two in a similar situation, I could not but sympathize with him.
As Bonaparte says, the age of Reason is not ended. Nothing can totally
extinguish, or eclipse the light which has been shed abroad by the press.
I am, Sir, with hearty wishes for your health and happiness, your friend
and humble servant.
TO DOCTOR JOHN MANNERS.
MONTICELLO, June 12, 1817.
SIR,--Your favor of May 20th has been received some time since, but the
increasing inertness of age renders me slow in obeying the calls of the
writing-table, and less equal than I have been to its labors.
My opinion on the right of Expatriation has been, so long ago as the
year 1776, consigned to record in the act of the Virginia code, drawn
by myself, recognizing the right expressly, and prescribing the mode of
exercising it. The evidence of this natural right, like that of our right
to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness,
is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but
is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the
charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of kings. If he
has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, he
has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode; and we may
safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on
which Nature has traced, for each individual, the geographical line
which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness. It certainly
does not exist in his mind. Where, then, is it? I believe, too, I might
safely affirm, that there is not another nation, civilized or savage,
which has ever denied this natural right. I doubt if there is another
which refuses its exercise. I know it is allowed in some of the most
respectable countries of continental Europe, nor have I ever heard of
one in which it was not. How it is among our savage neighbors, who have
no law but that of Nature, we all know.
Though long estranged from legal reading and reasoning, and little
familiar with the decisions of particular judges, I have considered that
respecting the obligation of the common law in this country as a very
plain one, and merely a question of document. If we are under that law,
the document which made us so can surely be produced; and as far as this
can be produced, so far we are subject to it, and farther we are not. Most
of the States did, I believe, at an early period of their legislation,
adopt the English law, common and statute, more or less in a body, as
far as localities admitted of their application. In these States, then,
the common law, so far as adopted, is the _lex-loci_. Then comes the law
of Congress, declaring that what is law in any State, shall be the rule
of decision in their courts, as to matters arising within that State,
except when controlled by their own statutes. But this law of Congress
has been considered as extending to civil cases only; and that no such
provision has been made for criminal ones. A similar provision, then,
for criminal offences, would, in like manner, be an adoption of more or
less of the common law, as part of the _lex-loci_, where the offence
is committed; and would cover the whole field of legislation for the
general government. I have turned to the passage you refer to in Judge
Cooper's Justinian, and should suppose the general expressions there
used would admit of modifications conformable to this doctrine. It would
alarm me indeed, in any case, to find myself entertaining an opinion
different from that of a judgment so accurately organized as his. But I
am quite persuaded that, whenever Judge Cooper shall be led to consider
that question simply and nakedly, it is so much within his course of
thinking, as liberal as logical, that, rejecting all blind and undefined
obligation, he will hold to the positive and explicit precepts of the
law alone. Accept these hasty sentiments on the subjects you propose,
as hazarded in proof of my great esteem and respect.
TO BARON HUMBOLDT.
MONTICELLO, June 13, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--The receipt of your Distributio Geographica Plantarum, with
the duty of thanking you for a work which sheds so much new and valuable
light on botanical science, excites the desire, also, of presenting
myself to your recollection, and of expressing to you those sentiments
of high admiration and esteem, which, although long silent, have never
slept. The physical information you have given us of a country hitherto so
shamefully unknown, has come exactly in time to guide our understandings
in the great political revolution now bringing it into prominence on the
stage of the world. The issue of its struggles, as they respect Spain,
is no longer matter of doubt. As it respects their own liberty, peace and
happiness, we cannot be quite so certain. Whether the blinds of bigotry,
the shackles of the priesthood, and the fascinating glare of rank and
wealth, give fair play to the common sense of the mass of their people,
so far as to qualify them for self-government, is what we do not know.
Perhaps our wishes may be stronger than our hopes. The first principle
of republicanism is, that the _lex-majoris partis_ is the fundamental law
of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of
the society enounced by the majority of a single vote, as sacred as if
unanimous, is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which
is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but
that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism. This has
been the history of the French revolution, and I wish the understanding
of our Southern brethren may be sufficiently enlarged and firm to see
that their fate depends on its sacred observance.
In our America we are turning to public improvements. Schools, roads,
and canals, are everywhere either in operation or contemplation. The
most gigantic undertaking yet proposed, is that of New York, for drawing
the waters of Lake Erie into the Hudson. The distance is 353 miles,
and the height to be surmounted 661 feet. The expense will be great,
but its effect incalculably powerful in favor of the Atlantic States.
Internal navigation by steamboats is rapidly spreading through all our
States, and that by sails and oars will ere long be looked back to as
among the curiosities of antiquity. We count much, too, on its efficacy
for harbor defence; and it will soon be tried for navigation by sea.
We consider the employment of the contributions which our citizens can
spare, after feeding, and clothing, and lodging themselves comfortably,
as more useful, more moral, and even more splendid, than that preferred
by Europe, of destroying human life, labor and happiness.
I write this letter without knowing where it will find you. But wherever
that may be, I am sure it will find you engaged in something instructive
for man. If at Paris, you are of course in habits of society with Mr.
Gallatin, our worthy, our able, and excellent minister, who will give
you, from time to time, the details of the progress of a country in
whose prosperity you are so good as to feel an interest, and in which
your name is revered among those of the great worthies of the world. God
bless you, and preserve you long to enjoy the gratitude of your fellow
men, and to be blessed with honors, health and happiness.
TO M. DE MARBOIS.
MONTICELLO, June 14, 1817.
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy of the interesting narrative of
the Complet d'Arnold, which you have been so kind as to send me. It
throws light on that incident of history which we did not possess
before. An incident which merits to be known, as a lesson to mankind,
in all its details. This mark of your attention recalls to my mind the
earlier period of life at which I had the pleasure of your personal
acquaintance, and renews the sentiments of high respect and esteem
with which that acquaintance inspired me. I had not failed to accompany
your personal sufferings during the civil convulsions of your country,
and had sincerely sympathized with them. An awful period, indeed, has
passed in Europe since our first acquaintance. When I left France at the
close of '89, your revolution was, as I thought, under the direction of
able and honest men. But the madness of some of their successors, the
vices of others, the malicious intrigues of an envious and corrupting
neighbor, the tracasserie of the Directory, the usurpations, the havoc,
and devastations of your Attila, and the equal usurpations, depredations
and oppressions of your hypocritical deliverers, will form a mournful
period in the history of man, a period of which the last chapter will not
be seen in your day or mine, and one which I still fear is to be written
in characters of blood. Had Bonaparte reflected that such is the moral
construction of the world, that no national crime passes unpunished in
the long run, he would not now be in the cage of St. Helena; and were
your present oppressors to reflect on the same truth, they would spare
to their own countries the penalties on their present wrongs which will
be inflicted on them on future times. The seeds of hatred and revenge
which they are now sowing with a large hand, will not fail to produce
their fruits in time. Like their brother robbers on the highway, they
suppose the escape of the moment a final escape, and deem infamy and
future risk countervailed by present gain. Our lot has been happier.
When you witnessed our first struggles in the war of independence, you
little calculated, more than we did, on the rapid growth and prosperity
of this country; on the practical demonstration it was about to exhibit,
of the happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only
rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on
him by the wicked acts of his tyrants.
I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for ages to
come, and that, contrary to the principle of Montesquieu, it will be
seen that the larger the extent of country, the more firm its republican
structure, if founded, not on conquest, but in principles of compact and
equality. My hope of its duration is built much on the enlargement of the
resources of life going hand in hand with the enlargement of territory,
and the belief that men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of
doing so are open to them. With the consolation of this belief in the
future result of our labors, I have that of other prophets who foretell
distant events, that I shall not live to see it falsified. My theory
has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as
cheap, and pleasanter than the gloom of despair. I wish to yourself a
long life of honors, health and happiness.
TO ALBERT GALLATIN.
MONTICELLO, June 16, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--The importance that the enclosed letters should safely reach
their destination, impels me to avail myself of the protection of your
cover. This is an inconvenience to which your situation exposes you,
while it adds to the opportunities of exercising yourself in works of
charity.
According to the opinion I hazarded to you a little before your
departure, we have had almost an entire change in the body of Congress.
The unpopularity of the compensation law was completed, by the manner
of repealing it as to all the world except themselves. In some States,
it is said, every member is changed; in all, many. What opposition there
was to the original law, was chiefly from southern members. Yet many of
those have been left out, because they received the advanced wages. I
have never known so unanimous a sentiment of disapprobation; and what
is remarkable is, that it was spontaneous. The newspapers were almost
entirely silent, and the people not only unled by their leaders, but
in opposition to them. I confess I was highly pleased with this proof
of the innate good sense, the vigilance, and the determination of the
people to act for themselves.
Among the laws of the late Congress, some were of note; a navigation
act, particularly, applicable to those nations only who have navigation
acts; pinching one of them especially, not only in the general way, but
in the intercourse with her foreign possessions. This part may re-act
on us, and it remains for trial which may bear longest. A law respecting
our conduct as a neutral between Spain and her contending colonies, was
passed by a majority of one only, I believe, and against the very general
sentiment of our country. It is thought to strain our complaisance to
Spain beyond her right or merit, and almost against the right of the
other party, and certainly against the claims they have to our good
wishes and neighborly relations. That we should wish to see the people
of other countries free, is as natural, and at least as justifiable, as
that one King should wish to see the Kings of other countries maintained
in their despotism. Right to both parties, innocent favor to the juster
cause, is our proper sentiment.
You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing
both Houses, was negatived by the President. The act was founded,
avowedly, on the principle that the phrase in the constitution which
authorizes Congress "to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the
general welfare," was an extension of the powers specifically enumerated
to whatever would promote the general welfare; and this, you know, was
the federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is
almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the
republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the
general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated;
and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but
by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant
they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place
under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a
limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. I think the
passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident. Every State will
certainly concede the power; and this will be a national confirmation
of the grounds of appeal to them, and will settle forever the meaning of
this phrase, which, by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the
General Government in a claim of universal power. For in the phrase, "to
lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare," it is a
mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by
the first or are distinct and co-ordinate powers; a question unequivocally
decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following. It is
fortunate for another reason, as the States, in conceding the power,
will modify it, either by requiring the federal ratio of expense in each
State, or otherwise, so as to secure us against its partial exercise.
Without this caution, intrigue, negotiation, and the barter of votes
might become as habitual in Congress, as they are in those legislatures
which have the appointment of officers, and which, with us, is called
"logging," the term of the farmers for their exchanges of aid in rolling
together the logs of their newly-cleared grounds. Three of our papers
have presented us the copy of an act of the legislature of New York,
which, if it has really passed, will carry us back to the times of the
darkest bigotry and barbarism, to find a parallel. Its purport is, that
all those who shall _hereafter_ join in communion with the religious
sect of Shaking Quakers, shall be deemed civilly dead, their marriages
dissolved, and all their children and property taken out of their
hands. This act being published nakedly in the papers, without the usual
signatures, or any history of the circumstances of its passage, I am not
without a hope it may have been a mere abortive attempt. It contrasts
singularly with a cotemporary vote of the Pennsylvania legislature, who,
on a proposition to make the belief in God a necessary qualification for
office, rejected it by a great majority, although assuredly there was
not a single atheist in their body. And you remember to have heard, that
when the act for religious freedom was before the Virginia Assembly, a
motion to insert the name of Jesus Christ before the phrase, "the author
of our holy religion," which stood in the bill, was rejected, although
that was the creed of a great majority of them.
I have been charmed to see that a Presidential election now produces
scarcely any agitation. On Mr. Madison's election there was little,
on Monroe's all but none. In Mr. Adams' time and mine, parties were so
nearly balanced as to make the struggle fearful for our peace. But since
the decided ascendency of the republican body, federalism has looked on
with silent but unresisting anguish. In the middle, southern and western
States, it is as low as it ever can be; for nature has made some men
monarchists and tories by their constitution, and some, of course, there
always will be.
* * * * *
We have had a remarkably cold winter. At Hallowell, in Maine, the mercury
was at thirty-four degrees below zero, of Fahrenheit, which is sixteen
degrees lower than it was in Paris in 1788-9. Here it was at six degrees
above zero, which is our greatest degree of cold.
Present me respectfully to Mrs. Gallatin, and be assured of my constant
and affectionate friendship.
TO MR. ADAMS.
POPLAR FOREST, September 8, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--A month's absence from Monticello has added to the delay of
acknowledging your last letters, and indeed for a month before I left it,
our projected college gave me constant employment; for, being the only
visitor in its immediate neighborhood, all its administrative business
falls on me, and that, where building is going on, is not a little. In
yours of July 15th, you express a wish to see our plan, but the present
visitors have sanctioned no plan as yet. Our predecessors, the first
trustees, had desired me to propose one to them, and it was on that
occasion I asked and received the benefit of your ideas on the subject.
Digesting these with such other schemes as I had been able to collect, I
made out a prospectus, the looser and less satisfactory from the uncertain
amount of the funds to which it was to be adapted. This I addressed, in
the form of a letter, to their President, Peter Carr, which, going before
the legislature when a change in the constitution of the college was
asked, got into the public papers, and, among others, I think you will
find it in Niles' Register, in the early part of 1815. This, however,
is to be considered but as a _premiere ebauche_, for the consideration
and amendment of the present visitors, and to be accommodated to one of
two conditions of things. If the institution is to depend on private
donations alone, we shall be forced to accumulate on the shoulders of
four professors a mass of sciences which, if the legislature adopts it,
should be distributed among ten. We shall be ready for a professor of
languages in April next, for two others the following year, and a fourth
a year after. How happy should we be if we could have a Ticknor for our
first. A critical classic is scarcely to be found in the United States.
To this professor, a fixed salary of five hundred dollars, with liberal
tuition fees from the pupils, will probably give two thousand dollars a
year. We are now on the look-out for a professor, meaning to accept of
none but of the very first order.
You ask if I have seen Buchanan's, McAfee's, or Wilkinson's books?
I have seen none of them, but have lately read, with great pleasure,
Reid & Eaton's life of Jackson, if life may be called what is merely a
history of his campaign of 1814. Reid's part is well written. Eaton's
continuation is better for its matter than style. The whole, however,
is valuable.
I have lately received a pamphlet of extreme interest from France. It
is De Pradt's Historical Recital of the first return of Louis XVIII. to
Paris. It is precious for the minutiæ of the proceedings which it details,
and for their authenticity, as from an eye-witness. Being but a pamphlet
I enclose it for your perusal, assured, if you have not seen it, that it
will give you pleasure. I will ask its return, because I value it as a
morsel of genuine history, a thing so rare as to be always valuable. I
have received some information from an eye-witness also of what passed on
the occasion of the second return of Louis XVIII. The Emperor Alexander,
it seems, was solidly opposed to this. In the consultation of the allied
sovereigns and their representatives with the executive council at Paris,
he insisted that the Bourbons were too incapable and unworthy of being
placed at the head of the nation; declared he would support any other
choice they should freely make, and continued to urge most strenuously
that some other choice should be made. The debates ran high and warm,
and broke off after midnight, every one retaining his own opinion. He
lodged, as you know, at Talleyrand's. When they returned into council
the next day, his host had overcome his firmness. Louis XVIII. was
accepted, and through the management of Talleyrand, accepted without any
capitulation, although the sovereigns would have consented that he should
be first required to subscribe and swear to the constitution prepared,
before permission to enter the kingdom. It would seem as if Talleyrand
had been afraid to admit the smallest interval of time, lest a change of
mind would bring back Bonaparte on them. But I observe that the friends
of a limited monarchy there consider the popular representation as much
improved by the late alteration, and confident it will in the end produce
a fixed government in which an elective body, fairly representative of
the people, will be an efficient element.
I congratulate Mrs. Adams and yourself on the return of your excellent
and distinguished son, and our country still more on such a minister of
their foreign affairs; and I renew to both the assurance of my high and
friendly respect and esteem.
TO GEORGE FLOWER.
POPLAR FOREST, September 12, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of August 12th was yesterday received at this
place, and I learn from it with pleasure that you have found a tract of
country which will suit you for settlement. To us your first purchase
would have been more gratifying, by adding yourself and your friends
to our society; but the overruling consideration, with us as with you,
is your own advantage, and as it would doubtless be a great comfort to
you to have your ancient neighbors and friends settled around you. I
sincerely wish that your proposition to "purchase a tract of land in the
Illinois on favorable terms, for introducing a colony of English farmers,"
may encounter no difficulties from the established rules of our land
department. The general law prescribes an open sale, where all citizens
may compete on an equal footing for any lot of land which attracts their
choice. To dispense with this in any particular case, requires a special
law of Congress, and to special legislation we are generally averse,
lest a principle of favoritism should creep in and pervert that of equal
rights. It has, however, been done on some occasions where a special
national advantage has been expected to overweigh that of adherence to
the general rule. The promised introduction of the culture of the vine
procured a special law in favor of the Swiss settlement on the Ohio.
That of the culture of oil, wine and other southern productions, did
the same lately for the French settlement on the Tombigbee. It remains
to be tried whether that of an improved system of farming, interesting
to so great a proportion of our citizens, may not also be thought worth
a dispensation with the general rule. This I suppose is the principal
ground on which your proposition will be questioned. For although as
to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling
together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they
preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of
government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among
the natives for quicker amalgamation. Yet English emigrants are without
this inconvenience. They differ from us little but in their principles
of government, and most of those (merchants excepted) who come here,
are sufficiently disposed to adopt ours. What the issue, however, of
your proposition may probably be, I am less able to advise you than many
others; for during the last eight or ten years I have no knowledge of the
administration of the land office or the principles of its government.
Even the persons on whom it will depend are all changed within that
interval, so as to leave me small means of being useful to you. Whatever
they may be, however, they shall be freely exercised for your advantage,
and that, not on the selfish principle of increasing our own population at
the expense of other nations, for the additions to that from emigration
are but as a drop in a bucket to those by natural procreation, but to
consecrate a sanctuary for those whom the misrule of Europe may compel
to seek happiness in other climes. This refuge once known will produce
reaction on the happiness even of those who remain there, by warning
their task-masters that when the evils of Egyptian oppression become
heavier than those of the abandonment of country, another Canaan is open
where their subjects will be received as brothers, and secured against
like oppressions by a participation in the right of self-government. If
additional motives could be wanting with us to the maintenance of this
right, they would be found in the animating consideration that a single
good government becomes thus a blessing to the whole earth, its welcome
to the oppressed restraining within certain limits the measure of their
oppressions. But should even this be counteracted by violence on the
right of expatriation, the other branch of our example then presents
itself for imitation, to rise on their rulers and do as we have done. You
have set to your own country a good example, by showing them a peaceable
mode of reducing their rulers to the necessity of becoming more wise,
more moderate, and more honest, and I sincerely pray that the example
may work for the benefit of those who cannot follow it, as it will for
your own.
With Mr. Burckbeck, the associate of your late explanatory journeying,
I have not the happiness of personal acquaintance; but I know him
through his narrative of your journeyings together through France. The
impressions received from that, give me confidence that a participation
with yourself in assurances of the esteem and respect of a stranger
will not be unacceptable to him, and the less when given through you
and associated with those to yourself.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, October 10, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your kind congratulations on the return of
my little family from Europe. To receive them all in fine health and
good spirits, after so long an absence, was a greater blessing than at
my time of life when they went away, I had any right to hope, or reason
to expect.
If the Secretary of State can give satisfaction to his fellow-citizens in
his new office, it will be a source of consolation to me while I live;
although it is not probable that I shall long be a witness of his good
success, or ill success. I shall soon be obliged to say to him, and to
you, and to your country and mine, God bless you all! Fare-thee-well!
Indeed, I need not wait a moment. I can say all that now, with as good
a will, and as clear a conscience, as at any time past, or future.
I thank you, also, for the loan of De Pradt's narration of the intrigues,
at the second restoration of the Bourbons. In this, as in many other
instances, is seen the influence of a single subtle mind, and a trifling
accident, in deciding the fate of mankind for ages. De Pradt and
Talleyrand were well associated.
I have ventured to send the pamphlet to Washington with a charge to return
it to you. The French have a King, a chamber of Peers, and a chamber of
Deputies. _Voila! les ossimens_ of a constitution of a limited monarchy;
and of a good one, provided the bones are united by good joints, and
knitted together by strong tendons. But where does the sovereignty reside?
Are the three branches sufficiently defined? A fair representation of the
body of the people by elections, sufficiently frequent, is essential to
a free government; but if the Commons cannot make themselves respected
by the Peers, and the King, they can do no good, nor prevent any evil.
Can any organization of government secure public and private liberty
without a general or universal freedom, without license, or licentiousness
of thinking, speaking, and writing. Have the French such freedom? Will
their religion, or policy, allow it?
When I think of liberty, and a free government, in an ancient, opulent,
populous, and commercial empire, I fear I shall always recollect a fable
of Plato.
Love is a son of the god of riches, and the goddess of poverty. He
inherits from his father the intrepidity of his courage, the enthusiasm
of his thoughts, his generosity, his prodigality, his confidence in
himself, the opinion of his own merit, the impatience to have always the
preference; but he derives from his mother that indigence which makes
him always a beggar; that importunity with which he demands everything;
that timidity which sometimes hinders him from daring to ask anything;
that disposition which he has to servitude, and that dread of being
despised, which he can never overcome.
Such is Love according to Plato. Who calls him a demon? And such is
liberty in France, and England, and all other great, rich, old, corrupted
commercial nations. The opposite qualities of the father and mother are
perpetually tearing to pieces himself and his friends as well as his
enemies.
Mr. Monroe has got the universal character among all our common people
of "A very smart man." And verily I am of the same mind. I know not
another who could have executed so great a plan so cleverly.
I wish him the same happy success through his whole administration.
I am, Sir, with respect and friendship, yours,
J. A.
TO THE HONORABLE JOHN Q. ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, November 1, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 4th of October was not received here until the
20th, having been sixteen days on its passage; since which unavoidable
avocations have made this the first moment it has been in my power to
acknowledge its receipt. Of the character of M. de Pradt his political
writings furnish a tolerable estimate, but not so full as you have
favored me with. He is eloquent, and his pamphlet on colonies shows him
ingenious. I was gratified by his _Recit Historique_, because, pretending,
as all men do, to some character, and he to one of some distinction, I
supposed he would not place before the world facts of glaring falsehood,
on which so many living and distinguished witnesses could convict him.
We, too, who are retired from the business of the world, are glad to
catch a glimpse of truth, here and there as we can, to guide our path
through the boundless field of fable in which we are bewildered by public
prints, and even by those calling themselves histories. A word of truth
to us is like the drop of water supplicated from the tip of Lazarus'
finger. It is as an observation of latitude and longitude to the mariner
long enveloped in clouds, for correcting the ship's way.
On the subject of weights and measures, you will have, at its threshold,
to encounter the question on which Solon and Lycurgus acted differently.
Shall we mould our citizens to the law, or the law to our citizens? And
in solving this question their peculiar character is an element not to
be neglected. Of the two only things in nature which can furnish an
invariable standard, to wit, the dimensions of the globe itself, and
the time of its diurnal revolution on its axis, it is not perhaps of
much importance which we adopt. That of the dimensions of the globe,
preferred ultimately by the French, after first adopting the other, has
been objected to from the difficulty, not to say impracticability, of
the verification of their admeasurement by other nations. Except the
portion of a meridian which they adopted for their operation, there
is not another on the globe which fulfils the requisite conditions,
to wit, of so considerable length, that length too divided, not very
unequally, by the 45th degree of latitude, and terminating at each end
in the ocean. Now, this singular line lies wholly in France and Spain.
Besides the immensity of expense and time which a verification would
always require, it cannot be undertaken by any nation without the joint
consent of these two powers. France having once performed the work,
and refusing, as she may, to let any other nation re-examine it, she
makes herself the sole depository of the original standard for all
nations; and all must send to her to obtain, and from time to time to
prove their standards. To this, indeed, it may be answered, that there
can be no reason to doubt that the mensuration has been as accurately
performed as the intervention of numerous waters, and of high ridges of
craggy mountains, would admit; that all the calculations have been free
of error, their coincidences faithfully reported, and that, whether in
peace or war, to foes as well as friends, free access to the original
will at all times be admitted. In favor of the standard to be taken from
the time employed in a revolution of the earth on its axis, it may be
urged that this revolution is a matter of fact present to all the world,
that its division into seconds of time is known and received by all the
world, that the length of a pendulum vibrating seconds in the different
circles of latitude is already known to all, and can at any time and in
any place be ascertained by any nation or individual, and inferred by
known laws from their own to the medium latitude of 45°, whenever any
doubt may make this desirable; and that this is the particular standard
which has at different times been contemplated and desired[1] by the
philosophers of every nation, and even by those of France, except at the
particular moment when this change was suddenly proposed and adopted,
and under circumstances peculiar to the history of the moment. But the
cogent reason which will decide the fate of whatever you report is, that
England has lately adopted the reference of its measures to the pendulum.
It is the mercantile part of our community which will have most to do in
this innovation; it is that which having command of all the presses can
make the loudest outcry, and you know their identification with English
regulations, practices, and prejudices. It is from this identification
alone you can hope to be permitted to adopt even the English reference to
a pendulum. But the English proposition goes only to say what proportion
their measures bear to the second pendulum of their own latitude, and
not at all to change their unit, or to reduce into any simple order
the chaos of their weights and measures. That would be innovation, and
innovation there is heresy and treason. Whether the Senate meant more
than this I do not know; and much doubt if more can be effected. However,
in endeavors to improve our situation, we should never despair; and I
sincerely wish you may be able to rally us to either standard, and to
give us an unit, the aliquot part of something invariable which may be
applied simply and conveniently to our measures, weights, and coins,
and most especially that the decimal divisions may pervade the whole.
The convenience of this in our monied system has been approved by all,
and France has followed the example. The volume of tracts which you have
noted in the library of Congress, contains everything which I had then
been able to collect on this subject. You will find some details which
may be of use in two thin 4to vols., Nos. 399, 400, of chapter xxiv.;
the latter being a collection of sheets selected from the "_Encyclopedie
Methodique_," on the weights, measures and coins of all nations, bound
up together and alone; and the former a supplement by Beyerlé. Cooper's
Emporium too, for May 1812, and August 1813, may offer something. The
reports of the Committees of Parliament of 1758-9, I think you will find
in Postlethwaite's Dictionary, which is also in the library, chapter
20, No. 10. That of Mechain and Delambre I have not, nor do I know who
has it.
I have lately seen a book which your office ought to possess, if it has
it not already, entitled "_Memoire sur la Louisiane_, par M. le Comte de
Vergennes, 8vo, Paris, chez Lepetit, Jeune, 1802." It contains more in
detail the proofs of the extent of Louisiana as far as the Rio Grande
than I have ever before seen, and its author gives it authenticity.
It has been executed with great industry and research into the French
records. This reminds me of a MS. which Governor Claiborne found in a
private family in Louisiana, being a journal kept (I forget by whom,
but) by a confidential officer of the government, proving exactly by
what connivance between the agents of the _compagnie d'occident_ and
the Spaniards these last smuggled settlements into Louisiana as far as
Assinais, Adais, &c., for the purpose of covering the contraband trade
of the company. Claiborne being afraid to trust the original by mail
without keeping a copy, sent it on. It arrived safe, and was deposited
in the office of State. He then sent me the copy on the destruction of
the office at Washington by the British, apprehending the original might
be involved in that destruction. I sent the copy to Colonel Monroe,
then Secretary of State, with a request to return it if the original
was safe, and to keep it if not. I have heard no more of it; but will
now request of you to have search made for the original, and if safe, to
return me the copy. I propose to deposit it with the historical committee
of the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, for safe keeping. I have
no use nor wish for such a thing myself, but think it will be safer in
two deposits than one. My recommendation to Colonel Monroe, was to have
it printed. I have barely left myself room to express my satisfaction
at your call to the important office you hold, and to tender you the
assurance of my great esteem and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] If conforming to this desire of other nations, we adopt
the second pendulum, 3/10 of that for our foot will be the
same as ⅕ or, 2/10 of the second rod, because that rod is to
the pendulum as 3 to 2. This would make our foot ¼ inch less
than the present one.
TO MR. DUPONCEAU.
MONTICELLO, November 7, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--A part of the information of which the expedition of Lewis
and Clarke was the object, has been communicated to the world by
the publication of their journal; but much and valuable matter yet
remains uncommunicated. The correction of the longitudes of their map
is essential to its value; to which purpose their observations of the
lunar distances are to be calculated and applied. The new subjects they
discovered in the vegetable, animal, and mineral departments, are to
be digested and made known. The numerous vocabularies they obtained of
the Indian languages are to be collated and published. Although the
whole expense of the expedition was furnished by the public, and the
information to be derived from it was theirs also, yet on the return
of Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, the government thought it just to leave
to them any pecuniary benefit which might result from a publication of
the papers, and supposed, indeed, that this would secure the best form
of publication. But the property in these papers still remained in the
government for the benefit of their constituents. With the measures
taken by Governor Lewis for their publication, I was never acquainted.
After his death, Governor Clarke put them, in the first instance, into
the hands of the late Doctor Barton, from whom some of them passed to
Mr. Biddle, and some again, I believe, from him to Mr. Allen. While
the MS. books of journals were in the hands of Dr. Barton, I wrote to
him, on behalf of Governor Lewis' family, requesting earnestly, that,
as soon as these should be published, the originals might be returned,
as the family wished to have them preserved. He promised in his answer
that it should be faithfully done. After his death, I obtained, through
the kind agency of Mr. Correa, from Mrs. Barton, three of these books,
of which I knew there had been ten or twelve, having myself read them.
These were all she could find. The rest, therefore, I presume, are in
the hands of the other gentlemen. After the agency I had had in effecting
this expedition, I thought myself authorized, and, indeed, that it would
be expected of me, that I should follow up the subject, and endeavor to
obtain its fruits for the public. I wrote to General Clarke, therefore,
for authority to receive the original papers. He gave it in the letters
to Mr. Biddle and to myself, which I now enclose. As the custody of
these papers belonged properly to the War-Office, and that was vacant
at the time, I have waited several months for its being filled. But the
office still remaining vacant, and my distance rendering any effectual
measures, by myself, impracticable, I ask the agency of your committee,
within whose province I propose to place the matter, by making it the
depository of the papers generally. I therefore now forward the three
volumes of MS. journals in my possession, and authorize them, under
General Clarke's letters, to inquire for and to receive the rest. So also
the astronomical and geographical papers, those relating to zoological,
botanical, and mineral subjects, with the Indian vocabularies, and
statistical tables relative to the Indians. Of the astronomical and
geographical papers, if the committee will be so good as to give me a
statement, I will, as soon as a Secretary at War is appointed, propose
to him to have made, at the public expense, the requisite calculations,
to have the map corrected in its longitudes and latitudes, engraved
and published on a proper scale; and I will ask from General Clarke the
one he offers, with his corrections. With respect to the zoological and
mineralogical papers and subjects, it would perhaps be agreeable to the
Philosophical Society, to have a digest of them made, and published in
their transactions or otherwise. And if it should be within the views
of the historical committee to have the Indian vocabularies digested
and published, I would add to them the remains of my collection. I had
through the course of my life availed myself of every opportunity of
procuring vocabularies of the languages of every tribe which either myself
or my friends could have access to. They amounted to about forty, more
or less perfect. But in their passage from Washington to this place, the
trunk in which they were was stolen and plundered, and some fragments
only of the vocabularies were recovered. Still, however, they were such
as would be worth incorporation with a larger work, and shall be at the
service of the historical committee, if they can make any use of them.
Permit me to request the return of General Clarke's letter, and to add
assurances of my respect and esteem.
P. S. With the volumes of MS. journal, Mrs. Barton delivered one by
mistake I suppose, which seems to have been the journal of some botanist.
I presume it was the property of Dr. Barton, and therefore forward it
to you to be returned to Mrs. Barton.
TO MR. CORREA.
POPLAR FOREST, November 25, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--I am highly gratified by the interest you take in our Central
College, and the more so as it may possibly become an inducement to
pass more of your time with us. It is even said you had thought of
engaging a house in its neighborhood. But why another house? Is not one
enough? and especially one whose inhabitants are made so happy by your
becoming their inmate? When you shall have a wife and family wishing
to be to themselves, then the question of another house may be taken
_ad referendum_. I wish Dr. Cooper could have the same partialities. He
seems to have misunderstood my last letter; in the former I had spoken
of opening our Physical School in the spring of '19, but learning that
that delay might render his engagement uncertain, the visitors determined
to force their preparations so as to receive him by midsummer next, and
so my letter stated. In one I now write, I recall his attention to that
circumstance. But his decision will no doubt be governed by the result
of the proposition, to permit the medical students of Philadelphia to
attend him. I can never regret any circumstance which may add to his
well-being, for I most sincerely wish him well. That himself and Mrs.
Cooper will be happier in the society of Philadelphia, cannot be doubted.
It would be flattering enough to us to be his second choice. I find from
his information that we are not to expect to obtain in this country
either a classical or mathematical professor of the first order: and
as our institution cannot be raised above the common herd of academies,
colleges, &c., already scattered over our country, but by super-eminent
professors, we have determined to accept of no mediocrity, and to seek
in Europe for what is eminent. We shall go to Edinburgh in preference,
because of the advantage to students of receiving communications in
their native tongue, and because peculiar and personal circumstances
will enable us to interest Dugald Stewart and Professor Leslie, of
that College, in procuring us subjects of real worth and eminence.
I put off writing to them for a classical and mathematical professor
only until I see what our legislature, which meets on Monday next, is
disposed to do, either on the question singly of adopting our college
for their university, or on that of entering at once on a general system
of instruction, for which they have, for some time been preparing. For
this last purpose I have sketched, and put into the hands of a member
a bill, delineating a practicable plan, entirely within the means they
already have on hand, destined to this object. My bill proposes, 1.
Elementary schools in every county, which shall place every householder
within three miles of a school. 2. District colleges, which shall place
every father within a day's ride of a college where he may dispose of
his son. 3. An university in a healthy and central situation, with the
offer of the lands, buildings, and funds of the Central College, if
they will accept that place for their establishment. In the 1st will
be taught reading, writing, common arithmetic, and general notions of
geography. In the 2d, ancient and modern languages, geography fully, a
higher degree of numerical arithmetic, mensuration, and the elementary
principles of navigation. In the 3d, all the useful sciences in their
highest degree. To all of which is added a selection from the elementary
schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too
poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense
through the colleges and university. The object is to bring into action
that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for
want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of
mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be the double or
treble of what it is in most countries. The expense of the elementary
schools for every county, is proposed to be levied on the wealth of the
county, and all children rich and poor to be educated at these three
years gratis. The expense of the colleges and university, admitting two
professors to each of the former, and ten to the latter, can be completely
and permanently established with a sum of five hundred thousand dollars,
in addition to the present funds of our Central College. Our literary
fund has already on hand, and appropriated to these purposes, a sum of
seven hundred thousand dollars, and that increasing yearly. This is
in fact and substance the plan I proposed in a bill forty years ago,
but accommodated to the circumstances of this, instead of that day. I
derive my present hopes that it may now be adopted, from the fact that
the House of Representatives, at their last session, passed a bill, less
practicable and boundlessly expensive, and therefore alone rejected by
the Senate, and printed for public consideration and amendment. Mine,
after all, may be an Utopian dream, but being innocent, I have thought
I might indulge in it till I go to the land of dreams, and sleep there
with the dreamers of all past and future times.
I have taken measures to obtain the crested turkey, and will endeavor
to perpetuate that beautiful and singular characteristic, and shall be
not less earnest in endeavors to raise the Moronnier. God bless you,
and preserve you long in life and health, until wearied with delighting
your kindred spirits here, you may wish to encounter the great problem,
untried by the living, unreported by the dead.
TO MR. DUPONCEAU.
MONTICELLO, December 30, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--An absence of six weeks has occasioned your letters of the
5th and 11th inst., to lie thus long unacknowledged. After I had sent
off the two other Westover MSS. I received a third of the same journal.
On perusing it I am not sensible by memory, of anything not contained in
the former, except eight pages of a preliminary account of the abridgment
of our limits by successive charters to other colonies. I suppose this
to be a copy of the largest of the other two, entered fair in a folio
volume, with other documents relating to the government of Virginia. It
is bound in vellum, and, by the arms pasted in it, seems to have been
intended for the shelves of the author's library. As this journal is
complete it might enable us to supply the hiatuses of the other copies.
I now send you the remains of my Indian vocabularies, some of which are
perfect. I send with them the fragments of my digest of them, which were
gathered up on the banks of the river where they had been strewed by the
plunderers of the trunk in which they were. Those will merely show the
arrangement I had given the vocabularies, according to their affinities
and degrees of resemblance or dissimilitude.
If you can recover Capt. Lewis' collection, they will make an important
addition, for there was no part of his instructions which he executed more
fully or carefully, never meeting with a single Indian of a new tribe,
without making his vocabulary the first object. What Professor Adelung
mentions of the Empress Catharine's having procured many vocabularies of
our Indians, is correct. She applied to M. de La Fayette, who, through
the aid of General Washington, obtained several; but I never learnt of
what particular tribes. The great works of Pallas being rare, I will
mention that there are two editions of it, the one in two volumes, the
other in four volumes 4to, in the library I ceded to Congress, which
maybe consulted. But the Professor's account of the supposed Mexican MS.
is quite erroneous, nor can I conceive through whom he can have received
his information. It has probably been founded on an imperfect knowledge
of the following fact: Soon after the acquisition of Louisiana, Governor
Claiborne found, in a private family there, a MS. journal kept, (I forget
by whom,) but by a confidential officer of the French government, proving
exactly by what connivance between the agents of the compagnie d'occident,
and the Spaniards, these last smuggled settlements into Louisiana, as
far as Assinais, Adais, &c., for the purpose of covering the contraband
trade of the company. Claiborne, being afraid to trust the original by
mail, without keeping a copy, sent it on after being copied. It arrived
safe, and was deposited by me in the office of State. He then sent me
the copy, on the destruction of the office at Washington by the British;
apprehending the original might be involved in that destruction, I sent
the copy to Colonel Monroe, then Secretary of State, with a request to
return it, if the original was safe, and to keep it, if not. I have
heard no more of it. My intention was, and is, if it is returned to
me, to deposit it with your committee for safe keeping or publication.
While on the subject of Louisiana, I have thought I had better commit
to you also an historical memoir of my own respecting the important
question of its limits. When we first made the purchase we knew little
of its extent, having never before been interested to inquire into it.
Possessing, then, in my library, everything respecting America which I
had been able to collect by unremitting researches, during my residence
in Europe, particularly and generally through my life, I availed myself
of the leisure of my succeeding autumnal recess from Washington, to bring
together everything which my collection furnished on the subject of its
boundary. The result was the memoir I now send you, copies of which were
furnished to our ministers at Paris and Madrid, for their information as
to the extent of territory claimed under our purchase. The New Orleans
MS. afterwards discovered, furnished some valuable supplementary proofs
of title.
I defer writing to the Secretary at War respecting the observations of
longitude and latitude by Capt. Lewis, until I learn from you whether
they are recovered, and whether they are so complete as to be susceptible
of satisfactory calculation. I salute you with great respect and esteem.
TO MR. WIRT.
MONTICELLO, January 5, 1818.
I have first to thank you, dear Sir, for the copy of your late work
which you have been so kind as to send me, and then to render you double
congratulations, first, on the general applause it has so justly received,
and next on the public testimony of esteem for its author, manifested
by your late call to the executive councils of the nation. All this I
do heartily, and then proceed to a case of business on which you will
have to advise the government on the threshold of your office. You have
seen the death of General Kosciusko announced in the papers in such a
way as not to be doubted. He had in the funds of the United States a
very considerable sum of money, on the interest of which he depended for
subsistence. On his leaving the United States, in 1798, he placed it under
my direction by a power of attorney, which I executed entirely through
Mr. Barnes, who regularly remitted his interest. But he left also in my
hands an autograph will, disposing of his funds in a particular course
of charity, and making me his executor. The question the government
will ask of you, and which I therefore ask, is in what court must this
will be proved, and my qualification as executor be received, to justify
the United States in placing these funds under the trust? This is to be
executed wholly in this State, and will occupy so long a course of time
beyond what I can expect to live, that I think to propose to place it
under the Court of Chancery. The place of probate generally follows the
residence of the testator. That was in a foreign country in the present
case. Sometimes the _bona notabilia_. The evidences or representations
of these (the certificates) are in my hands. The things represented (the
money) in those of the United States. But where are the United States?
Everywhere, I suppose, where they have government or property liable to
the demand on payment. That is to say, in every State of the Union, in
this, for example, as well as any other, strengthened by the circumstances
of the deposit of the will, the residence of the executor, and the place
where the trust is to be executed. In no instance, I believe, does the
mere habitation of the debtor draw to it the place of probate, and if it
did, the United States are omnipresent by their functionaries, as well as
property in every State of the Union. I am led by these considerations
to suppose our district or general court competent to the object; but
you know best, and by your advice, sanctioned by the Secretary of the
Treasury, I shall act. I write to the Secretary on this subject. If our
district court will do, I can attend it personally; if the general court
only be competent, I am in hopes it will find means of dispensing with
my personal attendance. I salute you with affectionate esteem and respect.
TO DR. BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE.
MONTICELLO, March 3, 1818.
DEAR SIR,--I have just received your favor of February 20th, in which you
observe that Mr. Wirt, on page 47 of his Life of Patrick Henry, quotes
me as saying that "Mr. Henry certainly gave the first impulse to the
ball of revolution." I well recollect to have used some such expression
in a letter to him, and am tolerably certain that our own State being
the subject under contemplation, I must have used it with respect to
that only. Whether he has given it a more general aspect I cannot say,
as the passage is not in the page you quote, nor, after thumbing over
much of the book, have I been able to find it.[2] In page 417 there is
something like it, but not the exact expression, and even there it may
be doubted whether Mr. Wirt had his eye on Virginia alone, or on all
the colonies. But the question, who commenced the revolution? is as
difficult as that of the first inventors of a thousand good things. For
example, who first discovered the principle of gravity? Not Newton; for
Galileo, who died the year that Newton was born, had measured its force
in the descent of gravid bodies. Who invented the Lavoiserian chemistry?
The English say Dr. Black, by the preparatory discovery of latent heat.
Who invented the steamboat? Was it Gerbert, the Marquis of Worcester,
Newcomen, Savary, Papin, Fitch, Fulton? The fact is, that one new idea
leads to another, that to a third, and so on through a course of time
until some one, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines
all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention. I
suppose it would be as difficult to trace our revolution to its first
embryo. We do not know how long it was hatching in the British cabinet
before they ventured to make the first of the experiments which were to
develop it in the end and to produce complete parliamentary supremacy.
Those you mention in Massachusetts as preceding the stamp act, might
be the first visible symptoms of that design. The proposition of that
act in 1764, was the first here. Your opposition, therefore, preceded
ours, as occasion was sooner given there than here, and the truth, I
suppose, is, that the opposition in every colony began whenever the
encroachment was presented to it. This question of priority is as the
inquiry would be who first, of the three hundred Spartans, offered his
name to Leonidas? I shall be happy to see justice done to the merits of
all, by the unexceptionable umpirage of date and facts, and especially
from the pen which is proposed to be employed in it.
I rejoice, indeed, to learn from you that Mr. Adams retains the strength
of his memory, his faculties, his cheerfulness, and even his epistolary
industry. This last is gone from me. The aversion has been growing on
me for a considerable time, and now, near the close of seventy-five,
is become almost insuperable. I am much debilitated in body, and my
memory sensibly on the wane. Still, however, I enjoy good health and
spirits, and am as industrious a reader as when a student at college.
Not of newspapers. These I have discarded. I relinquish, as I ought to
do, all intermeddling with public affairs, committing myself cheerfully
to the watch and care of those for whom, in my turn, I have watched and
cared. When I contemplate the immense advances in science and discoveries
in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look
forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation,
and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have
been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches.
Even the metaphysical contest, which you so pleasantly described to me
in a former letter, will probably end in improvement, by clearing the
mind of Platonic mysticism and unintelligible jargon. Although age is
taking from me the power of communicating by letter with my friends
as industriously as heretofore, I shall still claim with them the same
place they will ever hold in my affections, and on this ground I, with
sincerity and pleasure, assure you of my great esteem and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] It was found page 41.
TO N. BURWELL, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, March 14, 1818.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of February 17th found me suffering under an attack
of rheumatism, which has but now left me at sufficient ease to attend
to the letters I have received. A plan of female education has never
been a subject of systematic contemplation with me. It has occupied my
attention so far only as the education of my own daughters occasionally
required. Considering that they would be placed in a country situation,
where little aid could be obtained from abroad, I thought it essential
to give them a solid education, which might enable them, when become
mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course
for sons, should their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive.
My surviving daughter accordingly, the mother of many daughters as well
as sons, has made their education the object of her life, and being a
better judge of the practical part than myself, it is with her aid and
that of one of her elevès, that I shall subjoin a catalogue of the books
for such a course of reading as we have practiced.
A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for
novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively
employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone
and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and
unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in
all the figments of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result
is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the
real businesses of life. This mass of trash, however, is not without some
distinction; some few modelling their narratives, although fictitious,
on the incidents of real life, have been able to make them interesting
and useful vehicles of a sound morality. Such, I think, are Marmontel's
new moral tales, but not his old ones, which are really immoral. Such are
the writings of Miss Edgeworth, and some of those of Madame Genlis. For
a like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged. Some is useful
for forming style and taste. Pope, Dryden, Thompson, Shakspeare, and of
the French, Molière, Racine, the Corneilles, may be read with pleasure
and improvement.
The French language, become that of the general intercourse of nations,
and from their extraordinary advances, now the depository of all
science, is an indispensable part of education for both sexes. In the
subjoined catalogue, therefore, I have placed the books of both languages
indifferently, according as the one or the other offers what is best.
The ornaments too, and the amusements of life, are entitled to their
portion of attention. These, for a female, are dancing, drawing, and
music. The first is a healthy exercise, elegant and very attractive
for young people. Every affectionate parent would be pleased to
see his daughter qualified to participate with her companions, and
without awkwardness at least, in the circles of festivity, of which
she occasionally becomes a part. It is a necessary accomplishment,
therefore, although of short use; for the French rule is wise, that no
lady dances after marriage. This is founded in solid physical reasons,
gestation and nursing leaving little time to a married lady when this
exercise can be either safe or innocent. Drawing is thought less of in
this country than in Europe. It is an innocent and engaging amusement,
often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to
become a mother and an instructor. Music is invaluable where a person has
an ear. Where they have not, it should not be attempted. It furnishes
a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the
day, and lasts us through life. The taste of this country, too, calls
for this accomplishment more strongly than for either of the others.
I need say nothing of household economy, in which the mothers of our
country are generally skilled, and generally careful to instruct their
daughters. We all know its value, and that diligence and dexterity in
all its processes are inestimable treasures. The order and economy of
a house are as honorable to the mistress as those of the farm to the
master, and if either be neglected, ruin follows, and children destitute
of the means of living.
This, Sir, is offered as a summary sketch on a subject on which I have
not thought much. It probably contains nothing but what has already
occurred to yourself, and claims your acceptance on no other ground than
as a testimony of my respect for your wishes, and of my great esteem
and respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, May 17, 1818.
DEAR SIR,--I was so unfortunate as not to receive from Mr. Holly's own
hand your favor of January the 28th, being then at my other home. He
dined only with my family, and left them with an impression which has
filled me with regret that I did not partake of the pleasure his visit
gave them. I am glad he is gone to Kentucky. Rational Christianity will
thrive more rapidly there than here. They are freer from prejudices
than we are, and bolder in grasping at truth. The time is not distant,
though neither you nor I shall see it, when we shall be but a secondary
people to them. Our greediness for wealth, and fantastical expense, have
degraded, and will degrade, the minds of our maritime citizens. These
are the peculiar vices of commerce.
I had been long without hearing _from_ you, but I had heard _of_ you
through a letter from Doctor Waterhouse. He wrote to reclaim against
an expression of Mr. Wirt's, as to the commencement of motion in the
revolutionary ball. The lawyers say that words are always to be expounded
_secundum subjectam materiem_, which, in Mr. Wirt's case, was Virginia.
It would, moreover, be as difficult to say at what moment the Revolution
began, and what incident set it in motion, as to fix the moment that the
embryo becomes an animal, or the act which gives him a beginning. But
the most agreeable part of his letter was that which informed me of your
health, your activity, and strength of memory; and the most wonderful,
that which assured me that you retained your industry and promptness in
epistolary correspondence. Here you have entire advantage over me. My
repugnance to the writing table becomes daily and hourly more deadly
and insurmountable. In place of this has come on a canine appetite
for reading. And I indulge it, because I see in it a relief against
the _tædium senectutis_; a lamp to lighten my path through the dreary
wilderness of time before me, whose bourne I see not. Losing daily all
interest in the things around us, something else is necessary to fill
the void. With me it is reading, which occupies the mind without the
labor of producing ideas from my own stock.
I enter into all your doubts as to the event of the revolution of South
America. They will succeed against Spain. But the dangerous enemy is
within their own breasts. Ignorance and superstition will chain their
minds and bodies under religious and military despotism. I do believe
it would be better for them to obtain freedom by degrees only; because
that would by degrees bring on light and information, and qualify them
to take charge of themselves understandingly; with more certainty,
if in the meantime, under so much control as may keep them at peace
with one another. Surely, it is our duty to wish them independence and
self-government, because they wish it themselves, and they have the
right, and we none, to choose for themselves; and I wish, moreover, that
our ideas may be erroneous, and theirs prove well founded. But these
are speculations, my friend, which we may as well deliver over to those
who are to see their development. We shall only be lookers on, from the
clouds above, as now we look down on the labors, the hurry and bustle of
the ants and bees. Perhaps in that super-mundane region, we may be amused
with seeing the fallacy of our own guesses, and even the nothingness of
those labors which have filled and agitated our own time here.
_En attendant_, with sincere affections to Mrs. Adams and yourself, I
salute you both cordially.
TO M. JULLIEN.
MONTICELLO, July 23, 1818.
SIR,--Your favor of March 30th, 1817, came to my hands on the 1st of
March, 1818. While the statement it contained of the many instances
of your attention in sending to me your different writings was truly
flattering, it was equally mortifying to perceive that two only of
the eight it enumerates, had ever come to my hands; and that both of
my acknowledgments of these had miscarried also. Your first favor of
November 5th, 1809, was received by me on the 6th of May, 1810, and was
answered on the 15th of July of the same year, with an acknowledgment
of the receipt of your "_Essai general d'education physique morale, et
intellectuelle,_" and of the high sense I entertained of its utility.
I do not recollect through what channel I sent this answer, but have
little doubt that it was through the office of our Secretary of State,
and our minister then at the court of France.
In a letter from Mr. E. I. Dupont of August 11, 1817, I received the
favor of your "_Esquisse d'un ouvrage sur l'education comparée,_" which
he said had been received by his father a few days before his death;
and on the 9th of September, 1817, I answered his letter, in which was
the following paragraph: "I duly received the pamphlet of M. Jullien on
Education, to whom I had been indebted some years before for a valuable
work on the same subject. Of this I expressed to him my high estimation in
a letter of thanks, which I trust he received. The present pamphlet is an
additional proof of his useful assiduities on this interesting subject,
which, if the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as
we fondly hope and believe, is to be the chief instrument in effecting
it." I hoped that Mr. E. I. Dupont, in acknowledging to you the receipt
of your letter to his father, would be the channel of conveying to you
my thanks, as he was to me of the work for which they were rendered. Be
assured, Sir, that not another scrip, either written or printed, ever came
to me from you; and that I was incapable of omitting the acknowledgments
they called for, and of the neglect which you have had so much reason
to impute to me. I know well the uncertainty of transmissions across the
Atlantic, but never before experienced such a train of them as has taken
place in your favors and my acknowledgments of them. You will perceive
that the letter I am now answering was eleven months on its passage to
me.
The distance between the scenes of action of General Kosciusko and myself,
during our revolutionary war,--his in the military, mine in the civil
department,--was such, that I could give no particulars of the part he
acted in that war. But immediately on the receipt of your letter, I wrote
to General Armstrong, who had been his companion in arms, and an aid to
General Gates, with whom General Kosciusko mostly served, and requested
him to give me all the details within his knowledge; informing him for
whom, and for what purpose they were asked. I received, two days ago
only, the paper of which the enclosed is a copy, and copied by myself,
because the original is in such a handwriting as I am confident no
foreigner could ever decypher. However heavily pressed by the hand of
age, and unequal to the duties of punctual correspondence, of which my
friends generally would have a right to complain, if the cause depended
on myself, I am happy to find that in that with yourself there has
been no ground of reproach. Least of all things could I have omitted
any researches within my power which might do justice to the memory of
General Kosciusko, the brave auxiliary of my country in its struggle for
liberty, and, from the year 1797, when our particular acquaintance began,
my most intimate and much beloved friend. On his last departure from the
United States in 1798, he left in my hands an instrument appropriating
after his death all the property he had in our public funds, the price
of his military services here, to the education and emancipation of as
many of the children of bondage in this country as it should be adequate
to. I am now too old to undertake a business _de si longue haleine_;
but I am taking measures to place it in such hands as will ensure a
faithful discharge of the philanthropic intentions of the donor. I learn
with pleasure your continued efforts for the instruction of the future
generations of men, and, believing it the only means of effectuating
their rights, I wish them all possible success, and to yourself the
eternal gratitude of those who will feel their benefits, and beg leave
to add the assurance of my high esteem and respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, November 13, 1818.
The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which your
letter of October the 20th had given me ominous foreboding. Tried myself
in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection
which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost,
what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same
trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are
the only medicine. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open
afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my
tears with yours, will I say a word more where words are vain, but that
it is of some comfort to us both, that the term is not very distant, at
which we are to deposit in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering
bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends
we have loved and lost, and whom we shall still love and never lose
again. God bless you and support you under your heavy affliction.
TO ROBERT WALSH.
MONTICELLO, December 4, 1818.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of November the 8th has been some time received; but
it is in my power to give little satisfaction as to its inquiries. Dr.
Franklin had many political enemies, as every character must, which,
with decision enough to have opinions, has energy and talent to give
them effect on the feelings of the adversary opinion. These enmities
were chiefly in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In the former, they were
merely of the proprietary party. In the latter, they did not commence
till the Revolution, and then sprung chiefly from personal animosities,
which spreading by little and little, became at length of some extent.
Dr. Lee was his principal calumniator, a man of much malignity, who,
besides enlisting his whole family in the same hostility, was enabled,
as the agent of Massachusetts with the British government, to infuse it
into that State with considerable effect. Mr. Izard, the Doctor's enemy
also, but from a pecuniary transaction, never countenanced these charges
against him. Mr. Jay, Silas Deane, Mr. Laurens, his colleagues also, ever
maintained towards him unlimited confidence and respect. That he would
have waived the formal recognition of our independence, I never heard on
any authority worthy notice. As to the fisheries, England was urgent to
retain them exclusively, France neutral, and I believe, that had they been
ultimately made a _sine quâ non_, our commissioners (Mr. Adams excepted)
would have relinquished them, rather than have broken off the treaty. To
Mr. Adams' perseverance alone, on that point, I have always understood
we were indebted for their reservation. As to the charge of subservience
to France, besides the evidence of his friendly colleagues before named,
two years of my own service with him at Paris, daily visits, and the
most friendly and confidential conversation, convince me it had not a
shadow of foundation. He possessed the confidence of that government in
the highest degree, insomuch, that it may truly be said, that they were
more under his influence, than he under theirs. The fact is, that his
temper was so amiable and conciliatory, his conduct so rational, never
urging impossibilities, or even things unreasonably inconvenient to them,
in short, so moderate and attentive to their difficulties, as well as
our own, that what his enemies called subserviency, I saw was only that
reasonable disposition, which, sensible that advantages are not all to
be on one side, yielding what is just and liberal, is the more certain
of obtaining liberality and justice. Mutual confidence produces, of
course, mutual influence, and this was all which subsisted between Dr.
Franklin and the government of France.
I state a few anecdotes of Dr. Franklin, within my own knowledge, too
much in detail for the scale of Delaplaine's work, but which may find _a
cadre_ in some of the more particular views you contemplate. My health is
in a great measure restored, and our family join with me in affectionate
recollections and assurances of respect.
TO M. DE NEUVILLE.
MONTICELLO, December 13, 1818.
I thank your Excellency for the notice with which your letters favor me,
of the liberation of France from the occupation of the allied powers. To
no one, not a native, will it give more pleasure. In the desolation of
Europe, to gratify the atrocious caprices of Bonaparte, France sinned
much; but she has suffered more than retaliation. Once relieved from
the incubus of her late oppression, she will rise like a giant from
her slumbers. Her soil and climate, her arts and eminent sciences, her
central position and free constitution, will soon make her greater than
she ever was. And I am a false prophet, if she does not at some future
day, remind of her sufferings those who have inflicted them the most
eagerly. I hope, however, she will be quiet for the present, and risk
no new troubles. Her constitution, as now amended, gives as much of
self-government as perhaps she can yet bear, and will give more, when
the habits of order shall have prepared her to receive more. Besides the
gratitude which every American owes her, as our sole ally during the
war of independence, I am additionally affectioned by the friendships
I contracted there, by the good dispositions I witnessed, and by the
courtesies I received.
I rejoice, as a moralist, at the prospect of a reduction of the duties
on wine, by our national legislature. It is an error to view a tax on
that liquor as merely a tax on the rich. It is a prohibition of its use
to the middling class of our citizens, and a condemnation of them to
the poison of whiskey, which is desolating their houses. No nation is
drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine
substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the
only antidote to the bane of whiskey. Fix but the duty at the rate of
other merchandise, and we can drink wine here as cheap as we do grog; and
who will not prefer it? Its extended use will carry health and comfort
to a much enlarged circle. Every one in easy circumstances (as the bulk
of our citizens are) will prefer it to the poison to which they are now
driven by their government. And the treasury itself will find that a
penny a piece from a dozen, is more than a groat from a single one. This
reformation, however, will require time. Our merchants know nothing of
the infinite variety of cheap and good wines to be had in Europe; and
particularly in France, in Italy, and the Græcian islands; as they know
little also, of the variety of excellent manufactures and comforts to
be had anywhere out of England. Nor will these things be known, nor of
course called for here, until the native merchants of those countries,
to whom they are known, shall bring them forward, exhibit and vend them
at the moderate profits they can afford. This alone will procure them
familiarity with us, and the preference they merit in competition with
corresponding articles now in use.
Our family renew with pleasure their recollections of your kind visit
to Monticello, and join me in tendering sincere assurances of the
gratification it afforded us, and of our great esteem and respectful
consideration.
TO NATHANIEL MACON, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 12, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--The problem you had wished to propose to me was one which
I could not have solved; for I knew nothing of the facts. I read no
newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for
they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. I feel a
much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand
years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but
of the heroes of Troy, of the wars of Lacedæmon and Athens, of Pompey and
Cæsar, and of Augustus too, the Bonaparte and parricide scoundrel of that
day. I have had, and still have, such entire confidence in the late and
present Presidents, that I willingly put both soul and body into their
pockets. While such men as yourself and your worthy colleagues of the
legislature, and such characters as compose the executive administration,
are watching for us all, I slumber without fear, and review in my dreams
the visions of antiquity. There is, indeed, one evil which awakens me
at times, because it jostles me at every turn. It is that we have now no
measure of value. I am asked eighteen dollars for a yard of broadcloth,
which, when we had dollars, I used to get for eighteen shillings; from
this I can only understand that a dollar is now worth but two inches of
broadcloth, but broadcloth is no standard of measure or value. I do not
know, therefore, whereabouts I stand in the scale of property, nor what
to ask, or what to give for it. I saw, indeed, the like machinery in
action in the years '80 and '81, and without dissatisfaction; because in
wearing out, it was working out our salvation. But I see nothing in this
renewal of the game of "Robin's alive" but a general demoralization of
the nation, a filching from industry its honest earnings, wherewith to
build up palaces, and raise gambling stock for swindlers and shavers, who
are too close to their career of piracies by fraudulent bankruptcies.
My dependence for a remedy, however, is with the wisdom which grows
with time and suffering. Whether the succeeding generation is to be more
virtuous than their predecessors, I cannot say; but I am sure they will
have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that honesty is
the first chapter in the book of wisdom. I have made a great exertion to
write you thus much; my antipathy to taking up a pen being so intense
that I have never given you a stronger proof, than in the effort of
writing a letter, how much I value you, and of the superlative respect
and friendship with which I salute you.
TO MR. ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, March 21, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--I am indebted to you for Mr. Bowditch's very learned
mathematical papers, the calculations of which are not for every reader,
although their results are readily enough understood. One of these
impairs the confidence I had reposed in La Place's demonstration, that
the eccentricities of the planets of our system could oscillate only
within narrow limits, and therefore could authorize no inference that
the system must, by its own laws, come one day to an end. This would
have left the question one of infinitude, at both ends of the line of
time, clear of physical authority.
Mr. Pickering's pamphlet on the pronunciation of the Greek, for which I
am indebted to you also, I have read with great pleasure. Early in life,
the idea occurred to me that the people now inhabiting the ancient seats
of the Greeks and Romans, although their languages in the intermediate
ages had suffered great changes, and especially in the declension of
their nouns, and in the terminations of their words generally, yet
having preserved the body of the word radically the same, so they would
preserve more of its pronunciation. That at least it was probable that
a pronunciation, handed down by tradition, would retain, as the words
themselves do, more of the original than that of any other people whose
language has no affinity to that original. For this reason I learnt,
and have used the Italian pronunciation of the Latin. But that of the
modern Greeks I had no opportunity of learning until I went to Paris.
There I became acquainted with two learned Greeks, Count Carberri and
Mr. Paradise, and with a lady, a native Greek, the daughter of Baron de
Tott, who did not understand the ancient language. Carberri and Paradise
spoke it. From these instructors I learnt the modern pronunciation,
and in _general_ trusted to its orthodoxy. I say, _in general_, because
sound being more fugitive than the written letter, we must, after such
a lapse of time, presume in it some degeneracies, as we see there are
in the written words. We may not, indeed, be able to put our finger on
them confidently, yet neither are they entirely beyond the reach of all
indication. For example, in a language so remarkable for the euphony of
its sounds, if that euphony is preserved in particular combinations of
its letters, by an adherence to the powers ordinarily ascribed to them,
and is destroyed by a change of these powers, and the sound of the word
thereby rendered harsh, inharmonious, and inidiomatical, here we may
presume some degeneracy has taken place. While, therefore, I gave in
to the modern pronunciation generally, I have presumed, as an instance
of degeneracy, their ascribing the same sound to the six letters, or
combinations of letters, ε, ι, υ, ει, οι, υι, to all of which they give
the sound of our double _e_ in the word _meet_. This useless equivalence
of three vowels and three diphthongs, did not probably exist among the
ancient Greeks; and the less probably as, while this single sound, _ee_,
is overcharged by so many different representative characters, the sounds
we usually give to these characters and combinations would be left without
any representative signs. This would imply either that they had not these
sounds in their language, or no signs for their expression. Probability
appears to me, therefore, against the practice of the modern Greeks of
giving the same sound to all these different representatives, and to be
in favor of that of foreign nations, who, adopting the Roman characters,
have assimilated to them, in a considerable degree, the powers of the
corresponding Greek letters. I have, accordingly, excepted this in my
adoption of the modern pronunciation. I have been more doubtful in the
use of the αυ, ευ, ηυ, ωυ, sounding the υ, upsilon, as our _f_ or _v_,
because I find traces of that power of υ, or of _v_, in some modern
languages. To go no further than our own, we have it in _laugh_, _cough_,
_trough_, _enough_. The county of Louisa, adjacent to that in which I
live, was, when I was a boy, universally pronounced Lovisa. That it is
not the _gh_ which gives the sound of _f_ or _v_, in these words, is
proved by the orthography of _plough_, _trough_, _thought_, _fraught_,
_caught_. The modern Greeks themselves, too, giving up υ, upsilon, in
ordinary, the sound of our _ee_, strengthens the presumption that its
anomalous sound of _f_ or _v_, is a corruption. The same may be inferred
from the cacophony of ελαφνε (elavne) for ελαυνε, (elawne,) Αχιλλεφς
(Achillefs) for Αχιλλευς, (Achilleise,) εφς (eves) for εϋς, (eeuse,)
οφκ (ovk) for ouk, (ouk,) ωφτος (ovetos) for ωϋτος, (o-u-tos,) Ζεφς (zevs)
for Ζευς (zese,) of which all nations have made their Jupiter; and the
uselessness of the υ in ευφωνια which would otherwise have been spelt
εφωνια. I therefore except this also from what I consider as approvable
pronunciation.
Against reading Greek by accent, instead of quantity, as Mr. Ciceitira
proposes, I raise both my hands. What becomes of the sublime measure of
Homer, the full sounding rhythm of Demosthenes, if, abandoning quantity,
you chop it up by accent? What ear can hesitate in its choice between
the two following rhythms?
"Tὸν, δ' απαμειβὸμενος προσεφὴ πόδας ωκὺς Αχιλλευς,
and,
Τον, δ' απαμειβομενός προσεφὴ ποδας ώκυς Αχίλλευς,"
the latter noted according to prosody, the former by accent, and
dislocating our teeth in its utterance; every syllable of it, except the
first and last, being pronounced against quantity. And what becomes of
the art of prosody? Is that perfect coincidence of its rules with the
structure of their verse, merely accidental? or was it of design, and
yet for no use.
On the whole, I rejoice that this subject is taken up among us, and that
it is in so able hands as those of Mr. Pickering. Should he ultimately
establish the modern pronunciation of the letters without any exception,
I shall think it a great step gained, and giving up my exceptions,
shall willingly rally to him; and as he has promised us another paper
on the question whether we shall read by quantity or by accent, I can
confidently trust it to the correctness of his learning and judgment.
Of the origin of accentuation, I have never seen satisfactory proofs.
But I have generally supposed the accents were intended to direct the
inflections and modulations of the voice; but not to affect the quantity
of the syllables. You did not expect, I am sure, to draw on yourself so
long a disquisition on letters and sounds, nor did I intend it, but the
subject run before me, and yet I have dropped much of it by the way.
I am delighted with your high approbation of Mr. Tracy's book. The evils
of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed, until our citizens
are generally and radically instructed in their cause and consequences,
and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of
speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then we must be
content to return, _quod hoc_, to the savage state, to recur to barter
in the exchange of our property, for want of a stable, common measure of
value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the
Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor,
passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebankers. If
I had your permission to put your letter into the hands of the editor,
(Milligan,) with or without any verbal alterations you might choose, it
would ensure the general circulation, which my prospectus and prefatory
letter will less effectually recommend. There is nothing in the book of
mine but these two articles, and the note on taxation in page 202. I never
knew who the translator was; but I thought him some one who understood
neither French nor English; and probably a Caledonian, from the number
of Scotticisms I found in his MS. The innumerable corrections in that,
cost me more labor than would have done a translation of the whole _de
novo_; and made at last but an inelegant although faithful version of
the sense of the author. _Dios guarde á V. S. muchos años._
TO DOCTOR VINE UTLEY.
MONTICELLO, March 21, 1819.
SIR,--Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant;
and the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled
me not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied
it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like
other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my
own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little
animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the
vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double, however, the
Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but
halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I
cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and
cider are my table drinks, and my breakfast, like that also of my friend,
is of tea and coffee. I have been blest with organs of digestion which
accept and concoct, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate chooses
to consign to them, and I have not yet lost a tooth by age. I was a hard
student until I entered on the business of life, the duties of which
leave no idle time to those disposed to fulfil them; and now, retired,
and at the age of seventy-six, I am again a hard student. Indeed, my
fondness for reading and study revolts me from the drudgery of letter
writing. And a stiff wrist, the consequence of an early dislocation, makes
writing both slow and painful. I am not so regular in my sleep as the
Doctor says he was, devoting to it from five to eight hours, according
as my company or the book I am reading interests me; and I never go to
bed without an hour, or half hour's previous reading of something moral,
whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to
bed early or late, I rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but
not necessarily in the day, unless in reading small print. My hearing is
distinct in particular conversation, but confused when several voices
cross each other, which unfits me for the society of the table. I have
been more fortunate than my friend in the article of health. So free
from catarrhs that I have not had one, (in the breast, I mean) on an
average of eight or ten years through life. I ascribe this exemption
partly to the habit of bathing my feet in cold water every morning, for
sixty years past. A fever of more than twenty-four hours I have not had
above two or three times in my life. A periodical headache has afflicted
me occasionally, once, perhaps, in six or eight years, for two or three
weeks at a time, which seems now to have left me; and except on a late
occasion of indisposition, I enjoy good health; too feeble, indeed, to
walk much, but riding without fatigue six or eight miles a day, and
sometimes thirty or forty. I may end these egotisms, therefore, as I
began, by saying that my life has been so much like that of other people,
that I might say with Horace, to every one "_nomine mutato, narratur
fabula de te_." I must not end, however, without due thanks for the kind
sentiments of regard you are so good as to express towards myself; and
with my acknowledgments for these, be pleased to accept the assurances
of my respect and esteem.
TO MR. SPAFFORD.
MONTICELLO, May 11, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--The interest on the late derangement of my health which was so
kindly expressed by many, could not but be gratifying to me, as much as
it manifested a sentiment that I had not been merely an useless cypher
of society. Yet a decline of health at the age of 76, was naturally to
be expected, and is a warning of an event which cannot be distant, and
whose approach I contemplate with little concern; for indeed, in no
circumstance has nature been kinder to us, than in the soft gradations
by which she prepares us to part willingly with what we are not destined
always to retain. First one faculty is withdrawn and then another, sight,
hearing, memory, affections, and friends, filched one by one, till we are
left among strangers, the mere monuments of times, facts, and specimens
of antiquity for the observation of the curious.
To your request of materials for writing my life, I know not what to
say, although I have been obliged to say something to several preceding
applications of the same kind. One answer indeed is obvious, that I
am by decay of memory, aversion to labor, and cares more suited to my
situation, unequal to such a task. Of the public transactions in which
I have borne a part, I have kept no narrative with a view of history. A
life of constant action leaves no time for recording. Always thinking
of what is next to be done, what has been done is dismissed, and soon
obliterated from the memory. I cannot be insensible to the partiality
which has induced several persons to think my life worthy of remembrance.
And towards none more than yourself, who give me so much credit more than
I am entitled to, as to what has been effected for the safeguard of our
republican constitution. Numerous and able coadjutors have participated
in these efforts, and merit equal notice. My life, in fact, has been
so much like that of others, that their history is my history, with
a mere difference of feature. The only valuable materials for history
which I possessed, were the pamphlets of the day, carefully collected
and preserved; but these past on to Congress with my library, and are
to be found in their depository. Except the Notes on Virginia, I never
wrote anything but acts of office, of which I rarely kept a copy. These
will all be found in the journals and gazettes of the times. There was
a book published in England about 1801, or soon after, entitled "Public
Characters," in which was given a sketch of my history to that period. I
never knew, nor could conjecture by whom this was written; but certainly
by some one pretty intimately acquainted with myself and my connections.
There were a few inconsiderable errors in it, but in general it was
correct. Delaplaine, in his Repository, has also given some outlines on
the same subject; he sets out indeed with an error as to the county of
my birth. Chesterfield, which he states as such, was the residence of my
grandfather and remoter ancestors, but Albemarle was that of my father,
and of my own birth and residence. Excepting this error, I remark no other
but in his ascriptions of more merit than I have deserved. Girardin's
History of Virginia, too, gives many particulars on the same subject,
which are correct. These publications furnish all the details of facts
and dates which can interest anybody, and more than I could now furnish
myself from a decayed memory, or any notes I retain. While, therefore,
I feel just acknowledgments for the partial selection of a subject for
your employment, I am persuaded you will perceive there is too little
new and worthy of public notice to devote to it a time which may be so
much more usefully employed; and with a due sense of the partiality of
your friendship, I salute you with assurances of the greatest esteem
and respect.
TO S. A. WELLS, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, May 12, 1819.
SIR,--An absence of some time at an occasional and distant residence
must apologize for the delay in acknowledging the receipt of your favor
of April 12th. And candor obliges me to add that it has been somewhat
extended by an aversion to writing, as well as to calls on my memory for
facts so much obliterated from it by time as to lessen my confidence in
the traces which seem to remain. One of the inquiries in your letter,
however, may be answered without an appeal to the memory. It is that
respecting the question whether committees of correspondence originated
in Virginia or Massachusetts? On which you suppose me to have claimed it
for Virginia. But certainly I have never made such a claim. The idea, I
suppose, has been taken up from what is said in Wirt's history of Mr.
Henry, p. 87, and from an inexact attention to its precise terms. It
is there said "this house [of burgesses of Virginia] had the merit of
originating that powerful engine of resistance, corresponding committees
_between the legislatures of the different colonies_." That the fact as
here expressed is true, your letter bears witness when it says that the
resolutions of Virginia for this purpose were transmitted to the speakers
of the different Assemblies, and by that of Massachusetts was laid at
the next session before that body, who appointed a committee for the
specified object: adding, "thus in Massachusetts there were two committees
of correspondence, one chosen by the people, the other appointed by
the House of Assembly; in the former, Massachusetts preceded Virginia;
in the latter, Virginia preceded Massachusetts." To the origination of
committees for the interior correspondence between the counties and towns
of a State, I know of no claim on the part of Virginia; but certainly
none was ever made by myself. I perceive, however, one error into
which memory had led me. Our committee for national correspondence was
appointed in March, '73, and I well remember that going to Williamsburg
in the month of June following, Peyton Randolph, our chairman, told me
that messengers, bearing despatches between the two States, had crossed
each other by the way; that of Virginia carrying our propositions for a
committee of national correspondence, and that of Massachusetts bringing,
as my memory suggested, a similar proposition. But here I must have
misremembered; and the resolutions brought us from Massachusetts were
probably those you mention of the town meeting of Boston, on the motion
of Mr. Samuel Adams, appointing a committee "to state the rights of the
colonists, and of that province in particular, and the infringements
of them, to communicate them to the several towns, as the sense of the
town of Boston, and to request of each town a free communication of its
sentiments on this subject"? I suppose, therefore, that these resolutions
were not received, as you think, while the House of Burgesses was in
session in March, 1773; but a few days after we rose, and were probably
what was sent by the messenger who crossed ours by the way. They may,
however, have been still different. I must therefore have been mistaken
in supposing and stating to Mr. Wirt, that the proposition of a committee
for national correspondence was nearly simultaneous in Virginia and
Massachusetts.
A similar misapprehension of another passage in Mr. Wirt's book, for
which I am also quoted, has produced a similar reclamation of the part of
Massachusetts by some of her most distinguished and estimable citizens.
I had been applied to by Mr. Wirt for such facts respecting Mr. Henry,
as my intimacy with him, and participation in the transactions of the
day, might have placed within my knowledge. I accordingly committed them
to paper, and Virginia being the theatre of his action, was the only
subject within my contemplation, while speaking of him. Of the resolutions
and measures here, in which he had the acknowledged lead, I used the
expression that "Mr. Henry certainly gave the first impulse to the ball
of revolution." [Wirt, p. 41.] The expression is indeed general, and in
all its extension would comprehend all the sister States. But indulgent
construction would restrain it, as was really meant, to the subject
matter under contemplation, which was Virginia alone; according to the
rule of the lawyers, and a fair canon of general criticism, that every
expression should be construed _secundum subjectam materiem_. Where the
first attack was made, there must have been of course, the first act
of resistance, and that was of Massachusetts. Our first overt act of
war was Mr. Henry's embodying a force of militia from several counties,
regularly armed and organized, marching them in military array, and
making reprisal on the King's treasury at the seat of government for
the public powder taken away by his Governor. This was on the last days
of April, 1775. Your formal battle of Lexington was ten or twelve days
before that, which greatly overshadowed in importance, as it preceded
in time our little affray, which merely amounted to a levying of arms
against the King, and very possibly you had had military affrays before
the regular battle of Lexington.
These explanations will, I hope, assure you, Sir, that so far as either
facts or opinions have been truly quoted from me, they have never been
meant to intercept the just fame of Massachusetts, for the promptitude
and perseverance of her early resistance. We willingly cede to her the
laud of having been (although not exclusively) "the cradle of sound
principles," and if some of us believe she has deflected from them in
her course, we retain full confidence in her ultimate return to them.
I will now proceed to your quotation from Mr. Galloway's statements
of what passed in Congress on their declaration of independence, in
which statement there is not one word of truth, and where, bearing some
resemblance to truth, it is an entire perversion of it. I do not charge
this on Mr. Galloway himself; his desertion having taken place long
before these measures, he doubtless received his information from some of
the loyal friends whom he left behind him. But as yourself, as well as
others, appear embarrassed by inconsistent accounts of the proceedings
on that memorable occasion, and as those who have endeavored to restore
the truth have themselves committed some errors, I will give you some
extracts from a written document on that subject, for the truth of
which I pledge myself to heaven and earth; having, while the question
of independence was under consideration before Congress, taken written
notes, in my seat, of what was passing, and reduced them to form on
the final conclusion. I have now before me that paper, from which the
following are extracts:
"On Friday the 7th of June, 1776, the delegates from Virginia moved,
in obedience to instructions from their constituents, that the Congress
should declare that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be,
free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance
to the British crown, and that all political connection between them
and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be totally dissolved;
that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance
of foreign powers, and a confederation be formed to bind the colonies
more closely together. The house being obliged to attend at that time to
some other business, the proposition was referred to the next day, when
the members were ordered to attend punctually at ten o'clock. Saturday,
June 8th, they proceeded to take it into consideration, and referred
it to a committee of the whole, into which they immediately resolved
themselves, and passed that day and Monday the 10th in debating on the
subject.
"It appearing in the course of these debates, that the colonies of New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina
were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but that they were
fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait awhile
for them, and to postpone the final decision to July 1st. But that this
might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed
to prepare a Declaration of Independence. The committee were J. Adams,
Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston and myself. This was
reported to the House on Friday the 28th of June, when it was read and
ordered to lie on the table. On Monday the 1st of July the House resolved
itself into a committee of the whole, and resumed the consideration of
the original motion made by the delegates of Virginia, which being again
debated through the day, was carried in the affirmative by the votes of
New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey,
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. South Carolina and
Pennsylvania] voted against it. Delaware having but two members present,
they were divided. The delegates for New York declared they were for it
themselves, and were assured their constituents were for it; but that
their instructions having been drawn near a twelvemonth before, when
reconciliation was still the general object, they were enjoined by them
to do nothing which should impede that object. They therefore thought
themselves not justifiable in voting on either side, and asked leave to
withdraw from the question, which was given them. The Committee rose and
reported their resolution to the House. Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina,
then requested the determination might be put off to the next day, as
he believed his colleagues, though they disapproved of the resolution,
would then join in it for the sake of unanimity. The ultimate question
whether the House would agree to the resolution of the committee was
accordingly postponed to the next day, when it was again moved, and South
Carolina concurred in voting for it; in the meantime a third member had
come post from the Delaware counties, and turned the vote of that colony
in favor of the resolution. Members of a different sentiment attending
that morning from Pennsylvania also, their vote was changed; so that
the whole twelve colonies, who were authorized to vote at all, gave
their votes for it; and within a few days, [July 9th,] the convention of
New York approved of it, and thus supplied the void occasioned by the
withdrawing of their delegates from the vote." [Be careful to observe
that this vacillation and vote was on the original motion of the 7th of
June by the Virginia delegates, that Congress should declare the colonies
independent.]
"Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of
Independence, which has been reported and laid on the table the Friday
preceding, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole. The
pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms
with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason those passages
which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest
they give them offence. The debates having taken up the greater parts
of the 2d, 3d and 4th days of July, were, in the evening of the last,
closed. The declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the
House, and signed by every member present except Mr. Dickinson." So far
my notes.
Governor McKean, in his letter to McCorkle of July 16th, 1817, has
thrown some lights on the transactions of that day, but trusting to
his memory chiefly at an age when our memories are not to be trusted,
he has confounded two questions, and ascribed proceedings to one which
belonged to the other. These two questions were, 1. The Virginia motion
of June 7th to declare independence, and 2. The actual declaration, its
matter and form. Thus he states the question on the declaration itself
as decided on the 1st of July. But it was the Virginia motion which was
voted on that day in committee of the whole; South Carolina, as well as
Pennsylvania, then voting against it. But the ultimate decision in _the
House_ on the report of the committee being by request postponed to the
next morning, all the States voted for it, except New York, whose vote
was delayed for the reason before stated. It was not till the 2d of July
that the declaration itself was taken up, nor till the 4th that it was
decided; and it was signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson.
The subsequent signatures of members who were not then present, and some
of them not yet in office, is easily explained, if we observe who they
were; to wit, that they were of New York and Pennsylvania. New York did
not sign till the 15th, because it was not till the 9th, (five days after
the general signature,) that their convention authorized them to do so.
The convention of Pennsylvania, learning that it had been signed by a
minority only of their delegates, named a new delegation on the 20th,
leaving out Mr. Dickinson, who had refused to sign. Willing and Humphreys
who had withdrawn, reappointing the three members who had signed, Morris
who had not been present, and five new ones, to wit, Rush, Clymer, Smith,
Taylor and Ross; and Morris and the five new members were permitted to
sign, because it manifested the assent of their full delegation, and the
express will of their convention, which might have been doubted on the
former signature of a minority only. Why the signature of Thornton of
New Hampshire was permitted so late as the 4th of November, I cannot now
say; but undoubtedly for some particular reason which we should find to
have been good, had it been expressed. These were the only post-signers,
and you see, Sir, that there were solid reasons for receiving those of
New York and Pennsylvania, and that this circumstance in no wise affects
the faith of this declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights
of man.
With a view to correct errors of fact before they become inveterate by
repetition, I have stated what I find essentially material in my papers;
but with that brevity which the labor of writing constrains me to use.
On the fourth particular articles of inquiry in your letter, respecting
your grandfather, the venerable Samuel Adams, neither memory nor
memorandums enable me to give any information. I can say that he was
truly a great man, wise in council, fertile in resources, immovable in
his purposes, and had, I think, a greater share than any other member, in
advising and directing our measures, in the northern war especially. As a
speaker he could not be compared with his living colleague and namesake,
whose deep conceptions, nervous style, and undaunted firmness, made him
truly our bulwark in debate. But Mr. Samuel Adams, although not of fluent
elocution, was so rigorously logical, so clear in his views, abundant in
good sense, and master always of his subject, that he commanded the most
profound attention whenever he rose in an assembly by which the froth
of declamation was heard with the most sovereign contempt. I sincerely
rejoice that the record of his worth is to be undertaken by one so much
disposed as you will be to hand him down fairly to that posterity for
whose liberty and happiness he was so zealous a laborer.
With sentiments of sincere veneration for his memory, accept yourself
this tribute to it with the assurances of my great respect.
P. S. August 6th, 1822, since the date of this letter, to wit, this day,
August 6th, '22, I received the new publication of the secret Journals
of Congress, wherein is stated a resolution, July 19th, 1776, that the
declaration passed on the 4th be fairly engrossed on parchment, and when
engrossed, be signed by every member; and another of August 2d, that being
engrossed and compared at the table, was signed by the members. That is
to say the copy engrossed on parchment (for durability) was signed by the
members after being compared at the table with the original one, signed
on paper as before stated. I add this P. S. to the copy of my letter
to Mr. Wells, to prevent confounding the signature of the original with
that of the copy engrossed on parchment.
TO EZRA STYLES, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, June 25, 1819.
Your favor, Sir, of the 14th, has been duly received, and with it the
book you were so kind as to forward to me. For this mark of attention, be
pleased to accept my thanks. The science of the human mind is curious,
but is one on which I have not indulged myself in much speculation.
The times in which I have lived, and the scenes in which I have been
engaged, have required me to keep the mind too much in action to have
leisure to study minutely its laws of action. I am therefore little
qualified to give an opinion on the comparative worth of books on that
subject, and little disposed to do it on any book. Yours has brought
the science within a small compass, and that is the merit of the first
order; and especially with one to whom the drudgery of letter writing
often denies the leisure of reading a single page in a week. On looking
over the summary of the contents of your book, it does not seem likely
to bring into collision any of those sectarian differences which you
suppose may exist between us. In that branch of religion which regards
the moralities of life, and the duties of a social being, which teaches
us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to do good to all men, I am
sure that you and I do not differ. We probably differ in the dogmas of
theology, the foundation of all sectarianism, and on which no two sects
dream alike; for if they did they would then be of the same. You say
you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I
know. I am not a Jew, and therefore do not adopt their theology, which
supposes the God of infinite justice to punish the sins of the fathers
upon their children, unto the third and fourth generation; and the
benevolent and sublime reformer of that religion has told us only that
God is good and perfect, but has not defined him. I am, therefore, of his
theology, believing that we have neither words nor ideas adequate to that
definition. And if we could all, after this example, leave the subject as
undefinable, we should all be of one sect, doers of good, and eschewers
of evil. No doctrines of his lead to schism. It is the speculations of
crazy theologists which have made a Babel of a religion the most moral
and sublime ever preached to man, and calculated to heal, and not to
create differences. These religious animosities I impute to those who
call themselves his ministers, and who engraft their casuistries on the
stock of his simple precepts. I am sometimes more angry with them than
is authorized by the blessed charities which he preaches. To yourself
I pray the acceptance of my great respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, July 9, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--I am in debt to you for your letters of May the 21st, 27th,
and June the 22d. The first, delivered me by Mr. Greenwood, gave me the
gratification of his acquaintance; and a gratification it always is, to
be made acquainted with gentlemen of candor, worth, and information, as
I found Mr. Greenwood to be. That, on the subject of Mr. Samuel Adams
Wells, shall not be forgotten in time and place, when it can be used to
his advantage.
But what has attracted my peculiar notice, is the paper from Mecklenburg
county, of North Carolina, published in the Essex Register, which you
were so kind as to enclose in your last, of June the 22d. And you seem
to think it genuine. I believe it spurious. I deem it to be a very
unjustifiable quiz, like that of the volcano, so minutely related to us
as having broken out in North Carolina, some half a dozen years ago, in
that part of the country, and perhaps in that very county of Mecklenburg,
for I do not remember its precise locality. If this paper be really taken
from the Raleigh Register, as quoted, I wonder it should have escaped
Ritchie, who culls what is good from every paper, as the bee from every
flower; and the National Intelligencer, too, which is edited by a North
Carolinian; and that the fire should blaze out all at once in Essex,
one thousand miles from where the spark is said to have fallen. But if
really taken from the Raleigh Register, who is the narrator, and is the
name subscribed real, or is it as fictitious as the paper itself? It
appeals, too, to an original book, which is burnt, to Mr. Alexander,
who is dead, to a joint letter from Caswell, Hughes, and Hooper, all
dead, to a copy sent to the dead Caswell, and another sent to Doctor
Williamson, now probably dead, whose memory did not recollect, in the
history he has written of North Carolina, this gigantic step of its
county of Mecklenberg. Horry, too, is silent in his history of Marion,
whose scene of action was the country bordering on Mecklenburg. Ramsay,
Marshall, Jones, Girardin, Wirt, historians of the adjacent States,
all silent. When Mr. Henry's resolutions, far short of independence,
flew like lightning through every paper, and kindled both sides of the
Atlantic, this flaming declaration of the same date, of the independence
of Mecklenburg county, of North Carolina, absolving it from the British
allegiance, and abjuring all political connection with that nation,
although sent to Congress too, is never heard of. It is not known even
a twelvemonth after, when a similar proposition is first made in that
body. Armed with this bold example, would not you have addressed our
timid brethren in peals of thunder on their tardy fears? Would not every
advocate of independence have rung the glories of Mecklenberg county in
North Carolina, in the ears of the doubting Dickinson and others, who
hung so heavily on us? Yet the example of independent Mecklenberg county,
in North Carolina, was never once quoted. The paper speaks, too, of the
continued exertions of their delegation (Caswell, Hooper, Hughes) "in
the cause of liberty and independence." Now you remember as well as I
do, that we had not a greater tory in Congress than Hooper; that Hughes
was very wavering, sometimes firm, sometimes feeble, according as the
day was clear or cloudy; that Caswell, indeed, was a good whig, and kept
these gentlemen to the notch, while he was present; but that he left us
soon, and their line of conduct became then uncertain until Penn came,
who fixed Hughes and the vote of the State. I must not be understood as
suggesting any doubtfulness in the State of North Carolina. No State was
more fixed or forward. Nor do I affirm, positively, that this paper is
a fabrication; because the proof of a negative can only be presumptive.
But I shall believe it such until positive and solemn proof of its
authenticity be produced. And if the name of McKnitt be real, and not
a part of the fabrication, it needs a vindication by the production of
such proof. For the present, I must be an unbeliever in the apocryphal
gospel.
I am glad to learn that Mr. Ticknor has safely returned to his friends;
but should have been much more pleased had he accepted the Professorship
in our University, which we should have offered him in form. Mr. Bowditch,
too, refuses us; so fascinating is the _vinculum_ of the _dulce natale
solum_. Our wish is to procure natives, where they can be found, like
these gentlemen, of the first order of requirement in their respective
lines; but preferring foreigners of the first order to natives of the
second, we shall certainly have to go for several of our Professors, to
countries more advanced in science than we are.
I set out within three or four days for my other home, the distance
of which, and its cross mails, are great impediments to epistolary
communications. I shall remain there about two months; and there, here,
and everywhere, I am and shall always be, affectionately and respectfully
yours.
TO JOHN BRAZIER, THE AUTHOR OF THE REVIEW OF PICKERING ON GREEK
PRONUNCIATION.
POPLAR FOREST, August 24, 1819.
SIR,--The acknowledgment of your favor of July 15th, and thanks for the
Review which it covered of Mr. Pickering's Memoir on the Modern Greek,
have been delayed by a visit to an occasional but distant residence
from Monticello, and to an attack here of rheumatism which is just now
moderating. I had been much pleased with the memoir, and was much also
with your review of it. I have little hope indeed of the recovery of
the ancient pronunciation of that finest of human languages, but still
I rejoice at the attention the subject seems to excite with you, because
it is an evidence that our country begins to have a taste for something
more than merely as much Greek as will pass a candidate for clerical
ordination.
You ask my opinion on the extent to which classical learning should
be carried in our country. A sickly condition permits me to think, and
a rheumatic hand to write too briefly on this litigated question. The
utilities we derive from the remains of the Greek and Latin languages
are, first, as models of pure taste in writing. To these we are certainly
indebted for the national and chaste style of modern composition which
so much distinguishes the nations to whom these languages are familiar.
Without these models we should probably have continued the inflated
style of our northern ancestors, or the hyperbolical and vague one of
the east. Second. Among the values of classical learning, I estimate
the luxury of reading the Greek and Roman authors in all the beauties
of their originals. And why should not this innocent and elegant luxury
take its preëminent stand ahead of all those addressed merely to the
senses? I think myself more indebted to my father for this than for
all the other luxuries his cares and affections have placed within my
reach; and more now than when younger, and more susceptible of delights
from other sources. When the decays of age have enfeebled the useful
energies of the mind, the classic pages fill up the vacuum of _ennui_,
and become sweet composers to that rest of the grave into which we are
all sooner or later to descend. Third. A third value is in the stores
of real science deposited and transmitted us in these languages, to-wit:
in history, ethics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, natural history, &c.
But to whom are these things useful? Certainly not to all men. There
are conditions of life to which they must be forever estranged, and
there are epochs of life too, after which the endeavor to attain them
would be a great misemployment of time. Their acquisition should be the
occupation of our early years only, when the memory is susceptible of deep
and lasting impressions, and reason and judgment not yet strong enough
for abstract speculations. To the moralist they are valuable, because
they furnish ethical writings highly and justly esteemed: although in
my own opinion, the moderns are far advanced beyond them in this line
of science, the divine finds in the Greek language a translation of his
primary code, of more importance to him than the original because better
understood; and, in the same language, the newer code, with the doctrines
of the earliest fathers, who lived and wrote before the simple precepts
of the founder of this most benign and pure of all systems of morality
became frittered into subtleties and mysteries, and hidden under jargons
incomprehensible to the human mind. To these original sources he must
now, therefore, return, to recover the virgin purity of his religion.
The lawyer finds in the Latin language the system of civil law most
conformable with the principles of justice of any which has ever yet
been established among men, and from which much has been incorporated
into our own. The physician as good a code of his art as has been given
us to this day. Theories and systems of medicine, indeed, have been in
perpetual change from the days of the good Hippocrates to the days of the
good Rush, but which of them is the true one? the present, to be sure,
as long as it is the present, but to yield its place in turn to the next
novelty, which is then to become the true system, and is to mark the
vast advance of medicine since the days of Hippocrates. Our situation
is certainly benefited by the discovery of some new and very valuable
medicines; and substituting those for some of his with the treasure
of facts, and of sound observations recorded by him (mixed to be sure
with anilities of his day) and we shall have nearly the present sum of
the healing art. The statesman will find in these languages history,
politics, mathematics, ethics, eloquence, love of country, to which he
must add the sciences of his own day, for which of them should be unknown
to him? And all the sciences must recur to the classical languages for
the etymon, and sound understanding of their fundamental terms. For the
merchant I should not say that the languages are a necessary. Ethics,
mathematics, geography, political economy, history, seem to constitute
the immediate foundations of his calling. The agriculturist needs ethics,
mathematics, chemistry and natural philosophy. The mechanic the same.
To them the languages are but ornament and comfort. I know it is often
said there have been shining examples of men of great abilities in all
the businesses of life, without any other science than what they had
gathered from conversations and intercourse with the world. But who can
say what these men would not have been had they started in the science
on the shoulders of a Demosthenes or Cicero, of a Locke or Bacon, or
a Newton? To sum the whole, therefore, it may truly be said that the
classical languages are a solid basis for most, and an ornament to all
the sciences.
I am warned by my aching fingers to close this hasty sketch, and to place
here my last and fondest wishes for the advancement of our country in
the useful sciences and arts, and my assurances of respect and esteem
for the Reviewer of the Memoir on modern Greek.
TO JUDGE ROANE.
POPLAR FOREST, September 6, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--I had read in the Enquirer, and with great approbation,
the pieces signed Hampden, and have read them again with redoubled
approbation, in the copies you have been so kind as to send me. I
subscribe to every title of them. They contain the true principles of the
revolution of 1800, for that was as real a revolution in the principles
of our government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected indeed
by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument
of reform, the suffrage of the people. The nation declared its will by
dismissing functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another,
in the two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their
election. Over the judiciary department, the constitution had deprived
them of their control. That, therefore, has continued the reprobated
system, and although new matter has been occasionally incorporated into
the old, yet the leaven of the old mass seems to assimilate to itself
the new, and after twenty years' confirmation of the federated system
by the voice of the nation, declared through the medium of elections, we
find the judiciary on every occasion, still driving us into consolidation.
In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the
constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your
quotation from the Federalist, of an opinion that "the judiciary is the
last resort in relation _to the other departments_ of the government,
but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under
which the judiciary is derived." If this opinion be sound, then indeed
is our constitution a complete _felo de se_. For intending to establish
three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that they might check
and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to
one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of
the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent
of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment
it has provided is not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one
you combat, sent cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, not
belonging to the case often, but sought for out of it, as if to rally
the public opinion beforehand to their views, and to indicate the line
they are to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have
excited animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body entrusted
with impeachment. The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing
of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into
any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal
truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent,
is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the
people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence
can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently
independent of all but moral law. My construction of the constitution is
very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly
independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself
what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its
action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal.
I will explain myself by examples, which, having occurred while I was
in office, are better known to me, and the principles which governed them.
A legislature had passed the sedition law. The federal courts had
subjected certain individuals to its penalties of fine and imprisonment.
On coming into office, I released these individuals by the power of
pardon committed to executive discretion, which could never be more
properly exercised than where citizens were suffering without the
authority of law, or, which was equivalent, under a law unauthorized by
the constitution, and therefore null. In the case of Marbury and Madison,
the federal judges declared that commissions, signed and sealed by the
President, were valid, although not delivered. I deemed delivery essential
to complete a deed, which, as long as it remains in the hands of the
party, is as yet no need, it is in _posse_ only, but not in _esse_, and
I withheld delivery of the commissions. They cannot issue a mandamus
to the President or legislature, or to any of their officers.[3] When
the British treaty of ---- arrived, without any provision against the
impressment of our seamen, I determined not to ratify it. The Senate
thought I should ask their advice. I thought that would be a mockery of
them, when I was predetermined against following it, should they advise
its ratification. The constitution had made their advice necessary to
confirm a treaty, but not to reject it. This has been blamed by some;
but I have never doubted its soundness. In the cases of two persons,
_antenati_, under exactly similar circumstances, the federal court had
determined that one of them (Duane) was not a citizen; the House of
Representatives nevertheless determined that the other (Smith, of South
Carolina) was a citizen, and admitted him to his seat in their body.
Duane was a republican, and Smith a federalist, and these decisions were
made during the federal ascendancy.
These are examples of my position, that each of the three departments
has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the
constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided
for themselves under a similar question. But you intimate a wish that my
opinion should be known on this subject. No, dear Sir, I withdraw from all
contests of opinion, and resign everything cheerfully to the generation
now in place. They are wiser than we were, and their successors will be
wiser than they, from the progressive advance of science. Tranquillity
is the _summum bonum_ of age. I wish, therefore, to offend no man's
opinion, nor to draw disquieting animadversions on my own. While duty
required it, I met opposition with a firm and fearless step. But loving
mankind in my individual relations with them, I pray to be permitted to
depart in their peace; and like the superannuated soldier, "_quadragenis
stipendiis emeritis_," to hang my arms on the post. I have unwisely, I
fear, embarked in an enterprise of great public concern, but not to be
accomplished within my term, without their liberal and prompt support. A
severe illness the last year, and another from which I am just emerged,
admonish me that repetitions may be expected, against which a declining
frame cannot long bear up. I am anxious, therefore, to get our University
so far advanced as may encourage the public to persevere to its final
accomplishment. That secured, I shall sing my _nunc demittas_. I hope
your labors will be long continued in the spirit in which they have
always been exercised, in maintenance of those principles on which I
verily believe the future happiness of our country essentially depends.
I salute you with affectionate and great respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The constitution controlling the common law in this
particular.
TO MR. MOORE.
MONTICELLO, September 22, 1819.
I thank you, Sir, for the remarks on the pronunciation of the Greek
language which you have been so kind as to send me. I have read them with
pleasure, as I had the pamphlet of Mr. Pickering on the same subject.
This question has occupied long and learned inquiry, and cannot, as I
apprehend, be ever positively decided. Very early in my classical days,
I took up the idea that the ancient Greek language having been changed
by degrees into the modern, and the present race of that people having
received it by tradition, they had of course better pretensions to the
ancient pronunciation also, than any foreign nation could have. When at
Paris, I became acquainted with some learned Greeks, from whom I took
pains to learn the modern pronunciation. But I could not receive it
as genuine _in toto_. I could not believe that the ancient Greeks had
provided six different notations for the simple sound of ι, iota, and
left the five other sounds which we give to η, υ, ει, οι, υι, without any
characters of notation at all. I could not acknowledge the υ, upsillon,
as an equivalent to our _v_, as in Αχιλλευς, which they pronounce
Achillevs, nor the γ gamma, to our _y_, as in αλγε', which they pronounce
alye. I concluded, therefore, that as experience proves to us that the
pronunciation of all languages changes, in their descent through time,
that of the Greek must have done so also in some degree; and the more
probably, as the body of the words themselves had substantially changed,
and I presumed that the instances above mentioned might be classed with
the degeneracies of time; a presumption strengthened by their remarkable
cacophony. As to all the other letters, I have supposed we might yield
to their traditionary claim of a more orthodox pronunciation. Indeed,
they sound most of them as we do, and, where they differ, as in the β, δ,
χ, their sounds do not revolt us, nor impair the beauty of the language.
If we adhere to the Erasmian pronunciation, we must go to Italy for
it, as we must do for the most probably correct pronunciation of the
language of the Romans, because rejecting the modern, we must argue
that the ancient pronunciation was probably brought from Greece, with
the language itself; and, as Italy was the country to which it was
brought, and from which it emanated to other nations, we must presume
it better preserved there than with the nations copying from them, who
would be apt to affect its pronunciation with some of their own national
peculiarities. And in fact, we find that no two nations pronounce it
alike, although all pretend to the Erasmian pronunciation. But the whole
subject is conjectural, and allows therefore full and lawful scope to
the vagaries of the human mind. I am glad, however, to see the question
stirred here; because it may excite among our young countrymen a spirit
of inquiry and criticism, and lead them to more attention to this most
beautiful of all languages. And wishing that the salutary example you
have set may have this good effect, I salute you with great respect and
consideration.
TO MR. SHORT.
MONTICELLO, October 31, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 21st is received. My late illness, in which
you are so kind as to feel an interest, was produced by a spasmodic
stricture of the ilium, which came upon me on the 7th inst. The crisis
was short, passed over favorably on the fourth day, and I should soon
have been well but that a dose of calomel and jalap, in which were only
eight or nine grains of the former, brought on a salivation. Of this,
however, nothing now remains but a little soreness of the mouth. I have
been able to get on horseback for three or four days past.
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not
the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in
moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed,
has given us what was good of the stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas,
being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of
Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to
see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse,
vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as
himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has
been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because,
in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness
whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention.
These they fathered blasphemously on him whom they claimed as their
founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their
caricatures of his religion so justly excite. Of Socrates we have nothing
genuine but in the Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one of
his Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the mantle of
his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself complained.
Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disfiguring his work at times with
some Stoicisms, and affecting too much of antithesis and point, yet
giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and practical morality. But
the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own
country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the
rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from
the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond
from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime
morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is
lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws
for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities
we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character
of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of
imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems,[4] invented by
ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him,
is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully
devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped,
effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which
have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply
afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain
from the chaff of the historians of his life. I have sometimes thought
of translating Epictetus (for he has never been tolerably translated
into English) by adding the genuine doctrines of Epicurus from the
Syntagma of Gassendi, and an abstract from the Evangelists of whatever
has the stamp of the eloquence and fine imagination of Jesus. The last
I attempted too hastily some twelve or fifteen years ago. It was the
work of two or three nights only, at Washington, after getting through
the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day. But with
one foot in the grave, these are now idle projects for me. My business
is to beguile the wearisomeness of declining life, as I endeavor to do,
by the delights of classical reading and of mathematical truths, and by
the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and
fear.
I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of
our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you
are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that "that indulgence
which presents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be
avoided." Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension
of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything
around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind,
the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated
indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know, is one of his four
cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not
to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will
meet and arrest us at every turn of our road. Weigh this matter well;
brace yourself up; take a seat with Correa, and come and see the finest
portion of your country, which, if you have not forgotten, you still do
not know, because it is no longer the same as when you knew it. It will
add much to the happiness of my recovery to be able to receive Correa and
yourself, and prove the estimation in which I hold you both. Come, too,
and see our incipient University, which has advanced with great activity
this year. By the end of the next, we shall have elegant accommodations
for seven professors, and the year following the professors themselves.
No secondary character will be received among them. Either the ablest
which America or Europe can furnish, or none at all. They will give us
the selected society of a great city separated from the dissipations
and levities of its ephemeral insects.
I am glad the bust of Condorcet has been saved and so well placed. His
genius should be before us; while the lamentable, but singular act of
ingratitude which tarnished his latter days, may be thrown behind us.
I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus, somewhat
in the lapidary style, which I wrote some twenty years ago, a like one
of the philosophy of Jesus, of nearly the same age, is too long to be
copied. _Vale, et tibi persuade carissimum te esse mihi._
_Syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus._
_Physical._--The Universe eternal.
Its parts, great and small, interchangeable.
Matter and Void alone.
Motion inherent in matter which is weighty and declining.
Eternal circulation of the elements of bodies.
Gods, an order of beings next superior to man, enjoying in their sphere,
their own felicities; but not meddling with the concerns of the scale
of beings below them.
_Moral._--Happiness the aim of life.
Virtue the foundation of happiness.
Utility the test of virtue.
Pleasure active and In-do-lent.
In-do-lence is the absence of pain, the true felicity.
Active, consists in agreeable motion; it is not happiness, but the means
to produce it.
Thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity; eating the means
to obtain it.
The _summum bonum_ is to be not pained in body, nor troubled in mind.
_i. e._ In-do-lence of body, tranquillity of mind.
To procure tranquillity of mind we must avoid desire and fear, the two
principal diseases of the mind.
Man is a free agent.
Virtue consists in 1. Prudence. 2. Temperance. 3. Fortitude. 4. Justice.
To which are opposed, 1. Folly. 2. Desire. 3. Fear. 4. Deceit.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] _e. g._ The immaculate conception of Jesus, his
deification, the creation of the world by him, his
miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension,
his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity,
original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of
Hierarchy, &c.
TO J. ADAMS, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, November 7, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--Three long and dangerous illnesses within the last twelve
months, must apologize for my long silence towards you.
The paper bubble is then burst. This is what you and I, and every
reasoning man, seduced by no obliquity of mind or interest, have long
foreseen; yet its disastrous effects are not the less for having been
foreseen. We were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating
medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the
regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and
explode them at their will. Lands in this State cannot now be sold for
a year's rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect
a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a
general revolution of property in this State. Over our own paper and that
of other States coming among us, they have competent powers; over that of
the bank of the United States there is doubt, not here, but elsewhere.
That bank will probably conform voluntarily to such regulations as the
Legislature may prescribe for the others. If they do not, we must shut
their doors, and join the other States which deny the right of Congress
to establish banks, and solicit them to agree to some mode of settling
this constitutional question. They have themselves twice decided against
their right, and twice for it. Many of the States have been uniform in
denying it, and between such parties the Constitution has provided no
umpire. I do not know particularly the extent of this distress in the
other States; but southwardly and westwardly I believe all are involved
in it. God bless you, and preserve you many years.
TO COLONEL JOHN NICHOLAS.
MONTICELLO, November 10, 1819.
SIR,--Your letter, and the draught of a memorial proposed to be presented
to the Legislature, are duly received. With respect to impressions from
any differences of political opinion, whether major or minor, alluded
to in your letter, I have none. I left them all behind me on quitting
Washington, where alone the state of things had, till then, required
some attention to them. Nor was that the lightest part of the load I
was there disburthened of; and could I permit myself to believe that
with the change of circumstances a corresponding change had taken place
in the minds of those who differed from me, and that I now stand in the
peace and good will of my fellow-citizens generally, it would indeed be
a sweetening ingredient in the last dregs of my life. It is not then
from that source that my testimony may be scanty, but from a decaying
memory, illy retaining things of recent transaction, and scarcely with
any distinctness those of forty years back, the period to which your
memorial refers: general impressions of them remain, but details are
mostly obliterated.
Of the transfer of your corps from the general to the State line, and the
other facts in the memorial preceding my entrance on the administration
of the State government, June 2, 1779, I, of course, have no knowledge;
but public documents, as well as living witnesses, will probably supply
this. In 1780, I remember your appointment to a command in the militia
sent under General Stevens to the aid of the Carolinas, of which fact the
commission signed by myself is sufficient proof. But I have no particular
recollections which respect yourself personally in that service. Of what
took place during Arnold's invasion in the subsequent winter I have
more knowledge, because so much passed under my own eye, and I have
the benefit of some notes to aid my memory. In the short interval of
fifty-seven hours between our knowing they had entered James river and
their actual debarkation at Westover, we could get together but a small
body of militia, (my notes say of three hundred men only,) chiefly from
the city and its immediate vicinities. You were placed in the command
of these, and ordered to proceed to the neighborhood of the enemy, not
with any view to face them directly with so small a force, but to hang
on their skirts, and to check their march as much as could be done, to
give time for the more distant militia to assemble. The enemy were not
to be delayed, however, and were in Richmond in twenty-four hours from
their being formed on shore at Westover. The day before their arrival at
Richmond, I had sent my family to Tuckahoe, as the memorial states, at
which place I joined them about 1 o'clock of that night, having attended
late at Westham, to have the public stores and papers thrown across the
river. You came up to us at Tuckahoe the next morning, and accompanied
me, I think, to Britton's opposite Westham, to see about the further
safety of the arms and other property. Whether you stayed there to look
after them, or went with me to the heights of Manchester, and returned
thence to Britton's, I do not recollect. The enemy evacuated Richmond at
noon of the 5th of January, having remained there but twenty-three hours.
I returned to it in the morning of the 8th, they being still encamped
at Westover and Berkley, and yourself and corps at the Forest. They
re-embarked at 1 o'clock of the 10th. The particulars of your movements
down the river, to oppose their re-landing at different points, I do
not specifically recollect, but, as stated in the memorial, they are so
much in agreement with my general impressions, that I have no doubt of
their correctness, and know that your conduct from the first advance
of the enemy to his departure, was approved by myself and by others
generally. The rendezvous of the militia at the Tuckahoe bridge, and
your having the command of them, I think I also remember, but nothing
of their subsequent movements. The legislature had adjourned to meet at
Charlottesville, where, at the expiration of my second year, I declined
a re-election in the belief that a military man would be more likely to
render services adequate to the exigencies of the times. Of the subsequent
facts, therefore, stated in the memorial, I have no knowledge.
This, Sir, is the sum of the information I am able to give on the
subjects of your memorial, and if it may contribute to the purposes of
justice in your case, I shall be happy that in bearing testimony to the
truth, I shall have rendered you a just service. I return the memorial
and commission, as requested, and pray you to accept my respectful
salutations.
TO MR. RIVES.
MONTICELLO, November 28, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--The distresses of our country, produced first by the flood,
then by the ebb of bank paper, are such as cannot fail to engage the
interposition of the legislature. Many propositions will, of course, be
offered, from all of which something may probably be culled to make a
good whole. I explained to you my project, when I had the pleasure of
possessing you here; and I now send its outline in writing, as I believe
I promised you. Although preferable things will I hope be offered, yet
some twig of this may perhaps be thought worthy of being engrafted on
a better stock. But I send it with no particular object or request,
but to use it as you please. Suppress it, suggest it, sound opinions,
or anything else, at will, only keeping my name unmentioned, for which
purpose it is copied in another hand, being ever solicitous to avoid
all offence which is heavily felt, when retired from the bustle and
contentions of the world. If we suffer the moral of the present lesson
to pass away without improvement by the eternal suppression of bank
_paper_, then indeed is the condition of our country desperate, until
the slow advance of public instruction shall give to our functionaries
the wisdom of their station. _Vale, et tibi persuade carissimum te mihi
esse._
_Plan for reducing the circulating medium._
The plethory of circulating medium which raised the prices of everything
to several times their ordinary and standard value, in which state of
things many and heavy debts were contracted; and the sudden withdrawing
too great a proportion of that medium, and reduction of prices far below
that standard, constitute the disease under which we are now laboring,
and which must end in a general revolution of property, if some remedy
is not applied. That remedy is clearly a gradual reduction of the medium
to its standard level, that is to say, to the level which a metallic
medium will always find for itself, so as to be in equilibrio with that
of the nations with which we have commerce.
To effect this,
Let the whole of the present paper medium be suspended in its circulation
after a certain and not distant day.
Ascertain by proper inquiry the greatest sum of it which has at any one
time been in actual circulation.
Take a certain term of years for its gradual reduction, suppose it to be
five years; then let the solvent banks issue ⅚ of that amount in new
notes, to be attested by a public officer, as a security that neither
more or less is issued, and to be given out in exchange for the suspended
notes, and the surplus in discount.
Let ⅕th of these notes bear on their face that the bank will discharge
them with specie at the end of one year; another 5th at the end of two
years; a third 5th at the end of three years; and so of the 4th and
5th. They will be sure to be brought in at their respective periods of
redemption.
Make it a high offence to receive or pass within this State a note of
any other.
There is little doubt that our banks will agree readily to this operation;
if they refuse, declare their charters forfeited by their former
irregularities, and give summary process against them for the suspended
notes.
The Bank of the United States will probably concur also; if not, shut
their doors and join the other States in respectful, but firm applications
to Congress, to concur in constituting a tribunal (a special convention,
_e. g._) for settling amicably the question of their right to institute
a bank, and that also of the States to do the same.
A stay-law for the suspension of executions, and their discharge at five
annual instalments, should be accommodated to these measures.
Interdict forever, to both the State and national governments, the power
of establishing any paper bank; for without this interdiction, we shall
have the same ebbs and flows of medium, and the same revolutions of
property to go through every twenty or thirty years.
In this way the value of property, keeping pace nearly with the sum of
circulating medium, will descend gradually to its proper level, at the
rate of about ⅕ every year, the sacrifices of what shall be sold for
payment of the first instalments of debts will be moderate, and time will
be given for economy and industry to come in aid of those subsequent.
Certainly no nation ever before abandoned to the avarice and jugglings of
private individuals to regulate, according to their own interests, the
quantum of circulating medium for the nation, to inflate, by deluges of
paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property
at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which
might endanger a competition in purchase. Yet this is what has been
done, and will be done, unless stayed by the protecting hand of the
legislature. The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of
this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require
that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder
and spoliation desolate the country. It is believed that Harpies are
already hoarding their money to commence these scenes on the separation
of the legislature; and we know that lands have been already sold under
the hammer for less than a year's rent.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, December 10, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of November
the 23d. The banks, bankrupt law, manufactures, Spanish treaty, are
nothing. These are occurrences which, like waves in a storm, will pass
under the ship. But the Missouri question is a breaker on which we lose
the Missouri country by revolt, and what more, God only knows. From the
battle of Bunker's Hill to the treaty of Paris, we never had so ominous
a question. It even damps the joy with which I hear of your high health,
and welcomes to me the consequences of my want of it. I thank God that
I shall not live to witness its issue. _Sed hæc hactenus._
I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous letters
of Cicero. They certainly breathe the purest effusions of an exalted
patriot, while the parricide Cæsar is lost in odious contrast. When the
enthusiasm, however, kindled by Cicero's pen and principles, subsides
into cool reflection, I ask myself, what was that government which the
virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, and the ambition of Cæsar
to subvert? And if Cæsar had been as virtuous as he was daring and
sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power,
have done to lead his fellow citizens into good government? I do not
say to _restore it_, because they never had it, from the rape of the
Sabines to the ravages of the Cæsars. If their people indeed had been,
like ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer
would be obvious. "Restore independence to all your foreign conquests,
relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as
a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will." But steeped in
corruption, vice and venality, as the whole nation was, (and nobody had
done more than Cæsar to corrupt it,) what could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus
have done, had it been referred to them to establish a good government
for their country? They had no ideas of government themselves, but of
their degenerate Senate, nor the people of liberty, but of the factious
opposition of their Tribunes. They had afterwards their Tituses, their
Trajans and Antoninuses, who had the will to make them happy, and the
power to mould their government into a good and permanent form. But
it would seem as if they could not see their way clearly to do it. No
government can continue good, but under the control of the people; and
their people were so demoralized and depraved, as to be incapable of
exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken
up _ab incunabulis_. Their minds were to be informed by education what is
right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue, and deterred
from those of vice by the dread of punishments, proportioned indeed,
but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth as the only safe guide,
and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after
another, in endless succession. These are the inculcations necessary
to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good
government. But this would have been an operation of a generation or
two, at least, within which period would have succeeded many Neros and
Commoduses, who would have quashed the whole process. I confess then, I
can neither see what Cicero, Cato, and Brutus, united and uncontrolled,
could have devised to lead their people into good government, nor how
this enigma can be solved, nor how further shown why it has been the
fate of that delightful country never to have known, to this day, and
through a course of five and twenty hundred years, the history of which
we possess, one single day of free and rational government. Your intimacy
with their history, ancient, middle and modern, your familiarity with
the improvements in the science of government at this time, will enable
you, if any body, to go back with our principles and opinions to the
times of Cicero, Cato and Brutus, and tell us by what process these great
and virtuous men could have led so unenlightened and vitiated a people
into freedom and good government, _et eris mihi magnus Apollo. Cura ut
valeas, et tibi persuadeas carissimum te mihi esse._
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
MONTEZILLO, December 21, 1819.
DEAR SIR,--I must answer your great question of the 10th in the words of
Dalembert to his correspondent, who asked him what is matter--"_Je vous
avoue je ne sçais rien_." In some part of my life I record a great work
of a Scotchman on the court of Augustus, in which, with much learning,
hard study, and fatiguing labor, he undertook to prove that had Brutus
and Cassius been conqueror, they would have restored virtue and liberty
to Rome.
_Mais je n'en crois rien._ Have you ever found in history one single
example of a nation, thoroughly corrupted, that was afterwards restored
to virtue, and without virtue there can be no political liberty.
If I were a Calvinist, I might pray that God by a miracle of divine grace
would instantaneously convert a whole contaminated nation from turpitude
to purity; but even in this I should be inconsistent, for the fatalism
of Mahometanism, Materialists, Atheists, Pantheists, and Calvinists,
and church of England articles, appear to me to render all prayer futile
and absurd. The French and the Dutch, in our day, have attempted reforms
and revolutions. We know the results, and I fear the English reformers
will have no better success.
Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of
temperance and industry. Will you tell me how to prevent riches from
producing luxury. Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing
effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly? When you will
answer me these questions, I hope I may venture to answer yours; yet all
these ought not to discourage us from exertion, for with my friend Jeb,
I believe no effort in favor of virtue is lost, and all good men ought
to struggle both by their council and example.
The Missouri question, I hope, will follow the other waves under the
ship, and do no harm. I know it is high treason to express a doubt
of the perpetual duration of our vast American empire, and our free
institution; and I say as devoutly as father Paul, _estor perpetua_,
but I am sometimes Cassandra enough to dream that another Hamilton, and
another Burr, might rend this mighty fabric in twain, or perhaps into
a leash; and a few more choice spirits of the same stamp, might produce
as many nations in North America as there are in Europe.
To return to the Romans. I never could discover that they possessed
much virtue, or real liberty. Their Patricians were in general griping
usurers, and tyrannical creditors in all ages. Pride, strength, and
courage, were all the virtues that composed their national characters; a
few of their nobles effecting simplicity, frugality, and piety, perhaps
really possessing them, acquired popularity amongst the plebeians, and
extended the power and dominions of the republic, and advanced in glory
till riches and luxury come in, sat like an incubus on the Republic,
_victam que ulcissitur orbem_.
Our winter sets in a fortnight earlier than usual, and is pretty severe.
I hope you have fairer skies, and milder air. Wishing your health may
last as long as your life, and your life as long as you desire it, I
am, dear Sir, respectfully and affectionately,
TO H. NELSON, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, March 12, 1820.
I thank you, dear Sir, for the information in your favor of the 4th
instant, of the settlement, _for the present_, of the Missouri question.
I am so completely withdrawn from all attention to public matters, that
nothing less could arouse me than the definition of a geographical line,
which on an abstract principle is to become the line of separation of
these States, and to render desperate the hope that man can ever enjoy
the two blessings of peace and self-government. The question sleeps for
the present, but is not dead. This State is in a condition of unparalleled
distress. The sudden reduction of the circulating medium from a plethory
to all but annihilation is producing an entire revolution of fortune.
In other places I have known lands sold by the sheriff for one year's
rent; beyond the mountain we hear of good slaves selling for one hundred
dollars, good horses for five dollars, and the sheriffs generally
the purchasers. Our produce is now selling at market for one-third
of its price, before this commercial catastrophe, say flour at three
and a quarter and three and a half dollars the barrel. We should have
less right to expect relief from our legislators if they had been the
establishers of the unwise system of banks. A remedy to a certain degree
was practicable, that of reducing the quantum of circulation gradually
to a level with that of the countries with which we have commerce, and
an eternal abjuration of paper. But they have adjourned without doing
anything. I fear local insurrections against these horrible sacrifices
of property. In every condition of trouble or tranquillity be assured
of my constant esteem and respect.
TO MR. ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, March 14, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--A continuation of poor health makes me an irregular
correspondent. I am, therefore, your debtor for the two letters of
January 20th and February 21st. It was after you left Europe that Dugald
Stuart, concerning whom you inquire, and Lord Dare, second son of the
Marquis of Lansdown, came to Paris. They brought me a letter from Lord
Wycombe, whom you knew. I became immediately intimate with Stuart, calling
mutually on each other and almost daily, during their stay at Paris,
which was of some months. Lord Dare was a young man of imagination, with
occasional flashes indicating deep penetration, but of much caprice,
and little judgment. He has been long dead, and the family title is
now, I believe, in the third son, who has shown in Parliament talents
of a superior order. Stuart is a great man, and among the most honest
living. I have heard nothing of his dying at top, as you suppose. Mr.
Tickner, however, can give you the best information on that subject,
as he must have heard particularly of him when in Edinburgh, although
I believe he did not see him. I have understood he was then in London
superintending the publication of a new work. I consider him and Tracy as
the ablest metaphysicians living; by which I mean investigators of the
thinking faculty of man. Stuart seems to have given its natural history
from facts and observations; Tracy its modes of action and deduction,
which he calls Logic, and Ideology; and Cabanis, in his Physique et
Morale de l'Homme, has investigated anatomically, and most ingeniously,
the particular organs in the human structure which may most probably
exercise that faculty. And they ask why may not the mode of action called
thought, have been given to a material organ of peculiar structure, as
that of magnetism is to the needle, or of elasticity to the spring by
a particular manipulation of the steel. They observe that on ignition
of the needle or spring, their magnetism and elasticity cease. So on
dissolution of the material organ by death, its action of thought may
cease also, and that nobody supposes that the magnetism or elasticity
retire to hold a substantive and distinct existence. These were qualities
only of particular conformations of matter; change the conformation, and
its qualities change also. Mr. Locke, you know, and other materialists,
have charged with blasphemy the spiritualists who have denied the Creator
the power of endowing certain forms of matter with the faculty of thought.
These, however, are speculations and subtleties in which, for my own
part, I have little indulged myself. When I meet with a proposition
beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as I do a weight which human
strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance, in these cases, is truly the
softest pillow on which I can lay my head. Were it necessary, however, to
form an opinion, I confess I should, with Mr. Locke, prefer swallowing
one incomprehensibility rather than two. It requires one effort only
to admit the single incomprehensibility of matter endowed with thought,
and two to believe, first that of an existence called spirit, of which
we have neither evidence nor idea, and then secondly how that spirit,
which has neither extension nor solidity, can put material organs into
motion. Those are things which you and I may perhaps know ere long. We
have so lived as to fear neither horn of the dilemma. We have, willingly,
done injury to no man; and have done for our country the good which has
fallen in our way, so far as commensurate with the faculties given us.
That we have not done more than we could, cannot be imputed to us as
a crime before any tribunal. I look, therefore, to the crisis, as I am
sure you also do, as one "_qui summum nec metuit diem nec optat_." In
the meantime be our last as cordial as were our first affections.
TO THE HONORABLE MARK LANGDON HILL.
MONTICELLO, April 5, 1820.
SIR,--A near relation of my late friend Governor Langdon, needs no apology
for addressing a letter to me, that relationship giving sufficient title
to all my respect. We were fellow laborers from the beginning of the first
to the accomplishment of the second revolution in our government, of the
same zeal and the same sentiments, and I shall honor his memory while
memory remains to me. The letter you mention is proof of my friendship
and unreserved confidence in him; it was written in warm times, and is
therefore too warmly expressed for the more reconciled temper of the
present day. I must pray you, therefore, not to let it get before the
public, lest it rekindle a flame which burnt too long and too fiercely
against me. It was my lot to be placed at the head of the column which
made the first breach in the ramparts of federalism, and to be charged,
on that event, with the duty of changing the course of the government
from what we deemed a monarchical, to its republican tack. This made me
the mark for every shaft which calumny and falsehood could point against
me. I bore them with resignation, as one of the duties imposed on me
by my post. But I assure you it was among the most painful duties from
which I hoped to find relief in retirement. Tranquillity is the _summum
bonum_ of old age and ill health, and nothing could so much disturb
this with me as to awaken angry feelings from the slumber in which I
wish them ever to remain. I beseech you then, good Sir, in the name of
my departed friend, not to bring on me a contention which neither duty
nor public good require me to encounter.
I regret the circumstances which have deprived us of the pleasure of
your visit, but console myself with the French proverb that "all is not
lost which is deferred," and the hope that more favorable circumstances
will some day give us that gratification. I congratulate you on the
sleep of the Missouri question. I wish I could say on its death, but
of this I despair. The idea of a geographical line once suggested will
brood in the minds of all those who prefer the gratification of their
ungovernable passions to the peace and union of their country. If I do
not contemplate this subject with pleasure, I do sincerely that of the
independence of Maine, and the wise choice they have made of General King
in the agency of their affairs, and I tender to yourself the assurance
of my esteem and respect.
TO WILLIAM SHORT.
MONTICELLO, April 13, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of March the 27th is received, and as you request,
a copy of the syllabus is now enclosed. It was originally written to Dr.
Rush. On his death, fearing that the inquisition of the public might get
hold of it, I asked the return of it from the family, which they kindly
complied with. At the request of another friend, I had given him a copy.
He lent it to _his_ friend to read, who copied it, and in a few months it
appeared in the Theological Magazine of London. Happily that repository
is scarcely known in this country, and the syllabus, therefore, is still
a secret, and in your hands I am sure it will continue so.
But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in
its true and high light, as no impostor himself, but a great reformer
of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am
with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of
Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness
of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it, &c., &c.
It is the innocence of his character, the purity and sublimity of his
moral precepts, the eloquence of his inculcations, the beauty of the
apologues in which he conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes,
indeed, needing indulgence to eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies, too, may
be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the
sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many
passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely
benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity,
so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible
that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I
separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to him the former,
and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of
his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great
Coryphæus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable
interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines, led me to try to
sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that his part
composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to
us by man. The syllabus is therefore of _his_ doctrines, not _all_ of
_mine_. I read them as I do those of other ancient and modern moralists,
with a mixture of approbation and dissent.
I rejoice, with you, to see an encouraging spirit of internal improvement
prevailing in the States. The opinion I have ever expressed of the
advantages of a western communication through the James river, I still
entertain; and that the Cayuga is the most promising of the links of
communication.
The history of our University you know so far. Seven of the ten pavilions
destined for the professors, and about thirty dormitories, will be
completed this year, and three other, with six hotels for boarding, and
seventy other dormitories, will be completed the next year, and the whole
be in readiness then to receive those who are to occupy them. But means
to bring these into place, and to set the machine into motion, must come
from the legislature. An opposition, in the meantime, has been got up.
That of our _alma mater_, William and Mary, is not of much weight. She
must descend into the secondary rank of academies of preparation for
the University. The serious enemies are the priests of the different
religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is
ominous. Their pulpits are now resounding with denunciations against
the appointment of Doctor Cooper, whom they charge as a monotheist in
opposition to their tritheism. Hostile as these sects are, in every other
point, to one another, they unite in maintaining their mystical theogony
against those who believe there is one God only. The Presbyterian clergy
are loudest; the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and
ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be now
obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin
hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor
Servetus, because he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which
has demonstrated that three are one and one is three, nor subscribe
to that of Calvin, that magistrates have a right to exterminate all
heretics to Calvinistic Creed. They pant to re-establish, _by law_, that
holy inquisition, which they can now only infuse into _public opinion_.
We have most unwisely committed to the hierophants of our particular
superstition, the direction of public opinion, that lord of the universe.
We have given them stated and privileged days to collect and catechise
us, opportunities of delivering their oracles to the people in mass,
and of moulding their minds as wax in the hollow of their hands. But in
despite of their fulminations against endeavors to enlighten the general
mind, to improve the reason of the people, and encourage them in the use
of it, the liberality of this State will support this institution, and
give fair play to the cultivation of reason. Can you ever find a more
eligible occasion of visiting once more your native country, than that
of accompanying Mr. Correa, and of seeing with him this beautiful and
hopeful institution _in ovo_?
Although I had laid down as a law to myself, never to write talk, or
even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs, and therefore
had ceased to read newspapers, yet the Missouri question aroused and
filled me with alarm. The old schism of federal and republican threatened
nothing, because it existed in every State, and united them together
by the fraternism of party. But the coincidence of a marked principle,
moral and political, with a geographical line, once conceived, I feared
would never more be obliterated from the mind; that it would be recurring
on every occasion and renewing irritations, until it would kindle such
mutual and mortal hatred, as to render separation preferable to eternal
discord. I have been among the most sanguine in believing that our Union
would be of long duration. I now doubt it much, and see the event at
no great distance, and the direct consequence of this question; not by
the line which has been so confidently counted on; the laws of nature
control this; but by the Potomac, Ohio and Missouri, or more probably,
the Mississippi upwards to our northern boundary. My only comfort and
confidence is, that I shall not live to see this; and I envy not the
present generation the glory of throwing away the fruits of their fathers'
sacrifices of life and fortune, and of rendering desperate the experiment
which was to decide ultimately whether man is capable of self-government?
This treason against human hope, will signalize their epoch in future
history, as the counterpart of the medal of their predecessors.
You kindly inquire after my health. There is nothing in it immediately
threatening, but swelled legs, which are kept down mechanically, by
bandages from the toe to the knee. These I have worn for six months. But
the tendency to turgidity may proceed from debility alone. I can walk
the round of my garden; not more. But I ride six or eight miles a day
without fatigue. I shall set out for Poplar Forest within three or four
days; a journey from which my physician augurs much good.
I salute you with constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
TO JOHN HOLMES.
MONTICELLO, April 22, 1820.
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send
me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is
a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read
newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were
in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore
from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire
bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it
at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment.
But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line,
coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived
and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated;
and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with
conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more
than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any _practicable_
way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a
bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a
general emancipation and _expatriation_ could be effected; and gradually,
and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have
the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him
go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of
one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to
another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be
so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them
individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment
of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of
coadjutors. An abstinence too, from this act of power, would remove the
jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition
of the different descriptions of men composing a State. This certainly
is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the constitution
has taken from them and given to the General Government. Could Congress,
for example, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen,
or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice
of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government
and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and
unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be,
that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh
the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more
likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before
they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason
against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate
of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONTICELLO, May 14, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 3d is received, and always with welcome.
These texts of truth relieve me from the floating falsehoods of the public
papers. I confess to you I am not sorry for the non-ratification of the
Spanish treaty. Our assent to it has proved our desire to be on friendly
terms with Spain; their dissent, the imbecility and malignity of their
government towards us, have placed them in the wrong in the eyes of the
world, and that is well; but to us the province of Techas will be the
richest State of our Union, without any exception. Its southern part will
make more sugar than we can consume, and the Red river, on its north, is
the most luxuriant country on earth. Florida, moreover, is ours. Every
nation in Europe considers it such a right. We need not care for its
occupation in time of peace, and, in war, the first cannon makes it ours
without offence to anybody. The friendly advisements, too, of Russia
and France, as well as the change of government in Spain, now ensured,
require a further and respectful forbearance. While their request will
rebut the plea of proscriptive possession, it will give us a right to
their approbation when taken in the maturity of circumstances. I really
think, too, that neither the state of our finances, the condition of our
country, nor the public opinion, urges us to precipitation into war.
The treaty has had the valuable effect of strengthening our title to
the Techas, because the cession of the Floridas in exchange for Techas
imports an acknowledgment of our right to it. This province moreover,
the Floridas and possibly Cuba, will join us on the acknowledgment of
their independence, a measure to which their new government will probably
accede voluntarily. But why should I be saying all this to you, whose
mind all the circumstances of this affair have had possession for years?
I shall rejoice to see you here; and were I to live to see you here
finally, it would be a day of jubilee. But our days are all numbered,
and mine are not many. God bless you and preserve you _muchos años_
TO GENERAL TAYLOR.
MONTICELLO, May 16, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--We regretted much your absence at the late meeting of the
Board of Visitors, but did not doubt it was occasioned by uncontrollable
circumstances. As the matters which came before us were of great
importance to the institution, I think it a duty to inform you of them.
You know the sanction of the legislature to our borrowing $60,000 on
the pledge of our annuity of $15,000. The Literary Board offered us
$40,000 on that pledge, to be repaid at five instalments, commencing at
the end of the third year from the date of the loan, and interest to
be regularly paid in the meantime. We endeavored to obtain permission
to draw for only $15,000 at first, and for $2,000 monthly afterwards,
to avoid the payment of dead interest. This they declined, as bound
themselves to keep the whole of their capital always in a course of
fructification. We then requested a postponement of the instalments to
the fourth instead of the third year, with an additional loan of the
further sum of $20,000, authorized by the law. To the postponement they
acceded, and we are assured they will to the further loan. To explain
to them the urgency of this additional year's postponement, a paper was
laid before them of which I enclose you a copy, and on which you are now
acting. Should the legislature not help us to the $93,600 there noted, the
result will be that at the end of the next year all the buildings will
be completed, (the library excepted,) and will then remain unoccupied
five years longer, until our funds shall be free for the engagements of
professors. Should they, on the other hand, give this aid, our funds will
be free, at the beginning of the next year, and will enable us to take
measures for procuring professors in the course of that summer, and to
open the University. We were all of opinion that we ought to complete the
buildings for the ten professors contemplated, as well as accommodations
for the students, before opening the institution; for were we to stop
at any point short of the full establishment, and open partially, as
our funds would thenceforward be absorbed by the professors' salaries,
we should never be able to advance a step further, nor to cover the
whole field of science contemplated by the law, and made the object of
our care and duty. We thought it better, therefore, to risk a delay of
eight years for a perfect establishment, than to begin earlier and go on
forever with a defective one; and we suppose it impossible that either
the legislature, or their constituents, should not consider an immediate
commencement as worth the sum necessary to procure it. You will observe
that in the estimate enclosed, no account is taken of our subscription
monies. They are, in fact, too uncertain in their collection to found
any necessary contracts; and we thought it better therefore to reserve
them as a contingent fund, and a resource to cover miscalculations and
accidents.
Another subject on this, as on former occasions, gave us embarrassment.
You may have heard of the hue and cry raised from the different pulpits
on our appointment of Dr. Cooper, whom they charge with Unitarianism
as boldly as if they knew the fact, and as presumptuously as if it
were a crime, and one for which, like Servetus, he should be burned;
and perhaps you may have seen the particular attack made on him in
the Evangelical magazine. For myself I was not disposed to regard the
denunciations of these satellites of religious inquisition; but our
colleagues, better judges of popular feeling, thought that they were not
to be altogether neglected; and that it might be better to relieve Dr.
Cooper, ourselves and the institution from this crusade. I had received
a letter from him expressing his uneasiness, not only for himself, but
lest this persecution should become embarrassing to the visitors, and
injurious to the institution; with an offer to resign, if we had the
same apprehensions. The Visitors, therefore, desired the committee of
Superintendence to place him at freedom on this subject, and to arrange
with him a suitable indemnification. I wrote accordingly in answer to his,
and a meeting of trustees of the college at Columbia happening to take
place soon after his receipt of my letter, they resolved unanimously that
it should be proposed to, and urged on their legislature, to establish
a professorship of Geology and Mineralogy, or a professorship of law,
with a salary of $1,000 a year to be given him, in addition to that of
chemistry, which is $2,000 a year, and to purchase his collection of
minerals; and they have no doubt of the legislature's compliance. On
the subject of indemnification, he is contented with the balance of the
$1,500 we had before agreed to give him, and which he says will not more
than cover his actual losses of time and expense; he adds, "it is right
I should acknowledge the liberality of your board with thanks. I regret
the storm that has been raised on my account; for it has separated me
from many fond hopes and wishes. Whatever my religious creed may be,
and perhaps I do not exactly know it myself, it is pleasure to reflect
that my conduct has not brought, and is not likely to bring, discredit
to my friends. Wherever I have been, it has been my good fortune to meet
with, or to make ardent and affectionate friends. I feel persuaded I
should have met with the same lot in Virginia had it been my chance to
have settled there, as I had hoped and expected, for I think my course
of conduct is sufficiently habitual to count on its effects."
I do sincerely lament that untoward circumstances have brought on us
the irreparable loss of this professor, whom I have looked to as the
corner-stone of our edifice. I know no one who could have aided us so
much in forming the future regulations for our infant institution; and
although we may perhaps obtain from Europe equivalents in science, they
can never replace the advantages of his experience, his knowledge of the
character, habits and manners of our country, his identification with
its sentiments and principles, and high reputation he has obtained in
it generally.
In the hope of meeting you at our fall visitation, and that you will do
me the favor of making this your head quarters, and of coming the day
before, at least, that we may prepare our business at ease, I tender
you the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
TO WILLIAM SHORT.
MONTICELLO, August 4, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--I owe you a letter for your favor of June the 29th, which was
received in due time; and there being no subject of the day, of particular
interest, I will make this a supplement to mine of April the 13th. My
aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions
of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of
being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced
the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanisms which his biographers
father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and
theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter
ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that
he was an impostor. I give no credit to their falsifications of his
actions and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in
my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian.
When Livy and Siculus, for example, tell us things which coincide with
our experience of the order of nature, we credit them on their word,
and place their narrations among the records of credible history. But
when they tell us of calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and
other things against the course of nature, we reject these as fables
not belonging to history. In like manner, when an historian, speaking
of a character well known and established on satisfactory testimony,
imputes to it things incompatible with that character, we reject them
without hesitation, and assent to that only of which we have better
evidence. Had Plutarch informed us that Cæsar and Cicero passed their
whole lives in religious exercises, and abstinence from the affairs
of the world, we should reject what was so inconsistent with their
established characters, still crediting what he relates in conformity
with our ideas of them. So again, the superlative wisdom of Socrates is
testified by all antiquity, and placed on ground not to be questioned.
When, therefore, Plato puts into his mouth such paralogisms, such quibbles
on words, and sophisms as a school boy would be ashamed of, we conclude
they were the whimsies of Plato's own foggy brain, and acquit Socrates
of puerilities so unlike his character. (Speaking of Plato, I will add,
that no writer, ancient or modern, has bewildered the world with more
_ignus fatui_, than this renowned philosopher, in Ethics, in Politics,
and Physics. In the latter, to specify a single example, compare his
views of the animal economy, in his Timæus, with those of Mrs. Bryan in
her Conversations on Chemistry, and weigh the science of the canonized
philosopher against the good sense of the unassuming lady. But Plato's
visions have furnished a basis for endless systems of mystical theology,
and he is therefore all but adopted as a Christian saint. It is surely
time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of
names so artificially magnified. But to return from this parenthesis.) I
say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of
the character of Jesus. We find in the writings of his biographers matter
of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance,
of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications.
Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being,
aphorisms, and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned
by a life of humility, innocence and simplicity of manners, neglect
of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence
and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be
inventions of the grovelling authors who relate them. They are far beyond
the powers of their feeble minds. They show that there was a character,
the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all
suspicion of being interpolations from their hands. Can we be at a loss
in separating such materials, and ascribing each to its genuine author?
The difference is obvious to the eye and to the understanding, and we
may read as we run to each his part; and I will venture to affirm, that
he who, as I have done, will undertake to winnow this grain from the
chaff, will find it not to require a moment's consideration. The parts
fall asunder of themselves, as would those of an image of metal and clay.
There are, I acknowledge, passages not free from objection, which we may,
with probability, ascribe to Jesus himself; but claiming indulgence from
the circumstances under which he acted. His object was the reformation
of some articles in the religion of the Jews, as taught by Moses. That
sect had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific
character, cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust. Jesus, taking
for his type the best qualities of the human head and heart, wisdom,
justice, goodness, and adding to them power, ascribed all of these, but
in infinite perfection, to the Supreme Being, and formed him really
worthy of their adoration. Moses had either not believed in a future
state of existence, or had not thought it essential to be explicitly
taught to his people. Jesus inculcated that doctrine with emphasis and
precision. Moses had bound the Jews to many idle ceremonies, mummeries,
and observances, of no effect towards producing the social utilities
which constitute the essence of virtue; Jesus exposed their futility and
insignificance. The one instilled into his people the most anti-social
spirit toward other nations; the other preached philanthropy and universal
charity and benevolence. The office of reformer of the superstitions of a
nation, is ever dangerous. Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of
reason and religion; and a step to right or left might place him within
the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a blood-thirsty race, as
cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family
God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel.
They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of
the law. He was justifiable, therefore, in avoiding these by evasions,
by sophisms, by misconstructions and misapplications of scraps of the
prophets, and in defending himself with these their own weapons, as
sufficient, _ad homines_, at least. That Jesus did not mean to impose
himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been
convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.
But that he might conscientiously believe himself inspired from above,
is very possible. The whole religion of the Jew, inculcated on him from
his infancy, was founded in the belief of divine inspiration. The fumes
of the most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious
code, as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not but
happen that, in the course of ages, events would now and then turn up
to which some of these vague rhapsodies might be accommodated by the
aid of allegories, figures, types, and other tricks upon words, they
have not only preserved their credit with the Jews of all subsequent
times, but are the foundation of much of the religions of those who
have schismatised from them. Elevated by the enthusiasm of a warm and
pure heart, conscious of the high strains of an eloquence which had not
been taught him, he might readily mistake the coruscations of his own
fine genius for inspirations of an higher order. This belief carried,
therefore, no more personal imputation, than the belief of Socrates, that
himself was under the care and admonitions of a guardian Dæmon. And how
many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations,
while perfectly sane on all other subjects. Excusing, therefore, on these
considerations, those passages in the gospels which seem to bear marks
of weakness in Jesus, ascribing to him what alone is consistent with
the great and pure character of which the same writings furnish proofs,
and to their proper authors their own trivialities and imbecilities. I
think myself authorized to conclude the purity and distinction of his
character, in opposition to the impostures which those authors would fix
upon him; and that the postulate of my former letter is no more than is
granted in all other historical works.
Mr. Correa is here, on his farewell visit to us. He has been much pleased
with the plan and progress of our University, and has given some valuable
hints to its botanical branch. He goes to do, I hope, much good in his
new country; the public instruction there, as I understand, being within
the department destined for him. He is not without dissatisfaction,
and reasonable dissatisfaction too, with the piracies of Baltimore;
but his justice and friendly dispositions will, I am sure, distinguish
between the iniquities of a few plunderers, and the sound principles
of our country at large, and of our government especially. From many
conversations with him, I hope he sees, and will promote in his new
situation, the advantages of a cordial fraternization among all the
American nations, and the importance of their coalescing in an American
system of policy, totally independent of and unconnected with that of
Europe. The day is not distant, when we may formally require a meridian
of partition through the ocean which separates the two hemispheres, on
the hither side of which no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an
American on the other; and when, during the rage of the eternal wars of
Europe, the lion and the lamb, within our regions, shall lie down together
in peace. The excess of population in Europe, and want of room, render
war, in their opinion, necessary to keep down that excess of numbers.
Here, room is abundant, population scanty, and peace the necessary means
for producing men, to whom the redundant soil is offering the means of
life and happiness. The principles of society there and here, then, are
radically different, and I hope no American patriot will ever lose sight
of the essential policy of interdicting in the seas and territories of
both Americas, the ferocious and sanguinary contests of Europe. I wish
to see this coalition begun. I am earnest for an agreement with the
maritime powers of Europe, assigning them the task of keeping down the
piracies of their seas and the cannibalisms of the African coasts, and
to us, the suppression of the same enormities within our seas; and for
this purpose, I should rejoice to see the fleets of Brazil and the United
States riding together as brethren of the same family, and pursuing the
same object. And indeed it would be of happy augury to begin at once
this concert of action here, on the invitation of either to the other
government, while the way might be preparing for withdrawing our cruisers
from Europe, and preventing naval collisions there which daily endanger
our peace.
* * * * *
Accept assurances of the sincerity of my friendship and respect for you.
TO DOCTOR COOPER.
MONTICELLO, August 14, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 24th ult. was received in due time, and I shall
rejoice indeed if Mr. Elliot and Mr. Nulty are joined to you in the
institution at Columbia, which now becomes of immediate interest to me.
Mr. Stack has given notice to his first class that he shall dismiss them
on the 10th of the next month, and his mathematical assistant also at
the same time, being determined to take only small boys in future. My
grandson, Eppes, is of the first class; and I have proposed to his father
to send him to Columbia, rather than anywhere northwardly. I am obliged,
therefore, to ask of you by what day he ought to be there, so as to be
at the commencement of what they call a session, and to be so good as to
do this by the first mail, as I shall set out to Bedford within about
a fortnight. He is so far advanced in Greek and Latin that he will be
able to pursue them by himself hereafter; and being between eighteen and
nineteen years of age he has no time to lose. I propose that he shall
commence immediately with the mathematics and natural philosophy, to be
followed by astronomy, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, natural history. It
would be time lost for him to attend professors of ethics, metaphysics,
logic, &c. The first of these may be as well acquired in the closet as
from living lectures; and supposing the two last to mean the _science
of mind_, the simple reading of Locke, Tracy, and Stewart, will give
him as much in that branch as is _real_ science. A relation of his (Mr.
Baker) and classmate will go with him.
I hope and believe you are mistaken in supposing the reign of fanaticism
to be on the advance. I think it certainly declining. It was first excited
artificially by the sovereigns of Europe as an engine of opposition to
Bonaparte and to France. It rose to a great height there, and became
indeed a powerful engine of loyalism, and of support to their governments.
But that loyalism is giving way to very different dispositions, and
its prompter fanaticism, is vanishing with it. In the meantime it had
been wafted across the Atlantic, and chiefly from England, with their
other fashions, but it is here also on the wane. The ambitious sect of
Presbyterians indeed, the Loyalists of our country, spare no pains to
keep it up. But their views of ascendency over all other sects in the
United States seem to excite alarm in all, and to unite them as against
a common and threatening enemy. And although the Unitarianism they
impute to you is heterodoxy with all of them, I suspect the other sects
will admit it to their alliance in order to strengthen the phalanx of
opposition against the enterprises of their more aspiring antagonists.
Although spiritualism is most prevalent with all these sects, yet with
none of them, I presume, is materialism declared heretical. Mr. Locke,
on whose authority they often plume themselves, openly maintained the
materialism of the soul; and charged with blasphemy those who denied
that it was in the power of an Almighty Creator to endow with the faculty
of thought any composition of matter he might think fit. The fathers of
the church of the three first centuries generally, if not universally,
were materialists, extending it even to the Creator himself; nor indeed
do I know exactly[5] in what age of the christian church the heresy of
spiritualism was introduced. Huet, in his commentaries on Origen,[6]
says, "Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Origenem, reapse
corporalis est, sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus."[7]
St. Macari,[8] as speaking of angels says, "quam vis enim subtilia sint,
tamen in substantia, forma, et figura, secundum tenuitatem naturæ eorum
corpora sunt tenuia, quemadmodum et hoc corpus in substantia sua crassum
et solidum est."[9] St. Justin martyr says expressly "το θειον φαμεν
ειναι ασωματον, ουκ δε εστιν ασωματον."
Tertullian's words are, "quid enim Deus nisi corpus?" and again, "quis
autem negabit Deum esse corpus? et si deus spiritus, spiritus etiam
corpus est sui generis, in suâ effigie," and that the soul is matter
he adduces the following tangible proof: "in ipso ultimo voluptatis
aestu, quo genitale virus expellitur, nonne aliquid de animâ sentimus
exire?"[10] The holy father thus asserting, and, as it would seem, from
his own feelings, that the sperm infused into the female matrix deposits
there the matter and germ of both soul and body, conjunctim, of the new
fœtus. Although I do not pretend to be familiar with these fathers, and
give the preceding quotations at second hand, yet I learn from authors
whom I respect, that not only those I have named, but St. Augustin,[11]
St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras, and others, concurred in the
materiality of the soul. Our modern doctors would hardly venture or wish
to condemn their fathers as heretics, the main pillars of their fabric
resting on their shoulders.
In the consultations of the visitors of the university on the subject of
releasing you from your engagement with us, although one or two members
seemed alarmed at this cry of "fire" from the Presbyterian pulpits,
yet the real ground of our decision was that our funds were in fact
hypotheticated for five or six years to redeem the loan we had reluctantly
made; and although we hoped and trusted that the ensuing legislature
would remit the debt and liberate our funds, yet it was not just, on
this possibility, to stand in the way of your looking out for a more
certain provision. The completing all our buildings for professors and
students by the autumn of the ensuing year, is now secured by sufficient
contracts, and our confidence is most strong that neither the State nor
their legislature will bear to see those buildings shut up for five or
six years, when they have the money in hand, and actually appropriated
to the object of education, which would open their doors at once for
the reception of their sons, now waiting and calling aloud for that
institution. The legislature meets on the 1st Monday of December, and
before Christmas we shall know what are their intentions. If such as we
expect, we shall then immediately take measures to engage our professors
and bring them into place the ensuing autumn or early winter. My hope is
that you will be able and willing to keep yourself uncommitted, to take
your place among them about that time; and I can assure you there is
not a voice among us which will not be cordially given for it. I think,
too, I may add, that if the Presbyterian opposition should not die by
that time, it will be directed at once against the whole institution,
and not amuse itself with nibbling at a single object. It did that only
because there was no other, and they might think it politic to mask
their designs on the body of the fortress, under the ---- of a battery
against a single bastion. I will not despair then of the avail of your
services in an establishment which I contemplate as the future bulwark
of the human mind in this hemisphere. God bless you and preserve you
_multos annos_.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] I believe by Athenasius and the council of Nicea.
[6] Ocellus de d'Argens, p. 97.
[7] Enfield, vi. 3.
[8] Ib. 105.
[9] Timæus, 17. Enfield, vi. 3.
[10] Hist. des Saints, 2 c. 4 p. 212, 215.
[11] Ocellus, 90.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, August 15, 1820.
I am a great defaulter, my dear Sir, in our correspondence, but prostrate
health rarely permits me to write; and when it does, matters of business
imperiously press their claims. I am getting better however, slowly,
swelled legs being now the only serious symptom, and these, I believe,
proceed from extreme debility. I can walk but little; but I ride six
or eight miles a day without fatigue; and within a few days, I shall
endeavor to visit my other home, after a twelvemonth's absence from it.
Our University, four miles distant, gives me frequent exercise, and the
oftener, as I direct its architecture. Its plan is unique, and it is
becoming an object of curiosity for the traveller. I have lately had
an opportunity of reading a critique on this institution in your North
American Review of January last, having been not without anxiety to see
what that able work would say of us; and I was relieved on finding in it
much coincidence of opinion, and even where criticisms were indulged,
I found they would have been obviated had the developments of our plan
been fuller. But these were restrained by the character of the paper
reviewed, being merely a report of outlines, not a detailed treatise, and
addressed to a legislative body, not to a learned academy. For example,
as an inducement to introduce the Anglo-Saxon into our plan, it was said
that it would reward amply the _few weeks_ of attention which alone would
be requisite for its attainment; leaving both term and degree under an
indefinite expression, because I know that not much time is necessary
to attain it to an useful degree, sufficient to give such instruction in
the etymologies of our language as may satisfy ordinary students, while
more time would be requisite for those who should propose to attain
a critical knowledge of it. In a letter which I had occasion to write
to Mr. Crofts, who sent you, I believe, as well as myself, a copy of
his treatise on the English and German languages, as preliminary to an
etymological dictionary he meditated, I went into explanations with him
of an easy process for simplifying the study of the Anglo-Saxon, and
lessening the terrors and difficulties presented by its rude alphabet,
and unformed orthography. But this is a subject beyond the bounds of a
letter, as it was beyond the bounds of a report to the legislature. Mr.
Crofts died, I believe, before any progress was made in the work he had
projected.
The reviewer expresses doubt, rather than decision, on our placing
military and naval architecture in the department of pure mathematics.
Military architecture embraces fortification and fieldworks, which,
with their bastions, curtains, hornworks, redoubts, &c., are based on a
technical combination of lines and angles. These are adapted to offence
and defence, with and against the effects of bombs, balls, escalades,
&c. But lines and angles make the sum of elementary geometry, a branch
of pure mathematics; and the direction of the bombs, balls, and other
projectiles, the necessary appendages of military works, although no
part of their architecture, belong to the conic sections, a branch of
transcendental geometry. Diderot and D'Alembert, therefore, in their
_Arbor scientiæ_, have placed military architecture in the department
of elementary geometry. Naval architecture teaches the best form and
construction of vessels; for which best form it has recourse to the
question of the solid of least resistance; a problem of transcendental
geometry. And its appurtenant projectiles belong to the same branch, as
in the preceding case. It is true, that so far as respects the action
of the water on the rudder and oars, and of the wind on the sails, it
may be placed in the department of mechanics, as Diderot and D'Alembert
have done; but belonging quite as much to geometry, and allied in its
military character to military architecture, it simplified our plan
to place both under the same head. These views are so obvious, that
I am sure they would have required but a second thought, to reconcile
the reviewer to their _location_ under the head of pure mathematics.
For this word _location_, see Bailey, Johnson, Sheridan, Walker, &c.
But if dictionaries are to be the arbiters of language, in which of
them shall we find _neologism_. No matter. It is a good word, well
sounding, obvious, and expresses an idea, which would otherwise require
circumlocution. The reviewer was justifiable, therefore, in using it;
although he noted at the same time, as unauthoritative, _centrality_,
_grade_, _sparse_; all which have been long used in common speech and
writing. I am a friend to _neology_. It is the only way to give to a
language copiousness and euphony. Without it we should still be held
to the vocabulary of Alfred or of Ulphilas; and held to their state of
science also: for I am sure they had no words which could have conveyed
the ideas of oxygen, cotyledons, zoophytes, magnetism, electricity,
hyaline, and thousands of others expressing ideas not then existing,
nor of possible communication in the state of their language. What a
language has the French become since the date of their revolution, by
the free introduction of new words! The most copious and eloquent in
the living world; and equal to the Greek, had not that been regularly
modifiable almost _ad infinitum_. Their rule was, that whenever their
language furnished or adopted a root, all its branches, in every part of
speech, were legitimated by giving them their appropriate terminations.
Αδελφος, αδελφη, αδελφιδιον, αδελφοτης, αδελφιξις, αδελφιδους, αδελφικος,
αδελφιζω, αδελφικως. And this should be the law of every language. Thus,
having adopted the adjective _fraternal_, it is a root which should
legitimate _fraternity_, _fraternation_, _fraternisation_, _fraternism_,
_to fraternate_, _fraternise_, _fraternally_. And give the word
_neologism_ to our language, as a root, and it should give us its fellow
substantives, _neology_, _neologist_, _neologisation_; its adjectives,
_neologous_, _neological_, _neologistical_; its verb, _neologise_; and
adverb, _neologically_. Dictionaries are but the depositories of words
already legitimated by usage. Society is the workshop in which new ones
are elaborated. When an individual uses a new word, if ill formed, it is
rejected in society; if well formed, adopted, and after due time, laid
up in the depository of dictionaries. And if, in this process of sound
neologisation, our trans-Atlantic brethren shall not choose to accompany
us, we may furnish, after the Ionians, a second example of a colonial
dialect improving on its primitive.
But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May the
12th, on matter, spirit, motion, &c. Its crowd of scepticisms kept me from
sleep. I read it, and laid it down; read it, and laid it down, again and
again; and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to
my habitual anodyne, "I feel, therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are
not myself: there are other existences then. I call them _matter_. I feel
them changing place. This gives me _motion_. Where there is an absence
of matter, I call it _void_, or _nothing_, or _immaterial space_. On the
basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all
the certainties we can have or need. I can conceive _thought_ to be an
action of a particular organization of matter, formed for that purpose
by its creator, as well as that _attraction_ is an action of matter, or
_magnetism_ of loadstone. When he who denies to the Creator the power
of endowing matter with the mode of action called _thinking_, shall show
how he could endow the sun with the mode of action called _attraction_,
which reins the planets in the track of their orbits, or how an absence
of matter can have a will, and by that will put matter into motion, then
the Materialist may be lawfully required to explain the process by which
matter exercises the faculty of thinking. When once we quit the basis
of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of _immaterial_ existences,
is to talk of _nothings_. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are
immaterial, is to say, they are _nothings_, or that there is no God, no
angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported
in my creed of materialism by the Lockes, the Tracys, and the Stewarts.
At what age[12] of the Christian church this heresy of _immaterialism_,
or masked atheism, crept in, I do not exactly know. But a heresy it
certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us, indeed, that "God
is a spirit," but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it
is not _matter_. And the ancient fathers generally, of the three first
centuries, held it to be matter, light and thin indeed, an etherial
gas; but still matter. Origen says, "Deus se ipse corporalis est; sed
graviorum tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus." Tertullian, "quid enim
deus nisi corpus?" And again, "quis negabit deum esse corpus? Etsi deus
spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis in sua effigie." St.
Justin Martyr, "το θειον φαμεν ειναι ασωματον· ουχ 'οτι ασωματον'--επειδη
δε το μη κρατεισθαι ὑπο τινος του κρατεισθαι τιμιωτερον εστι δια τουτο
καλουμεν αυτον ασωματον." And St. Macarius, speaking of angels, says,
"quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia, forma et figurâ,
secundum tenuitatem naturæ eorum, corpora sunt tenuia." And St. Austin,
St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras and others, with whose writings
I pretend not a familiarity, are said by those who are better acquainted
with them, to deliver the same doctrine. (Enfield x. 3, 1.) Turn to your
Ocellus d'Argens, 97, 105, and to his Timæus 17, for these quotations.
In England, these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29 Car.
2, when the writ _de hæretico comburendo_ was abolished; and here until
the Revolution, that statute not having extended to us. All heresies
being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely atheists,
differing from the material atheist only in their belief, that "nothing
made something," and from the material deist, who believes that matter
alone can operate on matter.
Rejecting all organs of information, therefore, but my senses, I rid
myself of the pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations
hyperphysical and antiphysical, so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind.
A single sense may indeed be sometimes deceived, but rarely; and never
all our senses together, with their faculty of reasoning. They evidence
realities, and there are enough of these for all the purposes of life,
without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am
satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without
tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of
which I have no evidence. I am sure that I really know many, many things,
and none more surely than that I love you with all my heart, and pray
for the continuance of your life until you shall be tired of it yourself.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] That of Athanasius and the Council of Nicæa, anno.
324.
TO MR. JARVIS.
MONTICELLO, September 28, 1820.
I thank you, Sir, for the copy of your Republican which you have been so
kind as to send me, and I should have acknowledged it sooner but that I
am just returned home after a long absence. I have not yet had time to
read it seriously, but in looking over it cursorily I see much in it to
approve, and shall be glad if it shall lead our youth to the practice
of thinking on such subjects and for themselves. That it will have this
tendency may be expected, and for that reason I feel an urgency to note
what I deem an error in it, the more requiring notice as your opinion
is strengthened by that of many others. You seem, in pages 84 and 148,
to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional
questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place
us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as
other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions
for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is
"_boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem_," and their power the more
dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the
other functionaries are, to the elective control. The constitution has
erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided,
with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign
within themselves. If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census,
for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing
a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the constitution, or if
they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to
them; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint
other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the
judges cannot force him. They can issue their mandamus or distringas to
no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfilment of their
official duties, any more than the president or legislature may issue
orders to the judges or their officers. Betrayed by English example, and
unaware, as it should seem, of the control of our constitution in this
particular, they have at times overstepped their limit by undertaking to
command executive officers in the discharge of their executive duties; but
the constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent,
restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the
executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs. The judges
certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions,
because the laws of _meum_ and _tuum_ and of criminal action, forming the
great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department.
When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally,
they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The
exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no
safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people
themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise
their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take
it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the
true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. Pardon me, Sir, for
this difference of opinion. My personal interest in such questions is
entirely extinct, but not my wishes for the longest possible continuance
of our government on its pure principles; if the three powers maintain
their mutual independence on each other it may last long, but not so
if either can assume the authorities of the other. I ask your candid
re-consideration of this subject, and am sufficiently sure you will form
a candid conclusion. Accept the assurance of my great respect.
TO MR PINCKNEY.
MONTICELLO, September 30, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--An absence of some time from home has occasioned me to be thus
late in acknowledging the receipt of your favor of the 6th, and I see
in it with pleasure evidences of your continued health and application
to business. It is now, I believe, about twenty years since I had the
pleasure of seeing you, and we are apt, in such cases, to lose sight of
time, and to conceive that our friends remain stationary at the same
point of health and vigor as when we last saw them. So I perceive by
your letter you think with respect to myself, but twenty years added
to fifty-seven make quite a different man. To threescore and seventeen
add two years of prostrate health, and you have the old, infirm, and
nerveless body I now am, unable to write but with pain, and unwilling to
think without necessity. In this state I leave the world and its affairs
to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I
have endeavored to take care when young. I read but one newspaper and
that of my own State, and more for its advertisements than its news. I
have not read a speech in Congress for some years. I have heard, indeed,
of the questions of the tariff and Missouri, and formed _primâ facie_
opinions on them, but without investigation. As to the tariff, I should
say put down all banks, admit none but a _metallic circulation_, that
will take its proper level with the like circulation in other countries,
and then our manufacturers may work in fair competition with those of
other countries, and the import duties which the government may lay for
the purposes of revenue will so far place them above equal competition.
The Missouri question is a mere party trick. The leaders of federalism,
defeated in their schemes of obtaining power by rallying partisans to the
principle of monarchism, a principle of personal not of local division,
have changed their tack, and thrown out another barrel to the whale. They
are taking advantage of the virtuous feelings of the people to effect a
division of parties by a geographical line; they expect that this will
ensure them, on local principles, the majority they could never obtain on
principles of federalism; but they are still putting their shoulder to the
wrong wheel; they are wasting Jeremiads on the miseries of slavery, as if
we were advocates for it. Sincerity in their declamations should direct
their efforts to the true point of difficulty, and unite their counsels
with ours in devising some reasonable and practicable plan of getting
rid of it. Some of these leaders, if they could attain the power, their
ambition would rather use it to keep the Union together, but others have
ever had in view its separation. If they push it to that, they will find
the line of separation very different from their 36° of latitude, and
as manufacturing and navigating States, they will have quarrelled with
their bread and butter, and I fear not that after a little trial they
will think better of it, and return to the embraces of their natural and
best friends. But this scheme of party I leave to those who are to live
under its consequences. We who have gone before have performed an honest
duty, by putting in the power of our successors a state of happiness
which no nation ever before had within their choice. If that choice is
to throw it away, the dead will have neither the power nor the right to
control them. I must hope, nevertheless, that the mass of our honest and
well-meaning brethren of the other States, will discover the use which
designing leaders are making of their best feelings, and will see the
precipice to which they are lead, before they take the fatal leap. God
grant it, and to you health and happiness.
TO RICHARD RUSH, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, October 20, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--In your favor of May 3d, which I have now to acknowledge, you
so kindly proffered your attentions to any little matters I might have
on that side of the water, that I take the liberty of availing myself
of this proof of your goodness so far as to request you to put the
enclosed catalogue in the hands of some _honest_ bookseller of London,
who will procure and forward the books to me, with care and good faith.
They should be packed in a cheap trunk, and not put on ship-board until
April, as they would be liable to damage on a winter passage. I ask an
_honest_ correspondent in that line, because, when we begin to import
for the library of our Universary, we shall need one worthy of entire
confidence.
I send this letter open to my correspondent in Richmond, Captain Bernard
Peyton, with a request that he will put into it a bill of exchange on
London of £40 sterling, which of course, therefore, I cannot describe
to you by naming drawer and drawee. He will also forward, by other
conveyance, the duplicate and triplicate as usual. This sum would more
than cover the cost of the books written for, according to their prices
stated in printed catalogues; but as books have risen with other things
in price, I have enlarged the printed amount by about 15 per cent. to
cover any rise. Still, should it be insufficient, the bookseller is
requested to dock the catalogue to the amount of the remittance.
I have no news to give you; for I have none but from the newspapers, and
believing little of that myself, it would be an unworthy present to my
friends. But the important news lies now on your side of the Atlantic.
England, in throes from a trifle, as it would seem, but that trifle
the symptom of an irremediable disease proceeding from a long course of
exhaustion by efforts and burthens beyond her natural strength; France
agonizing between royalists and constitutionalists; the other States
of Europe pressing on to revolution and the rights of man, and the
colossal powers of Russia and Austria marshalled against them. These
are more than specks of hurricane in the horizon of the world. You,
who are young, may live to see its issue; the beginning only is for my
time. Nor is our side of the water entirely untroubled, the boisterous
sea of liberty is never without a wave. A hideous evil, the magnitude
of which is seen, and at a distance only, by the one party, and more
sorely felt and sincerely deplored by the other, from the difficulty
of the cure, divides us at this moment too angrily. The attempt by one
party to prohibit willing States from sharing the evil, is thought by
the other to render desperate, by accumulation, the hope of its final
eradication. If a little time, however, is given to both parties to cool,
and to dispel their visionary fears, they will see that concurring in
sentiment as to the evil, moral and political, the duty and interest of
both is to concur also in divining a practicable process of cure. Should
time not be given, and the schism be pushed to separation, it will be
for a short term only; two or three years trial will bring them back,
like quarrelling lovers to renewed embraces, and increased affections.
The experiment of separation would soon prove to both that they had
mutually miscalculated their best interests. And even were the parties
in Congress to secede in a passion, the soberer people would call a
convention and cement again the severance attempted by the insanity of
their functionaries. With this consoling view, my greatest grief would be
for the fatal effect of such an event on the hopes and happiness of the
world. We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government,
so modelled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is
a practicable government. Were we to break to pieces, it would damp the
hopes and the efforts of the good, and give triumph to those of the bad
through the whole enslaved world. As members, therefore, of the universal
society of mankind, and standing in high and responsible relation with
them, it is our sacred duty to suppress passion among ourselves, and not
to blast the confidence we have inspired of proof that a government of
reason is better than one of force. This letter is not of facts but of
opinions, as you will observe; and although the converse is generally
the most acceptable, I do not know that, in your situation, the opinions
of your countrymen may not be as desirable to be known to you as facts.
They constitute, indeed, moral facts, as important as physical ones to
the attention of the public functionary. Wishing you a long career to
the services you may render your country, and that it may be a career
of happiness and prosperity to yourself, I salute you with affectionate
attachment and respect.
TO MR. CORREA.
MONTICELLO, October 24, 1820.
Your kind letter, dear Sir, of October 12th, was handed to me by Dr.
Cooper, and was the first correction of an erroneous belief that you had
long since left our shores. Such had been Colonel Randolph's opinion,
and his had governed mine. I received your adieu with feelings of sincere
regret at the loss we were to sustain, and particularly of those friendly
visits by which you had made me so happy. I shall feel, too, the want of
your counsel and approbation in what we are doing and have yet to do in
our University, the last of my mortal cares, and the last service I can
render my country. But turning from myself, throwing egotism behind me,
and looking to your happiness, it is a duty and consolation of friendship
to consider that that may be promoted by your return to your own country.
There I hope you will receive the honors and rewards you merit, and which
may make the rest of your life easy and happy; there too you will render
precious services by promoting the science of your country, and blessing
its future generations with the advantages that bestows. Nor even there
shall we lose all the benefits of your friendship; for this motive, as
well as the love of your own country, will be an incitement to promote
that intimate harmony between our two nations which is so much the
interest of both. Nothing is so important as that America shall separate
herself from the systems of Europe, and establish one of her own. Our
circumstances, our pursuits, our interests, are distinct, the principles
of our policy should be so also. All entanglements with that quarter
of the globe should be avoided if we mean that peace and justice shall
be the polar stars of the American societies. I had written a letter to
a friend while you were here, in a part of which these sentiments were
expressed, and I had made an extract from it to put into your hands, as
containing my creed on that subject. You had left us, however, in the
morning earlier than I had been aware; still I enclose it to you, because
it would be a leading principle with me, had I longer to live. During
six and thirty years that I have been in situations to attend to the
conduct and characters of foreign nations, I have found the government
of Portugal the most just, inoffensive and unambitious of any one with
which we had concern, without a single exception. I am sure that this is
the character of ours also. Two such nations can never wish to quarrel
with each other. Subordinate officers may be negligent, may have their
passions and partialities, and be criminally remiss in preventing the
enterprises of the lawless banditti who are to be found in every seaport
of every country. The late piratical depredations which your commerce
has suffered as well as ours, and that of other nations, seem to have
been committed by renegado rovers of several nations, French, English,
American, which they as well as we have not been careful enough to
suppress. I hope our Congress now about to meet will strengthen the
measures of suppression. Of their disposition to do it there can be no
doubt; for all men of moral principle must be shocked at these atrocities.
I had repeated conversations on this subject with the President while
at his seat in this neighborhood. No man can abhor these enormities more
deeply. I trust it will not have been in the power of abandoned rovers,
nor yet of negligent functionaries, to disturb the harmony of two nations
so much disposed to mutual friendship, and interested in it. To this, my
dear friend, you can be mainly instrumental, and I know your patriotism
and philanthropy too well to doubt your best efforts to cement us. In
these I pray for your success, and that heaven may long preserve you
in health and prosperity to do all the good to mankind to which your
enlightened and benevolent mind disposes you. Of the continuance of my
affectionate friendship, with that of my life, and of its fervent wishes
for your happiness, accept my sincere assurance.
TO THE REVEREND JARED SPARKS.
MONTICELLO, November 4, 1820.
SIR,--Your favor of September 18th is just received, with the book
accompanying it. Its delay was owing to that of the box of books from
Mr. Guegan, in which it was packed. Being just setting out on a journey
I have time only to look over the summary of contents. In this I see
nothing in which I am likely to differ materially from you. I hold
the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by himself, to be the most pure,
benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man. I adhere to
the principles of the first age; and consider all subsequent innovations
as corruptions of his religion, having no foundation in what came from
him. The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin,
are, to my understanding, mere relapses into polytheism, differing from
paganism only by being more unintelligible. The religion of Jesus is
founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly, gave it triumph
over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. Thinking men of all
nations rallied readily to the doctrine of one only God, and embraced it
with the pure morals which Jesus inculcated. If the freedom of religion,
guaranteed to us by law _in theory_, can ever rise _in practice_ under
the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, truth will prevail over
fanaticism, and the genuine doctrines of Jesus, so long perverted by his
pseudo-priests, will again be restored to their original purity. This
reformation will advance with the other improvements of the human mind,
but too late for me to witness it. Accept my thanks for your book, in
which I shall read with pleasure your developments of the subject, and
with them the assurance of my high respect.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.
POPLAR FOREST, November 28, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--I sent in due time the Report of the Visitors to the Governor,
with a request that he would endeavor to convene the Literary Board
in time to lay it before the legislature on the second day of their
session. It was enclosed in a letter which will explain itself to you.
If delivered before the crowd of other business presses on them, they may
act on it immediately, and before there will have been time for unfriendly
combinations and manœuvres by the enemies of the institution. I enclose
you now a paper presenting some views which may be useful to you in
conversations, to rebut exaggerated estimates of what our institution is
to cost, and reproaches of deceptive estimates. One hundred and sixty-two
thousand three hundred and sixty-four dollars will be about the cost of
the whole establishment, when completed. Not an office at Washington has
cost less. The single building of the court house of Henrico has cost
nearly that; and the massive walls of the millions of bricks of William
and Mary could not now be built for a less sum.
Surely Governor Clinton's display of the gigantic efforts of New York
towards the education of her citizens, will stimulate the pride as
well as the patriotism of our legislature, to look to the reputation
and safety of their own country, to rescue it from the degradation of
becoming the Barbary of the Union, and of falling into the ranks of
our own negroes. To that condition it is fast sinking. We shall be in
the hands of the other States, what our indigenous predecessors were
when invaded by the science and arts of Europe. The mass of education
in Virginia, before the Revolution, placed her with the foremost of her
sister colonies. What is her education now? Where is it? The little we
have we import, like beggars, from other States; or import their beggars
to bestow on us their miserable crumbs. And what is wanting to restore
us to our station among our confederates? Not more money from the people.
Enough has been raised by them, and appropriated to this very object. It
is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their greatest
good. That good requires, that while they are instructed in general,
competently to the common business of life, others should employ their
genius with necessary information to the useful arts, to inventions for
saving labor and increasing our comforts, to nourishing our health, to
civil government, military science, &c.
Would it not have a good effect for the friends of this University to
take the lead in proposing and effecting a practical scheme of elementary
schools? To assume the character of the friends, rather than the opponents
of that object. The present plan has appropriated to the primary schools
forty-five thousand dollars for three years, making one hundred and
thirty-five thousand dollars. I should be glad to know if this sum has
educated one hundred and thirty-five poor children? I doubt it much. And
if it has, they have cost us one thousand dollars a piece for what might
have been done with thirty dollars. Supposing the literary revenue to be
sixty thousand dollars, I think it demonstrable, that this sum, equally
divided between the two objects, would amply suffice for both. One hundred
counties, divided into about twelve wards each, on an average, and a
school in each ward of perhaps ten children, would be one thousand and
two hundred schools, distributed proportionably over the surface of the
State. The inhabitants of each ward, meeting together (as when they work
on the roads), building good log houses for their school and teacher,
and contributing for his provisions, rations of pork, beef, and corn,
in the proportion each of his other taxes, would thus lodge and feed
him without feeling it; and those of them who are able, paying for the
tuition of their own children, would leave no call on the public fund but
for the tuition fee of, here and there, an accidental pauper, who would
still be fed and lodged with his parents. Suppose this fee ten dollars,
and three hundred dollars apportioned to a county on an average, (more or
less proportioned,) would there be thirty such paupers for every county?
I think not. The truth is, that the want of common education with us is
not from our poverty, but from want of an orderly system. More money
is now paid for the education of a part, than would be paid for that
of the whole, if systematically arranged. Six thousand common schools
in New York, fifty pupils in each, three hundred thousand in all; one
hundred and sixty thousand dollars annually paid to the masters; forty
established academies, with two thousand two hundred and eighteen pupils;
and five colleges, with seven hundred and eighteen students; to which
last classes of institutions seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars
have been given; and the whole appropriations for education estimated
at two and a half millions of dollars! What a pigmy to this is Virginia
become, with a population almost equal to that of New York! And whence
this difference? From the difference their rulers set on the value of
knowledge, and the prosperity it produces. But still, if a pigmy, let
her do what a pigmy may do. If among fifty children in each of the six
thousand schools of New York, there are only paupers enough to employ
twenty-five dollars of public money to each school, surely among the
ten children of each of our one thousand and two hundred schools, the
same sum of twenty-five dollars to each school will teach its paupers,
(five times as much as to the same number in New York,) and will amount
for the whole to thirty thousand dollars a year, the one-half only of
our literary revenue.
Do then, dear Sir, think of this, and engage our friends to take in
hand the whole subject. It will reconcile the friends of the elementary
schools, and none are more warmly so than myself, lighten the difficulties
of the University, and promote in every order of men the degree of
instruction proportioned to their condition, and to their views in life.
It will combine with the mass of our force, a wise direction of it,
which will insure to our country its future prosperity and safety. I
had formerly thought that visitors of the school might be chosen by the
county, and charged to provide teachers for every ward, and to superintend
them. I now think it would be better for every ward to choose its own
resident visitor, whose business it would be to keep a teacher in the
ward, to superintend the school, and to call meetings of the ward for all
purposes relating to it; their accounts to be settled, and wards laid
off by the courts. I think ward elections better for many reasons, one
of which is sufficient, that it will keep elementary education out of
the hands of fanaticising preachers, who, in county elections, would be
universally chosen, and the predominant sect of the county would possess
itself of all its schools.
A wrist stiffened by an ancient accident, now more so by the effect of
age, renders writing a slow and irksome operation with me. I cannot,
therefore, present these views, by separate letters to each of our
colleagues in the legislature, but must pray you to communicate them to
Mr. Johnson and General Breckenridge, and to request them to consider
this as equally meant for them. Mr. Gordon being the local representative
of the University, and among its most zealous friends, would be a more
useful second to General Breckenridge in the House of Delegates, by a
free communication of what concerns the University, with which he has
had little opportunity of becoming acquainted. So, also, would it be to
Mr. Rives, who would be a friendly advocate.
Accept the assurances of my constant and affectionate esteem and respect.
TO MR. MADISON.
POPLAR FOREST, November 29, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--The enclosed letter from our ancient friend Tenche Coxe, came
unfortunately to Monticello after I had left it, and has had a dilatory
passage to this place, where I received it yesterday, and obey its
injunction of immediate transmission to you. We should have recognized
the style even without a signature, and although so written as to be
much of it indecipherable. This is a sample of the effects we may expect
from the late mischievous law vacating every four years nearly all
the executive officers of the government. It saps the constitutional
and salutary functions of the President, and introduces a principle
of intrigue and corruption, which will soon leaven the mass, not only
of Senators, but of citizens. It is more baneful than the attempt
which failed in the beginning of the government, to make all officers
irremovable but with the consent of the Senate. This places, every four
years, all appointments under their power, and even obliges them to act
on every one nomination. It will keep in constant excitement all the
hungry cormorants for office, render them, as well as those in place,
sycophants to their Senators, engage these in eternal intrigue to turn
out one and put in another, in cabals to swap work; and make of them what
all executive directories become, mere sinks of corruption and faction.
This must have been one of the midnight signatures of the President,
when he had not time to consider, or even to read the law; and the more
fatal as being irrepealable but with the consent of the Senate, which
will never be obtained.
F. Gilmer has communicated to me Mr. Correa's letter to him of adieux to
his friends here, among whom he names most affectionately Mrs. Madison
and yourself. No foreigner, I believe, has ever carried with him more
friendly regrets. He was to sail the next day (November 10) in the
British packet for England, and thence take his passage in January for
Brazil. His present views are of course liable to be affected by the
events of Portugal, and the possible effects of their example on Brazil.
I expect to return to Monticello about the middle of the ensuing month,
and salute you with constant affection and respect.
TO THOMAS RITCHIE.
MONTICELLO, December 25, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--On my return home after a long absence, I find here your favor
of November the 23d, with Colonel Taylor's "Construction Construed,"
which you have been so kind as to send me, in the name of the author as
well as yourself. Permit me, if you please, to use the same channel for
conveying to him the thanks I render you also for this mark of attention.
I shall read it, I know, with edification, as I did his Inquiry, to
which I acknowledge myself indebted for many valuable ideas, and for the
correction of some errors of early opinion, never seen in a correct light
until presented to me in that work. That the present volume is equally
orthodox, I know before reading it, because I know that Colonel Taylor
and myself have rarely, if ever, differed in any political principle
of importance. Every act of his life, and every word he ever wrote,
satisfies me of this. So, also, as to the two Presidents, late and now
in office, I know them both to be of principles as truly republican as
any men living. If there be anything amiss, therefore, in the present
state of our affairs, as the formidable deficit lately unfolded to us
indicates, I ascribe it to the inattention of Congress to their duties,
to their unwise dissipation and waste of the public contributions. They
seemed, some little while ago, to be at a loss for objects whereon to
throw away the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury. I had feared
the result, because I saw among them some of my old fellow laborers, of
tried and known principles, yet often in their minorities. I am aware
that in one of their most ruinous vagaries, the people were themselves
betrayed into the same phrenzy with their Representatives. The deficit
produced, and a heavy tax to supply it, will, I trust, bring both to
their sober senses.
But it is not from this branch of government we have most to fear. Taxes
and short elections will keep them right. The judiciary of the United
States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working
under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.
They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general
and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will
lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English
law to forget the maxim, "_boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem_."
We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride their
five lawyers have lately taken. If they do, then, with the editor of
our book, in his address to the public, I will say, that "against this
every man should raise his voice," and more, should uplift his arm. Who
wrote this admirable address? Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too
much, nor one which can be changed but for the worse. That pen should
go on, lay bare these wounds of our constitution, expose the decisions
_seriatim_, and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation to
these bold speculators on its patience. Having found, from experience,
that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow, they
consider themselves secure for life; they sculk from responsibility to
public opinion, the only remaining hold on them, under a practice first
introduced into England by Lord Mansfield. An opinion is huddled up in
conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and
with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates, by a crafty
chief judge, who sophisticates the law to his mind, by the turn of his
own reasoning. A judiciary law was once reported by the Attorney General
to Congress, requiring each judge to deliver his opinion _seriatim_ and
openly, and then to give it in writing to the clerk to be entered in
the record. A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a
good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism,
at least in a republican government.
But to return to your letter; you ask for my opinion of the work you send
me, and to let it go out to the public. This I have ever made a point of
declining, (one or two instances only excepted.) Complimentary thanks
to writers who have sent me their works, have betrayed me sometimes
before the public, without my consent having been asked. But I am far
from presuming to direct the reading of my fellow citizens, who are good
enough judges themselves of what is worthy their reading. I am, also,
too desirous of quiet to place myself in the way of contention. Against
this I am admonished by bodily decay, which cannot be unaccompanied by
corresponding wane of the mind. Of this I am as yet sensible, sufficiently
to be unwilling to trust myself before the public, and when I cease
to be so, I hope that my friends will be too careful of me to draw me
forth and present me, like a Priam in armor, as a spectacle for public
compassion. I hope our political bark will ride through all its dangers;
but I can in future be but an inert passenger.
I salute you with sentiments of great friendship and respect.
TO M. DE LA FAYETTE.
MONTICELLO, December 26, 1820.
It is long, indeed, my very dear friend, since I have been able to address
a letter to you. For more than two years my health has been so entirely
prostrate, that I have, of necessity, intermitted all correspondence. The
dislocated wrist, too, which perhaps you may recollect, has now become so
stiff from the effects of age, that writing is become a slow and painful
operation, and scarcely ever undertaken but under the goad of imperious
business. In the meantime your country has been going on less well than
I had hoped. But it will go on. The light which has been shed on the
mind of man through the civilized world, has given it a new direction,
from which no human power can divert it. The sovereigns of Europe who
are wise, or have wise counsellors, see this, and bend to the breeze
which blows; the unwise alone stiffen and meet its inevitable crush.
The volcanic rumblings in the bowels of Europe, from north to south,
seem to threaten a general explosion, and the march of armies into Italy
cannot end in a simple march. The disease of liberty is catching; those
armies will take it in the south, carry it thence to their own country,
spread there the infection of revolution and representative government,
and raise its people from the prone condition of brutes to the erect
altitude of man. Some fear our envelopment in the wars engendering from
the unsettled state of our affairs with Spain, and therefore are anxious
for a ratification of our treaty with her. I fear no such thing, and
hope that if ratified by Spain it will be rejected here. We may justly
say to Spain, "when this negotiation commenced, twenty years ago, your
authority was acknowledged by those you are selling to us. That authority
is now renounced, and their right of self-disposal asserted. In buying
them from you, then, we buy but a war-title, a right to subdue them,
which you can neither convey nor we acquire. This is a family quarrel in
which we have no right to meddle. Settle it between yourselves, and we
will then treat with the party whose right is acknowledged." With whom
that will be, no doubt can be entertained. And why should we revolt them
by purchasing them as cattle, rather than receiving them as fellow-men?
Spain has held off until she sees they are lost to her, and now thinks
it better to get something than nothing for them. When she shall see
South America equally desperate, she will be wise to sell that also.
With us things are going on well. The boisterous sea of liberty indeed
is never without a wave, and that from Missouri is now rolling towards
us, but we shall ride over it as we have over all others. It is not
a moral question, but one merely of power. Its object is to raise a
geographical principle for the choice of a president, and the noise
will be kept up till that is effected. All know that permitting the
slaves of the south to spread into the west will not add one being to
that unfortunate condition, that it will increase the happiness of those
existing, and by spreading them over a larger surface, will dilute the
evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting finally rid of it,
an event more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than by the
noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity. In the meantime, it is a ladder
for rivals climbing to power.
In a letter to Mr. Porrey, of March 18th, 1819, I informed him of the
success of our application to Congress on his behalf. I enclosed this
letter to you, but hearing nothing from him, and as you say nothing of
it in yours of July 20th, I am not without fear it may have miscarried.
In the present I enclose for him the Auditor's certificate, and the
letters of General Washington and myself, which he had forwarded to me
with a request of their return. Your kindness in delivering this will
render unnecessary another letter from me, an effort which necessarily
obliges me to spare myself.
If you shall hear from me more seldom than heretofore, ascribe it, my
ever dear friend, to the heavy load of seventy-seven years and to waning
health, but not to weakened affections; these will continue what they
have ever been, and will ever be sincere and warm to the latest breath
of yours devotedly.
TO MR. ROSCOE.
MONTICELLO, December 27, 1820.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter received more than a twelvemonth ago, with the two
tracts on penal jurisprudence, and the literary institution of Liverpool,
ought long since to have called for the thanks I now return, had it been
in my power sooner to have tendered them. But a long continuance of ill
health has suspended all power of answering the kind attentions with which
I have been honored during it; and it is only now that a state of slow
and uncertain convalescence enables me to make acknowledgments which have
been so long and painfully delayed. The treatise on penal jurisprudence I
read with great pleasure. Beccaria had demonstrated general principles,
but practical applications were difficult. Our States are trying them
with more or less success; and the great light you have thrown on the
subject will, I am sure, be useful to our experiment. For the thing,
as yet, is but in experiment. Your Liverpool institution will also aid
us in the organization of our new University, an establishment now in
progress in this State, and to which my remaining days and faculties
will be devoted. When ready for its Professors, we shall apply for them
chiefly to your island. Were we content to remain stationary in science,
we should take them from among ourselves; but, desirous of advancing, we
must seek them in countries already in advance; and identity of language
points to our best resource. To furnish inducements, we provide for the
Professors separate buildings, in which themselves and their families
may be handsomely and comfortably lodged, and to liberal salaries will
be added lucrative perquisites. This institution will be based on the
illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to
follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as
reason is left free to combat it.
We are looking with wonder at what is passing among you. It
"Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly."
There must be something in these agitations more than meets the eye of a
distant spectator. Your queen must be used in this as a rallying point
merely, around which are gathering the discontents of every quarter
and character. If these flowed from theories of government only, and if
merely from the heads of speculative men, they would admit of parley,
of negotiation, of management. But I fear they are the workings of
hungry bellies, which nothing but food will fill and quiet. I sincerely
wish you safely out of them. Circumstances have nourished between our
kindred countries angry dispositions which both ought long since to have
banished from their bosoms. I have ever considered a cordial affection
as the first interest of both. No nation on earth can hurt us so much
as yours, none be more useful to you than ours. The obstacle, we have
believed, was in the obstinate and unforgiving temper of your late
king, and a continuance of his prejudices kept up from habit, after he
was with drawn from power. I hope I now see symptoms of sounder views
in your government; in which I know it will be cordially met by ours,
as it would have been by every administration which has existed under
our present constitution. None desired it more cordially than myself,
whatever different opinions were impressed on your government by a party
who wishes to have its weight in their scale as its exclusive friends.
My ancient friend and classmate, James Maury, informs me by letter that
he has sent me a bust which I shall receive with great pleasure and
thankfulness, and shall arrange in honorable file with those of some
cherished characters. Will you permit me to place here my affectionate
souvenirs of him, and accept for yourself the assurance of the highest
consideration and esteem.
TO FRANCIS EPPES.
MONTICELLO, January 19, 1821.
DEAR FRANCIS,--Your letter of the 1st came safely to hand. I am sorry
you have lost Mr. Elliot, however the kindness of Dr. Cooper will be
able to keep you in the track of what is worthy of your time.
You ask my opinion of Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine. They were alike
in making bitter enemies of the priests and pharisees of their day. Both
were honest men; both advocates for human liberty. Paine wrote for a
country which permitted him to push his reasoning to whatever length it
would go. Lord Bolingbroke in one restrained by a constitution, and by
public opinion. He was called indeed a tory; but his writings prove him
a stronger advocate for liberty than any of his countrymen, the whigs of
the present day. Irritated by his exile, he committed one act unworthy
of him, in connecting himself momentarily with a prince rejected by
his country. But he redeemed that single act by his establishment of
the principles which proved it to be wrong. These two persons differed
remarkably in the style of their writing, each leaving a model of what is
most perfect in both extremes of the simple and the sublime. No writer
has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity
of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming
language. In this he may be compared with Dr. Franklin; and indeed
his Common Sense was, for awhile, believed to have been written by Dr.
Franklin, and published under the borrowed name of Paine, who had come
over with him from England. Lord Bolingbroke's, on the other hand, is a
style of the highest order. The lofty, rhythmical, full-flowing eloquence
of Cicero. Periods of just measure, their members proportioned, their
close full and round. His conceptions, too, are bold and strong, his
diction copious, polished and commanding as his subject. His writings are
certainly the finest samples in the English language, of the eloquence
proper for the Senate. His political tracts are safe reading for the
most timid religionist, his philosophical, for those who are not afraid
to trust their reason with discussions of right and wrong.
You have asked my opinion of these persons, and, _to you_, I have given
it freely. But, remember, that I am old, that I wish not to make new
enemies, nor to give offence to those who would consider a difference
of opinion as sufficient ground for unfriendly dispositions. God bless
you, and make you what I wish you to be.
TO ARCHIBALD THWEAT.
MONTICELLO, January 19, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--I duly received your favor of the 11th, covering Judge Roane's
letter, which I now return. Of the kindness of his sentiments expressed
towards myself I am highly sensible; and could I believe that my public
services had merited the approbation he so indulgently bestows, the
satisfaction I should derive from it would be reward enough to his wish
that I would take a part in the transactions of the present day. I am
sensible of my incompetence. For first, I know little about them, having
long withdrawn my attention from public affairs, and resigned myself
with folded arms to the care of those who are to care for us all. And,
next, the hand of time pressing heavily on me, in mind as well as body,
leaves to neither sufficient energy to engage in public contentions.
I am sensible of the inroads daily making by the federal, into the
jurisdiction of its co-ordinate associates, the State governments. The
legislative and executive branches may sometimes err, but elections
and dependence will bring them to rights. The judiciary branch is the
instrument which, working like gravity, without intermission, is to
press us at last into one consolidated mass. Against this I know no
one who, equally with Judge Roane himself, possesses the power and the
courage to make resistance; and to him I look, and have long looked,
as our strongest bulwark. If Congress fails to shield the States from
dangers so palpable and so imminent, the States must shield themselves,
and meet the invader foot to foot. This is already half done by Colonel
Taylor's book; because a conviction that we are right accomplishes half
the difficulty of correcting wrong. This book is the most effectual
retraction of our government to its original principles which has ever
yet been sent by heaven to our aid. Every State in the Union should
give a copy to every member they elect, as a standing instruction, and
ours should set the example. Accept with Mrs. Thweat the assurance of
my affectionate and respectful attachment.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, January 22, 1821.
I was quite rejoiced, dear Sir, to see that you had health and spirits
enough to take part in the late convention of your State, for revising
its constitution, and to bear your share in its debates and labors. The
amendments of which we have as yet heard, prove the advance of liberalism
in the intervening period; and encourage a hope that the human mind will
some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed two thousand years ago. This
country, which has given to the world the example of physical liberty,
owes to it that of moral emancipation also, for as yet it is but nominal
with us. The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice, the
freedom asserted by the laws in theory.
Our anxieties in this quarter are all concentrated in the question,
what does the Holy Alliance in and out of Congress mean to do with
us on the Missouri question? And this, by-the-bye, is but the name of
the case, it is only the John Doe or Richard Roe of the ejectment. The
real question, as seen in the States afflicted with this unfortunate
population, is, are our slaves to be presented with freedom and a
dagger? For if Congress has the power to regulate the conditions of the
inhabitants of the States, within the States, it will be but another
exercise of that power, to declare that all shall be free. Are we then
to see again Athenian and Lacedemonian confederacies? To wage another
Peloponnesian war to settle the ascendency between them? Or is this
the tocsin of merely a servile war? That remains to be seen; but not, I
hope, by you or me. Surely, they will parley awhile, and give us time
to get out of the way. What a Bedlamite is man? But let us turn from
our own uneasiness to the miseries of our southern friends. Bolivar
and Morillo, it seems, have come to the parley, with dispositions at
length to stop the useless effusion of human blood in that quarter. I
feared from the beginning, that these people were not yet sufficiently
enlightened for self-government; and that after wading through blood and
slaughter, they would end in military tyrannies, more or less numerous.
Yet as they wished to try the experiment, I wished them success in it;
they have now tried it, and will possibly find that their safest road
will be an accommodation with the mother country, which shall hold them
together by the single link of the same chief magistrate, leaving to him
power enough to keep them in peace with one another, and to themselves
the essential power of self-government and self-improvement, until they
shall be sufficiently trained by education and habits of freedom, to walk
safely by themselves. Representative government, native functionaries,
a qualified negative on their laws, with a previous security by compact
for freedom of commerce, freedom of the press, _habeas corpus_ and trial
by jury, would make a good beginning. This last would be the school in
which their people might begin to learn the exercise of civic duties as
well as rights. For freedom of religion they are not yet prepared. The
scales of bigotry have not sufficiently fallen from their eyes, to accept
it for themselves individually, much less to trust others with it. But
that will come in time, as well as a general ripeness to break entirely
from the parent stem. You see, my dear Sir, how easily we prescribe
for others a cure for their difficulties, while we cannot cure our own.
We must leave both, I believe, to heaven, and wrap ourselves up in the
mantle of resignation, and of that friendship of which I tender to you
the most sincere assurances.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.
MONTICELLO, January 31, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--Your favors of the 18th and 25th came together, three days
ago. They fill me with gloom as to the dispositions of our legislature
towards the University. I perceive that I am not to live to see it
opened. As to what had better be done within the limits of their will,
I trust with entire confidence to what yourself, Gen. Breckenridge and
Mr. Johnson shall think best. You will see what is practicable, and give
it such shape as you think best. If a loan is to be resorted to, I think
sixty thousand dollars will be necessary, including the library. Its
instalments cannot begin until those of the former loan are accomplished;
and they should not begin later, nor be less than thirteen thousand
dollars a year. (I think it safe to retain two thousand dollars a year
for care of the buildings, improvement of the grounds, and unavoidable
contingencies.) To extinguish this second loan, will require between
five and six instalments, which will carry us to the end of 1833, or
thirteen years from this time. My individual opinion is, that we had
better not open the institution until the buildings, library, and all,
are finished, and our funds cleared of incumbrance. Those buildings once
erected, will secure the full object infallibly at the end of thirteen
years, and as much earlier as the legislature shall choose. And if we
were to begin sooner, with half funds only, it would satisfy the common
mind, prevent their aid beyond that point, and our institution remaining
at that forever, would be no more than the paltry academies we now have.
Even with the whole funds we shall be reduced to six professors. While
Harvard will still prime it over us with her twenty professors. How many
of our youths she now has, learning the lessons of anti-Missourianism,
I know not; but a gentleman lately from Princeton, told me he saw there
the list of the students at that place, and that more than half were
Virginians. These will return home, no doubt, deeply impressed with the
sacred principles of our Holy Alliance of restrictionists.
But the gloomiest of all prospects, is in the desertion of the best
friends of the institution, for desertion I must call it. I know not
the necessities which may force this on you. General Cocke, you say,
will explain them to me; but I cannot conceive them, nor persuade
myself they are uncontrollable. I have ever hoped, that yourself, Gen.
Breckenridge and Mr. Johnson would stand at your posts in the legislature,
until everything was effected, and the institution opened. If it is so
difficult to get along with all the energy and influence of our present
colleagues in the legislature, how can we expect to proceed at all,
reducing our moving power? I know well your devotion to your country,
and your foresight of the awful scenes coming on her, sooner or later.
With this foresight, what service can we ever render her equal to this?
What object of our lives can we propose so important? What interest of
our own which ought not to be postponed to this? Health, time, labor,
on what in the single life which nature has given us, can these be
better bestowed than on this immortal boon to our country? The exertions
and the mortifications are temporary; the benefit eternal. If any
member of our college of visitors could justifiably withdraw from this
sacred duty, it would be myself, who, _quadragenis stipendiis jamdudum
peractis_, have neither vigor of body nor mind left to keep the field;
but I will die in the last ditch, and so I hope you will, my friend, as
well as our firm-breasted brothers and colleagues, Mr. Johnson and Gen.
Breckenridge. Nature will not give you a second life wherein to atone for
the omissions of this. Pray then, dear and very dear Sir, do not think
of deserting us, but view the sacrifices which seem to stand in your
way, as the lesser duties, and such as ought to be postponed to this,
the greatest of all. Continue with us in these holy labors, until having
seen their accomplishment, we may say with old Simeon, "_nunc dimittas,
Domine_." Under all circumstances, however, of praise or blame, I shall
be affectionately yours.
TO JARED MANSFIELD, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 13, 1821.
I am favored, Sir, with your letter of January 26th, and am duly
sensible of the honor proposed of giving to my portrait a place among
the benefactors of our nation, and of the establishment of West Point
in particular. I have ever considered that establishment as of major
importance to our country, and in whatever I could do for it, I viewed
myself as performing a duty only. This is certainly more than requited
by the kind sentiments expressed in your letter. The real debt of the
institution is to its able and zealous professors. Mr. Sully, I fear,
however, will consider the trouble of his journey, and the employment
of his fine pencil, as illy bestowed on an ottamy of 78. Voltaire, when
requested by a female friend to sit for his bust by the sculptor Pigalle,
answered, "J'ai soixante seize ans; et M. Pigalle doit, dit-on venir
modeler mon visage. Mais, Madame, il faudrait que j'eusse un visage. On
n'en devinerait à peine la place mes yeux sont enfonces de trois pouces;
mes joues sont de vieux parchemin mal collés sur des os qui ne tiennent à
rien. Le peu de dents que j'avais est parti." I will conclude, however,
with him, that what remains is at your service, and that of the pencil
of Mr. Sully. I shall be at home till the middle of April, when I shall
go for some time to an occasional and distant residence. Within this
term Mr. Sully will be pleased to consult his own convenience, in which
the state of the roads will of course have great weight. Every day of
it will be equal with me.
I pray you, Sir, to convey to the brethren of your institution, and to
accept for yourself also, the assurance of my high consideration and
regard.
TO GENERAL BRECKENRIDGE.
MONTICELLO, February 15, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--I learn, with deep affliction, that nothing is likely to be
done for our University this year. So near as it is to the shore that
one shove more would land it there, I had hoped that would be given;
and that we should open with the next year an institution on which the
fortunes of our country may depend more than may meet the general eye.
The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next;
that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are
cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution
of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that
in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet
consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to
destinies of high promise; these are considerations which will occur to
all; but all, I fear, do not see the speck in our horizon which is to
burst on us as a tornado, sooner or later. The line of division lately
marked out between different portions of our confederacy, is such as will
never, I fear, be obliterated, and we are now trusting to those who are
against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the
minds and affections of our youth. If, as has been estimated, we send
three hundred thousand dollars a year to the northern seminaries, for
the instruction of our own sons, then we must have there five hundred
of our sons, imbibing opinions and principles in discord with those of
their own country. This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence,
and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy. We are now certainly
furnishing recruits to their school. If it be asked what are we to do,
or said we cannot give the last lift to the University without stopping
our primary schools, and these we think most important; I answer, I know
their importance. Nobody can doubt my zeal for the general instruction
of the people. Who first started that idea? I may surely say, myself.
Turn to the bill in the revised code, which I drew more than forty years
ago, and before which the idea of a plan for the education of the people,
generally, had never been suggested in this State. There you will see
developed the first rudiments of the whole system of general education
we are now urging and acting on; and it is well known to those with whom
I have acted on this subject, that I never have proposed a sacrifice of
the primary to the ultimate grade of instruction. Let us keep our eye
steadily on the whole system. If we cannot do everything at once, let
us do one at a time. The primary schools need no preliminary expense;
the ultimate grade requires a considerable expenditure in advance. A
suspension of proceeding for a year or two on the primary schools, and
an application of the whole income, during that time, to the completion
of the buildings necessary for the University, would enable us then to
start both institutions at the same time. The intermediate branch, of
colleges, academies and private classical schools, for the middle grade,
may hereafter receive any necessary aids when the funds shall become
competent. In the meantime, they are going on sufficiently, as they
have ever yet gone on, at the private expense of those who use them,
and who in numbers and means are competent to their own exigencies. The
experience of three years has, I presume, left no doubt that the present
plan of primary schools, of putting money into the hands of twelve hundred
persons acting for nothing, and under no responsibility, is entirely
inefficient. Some other must be thought of; and during this pause, if
it be only for a year, the whole revenue of that year, with that of the
last three years which has not been already thrown away, would place our
University in readiness to start with a better organization of primary
schools, and both may then go on, hand in hand, forever. No diminution
of the capital will in this way have been incurred; a principle which
ought to be deemed sacred. A relinquishment of interest on the late loan
of sixty thousand dollars, would so far, also, forward the University
without lessening the capital.
But what may be best done I leave with entire confidence to yourself and
your colleagues in legislation, who know better than I do the conditions
of the literary fund and its wisest application; and I shall acquiesce
with perfect resignation to their will. I have brooded, perhaps with
fondness, over this establishment, as it held up to me the hope of
continuing to be useful while I continued to live. I had believed that
the course and circumstances of my life had placed within my power some
services favorable to the outset of the institution. But this may be
egotism; pardonable, perhaps, when I express a consciousness that my
colleagues and successors will do as well, whatever the legislature
shall enable them to do.
I have thus, my dear Sir, opened my bosom, with all its anxieties, freely
to you. I blame nobody for seeing things in a different light. I am
sure that all act conscientiously, and that all will be done honestly
and wisely which can be done. I yield the concerns of the world with
cheerfulness to those who are appointed in the order of nature to succeed
to them; and for yourself, for our colleagues, and for all in charge of
our country's future fame and fortune, I offer up sincere prayers.
TO DABNEY TERRELL, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 26, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--While you were in this neighborhood, you mentioned to me
your intention of studying the law, and asked my opinion as to the
sufficient course of reading. I gave it to you, _ore tenus_, and with
so little consideration that I do not remember what it was; but I have
since recollected that I once wrote a letter to Dr. Cooper,[13] on
good consideration of the subject. He was then law-lecturer, I believe,
at Carlisle. My stiffening wrist makes writing now a slow and painful
operation, but my granddaughter Ellen undertakes to copy the letter,
which I shall enclose herein.
I notice in that letter four distinct epochs at which the English laws
have been reviewed, and their whole body, as existing at each epoch,
well digested into a code. These digests were by Bracton, Coke, Matthew
Bacon and Blackstone. Bracton having written about the commencement of
the extant statutes, may be considered as having given a digest of the
laws then in being, written and unwritten, and forming, therefore, the
textual code of what is called the common law, just at the period too
when it begins to be altered by statutes to which we can appeal. But
so much of his matter is become obsolete by change of circumstances or
altered by statute, that the student may omit him for the present, and
1st. Begin with [14]Coke's four Institutes. These give a complete body
of the law as it stood in the reign of the first James, an epoch the
more interesting to us, as we separated at that point from English
legislation, and acknowledge no subsequent statutory alterations.
2. Then passing over (for occasional reading as hereafter proposed)
all the reports and treatises to the time of Matthew Bacon, read his
abridgment, compiled about one hundred years after Coke's, in which they
are all embodied. This gives numerous applications of the old principles
to new cases, and gives the general state of the English law at that
period.
Here, too, the student should take up the chancery branch of the law,
by reading the first and second abridgments of the cases in Equity. The
second is by the same Matthew Bacon, the first having been published
some time before. The alphabetical order adopted by Bacon, is certainly
not as satisfactory as the systematic. But the arrangement is under
very general and leading heads, and these, indeed, with very little
difficulty, might be systematically instead of alphabetically arranged
and read.
3. Passing now in like manner over all intervening reports and tracts,
the student may take up Blackstone's Commentaries, published about
twenty-five years later than Bacon's abridgment, and giving the substance
of these new reports and tracts. This review is not so full as that of
Bacon, by any means, but better digested. Here, too, Wooddeson should be
read as supplementary to Blackstone, under heads too shortly treated by
him. Fonblanque's edition of Francis' Maxims of Equity, and Bridgman's
digested Index, into which the latter cases are incorporated, are also
supplementary in the chancery branch, in which Blackstone is very short.
This course comprehends about twenty-six 8vo volumes, and reading four
or five hours a day would employ about two years.
After these, the best of the reporters since Blackstone should be read
for the new cases which have occurred since his time. Which they are I
know not, as all of them are since my time.
By way of change and relief for another hour or two in the day, should
be read the law-tracts of merit which are many, and among them all those
of Baron Gilbert are of the first order. In these hours, too, may be
read Bracton, (now translated,) and Justinian's Institute. The method
of these two last works is very much the same, and their language often
quite so. Justinian is very illustrative of the doctrines of equity,
and is often appealed to, and Cooper's edition is the best on account
of the analogies and contrasts he has given of the Roman and English
law. After Bracton, Reeves' History of the English Law may be read to
advantage. During this same hour or two of lighter law reading, select
and leading cases of the reporters may be successively read, which the
several digests will have pointed out and referred to.
* * * * *
I have here sketched the reading in common law and chancery which I
suppose necessary for a reputable practitioner in those courts. But
there are other branches of law in which, although it is not expected
he should be an adept, yet when it occurs to speak of them, it should
be understandingly to a decent degree. There are the Admiralty law,
Ecclesiastical law, and the Law of Nations. I would name as elementary
books in these branches, Molloy de Jure Maritimo. Brown's Compend. of
the Civil and Admiralty Law, 2 vols. 8vo. The Jura Ecclesiastica, 2
vols. 8vo. And Les Institutions du droit de la Nature et des Gens de
Reyneval, 1 vol. 8vo.
Besides these six hours of law reading, light and heavy, and those
necessary for the repasts of the day, for exercise and sleep, which
suppose to be ten or twelve, there will still be six or eight hours for
reading history, politics, ethics, physics, oratory, poetry, criticism,
&c., as necessary as law to form an accomplished lawyer.
The letter to Dr. Cooper, with this as a supplement, will give you those
ideas on a sufficient course of law reading which I ought to have done
with more consideration at the moment of your first request. Accept
them now as a testimony of my esteem, and of sincere wishes for your
success; and the family, _unâ voce_, desires me to convey theirs with
my own affectionate salutations.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] January 16, 1814.
[14] Since the date of this letter, a most important
and valuable edition has been published of Coke's First
Institute. The editor, Thomas, has analyzed the whole work,
and re-composed its matter in the order of Blackstone's
Commentaries, not omitting a sentence of Lord Coke's text,
nor inserting one not his. In notes, under the text,
he has given the modern decisions relating to the same
subjects, rendering it thus as methodical, lucid, easy and
agreeable to the reader as Blackstone, and more precise
and profound. It can now be no longer doubted that this is
the very best elementary work for a beginner in the study
of the law. It is not, I suppose, to be had in this State,
and questionable if in the North, as yet, and it is dear,
costing in England four guineas or nineteen dollars, to
which add the duty here on imported books, which, on the
three volumes 8vo, is something more than three dollars, or
one dollar the 8vo volume. This is a tax on learned readers
to support printers for the readers of "The Delicate
Distress, and The Wild Irish Boy".
TO TIMOTHY PICKERING, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, February 27, 1821.
I have received, Sir, your favor of the 12th, and I assure you I received
it with pleasure. It is true, as you say, that we have differed in
political opinions; but I can say with equal truth, that I never suffered
a political to become a personal difference. I have been left on this
ground by some friends whom I dearly loved, but I was never the first
to separate. With some others, of politics different from mine, I have
continued in the warmest friendship to this day, and to all, and to
yourself particularly, I have ever done moral justice.
I thank you for Mr. Channing's discourse, which you have been so kind as
to forward me. It is not yet at hand, but is doubtless on its way. I had
received it through another channel, and read it with high satisfaction.
No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason
in its advances towards rational Christianity. When we shall have done
away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that
three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the
artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure
of Jesus; when, in short, we shall have unlearned everything which has
been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines
he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples; and
my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely
from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian.
I know that the case you cite, of Dr. Drake, has been a common one. The
religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus,
so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured
them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable
thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to
pronounce its founder an impostor. Had there never been a commentator,
there never would have been an infidel. In the present advance of truth,
which we both approve, I do not know that you and I may think alike
on all points. As the Creator has made no two faces alike, so no two
minds, and probably no two creeds. We well know that among Unitarians
themselves there are strong shades of difference, as between Doctors
Price and Priestley, for example. So there may be peculiarities in your
creed and in mine. They are honestly formed without doubt. I do not
wish to trouble the world with mine, nor to be troubled for them. These
accounts are to be settled only with him who made us; and to him we leave
it, with charity for all others, of whom, also, he is the only rightful
and competent judge. I have little doubt that the whole of our country
will soon be rallied to the unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the
pure doctrines of Jesus also.
In saying to you so much, and without reserve, on a subject on which
I never permit myself to go before the public, I know that I am safe
against the infidelities which have so often betrayed my letters to the
strictures of those for whom they were not written, and to whom I never
meant to commit my peace. To yourself I wish every happiness, and will
conclude, as you have done, in the same simple style of antiquity, _da
operam ut valeas; hoc mihi gratius facere nihil potes_.
TO JUDGE ROANE.
MONTICELLO, March 9, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--I am indebted for your favor of February 25th, and especially
for your friendly indulgence to my excuses for retiring from the polemical
world. I should not shrink from the post of duty, had not the decays of
nature withdrawn me from the list of combatants. Great decline in the
energies of the body import naturally a corresponding wane of the mind,
and a longing after tranquillity as the last and sweetest asylum of age.
It is a law of nature that the generations of men should give way, one
to another, and I hope that the one now on the stage will preserve for
their sons the political blessings delivered into their hands by their
fathers. Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must
expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption
of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be
ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the
day be kept off as long as possible. We see already germs of this, as
might be expected. But we are not the less bound to press against them.
The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income,
growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the
employment of the pruning-knife; and I doubt not it will be employed;
good principles being as yet prevalent enough for that.
The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like
gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance,
gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulphing
insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds
them. The recent recall to first principles, however, by Colonel Taylor,
by yourself, and now by Alexander Smith, will, I hope, be heard and
obeyed, and that a temporary check will be effected. Yet be not weary
of well doing. Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.
Last and most portentous of all is the Missouri question. It is smeared
over for the present; but its geographical demarcation is indelible.
What it is to become, I see not; and leave to those who will live to
see it. The University will give employment to my remaining years, and
quite enough for my senile faculties. It is the last act of usefulness
I can render, and could I see it open I would not ask an hour more of
life. To you I hope many will still be given; and, certain they will
all be employed for the good of our beloved country, I salute you with
sentiments of especial friendship and respect.
TO JUDGE ROANE.
MONTICELLO, June 27, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--I have received through the hands of the Governor, Colonel
Taylor's letter to you. It is with extreme reluctance that I permit
myself to usurp the office of an adviser of the public, what books they
should read, and what not. I yield, however, on this occasion to your
wish and that of Colonel Taylor, and do what (with a single exception
only) I never did before, on the many similar applications made to me.
On reviewing my letters to Colonel Taylor and to Mr. Thweat, neither
appeared exactly proper. Each contained matter which might give offence
to the judges, without adding strength to the opinion. I have, therefore,
out of the two, cooked up what may be called "an extract of a letter from
Th: J. to ----;" but without saying it is published _with my consent_.
That would forever deprive me of the ground of declining the office of
a Reviewer of books in future cases. I sincerely wish the attention
of the public may be drawn to the doctrines of the book; and if this
self-styled extract may contribute to it, I shall be gratified. I salute
you with constant friendship and respect.
EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM TH: JEFFERSON TO ----.
I have read Colonel Taylor's book of "Constructions Construed," with
great satisfaction, and, I will say, with edification; for I acknowledge
it corrected some errors of opinion into which I had slidden without
sufficient examination. It is the most logical retraction of our
governments to the original and true principles of the constitution
creating them, which has appeared since the adoption of that instrument.
I may not perhaps concur in all its opinions, great and small; for no
two men ever thought alike on so many points. But on all its important
questions, it contains the true political faith, to which every catholic
republican should steadfastly hold. It should be put into the hands
of all our functionaries, authoritatively, as a standing instruction,
and true exposition of our Constitution, as understood at the time we
agreed to it. It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State
governments are superior to the federal, or the federal to the States.
The people, to whom all authority belongs, have divided the powers of
government into two distinct departments, the leading characters of
which are _foreign_ and domestic; and they have appointed for each a
distinct set of functionaries. These they have made co-ordinate, checking
and balancing each other, like the three cardinal departments in the
individual States: each equally supreme as to the powers delegated to
itself, and neither authorized ultimately to decide what belongs to
itself, or to its coparcenor in government. As independent, in fact, as
different nations, a spirit of forbearance and compromise, therefore,
and not of encroachment and usurpation, is the healing balm of such a
constitution; and each party should prudently shrink from all approach
to the line of demarcation, instead of rashly overleaping it, or throwing
grapples ahead to haul to hereafter. But, finally, the peculiar happiness
of our blessed system is, that in differences of opinion between these
different sets of servants, the appeal is to neither, but to their
employers peaceably assembled by their representatives in Convention.
This is more rational than the _jus fortioris_, or the cannon's mouth,
the _ultima et sola ratio regum_.
TO GENERAL DEARBORNE.
MONTICELLO, August 17, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 8th came to hand yesterday evening. I
hope you will never suppose your letters to be among those which are
troublesome to me. They are always welcome, and it is among my great
comforts to hear from my ancient colleagues, and to know that they are
well. The affectionate recollection of Mrs. Dearborne, cherished by our
family, will ever render her health and happiness interesting to them.
You are so far astern of Mr. Adams and myself, that you must not yet
talk of old age. I am happy to hear of his good health. I think he will
outlive us all, I mean the Declaration-men, although our senior since
the death of Colonel Floyd. It is a race in which I have no ambition to
win. Man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness. Like that,
too, if he continues longer hanging to the stem, it is but an useless
and unsightly appendage. I rejoice, with you that the State of Missouri
is at length a member of our Union. Whether the question it excited
is dead, or only sleepeth, I do not know. I see only that it has given
resurrection to the Hartford convention men. They have had the address,
by playing on the honest feelings of our former friends, to seduce them
from their kindred spirits, and to borrow their weight into the federal
scale. Desperate of regaining power under political distinctions, they
have adroitly wriggled into its seat under the auspices of morality, and
are again in the ascendency from which their sins had hurled them. It
is indeed of little consequence who governs us, if they sincerely and
zealously cherish the principles of union and republicanism.
I still believe that the Western extension of our confederacy will ensure
its duration, by overruling local factions, which might shake a smaller
association. But whatever may be the merit or demerit of that acquisition,
I divide it with my colleagues, to whose councils I was indebted for a
course of administration which, notwithstanding this late coalition of
clay and brass, will, I hope, continue to receive the approbation of
our country.
The portrait by Stewart was received in due time and good order, and
claims, for this difficult acquisition, the thanks of the family, who
join me in affectionate souvenirs of Mrs. Dearborne and yourself. My
particular salutations to both flow, as ever, from the heart, continual
and warm.
TO MR. C. HAMMOND.
MONTICELLO, August 18, 1821.
SIR,--Your favor of the 7th is just now received. The letter to which
it refers was written by me with the sole view of recommending to the
study of my fellow citizens a book which I considered as containing
more genuine doctrines on the subject of our government, and carrying
us back more truly to its fundamental principles, than any one which
had been written since the adoption of our constitution. As confined
to this object, I thought, and still think, its language as plain and
intelligible as I can make it. But when we see inspired writings made to
speak whatever opposite controversialists wish them to say, we cannot
ourselves expect to find language incapable of similar distortion. My
expressions were general; their perversion is in their misapplication
to a particular case. To test them truly, they should turn to the book
with whose opinion they profess to coincide. If the book establishes that
a State has no right to tax the monied property within its limits, or
that it can be called, as a party, to the bar of the federal judiciary,
then they may infer that these are my opinions. If no such doctrines
are there, my letter does not authorize their imputation to me.
It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from
its expression, (although I do not choose to put it into a newspaper,
nor, like a Priam in armor, offer myself its champion,) that the germ
of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the
federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a
scare-crow,) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little
to-day and a little to-morrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a
thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from
the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. To this
I am opposed; because, when all government, domestic and foreign, in
little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of
all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government
on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government
from which we separated. It will be as in Europe, where every man must
be either pike or gudgeon, hammer or anvil. Our functionaries and theirs
are wares from the same work-shop; made of the same materials, and by
the same hand. If the States look with apathy on this silent descent of
their government into the gulf which is to swallow all, we have only to
weep over the human character formed uncontrollable but by a rod of iron,
and the blasphemers of man, as incapable of self-government, become his
true historians.
But let me beseech you, Sir, not to let this letter get into a newspaper.
Tranquillity, at my age, is the supreme good of life. I think it a duty,
and it is my earnest wish, to take no further part in public affairs; to
leave them to the existing generation to whose turn they have fallen, and
to resign the remains of a decaying body and mind to their protection.
The abuse of confidence by publishing my letters has cost me more than
all other pains, and make me afraid to put pen to paper in a letter
of sentiment. If I have done it frankly in answer to your letter, it
is in full trust that I shall not be thrown by you into the arena of a
newspaper. I salute you with great respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, September 12, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--I am just returned from my other home, and shall within a
week go back to it for the rest of the autumn. I find here your favor
of August 20th, and was before in arrear for that of May 19th. I cannot
answer, but join in, your question of May 19th. Are we to surrender
the pleasing hopes of seeing improvement in the moral and intellectual
condition of man? The events of Naples and Piedmont cast a gloomy cloud
over that hope, and Spain and Portugal are not beyond jeopardy. And what
are we to think of this northern triumvirate, arming their nations to
dictate despotisms to the rest of the world? And the evident connivance
of England, as the price of secret stipulations for continental armies,
if her own should take side with her malcontent and pulverized people?
And what of the poor Greeks, and their small chance of amelioration even
if the hypocritical Autocrat should take them under the iron cover of
his Ukazes. Would this be lighter or safer than that of the Turk? These,
my dear friend, are speculations for the new generation, as, before they
will be resolved, you and I must join our deceased brother Floyd. Yet
I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope
that light and liberty are on steady advance. We have seen, indeed,
once within the records of history, a complete eclipse of the human
mind continuing for centuries. And this, too, by swarms of the same
northern barbarians, conquering and taking possession of the countries
and governments of the civilized world. Should this be again attempted,
should the same northern hordes, allured again by the corn, wine, and
oil of the south, be able again to settle their swarms in the countries
of their growth, the art of printing alone, and the vast dissemination
of books, will maintain the mind where it is, and raise the conquering
ruffians to the level of the conquered, instead of degrading these to
that of their conquerors. And even should the cloud of barbarism and
despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country
remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short,
the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much
of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on
the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
I think with you that there should be a school of instruction for our
navy as well as artillery; and I do not see why the same establishment
might not suffice for both. Both require the same basis of general
mathematics, adding projectiles and fortifications for the artillery
exclusively, and astronomy and theory of navigation exclusively for the
naval students. Berout conducted both schools in France, and has left
us the best book extant for their joint and separate instruction. It
ought not to require a separate professor.
A 4th of July oration delivered in the town of Milford, in your State,
gives to Samuel Chase the credit of having "first started the cry of
independence in the ears of his countrymen." Do you remember anything
of this? I do not. I have no doubt it was uttered in Massachusetts even
before it was by Thomas Paine. But certainly I never considered Samuel
Chase as foremost, or even forward in that hallowed cry. I know that
Maryland hung heavily on our backs, and that Chase, although first named,
was not most in unison with us of that delegation, either in politics
or morals, _et c'est ainsi que l'on ecrit l'histoire_!
Your doubt of the legitimacy of the word _gloriola_, is resolved by
Cicero, who, in his letter to Lucceius expresses a wish "_ut nos metipsi
vivi gloriola nostra perfruamur_." Affectionately adieu.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
MONTEZILLO, September 24, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your favor of the 12th instant. Hope springs
eternal. Eight millions of Jews hope for a Messiah more powerful and
glorious than Moses, David, or Solomon; who is to make them as powerful
as he pleases. Some hundreds of millions of Musslemen expect another
prophet more powerful than Mahomet, who is to spread Islamism over the
whole earth. Hundreds of millions of Christians expect and hope for
a millennium in which Jesus is to reign for a thousand years over the
whole world before it is burnt up. The Hindoos expect another and final
incarnation of Vishnu, who is to do great and wonderful things, I know
not what. All these hopes are founded on real or pretended revelation.
The modern Greeks, too, it seems, hope for a deliverer who is to produce
them--the Themistocleses and Demostheneses--the Platos and Aristotles--the
Solons and Lycurguses. On what prophecies they found their belief, I
know not. You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society, and
vast amelioration in the condition of mankind. Our faith may be supposed
by more rational arguments than any of the former, I own that I am very
sanguine in the belief of them, as I hope and believe you are, and your
reasoning in your letter confirmed me in them.
As Brother Floyd has gone, I am now the oldest of the little Congressional
group that remain. I may therefore rationally hope to be the first to
depart; and as you are the youngest and most energetic in mind and body,
you may therefore rationally hope to be the last to take your flight,
and to rake up the fire as father Sherman, who always staid to the last,
and commonly two days afterwards, used to say, "that it was his office
to sit up and rake the ashes over the coals." And much satisfaction may
you have in your office.
The cholera morbus has done wonders in St. Helena and in London. We shall
soon hear of a negotiation for a second wife. Whether in the body, or
out of the body, I shall always be your friend.
The anecdote of Mr. Chase, contained in the oration delivered at Milford,
must be an idle rumor, for neither the State of Maryland, nor of their
delegates, were very early in their conviction of the necessity of
independence, nor very forward in promoting it. The old speaker Tilghman,
Johnson, Chase, and Paca, were steady in promoting resistance, but after
some of them, Maryland sent one, at least, of the most turbulent Tories
that ever came to Congress.
TO ----.
MONTICELLO, September 28, 1821.
SIR,--The government of the United States, at a very early period, when
establishing its tariff on foreign importations, were very much guided
in their selection of objects by a desire to encourage manufactures
within ourselves. Among other articles then selected were books, on
the importation of which a duty of fifteen per cent, was imposed,
which, by ordinary custom house charges, amount to about eighteen per
cent., and adding the importing booksellers profit on this, becomes
about twenty-seven per cent. This was useful at first, perhaps, towards
exciting our printers to make a beginning in that business here. But
it is found in experience that the home demand is not sufficient to
justify the re-printing any but the most popular English works, and
cheap editions of a few of the classics for schools. For the editions of
value, enriched by notes, commentaries, &c., and for books in foreign
living languages, the demand here is too small and sparse to reimburse
the expense of re-printing them. None of these, therefore, are printed
here, and the duty on them becomes consequently not a protecting, but
really a prohibitory one. It makes a very serious addition to the price
of the book, and falls chiefly on a description of persons little able
to meet it. Students who are destined for professional callings, as
most of our scholars are, are barely able for the most part to meet
the expenses of tuition. The addition of eighteen or twenty-seven per
cent. on the books necessary for their instruction, amounts often to a
prohibition as to them. For want of these aids, which are open to the
students of all other nations but our own, they enter on their course
on a very unequal footing with those of the same professions in foreign
countries, and our citizens at large, too, who employ them, do not derive
from that employment all the benefit which higher qualifications would
give them. It is true that no duty is required on books imported for
seminaries of learning, but these, locked up in libraries, can be of no
avail to the practical man when he wishes a recurrence to them for the
uses of life. Of many important books of reference there is not perhaps
a single copy in the United States; of others but a few, and these too
distant often to be accessible to scholars generally. It is believed,
therefore, that if the attention of Congress could be drawn to this
article, they would, in their wisdom, see its impolicy. Science is more
important in a republican than in any other government. And in an infant
country like ours, we must much depend for improvement on the science of
other countries, longer established, possessing better means, and more
advanced than we are. To prohibit us from the benefit of foreign light,
is to consign us to long darkness.
The northern seminaries following with parental solicitude the interests
of their elevès in the course for which they have prepared them, propose
to petition Congress on this subject, and wish for the coöperation
of those of the south and west, and I have been requested, as more
convenient in position than they are, to solicit that coöperation. Having
no personal acquaintance with those who are charged with the direction
of the college of ---- ----, I do not know how more effectually to
communicate these views to them, than by availing myself of the knowledge
I have of your zeal for the happiness and improvement of our country.
I take the liberty, therefore, of requesting you to place the subject
before the proper authorities of that institution, and if they approve
the measure, to solicit a concurrent proceeding on their part to carry
it into effect. Besides petitioning Congress, I would propose that they
address in their corporate capacity, a letter to their delegates and
senators in Congress, soliciting their best endeavors to obtain the
repeal of the duty on imported books. I cannot but suppose that such an
application will be respected by them, and will engage their votes and
endeavors to effect an object so reasonable. A conviction that science
is important to the preservation of our republican government, and that
it is also essential to its protection against foreign power, induces
me, on this occasion, to step beyond the limits of that retirement to
which age and inclination equally dispose me, and I am without a doubt
that the same considerations will induce you to excuse the trouble I
propose to you, and that you will kindly accept the assurance of my high
respect and esteem.
TO NATHANIEL MACON.
MONTICELLO, November 23, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--Absence at an occasional but distant residence, prevented my
receiving your friendly letter of October 20th till three days ago. A
line from my good old friends is like balm to my soul. You ask me what
you are to do with my letter of September 19th? I wrote it, my dear
Sir, with no other view than to pour my thoughts into your bosom. I knew
they would be safe there, and I believed they would be welcome. But if
you think, as you say, that "good may be done by showing it to a few
_well-tried friends_," I have no objection to that, but ultimately you
cannot do better than to throw it into the fire.
My confidence, as you kindly observed, has been often abused by the
publication of my letters for the purposes of interest or vanity, and
it has been to me the source of much pain to be exhibited before the
public in forms not meant for them. I receive letters expressed in the
most friendly and even affectionate terms, sometimes, perhaps, asking
my opinion on some subject. I cannot refuse to answer such letters,
nor can I do it dryly and suspiciously. Among a score or two of such
correspondents, one perhaps betrays me. I feel it mortifyingly, but
conclude I had better incur one treachery than offend a score or two
of good people. I sometimes expressly desire that my letter may not be
published; but this is so like requesting a man not to steal or cheat,
that I am ashamed of it after I have done it.
Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road
it will pass to destruction, to-wit: by consolidation first, and then
corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will
be the federal judiciary; the two other branches, the corrupting and
corrupted instruments. I fear an explosion in our State Legislature. I
wish they may restrain themselves to a strong but temperate protestation.
Virginia is not at present in favor with her co-States. An opposition
headed by her would determine all the anti-Missouri States to take the
contrary side. She had better lie by, therefore, till the shoe shall
pinch an eastern State. Let the cry be first raised from that quarter,
and we may fall into it with effect. But I fear our eastern associates
wish for consolidation, in which they would be joined by the smaller
States generally. But, with one foot in the grave, I have no right to
meddle with these things. Ever and affectionately yours.
TO ----.
MONTICELLO, November 29, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--You have often gratified me by your astronomical
communications, and I am now about to amuse you with one of mine.
But I must first explain the circumstances which have drawn me into a
speculation so foreign to the path of life which the times in which I
have lived, more than my own inclinations have led me to pursue.
I had long deemed it incumbent on the authorities of our country, to
have the great western wilderness beyond the Mississippi, explored, to
make known its geography, its natural productions, its general character
and inhabitants. Two attempts which I had myself made formerly, before
the country was ours, the one from west to east, the other from east to
west, had both proved abortive. When called to the administration of
the general government, I made this an object of early attention, and
proposed it to Congress. They voted a sum of five thousand dollars for
its execution, and I placed Captain Lewis at the head of the enterprise.
No man within the range of my acquaintance, united so many of the
qualifications necessary for its successful direction. But he had not
received such an astronomical education as might enable him to give us
the geography of the country with the precision desired. The Missouri and
Columbia, which were to constitute the tract of his journey, were rivers
which varied little in their progressive latitudes, but changed their
longitudes rapidly and at every step. To qualify him for making these
observations, so important to the value of the enterprise, I encouraged
him to apply himself to this particular object, and gave him letters to
Doctor Patterson and Mr. Ellicott, requesting them to instruct him in the
necessary processes. Those for the longitude would of course be founded
on the lunar distances. But as these require essentially the aid of a
time-keeper, it occurred to me that during a journey of two, three, or
four years, exposed to so many accidents as himself and the instrument
would be, we might expect with certainty that it would become deranged,
and in a desert country where it could not be repaired. I thought it
then highly important that some means of observation should be furnished
him, if any could be, which should be practicable and competent to
ascertain his longitudes in that event. The equatorial occurred to myself
as the most promising substitute. I observed only that Ramsden, in his
explanation of its uses, and particularly that of finding the longitude
at land, still required his observer to have the aid of a time-keeper.
But this cannot be necessary, for the margin of the equatorial circle of
this instrument being divided into time by hours, minutes, and seconds,
supplies the main functions of the time-keeper, and for measuring merely
the interval of the observations, is such as not to be neglected. A
portable pendulum, for counting, by an assistant, would fully answer
that purpose. I suggested my fears to several of our best astronomical
friends, and my wishes that other processes should be furnished him,
if any could be, which might guard us ultimately from disappointment.
Several other methods were proposed, but all requiring the use of a
time-keeper. That of the equatorial being recommended by none, and other
duties refusing me time for protracted consultations, I relinquished the
idea for that occasion. But, if a sound one, it should not be abandoned.
Those deserts are yet to be explored, and their geography given to the
world and ourselves with a correctness worthy of the science of the age.
The acquisition of the country before Captain Lewis' departure facilitated
our enterprise, but his time-keeper failed early in his journey. His
dependence, then, was on the compass and log-line, with the correction
of latitudes only; and the true longitudes of the different points of
the Missouri, of the Stony Mountains, the Columbia and Pacific, at its
mouth, remain yet to be obtained by future enterprise.
The circumstance which occasions a recurrence of the subject to my mind
at this time particularly is this: our legislature, some time ago, came
to a determination that an accurate map should be made of our State. The
late John Wood was employed on it. Its first elements are prepared by maps
of the several counties. But these have been made by chain and compass
only, which suppose the surface of the earth to be a plane. To fit them
together, they must be accommodated to its real spherical surface; and
this can be done only by observations of latitude and longitude, taken at
different points of the area to which they are to be reduced. It is true
that in the lower and more populous parts of the State, the method of
lunar distances by the circle or sextant, and time-keeper, may be used;
because those parts furnish means of repairing or replacing a deranged
time-keeper. But the deserts beyond the Alleghany are as destitute of
resource in that case, as those of the Missouri. The question then recurs
whether the equatorial, without the auxiliary of a time-keeper, is not
competent to the ascertainment of longitudes at land, where a fixed
meridian can always be obtained? and whether indeed it may not everywhere
at land, be a readier and preferable instrument for that purpose? To
these questions I ask your attentions; and to show the grounds on which
I entertain the opinion myself, I will briefly explain the principles
of the process, and the peculiarities of the instrument which give it
the competence I ascribe to it. And should you concur in the opinion,
I will further ask you to notice any particular circumstances claiming
attention in the process, and the corrections which the observations may
necessarily require. As to myself, I am an astronomer of theory only,
little versed in practical observations, and the minute attentions and
corrections they require. I proceed now to the explanation.
A method of finding the longitude of a place _at land, without a
time-keeper_.
If two persons, at different points of the same hemisphere, (as Greenwich
and Washington, for example,) observe the same celestial phenomenon, at
the same instant of time, the difference of the times marked by their
respective clocks is the difference of their longitudes, or the distance
between their meridians. To catch with precision the same instant of
time for these simultaneous observations, the moon's motion in her
orbit is the best element; her change of place (about a half second of
space in a second of time) is rapid enough to be ascertained by a good
instrument with sufficient precision for the object. But suppose the
observer at Washington, or in a desert, to be without a time-keeper;
the equatorial is the instrument to be used in that case. Again, we have
supposed a contemporaneous observer at Greenwich. But his functions may
be supplied by the nautical almanac, adapted to that place, and enabling
us to calculate for any instant of time the meridian distances there of
the heavenly bodies necessary to be observed for this purpose.
The observer at Washington, choosing the time when their position is
suitable, is to adjust his equatorial to his meridian, to his latitude,
and to the plane of his horizon; or if he is in a desert where neither
meridian nor latitude is yet ascertained, the advantages of this noble
instrument are, that it enables him to find both in the course of a
few hours. Thus prepared, let him ascertain by observation the right
ascension of the moon from that of a known star, or their horary distance;
and, at the same instant, her horary distance from his meridian. Her
right ascension at the instant thus ascertained, enter with that of
the nautical almanac, and calculate, by its tables, what was her horary
distance from the meridian of Greenwich at the instant she had attained
that point of right ascension, or that horary distance from the same
star. The addition of these meridian distances, if the moon was between
the two meridians, or the subtraction of the lesser from the greater, if
she was on the same side of both, is the differences of their longitudes.
This general theory admits different cases, of which the observer may
avail himself, according to the particular position of the heavenly
bodies at the moment of observation.
Case 1st. When the moon is on his meridian, or on that of Greenwich.
Second. When the star is on either meridian.
Third. When the moon and star are on the same side of his meridian.
Fourth. When they are on different sides.
For instantaneousness of observation, the equatorial has great advantage
over the circle or sextant; for being truly placed in the meridian
beforehand, the telescope may be directed sufficiently in advance of
the moon's motion, for time to note its place on the equatorial circle,
before she attains that point. Then observe, until her limb touches
the cross-hairs; and in that instant direct the telescope to the star;
that completes the observation, and the place of the star may be read
at leisure. The apparatus for correcting the effects of refraction and
parallax, which is fixed on the eye-tube of the telescope, saves time
by rendering the notation of altitudes unnecessary, and dispenses with
the use of either a time-keeper or portable pendulum.
I have observed that, if placed in a desert where neither meridian nor
latitude is yet ascertained, the equatorial enables the observer to
find both in a few hours. For the latitude, adjust by the cross-levels
the azimuth plane of the instrument to the horizon of the place. Bring
down the equatorial plane to an exact parallelism with it, its pole then
becoming vertical. By the nut and pinion commanding it, and by that of
the semi-circle of declination, direct the telescope to the sun. Follow
its path with the telescope by the combined use of these two pinions,
and when it has attained its greatest altitude, calculate the latitude
as when taken by a sextant.
For finding the meridian, set the azimuth circle to the horizon, elevate
the equatorial circle to the complement of the latitude, and fix it by
the clamp and tightening screw of the two brass segments of arches below.
By the declination semicircle set the telescope to the sun's declination
of the moment. Turn the instrument towards the meridian by guess, and
by the combined movement of the equatorial and azimuth circles direct
the telescope to the sun, then by the pinion of the equatorial alone,
follow the path of the sun with the telescope. If it swerves from that
path, turn the azimuth circle until it shall follow the sun accurately.
A distant stake or tree should mark the meridian, to guard against its
loss by any accidental jostle of the instrument. The 12 o'clock line will
then be in the true meridian, and the axis of the equatorial circle will
be parallel with that of the earth. The instrument is then in its true
position for the observations of the night. To the competence and the
advantages of this method, I will only add that these instruments are
high-priced. Mine cost thirty-five guineas in Ramsden's shop, a little
before the Revolution. I will lengthen my letter, already too long, only
by assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO ---- NICHOLAS.
MONTICELLO, December 11, 1821.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of December the 19th places me under a dilemma,
which I cannot solve but by an exposition of the naked truth. I would
have wished this rather to have remained as hitherto, without inquiry;
but your inquiries have a right to be answered. I will do it as exactly
as the great lapse of time and a waning memory will enable me. I may
misremember indifferent circumstances, but can be right in substance.
At the time when the republicans of our country were so much alarmed
at the proceedings of the federal ascendency in Congress, in the
executive and the judiciary departments, it became a matter of serious
consideration how head could be made against their enterprises on the
constitution. The leading republicans in Congress found themselves of no
use there, brow-beaten, as they were, by a bold and overwhelming majority.
They concluded to retire from that field, take a stand in the State
legislatures, and endeavor there to arrest their progress. The alien and
sedition laws furnished the particular occasion. The sympathy between
Virginia and Kentucky was more cordial, and more intimately confidential,
than between any other two States of republican policy. Mr. Madison came
into the Virginia legislature. I was then in the Vice-Presidency, and
could not leave my station. But your father, Colonel W. C. Nicholas,
and myself happening to be together, the engaging the co-operation of
Kentucky in an energetic protestation against the constitutionality of
those laws, became a subject of consultation. Those gentlemen pressed me
strongly to sketch resolutions for that purpose, your father undertaking
to introduce them to that legislature, with a solemn assurance, which I
strictly required, that it should not be known from what quarter they
came. I drew and delivered them to him, and in keeping their origin
secret, he fulfilled his pledge of honor. Some years after this, Colonel
Nicholas asked me if I would have any objection to its being known that
I had drawn them. I pointedly enjoined that it should not. Whether he had
unguardedly intimated it before to any one, I know not; but I afterwards
observed in the papers repeated imputations of them to me; on which,
as has been my practice on all occasions of imputation, I have observed
entire silence. The question, indeed, has never before been put to me,
nor should I answer it to any other than yourself; seeing no good end to
be proposed by it, and the desire of tranquillity inducing with me a wish
to be withdrawn from public notice. Your father's zeal and talents were
too well known, to derive any additional distinction from the penning
these resolutions. That circumstance, surely, was of far less merit than
the proposing and carrying them through the legislature of his State.
The only fact in this statement, on which my memory is not distinct, is
the time and occasion of the consultation with your father and Colonel
Nicholas. It took place here I know; but whether any other person was
present, or communicated with, is my doubt. I think Mr. Madison was
either with us, or consulted, but my memory is uncertain as to minute
details.
I fear, dear Sir, we are now in such another crisis, with this difference
only, that the judiciary branch is alone and single handed in the present
assaults on the constitution. But its assaults are more sure and deadly,
as from an agent seemingly passive and unassuming. May you and your
cotemporaries meet them with the same determination and effect, as your
father and his did the alien and sedition laws, and preserve inviolate
a constitution, which, cherished in all its chastity and purity, will
prove in the end a blessing to all the nations of the earth. With these
prayers, accept those for your own happiness and prosperity.
TO MESSRS. GEORGE W. SUMMERS AND JOHN B. GARLAND.
MONTICELLO, February 27, 1822.
GENTLEMEN,--I have received your favor of the 18th, and am duly sensible
of the honor done my name by its association with the institution formed
in your college for improvement in the art of speaking. The efforts of the
members will, I trust, give a just reputation to the society and reflect
on its name the honor which it cannot derive from it. In a country and
government like ours, eloquence is a powerful instrument, well worthy of
the special pursuit of our youth. Models, indeed, of chaste and classical
oratory are truly too rare with us; nor do I recollect any remarkable in
England. Among the ancients the most perfect specimens are perhaps to be
found in Livy, Sallust and Tacitus. Their pith and brevity constitute
perfection itself for an audience of sages, on whom froth and fancy
would be lost in air. But in ordinary cases, and with us particularly,
more development is necessary. For senatorial eloquence, Demosthenes is
the finest model; for the bar, Cicero. The former had more logic, the
latter more imagination.
Of the eloquence of the pen we have fine samples in English. Robertson,
Sterne, Addison, are of the first merit in the different characters of
composition. Hume, in the circumstance of style is equal to any; but
his tory principles spread a cloud over his many and great excellencies.
The charms of his style and matter have made tories of all England, and
doubtful republicans here.
You say that any advice which I could give you would be acceptable. But,
for this, you cannot be in better hands than of the worthy professors of
your own college. Their counsels would, I am sure, embrace everything
I could offer. It will not, however, be a work of mere supereorgation
if it will gratify you, and will furnish a stronger proof of my desire
to encourage you in your laudable dispositions. Some thirty-six or
thirty-seven years ago, I had a nephew, the late Peter Carr, whose
education I directed, and had much at heart his future fortunes. Residing
abroad at the time in public service, my counsels to him were necessarily
communicated by letters. Searching among my papers I find a letter
written to him, and conveying such advice as I thought suitable to the
particular period of his age and education. He was then about fifteen, and
had made some progress in classical reading. As your present situation
may be somewhat similar, you may find in that letter some things worth
remembering. I enclose you a copy therefore. It was written in haste,
under the pressure of official labors, and with no view of being ever
seen but by himself. It might otherwise have been made more correct in
style and matter. But such as it is, I place it at your service, and
pray you to receive it merely as a compliance with your own request,
and as a proof of my good will and of my best wishes for your success in
the career of life for which you are so worthily and laudably preparing
yourselves.
TO MR. EDWARD EVERETT, OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.
MONTICELLO, March 2, 1822.
I am thankful to you, Sir, for the very edifying view of Europe which
you have been so kind as to send me. Tossed at random by the newspapers
on an ocean of uncertainties and falsehoods, it is joyful at times to
catch the glimmering of a beacon which shows us truly where we are. De
Pradt's Europe had some effect in this way; but the less as the author
was less known in character. The views presented by your brother unite
our confidence with the soundness of his observation and information. I
have read the work with great avidity and profit, and have found my ideas
of Europe in general, rallied by it to points of good satisfaction. In
the single chapter on England only, where his theories are new, if we
cannot suddenly give up all our old notions, he furnishes us abundant
matter for reflection and a revisal of them. I have long considered
the present crisis of England, and the origin of the evils which are
lowering over her, as produced by enormous excess of her expenditures
beyond her income. To pay even the interest of the debt contracted,
she is obliged to take from the industrious so much of their earnings,
as not to leave enough for their backs and bellies. They are daily,
therefore, passing over to the pauper-list, to subsist on the declining
means of those still holding up, and when these also shall be exhausted,
what next? Reformation cannot remedy this. It could only prevent its
recurrence when once relieved from the debt. To effect that relief I
see but one possible and just course. Considering the funded and real
property as equal, and the debt as much of the one as the other, for
the holder of property to give up one-half to those of the funds, and
the latter to the nation the whole of what it owes them. But this the
nature of man forbids us to expect without blows, and blows will decide
it by a promiscuous sacrifice of life and property. The debt thus, or
otherwise, extinguished, a _real_ representation introduced into the
government of either property or people, or of both, renouncing eternal
war, restraining future expenses to future income, and breaking up forever
the consuming circle of extravagance, debt, insolvency, and revolution,
the island would then again be in the degree of force which nature has
measured out to it, of respectable station in the scale of nations, but
not at their head. I sincerely wish she could peaceably get into this
state of being, as the present prospects of southern Europe seem to need
the acquisition of new weights in their balance, rather than the loss
of old ones. I set additional value on this volume, inasmuch as it has
procured me the occasion of expressing to you my high estimation of your
character, the interest with which I look to it as an American, and the
great esteem and respect with which I beg leave to salute you.
TO JEDEDIAH MORSE.
MONTICELLO, March 6, 1822.
SIR,--I have duly received your letter of February the 16th, and have now
to express my sense of the honorable station proposed to my ex-brethren
and myself, in the constitution of the society for the civilization and
improvement of the Indian tribes. The object too expressed, as that of the
association, is one which I have ever had much at heart, and never omitted
an occasion of promoting while I have been in situations to do it with
effect, and nothing, even now, in the calm of age and retirement, would
excite in me a more lively interest than an approvable plan of raising
that respectable and unfortunate people from the state of physical and
moral abjection, to which they have been reduced by circumstances foreign
to them. That the plan now proposed is entitled to unmixed approbation,
I am not prepared to say, after mature consideration, and with all the
partialities which its professed object would rightfully claim from me.
I shall not undertake to draw the line of demarcation between private
associations of laudable views and unimposing numbers, and those whose
magnitude may rivalize and jeopardize the march of regular government.
Yet such a line does exist. I have seen the days, they were those which
preceded the revolution, when even this last and perilous engine became
necessary; but they were days which no man would wish to see a second
time. That was the case where the regular authorities of the government
had combined against the rights of the people, and no means of correction
remained to them but to organize a collateral power, which, with their
support, might rescue and secure their violated rights. But such is
not the case with our government. We need hazard no collateral power,
which, by a change of its original views, and assumption of others we
know not how virtuous or how mischievous, would be ready organized and
in force sufficient to shake the established foundations of society,
and endanger its peace and the principles on which it is based. Is not
the machine now proposed of this gigantic stature? It is to consist of
the ex-Presidents of the United States, the Vice President, the Heads
of all the executive departments, the members of the supreme judiciary,
the Governors of the several States and territories, all the members
of both Houses of Congress, all the general officers of the army, the
commissioners of the navy, all Presidents and Professors of colleges
and theological seminaries, all the clergy of the United States, the
Presidents and Secretaries of all associations having relation to
Indians, all commanding officers within or near Indian territories, all
Indian superintendents and agents; all these _ex officio_; and as many
private individuals as will pay a certain price for membership. Observe,
too, that the clergy will constitute[15] nineteen twentieths of this
association, and, by the law of the majority, may command the twentieth
part, which, composed of all the high authorities of the United States,
civil and military, may be outvoted and wielded by the nineteen parts
with uncontrollable power, both as to purpose and process. Can this
formidable array be reviewed without dismay? It will be said, that in
this association will be all the confidential officers of the government;
the choice of the people themselves. No man on earth has more implicit
confidence than myself in the integrity and discretion of this chosen
band of servants. But is confidence or discretion, or is _strict limit_,
the principle of our constitution? It will comprehend, indeed, all the
functionaries of the government; but seceded from their constitutional
stations as guardians of the nation, and acting not by the laws of
their station, but by those of a voluntary society, having no limit to
their purposes but the same will which constitutes their existence. It
will be the authorities of the people and all influential characters
from among them, arrayed on one side, and on the other, the people
themselves deserted by their leaders. It is a fearful array. It will be
said that these are imaginary fears. I know they are so at present. I
know it is as impossible for these agents of our choice and unbounded
confidence, to harbor machinations against the adored principles of our
constitution, as for gravity to change its direction, and gravid bodies
to mount upwards. The fears are indeed imaginary, but the example is
_real_. Under its authority, as a precedent, future associations will
arise with objects at which we should shudder at this time. The society
of Jacobins, in another country, was instituted on principles and views
as virtuous as ever kindled the hearts of patriots. It was the pure
patriotism of their purposes which extended their association to the
limits of the nation, and rendered their power within it boundless; and
it was this power which degenerated their principles and practices to
such enormities as never before could have been imagined. Yet these were
men, and we and our descendants will be no more. The present is a case
where, if ever, we are to guard against ourselves; not against ourselves
as we are, but as we may be; for who can now imagine what we may become
under circumstances not now imaginable? The object of this institution,
seems to require so hazardous an example as little as any which could be
proposed. The government is, at this time, going on with the process of
civilizing the Indians, on a plan probably as promising as any one of us
is able to devise, and with resources more competent than we could expect
to command by voluntary taxation. Is it that the new characters called
into association with those of the government, are wiser than these? Is
it that a plan originated by a meeting of private individuals is better
than that prepared by the concentrated wisdom of the nation, of men not
self-chosen, but clothed with the full confidence of the people? Is it
that there is no danger that a new authority, marching, independently,
along side of the government, in the same line and to the same object,
may not produce collision, may not thwart and obstruct the operations of
the government, or wrest the object entirely from their hands? Might we
not as well appoint a committee for each department of the government,
to counsel and direct its head separately, as volunteer ourselves to
counsel and direct the whole, in mass? And might we not do it as well
for their foreign, their fiscal, and their military, as for their Indian
affairs? And how many societies, auxiliary to the government, may we
expect to see spring up, in imitation of this, offering to associate
themselves in this and that of its functions? In a word, why not take
the government out of its constitutional hands, associate them indeed
with us, to preserve a semblance that the acts are theirs, but insuring
them to be our own by allowing them a minor vote only.
These considerations have impressed my mind with a force so irresistible,
that (in duty bound to answer your polite letter, without which I should
not have obtruded an opinion) I have not been able to withhold the
expression of them. Not knowing the individuals who have proposed this
plan, I cannot be conceived as entertaining personal disrespect for them.
On the contrary, I see in the printed list persons for whom I cherish
sentiments of sincere friendship, and others, for whose opinions and
purity of purpose I have the highest respect. Yet thinking as I do, that
this association is unnecessary; that the government is proceeding to
the same object under control of the law; that they are competent to it
in wisdom, in means, and inclination; that this association, this wheel
within a wheel, is more likely to produce collision than aid; and that
it is, in its magnitude, of dangerous example; I am bound to say, that,
as a dutiful citizen, I cannot in conscience become a member of this
society, possessing as it does my entire confidence in the integrity
of its views. I feel with awe the weight of opinion to which I may be
opposed, and that, for myself, I have need to ask the indulgence of a
belief that the opinion I have given is the best result I can deduce from
my own reason and experience, and that it is sincerely conscientious.
Repeating, therefore, my just acknowledgments for the honor proposed to
me, I beg leave to add the assurances to the society and yourself of my
highest confidence and consideration.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] The clergy of the United States may probably be
estimated at eight thousand. The residue of this society
at four hundred; but if the former number be halved, the
reasoning will be the same.
TO GENERAL BRECKENRIDGE.
MONTICELLO, April 9, 1822.
DEAR GENERAL,--Your favor of March 28th was received on the 7th instant.
We failed in having a quorum on the 1st. Mr. Johnson and General Taylor
were laboring for Lithgow in Richmond, and Mr. Madison was unwell. On the
score of business it was immaterial, as there was not a single measure
to be proposed. The loss was of the gratification of meeting in society
with those whom we esteem. This is the valuable effect of our semi-annual
meetings, jubilees, in fact, for feasting the mind and fostering the
best affections of the heart towards those who merit them.
The four rows of buildings of accommodation are so nearly completed, that
they are certain of being entirely so in the course of the summer; and
our funds, as you have seen stated in our last Report, are sufficient
to meet the expense, except that the delays in collecting the arrears of
subscriptions oblige us to borrow temporarily from this year's annuity,
which, according to that Report, had another destination. These buildings
done, we are to rest on our oars, and passively await the will of the
legislature. Our future course is a plain one. We have proceeded from
the beginning on the sound determination to finish the buildings before
opening the institution; because, once opened, all its funds will be
absorbed by professors' salaries, &c., and nothing remain ever to finish
the buildings. And we have thought it better to begin two or three years
later, in the full extent proposed, than to open, and go on forever, with
a half-way establishment. Of the wisdom of this proceeding, and of its
greater good to the public finally, I cannot a moment doubt. Our part
then is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right
nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that
the public approbation will in the end be with us. The councils of the
legislature, at their late session, were poisoned unfortunately by the
question of the seat of government, and the consequent jealousies of our
views in erecting the large building still wanting. This lost us some
friends who feel a sincere interest in favor of the University, but a
stronger one in the question respecting the seat of government. They seem
not to have considered that the seat of the government, and that of the
University, are incompatible with one another; that if the former were to
come here, the latter must be removed. Even Oxford and Cambridge placed
in the middle of London, they would be deserted as seats of learning,
and as proper places for training youth. These groundless jealousies,
it is to be hoped, will be dissipated by sober reflection, during the
separation of the members; and they will perceive, before their next
meeting, that the large building, without which the institution cannot
proceed, has nothing to do with the question of the seat of government.
If, however, the ensuing session should still refuse their patronage,
a second or a third will think better, and result finally in fulfilling
the object of our aim, the securing to our country a full and perpetual
institution for all the useful sciences; one which will restore us to
our former station in the confederacy. It may be a year or two later
indeed; but it will replace us in full grade, and not leave us among
the mere subalterns of the league. Patience and steady perseverance on
our part will secure the blessed end. If we shrink, it is gone forever.
Our autumnal meeting will be interesting. The question will be whether
we shall relinquish the scale of a real University, the rallying centre
of the South and the West, or let it sink to that of a common academy.
I hope you will be with us, and give us the benefit of your firm and
enlarged views. I am not at all disheartened with what has passed, nor
disposed to give up the ship. We have only to lie still, to do and say
nothing, and firmly avoid opening. The public opinion is advancing. It
is coming to our aid, and will force the institution on to consummation.
The numbers are great, and many from great distances, who visit it daily
as an object of curiosity. They become strengthened if friends, converted
if enemies, and all loud and zealous advocates, and will shortly give
full tone to the public voice. Our motto should be "be not wearied with
well-doing." Accept the assurance of my affectionate friendship and
respect.
TO MESSRS. RITCHIE AND GOOCH.
MONTICELLO, May 13, 1822.
MESSRS. RITCHIE AND GOOCH,--I am thankful to you for the paper you
have been so kind as to send me, containing the arraignment of the
Presidents of the United States generally, as peculators or accessories
to peculation, by an informer who masks himself under the signature
of "a Native Virginian." What relates to myself in this paper, (being
his No. VI., and the only No. I have seen) I had before read in the
"Federal Republican" of Baltimore, of August 28th, which was sent to me
by a friend, with the real name of the author. It was published there
during the ferment of a warmly-contested election. I considered it,
therefore, as an electioneering manœuvre merely, and did not even think
it required the trouble of recollecting, after a lapse of thirty-three
years, the circumstances of the case in which he charges me with having
purloined from the treasury of the United States the sum of $1,148. But
as he has thought it worth repeating in his Roll of informations against
your Presidents nominally, I shall give the truths of the case, which
he has omitted, perhaps because he did not know them, and ventured too
inconsiderately to supply them from his own conjectures.
On the return from my mission to France, and joining the government here,
in the spring of 1790, I had a long and heavy account to settle with the
United States, of the administration of their pecuniary affairs in Europe,
of which the superintendence had been confided to me while there. I gave
in my account early, but the pressure of other business did not permit
the accounting officers to attend to it till October 10th, 1792, when
we settled, and a balance of $888 67 appearing to be due from me, (but
erroneously as will be shown,) I paid the money the same day, delivered
up my vouchers, and received a certificate of it. But still the articles
of my draughts on the bankers could be only _provisionally_ past; until
their accounts also should be received to be confronted with mine. And
it was not till the 24th of June, 1804, that I received a letter from
Mr. Richard Harrison the auditor, informing me "that my accounts, as
Minister to France, had been adjusted and closed," adding, "the bill
drawn and credited by you under date of the 21st of October, 1789, for
banco florins 2,800, having never yet appeared in any account of the Dutch
bankers, stand at your debit only as a _provisional_ charge. If it should
hereafter turn out, as I incline to think it will, that this bill has
never been negotiated or used by Mr. Grand, you will have a just claim on
the public for its value." This was the first intimation to me that I had
too hastily charged myself with that draught. I determined, however, as
I had allowed it in my account, and paid up the balance it had produced
against me, to let it remain awhile, as there was a possibility that the
draught might still be presented by the holder to the bankers; and so
it remained till I was near leaving Washington, on my final retirement
from the administration in 1809. I then received from the auditor, Mr.
Harrison, the following note: "Mr. Jefferson, in his accounts as late
Minister to France, credited among other sums, a bill drawn by him on
the 21st October, 1789, to the order of Grand & Co., on the bankers of
the United States at Amsterdam, f. Banco f. 2,800, equal with _agio_ to
current florins 2,870, and which was charged to him _provisionally_ in
the official statement made at the Treasury, in the month of October,
1804. But as this bill has not yet been noticed in any account rendered
by the bankers, the presumption is strong that it was never negotiated
or presented for payment, and Mr. Jefferson, therefore, appears justly
entitled to receive the value of it, which, at forty cents the gilder,
(the rate at which it was estimated in the above-mentioned statement,)
amounts to $1,148. Auditor's office, January 24th, 1809."
Desirous of leaving nothing unsettled behind me, I drew the money from
the treasury, but without any interest, although I had let it lie there
twenty years, and had actually on that error paid $888 67, an apparent
balance against me, when the true balance was in my favor $259 33. The
question then is, how has this happened? I have examined minutely and
can state it clearly.
Turning to my pocket diary I find that on the 21st day of October, 1789,
the date of this bill, I was at Cowes in England, on my return to the
United States. The entry in my diary is in these words: "1789, October
21st. Sent to Grand & Co., letter of credit on Willinks, Van Staphorsts
and Hubbard, for 2,800 florins Banco." And I immediately credited it
in my account with the United States in the following words: "1789,
October 21. By my bill on Willinks, Van Staphorsts and Hubbard, in
favor of Grand & Co., for 2,800 florins, equal to 6,250 livres 18 sous."
My account having been kept in livres and sous of France, the auditor
settled this sum at the current exchange, making it $1,148. This bill,
drawn at Cowes in England, had to pass through London to Paris by the
English and French mails, in which passage it was lost, by some unknown
accident, to which it was the more exposed in the French mail, by the
confusion then prevailing; for it was exactly at the time that martial
law was proclaimed at Paris, the country all up in arms, and executions
by the mobs were daily perpetrating through town and country. However
this may have been, the bill never got to the hands of Grand & Co., was
never, of course, forwarded by them to the bankers of Amsterdam, nor
anything more ever heard of it. The auditor's first conjecture then was
the true one, that it never was negotiated, nor therefore charged to the
United States in any of the bankers' accounts. I have now under my eye
a duplicate furnished me by Grand of his account of that date against
the United States, and his private account against myself, and I affirm
that he has not noticed this bill in either of these accounts, and the
auditor assures us the Dutch bankers had never charged it. The sum of the
whole then is, that I drew a bill on the United States bankers, charged
myself with it on the presumption it would be paid, that it never was
paid however, either by the bankers of the United States, or anybody
else. It was surely just then to return me the money I had paid for it.
Yet "the Native Virginian" thinks that this act of receiving back the
money I had thus through error overpaid, "_was a palpable and manifest
art of moral turpitude, about which no two honest, impartial men can
possibly differ_." I ascribe these hard expressions to the ardor of
his zeal for the public good, and as they contain neither argument nor
proof, I pass them over without observation. Indeed, I have not been in
the habit of noticing these morbid ejections of spleen either with or
without the names of those venting them. But I have thought it a duty
on the present occasion to relieve my fellow citizens and my country
from the degradation in the eyes of the world to which this informer
is endeavoring to reduce it by representing it as governed hitherto
by a succession of swindlers and peculators. Nor shall I notice any
further endeavors to prove or to palliate this palpable misinformation.
I am too old and inert to undertake minute investigations of intricate
transactions of the last century; and I am not afraid to trust to the
justice and good sense of my fellow-citizens on future, as on former
attempts to lessen me in their esteem.
I ask of you, gentlemen, the insertion of this letter in your paper;
and I trust that the printers who have hazarded the publication of the
libel, on anonymous authority, will think that of the answer a moderate
retribution of the wrong to which they have been accessory.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, June 1, 1822.
It is very long, my dear Sir, since I have written to you. My dislocated
wrist is now become so stiff that I write slow and with pain, and
therefore write as little as I can. Yet it is due to mutual friendship
to ask once in awhile how we do? The papers tell us that General Starke
is off at the age of 93. Charles Thomson still lives at about the same
age, cheerful, slender as a grasshopper, and so much without memory
that he scarcely recognizes the members of his household. An intimate
friend of his called on him not long since; it was difficult to make
him recollect who he was, and, sitting one hour, he told him the same
story four times over. Is this life?
"With lab'ring step
To tread our former footsteps? pace the round
Eternal?--to beat and beat
The beaten track? to see what we have seen,
To taste the tasted? o'er our palates to decant
Another vintage?"
It is at most but the life of a cabbage; surely not worth a wish. When
all our faculties have left, or are leaving us, one by one, sight,
hearing, memory, every avenue of pleasing sensation is closed, and
athumy, debility and malaise left in their places, when friends of our
youth are all gone, and a generation is risen around us whom we know
not, is death an evil?
When one by one our ties are torn,
And friend from friend is snatched forlorn,
When man is left alone to mourn,
Oh! then how sweet it is to die!
When trembling limbs refuse their weight,
And films slow gathering dim the sight,
When clouds obscure the mental light
'Tis nature's kindest boon to die!
I really think so. I have ever dreaded a doting old age; and my health
has been generally so good, and is now so good, that I dread it still.
The rapid decline of my strength during the last winter has made me
hope sometimes that I see land. During summer I enjoy its temperature,
but I shudder at the approach of winter, and wish I could sleep through
it with the Dormouse, and only wake with him in spring, if ever. They
say that Starke could walk about his room. I am told you walk well and
firmly. I can only reach my garden, and that with sensible fatigue. I
ride, however, daily. But reading is my delight. I should wish never to
put pen to paper; and the more because of the treacherous practice some
people have of publishing one's letters without leave. Lord Mansfield
declared it a breach of trust, and punishable at law. I think it should
be a penitentiary felony; yet you will have seen that they have drawn
me out into the arena of the newspapers; although I know it is too late
for me to buckle on the armor of youth, yet my indignation would not
permit me passively to receive the kick of an ass.
To turn to the news of the day, it seems that the Cannibals of Europe
are going to eating one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey
is like the battle of the kite and snake. Whichever destroys the other,
leaves a destroyer the less for the world. This pugnacious humor of
mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of the obstacles to too
great multiplication provided in the mechanism of the Universe. The cocks
of the henyard kill one another up. Bears, bulls, rams, do the same. And
the horse, in his wild state, kills all the young males, until worn down
with age and war, some vigorous youth kills him, and takes to himself
the Harem of females. I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the
Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder, is better than that
of the fighter; and it is some consolation that the desolation by these
maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in other
parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow, while the
Russian holds her by the horns, and the Turk by the tail. God bless you,
and give you health, strength, and good spirits, and as much of life as
you think worth having.
TO REV. MR. WHITTEMORE.
MONTICELLO, June 5, 1822.
I thank you, Sir, for the pamphlets you have been so kind as to send
me, and am happy to learn that the doctrine of Jesus that there is but
one God, is advancing prosperously among our fellow citizens. Had his
doctrines, pure as they came from himself, been never sophisticated
for unworthy purposes, the whole civilized world would at this day have
formed but a single sect. You ask my opinion on the items of doctrine in
your catechism. I have never permitted myself to meditate a specified
creed. These formulas have been the bane and ruin of the Christian
church, its own fatal invention, which, through so many ages, made of
Christendom a slaughter-house, and at this day divides it into casts of
inextinguishable hatred to one another. Witness the present internecine
rage of all other sects against the Unitarian. The religions of antiquity
had no particular formulas of creed. Those of the modern world none,
except those of the religionists calling themselves Christians, and
even among these the Quakers have none. And hence, alone, the harmony,
the quiet, the brotherly affections, the exemplary and unschismatising
society of the Friends, and I hope the Unitarians, will follow their
happy example. With these sentiments of the mischiefs of creeds and
confessions of faith, I am sure you will excuse my not giving opinions
on the items of any particular one; and that you will accept, at the
same time, the assurance of the high respect and consideration which I
bear to its author.
TO MESSRS. RITCHIE AND GOOCH.
MONTICELLO, June 10, 1822.
MESSRS. RITCHIE AND GOOCH,--In my letter to you of May 13th, in answer
to a charge by a person signing himself "A Native Virginian," that on
a bill drawn by me for a sum equivalent to $1,148, the treasury of the
United States had made _double payment_, I supposed I had done as much as
would be required when I showed they had only returned to me money which
I had previously paid into the treasury on the presumption that such a
bill had been paid for me, but that this bill being lost or destroyed on
the way, had never been presented, consequently never paid by the United
States, and that the money was therefore returned to me. This being too
plain for controversy, the pseudo Native of Virginia, in his reply, No.
32, in the Federal Republican of May 24th, reduces himself ultimately
to the ground of a _double receipt_ of the money by me, first on sale or
negotiation of the bill in Europe, and a second time from the treasury.
But the bill was never sold or negotiated anywhere. It was not drawn
to raise money in the market. I sold it to nobody, received no money
on it, but enclosed it to Grand & Co. for some purpose of account, for
what particular purpose neither my memory, after a lapse of thirty-three
years, nor my papers enable me to say. Had I preserved a copy of my
letter to Grand enclosing the bill, that would doubtless have explained
the purpose. But it was drawn on the eve of my embarkation with my family
from Cowes for America, and probably the hurry of preparation for that
did not allow me time to take a copy. I presume this because I find no
such letter among my papers. Nor does any subsequent correspondence
with Grand explain it, because I had no private account with him; my
account as minister being kept with the treasury directly, so that he,
receiving no intimation of this bill, could never give me notice of its
miscarriage. But, however satisfactory might have been an explanation
of the purpose of the bill, it is unnecessary at least; the material
fact being established that it never got to hand, nor was ever paid by
the United States.
And how does the Native Virginian maintain his charge that I received the
cash when I drew the bill? by unceremoniously inserting into the entry
of that article in my account, words of his own, making me say in direct
terms that I did receive the cash for the bill. In my account rendered
to the treasury, it is entered in these words: "1789, Oct. 1. By my bill
on Willincks, Van Staphorsts & Hubbard in favor of Grand & Co. for 2,800
florins, equal to 6,230 livres 18 sous," but he quotes it as stated in
my account rendered to and settled at the treasury, and yet remaining,
as it is to be presumed, among the archives of that department, "_By
cash received of Grand_ for bill on Willincks, &c." Now the words "_cash
received of Grand_" constitute "the very point, the pivot, on which
the matter turns," as himself says, and not finding, he has furnished
them. Although the interpolation of them is sufficiently refuted by
the fact that Grand was, at the time, in France, and myself in England,
yet wishing that conviction of the interpolation should be founded on
official document, I wrote to the auditor, Mr. Harrison, requesting an
official certificate of the _very words_ in which that article stood in
my autograph account deposited in the office. I received yesterday his
answer of the 3d, in which he says, "I am unable to furnish the extract
you require, as the original account rendered by you of your pecuniary
transactions of a public nature in Europe, together with the vouchers
and documents connected with it, were all destroyed in the Register's
office in the memorable conflagration of 1814. With respect, therefore,
to the sum of $1,148 in question, I can only say that, after full and
repeated examinations, I considered you as most righteously and justly
entitled to receive it. Otherwise, it will, I trust, be believed that I
could not have consented to the re-payment." Considering the intimacy
which the Native Virginian shows with the treasury affairs, we might
be justified in suspecting that he knew this fact of the destruction
of the original by fire when he ventured to misquote. But certainly we
may call on him to say, and to show, from what original he copied these
words: "cash received from Grand"? I say, most assuredly, from none,
for none such ever existed. Although the original be lost, which would
have convicted him officially, it happens that when I made from my rough
draft a fair copy of my account for the treasury, I took also, with a
copying-machine, a press-copy of every page, which I kept for my own
use. It is known that copies by this well-known machine are taken by
impression on damp paper laid on the face of the written page while fresh,
and passed between rollers as copper plates are. They must therefore be
true _fac similies_. This press-copy now lies before me, has been shown
to several persons, and will be shown to as many as wish or are willing
to examine it; and this article of my account is entered in it in these
words: "1789, Oct. 1. By my bill on Willincks, Van Staphorsts & Hubbard
for 2,800 florins, equal to 6,230 livres 18 sous." An inspection of the
account, too, shows that whenever I received _cash_ for a bill, it is
uniformly entered "by cash received of such an one, &c;" but where a
bill was drawn to constitute an item of account only, the entry is "by
my bill on, &c." Now to these very words "cash received of Grand," not
in my original but interpolated by himself, he constantly appeals as
proofs of an acknowledgment _under my own hand_ that _I received the
cash_. In proof of this, I must request patience to read the following
quotations from his denunciations as standing in the Federal Republican
of May 24:
Page 2, column 2, 1. 48 to 29 from the bottom, "he [Mr. J.] admits in
his account rendered in 1790 and settled in 1792, that he had _received
the_ '_cash_,' [placing the word _cash_ between inverted commas to
have it marked particularly as a quotation] that he had _received the_
'_cash_' for the bill in question, and he does not directly deny it now.
Will he, can he, in the _face of his own declaration in writing_ to the
contrary, publicly say that he did not receive the money for this bill in
Europe? This is _the point_ on which the whole matter rests, the _pivot_
on which the arguments turn. If he did receive the money in Europe,
(no matter whether at Cowes or at Paris,) he certainly had no right to
receive it a second time from the public treasury of the United States.
This is admitted I believe on all sides. Now, _that he did receive the
money in Europe_ on this bill, is proved by the _acknowledgment of the
receiver himself_, who credits the amount in his account as settled at
the treasury thus: "_cash received of Grand_ for bill on Willincks, Van
Staphorsts, 2,876 gilders, 1,148 dollars."
Col. 3, 1. 28 to 21 from bottom. There is a plain difference in the
phraseology of the account, from which an extract is given by Mr. J. as
above, and that _which he rendered to the Treasury_. In the former he
gives the credit thus, "By my bills on Willincks," &c. In the latter he
states, "By _cash received of Grand_ for bill on Willincks, &c." There
is a difference, indeed, as he states it, but it is made solely by his
own interpolation.
Col. 3, 1. 8, from bottom. "That Mr. Jefferson should, in the very teeth
of the facts of the evidence before us, and in his own breast, gravely
say that he had paid the money for this bill, and that therefore it
was but just to return him the amount of it, when he had, _by his own
acknowledgment_, sent it to Grand & Co., and _received the money for
it_, is, I confess, not only matter of utter astonishment but regret."
I spare myself the qualifications which these paragraphs may merit,
leaving them to be applied by every reader according to the feelings
they may excite in his own breast.
He proceeds: "And now to place this case beyond the reach of cavil or
doubt, and to show _most conclusively_ that he had negotiated this bill
in Europe, and _received the cash_ for it there, and that such was the
understanding of the matter at the treasury in 1809, when he received
the money." These are his own words. Col. 4, he brings forward the
overwhelming fact "not hitherto made public but stated from the most
creditable and authentic source, that one of the accounting officers
of the treasury suggested in writing the propriety of taking bond and
security from Mr. J., for indemnification of the United States against
any future claim on this bill. But it seems the bond was not taken, and
the government is now liable in law, and in good faith for the payment of
this bill to the rightful owner." How this suggestion of taking bond at
the treasury, so solemnly paraded, is _more conclusive_ proof than his
own interpolation, that the _cash was received_, I am so dull as not to
perceive; but I say, that had the suggestion been made to me, it would
have been instantly complied with. But I deny his law. Were the bill now
to be presented to the treasury, the answer would and should be the same
as a merchant would give: "You have held up this bill three and thirty
years without notice; we have settled in the meantime with the drawer,
and have no effects of his left in our hands. Apply to him for payment."
On his application to me, I should first inquire into the history of the
bill; where it had been lurking for three and thirty years? how came he
by it? by interception? by trover? by assignment from Grand? by purchase?
from whom, when and where? And according to his answers I should either
institute criminal process against him, or if he showed that all was
fair and honest, I should pay him the money, and look for reimbursement
to the quarter appearing liable. The law deems seven years' absence of
a man, without being heard of, such presumptive evidence of his death,
as to distribute his estate, and to allow his wife to marry again. The
Auditor thought that twenty years non-appearance of a bill which had
been risked through the post-offices of two nations, was sufficient
presumption of its loss. But this self-styled native of Virginia thinks
that the thirty-three years now elapsed are not sufficient. Be it so.
If the accounting officers of the treasury have any uneasiness on that
subject, I am ready to give a bond of indemnification to the United
States in any sum the officers will name, and with the security which
themselves shall approve. Will this satisfy the native Virginian? or will
he now try to pick some other hole in this transaction, to shield himself
from a candid acknowledgment, that in making up his case, he supplied by
gratuitous conjectures, the facts which were not within his knowledge,
and that thus he has sinned against truth in his declarations before the
public? Be this as it may, I have so much confidence in the discernment
and candor of my fellow-citizens, as to leave to their judgment, and
dismiss from my own notice any future torture of words or circumstances
which this writer may devise for their deception. Indeed, could such
a denunciation, and on such proof, bereave me of that confidence and
consolation, I should, through the remainder of life, brood over the
afflicting belief that I had lived and labored in vain.
TO MR. GOODENOW.
MONTICELLO, June 13, 1822.
SIR,--I thank you for the volume of American Jurisprudence, which you
have been so kind as to send me. I am now too old to read books solidly,
unless they promise present amusement or future benefit. To me books
of law offer neither. But I read your 6th chapter with interest and
satisfaction, on the question whether the common law (of England) makes
a part of the laws of our general government? That it makes more or less
a part of the laws of the States is, I suppose, an unquestionable fact.
Not by _birthright_, a conceit as inexplicable as the trinity, but by
adoption. But, as to the general government, the Virginia Report on the
alien and sedition laws, has so completely pulverized this pretension
that nothing new can be said on it. Still, seeing that judges of the
Supreme Court, (I recollect, for example, Elsworth and Story) had been
found capable of such paralogism, I was glad to see that the Supreme
Court had given it up. In the case of Libel in the United States district
Court of Connecticut, the rejection of it was certainly sound; because
no law of the general government had made it an offence. But such a case
might, I suppose, be sustained in the State Courts which have state
laws against libels. Because as to the portions of power within each
State assigned to the general government, the President is as much the
Executive of the State, as their particular governor is in relation to
State powers. These, however, are speculations with which I no longer
trouble myself; and therefore, to my thanks, I will only add assurances
of my great respect.
TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE.
MONTICELLO, June 26, 1822.
DEAR SIR,--I have received and read with thankfulness and pleasure your
denunciation of the abuses of tobacco and wine. Yet, however sound in
its principles, I expect it will be but a sermon to the wind. You will
find it is as difficult to inculcate these sanative precepts on the
sensualities of the present day, as to convince an Athanasian that there
is but one God. I wish success to both attempts, and am happy to learn
from you that the latter, at least, is making progress, and the more
rapidly in proportion as our Platonizing Christians make more stir and
noise about it. The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the
happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is
the sum of religion. These are the great points on which he endeavored to
reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing
dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbour, are nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the
proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved,
and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can
damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes
and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists,
as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I say these are the false shepherds
foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up
some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching
a counter-religion made up of the _deliria_ of crazy imaginations, as
foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have
driven thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the
supposed author himself, with the horrors so falsely imputed to him. Had
the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from
his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian. I
rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which
has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither Kings nor priests,
the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I trust that there
is not a _young man_ now living in the United States who will not die
an Unitarian.
But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be re-established,
its votaries will fall into the fatal error of fabricating formulas of
creed and confessions of faith, the engines which so soon destroyed the
religion of Jesus, and made of Christendom a mere Aceldama; that they will
give up morals for mysteries, and Jesus for Plato. How much wiser are
the Quakers, who, agreeing in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel,
schismatize about no mysteries, and, keeping within the pale of common
sense, suffer no speculative differences of opinion, any more than of
feature, to impair the love of their brethren. Be this the wisdom of
Unitarians, this the holy mantle which shall cover within its charitable
circumference all who believe in one God, and who love their neighbor!
I conclude my sermon with sincere assurances of my friendly esteem and
respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, June 27, 1822.
DEAR SIR,--Your kind letter of the 11th has given me great satisfaction.
For although I could not doubt but that the hand of age was pressing
heavily on you, as on myself, yet we like to know the particulars and
the degree of that pressure. Much reflection too, has been produced by
your suggestion of lending my letter of the 1st, to a printer. I have
generally great aversion to the insertion of my letters in the public
papers; because of my passion for quiet retirement, and never to be
exhibited in scenes on the public stage. Nor am I unmindful of the
precept of Horace, "_solvere senescentem, mature sanus equum, ne peccet
ad extremum ridendus_." In the present case, however, I see a possibility
that this might aid in producing the very quiet after which I pant. I
do not know how far you may suffer, as I do, under the persecution of
letters, of which every mail brings a fresh load. They are letters of
inquiry, for the most part, always of good will, sometimes from friends
whom I esteem, but much oftener from persons whose names are unknown to
me, but written kindly and civilly, and to which, therefore, civility
requires answers. Perhaps, the better known failure of your hand in its
function of writing, may shield you in greater degree from this distress,
and so far qualify the misfortune of its disability. I happened to turn
to my letter-list some time ago, and a curiosity was excited to count
those received in a single year. It was the year before the last. I
found the number to be one thousand two hundred and sixty-seven, many
of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all to be answered
with due attention and consideration. Take an average of this number
for a week or a day, and I will repeat the question suggested by other
considerations in mine of the 1st. Is this life? At best it is but the
life of a mill-horse, who sees no end to his circle but in death. To such
a life, that of a cabbage is paradise. It occurs then, that my condition
of existence, truly stated in that letter, if better known, might check
the kind indiscretions which are so heavily oppressing the departing
hours of life. Such a relief would, to me, be an ineffable blessing. But
yours of the 11th, equally interesting and affecting, should accompany
that to which it is an answer. The two, taken together, would excite a
joint interest, and place before our fellow-citizens the present condition
of two ancient servants, who having faithfully performed their forty
or fifty campaigns, _stipendiis omnibus expletis_, have a reasonable
claim to repose from all disturbance in the sanctuary of invalids and
superannuates. But some device should be thought of for their getting
before the public otherwise than by our own publication. Your printer,
perhaps, could frame something plausible. * * * * *'s name should be left
blank, as his picture, should it meet his eye, might give him pain. I
consign, however, the whole subject to your consideration, to do in it
whatever your own judgment shall approve, and repeat always, with truth,
the assurance of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
TO WILLIAM T. BARRY.
MONTICELLO, July 2, 1822.
SIR,--Your favor of the 15th of June is received, and I am very thankful
for the kindness of its expressions respecting myself. But it ascribes
to me merits which I do not claim. I was only of a band devoted to the
cause of independence, all of whom exerted equally their best endeavors
for its success, and have a common right to the merits of its acquisition.
So also is the civil revolution of 1801. Very many and very meritorious
were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government
to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting
vigilance. Whether the surrender of our opponents, their reception into
our camp, their assumption of our name, and apparent accession to our
objects, may strengthen or weaken the genuine principles of republicanism,
may be a good or an evil, is yet to be seen. I consider the party division
of whig and tory the most wholesome which can exist in any government,
and well worthy of being nourished, to keep out those of a more dangerous
character. We already see the power, installed for life, responsible
to no authority, (for impeachment is not even a scare-crow,) advancing
with a noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation.
The foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions, for the
annihilation of constitutional State rights, and the removal of every
check, every counterpoise to the ingulphing power of which themselves
are to make a sovereign part. If ever this vast country is brought under
a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption,
indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of
surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between
reformation and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the
one or the other is inevitable. Before the canker is become inveterate,
before its venom has reached so much of the body politic as to get
beyond control, remedy should be applied. Let the future appointments
of judges be for four or six years, and renewable by the President and
Senate. This will bring their conduct, at regular periods, under revision
and probation, and may keep them in equipoise between the general and
special governments. We have erred in this point, by copying England,
where certainly it is a good thing to have the judges independent of
the King. But we have omitted to copy their caution also, which makes
a judge removable on the address of both legislative Houses. That there
should be public functionaries independent of the nation, whatever may
be their demerit, is a solecism in a republic, of the first order of
absurdity and inconsistency.
To the printed inquiries respecting our schools, it is not in my power to
give an answer. Age, debility, an ancient dislocated, and now stiffened
wrist, render writing so slow and painful, that I am obliged to decline
everything possible requiring writing. An act of our legislature will
inform you of our plan of primary schools, and the annual reports show
that it is becoming completely abortive, and must be abandoned very
shortly, after costing us to this day one hundred and eighty thousand
dollars, and yet to cost us forty-five thousand dollars a year more until
it shall be discontinued; and if a single boy has received the elements
of common education, it must be in some part of the country not known to
me. Experience has but too fully confirmed the early predictions of its
fate. But on this subject I must refer you to others more able than I
am to go into the necessary details; and I conclude with the assurances
of my great esteem and respect.
TO DOCTOR WATERHOUSE.
MONTICELLO, July 19, 1822.
DEAR SIR,--An anciently dislocated, and now stiffening wrist, makes
writing an operation so slow and painful to me, that I should not so soon
have troubled you with an acknowledgment of your favor of the 8th, but for
the request it contained of my consent to the publication of my letter
of June the 26th. No, my dear Sir, not for the world. Into what a nest
of hornets would it thrust my head! the _genus irritable vatum_, on whom
argument is lost, and reason is, by themselves, disclaimed in matters of
religion. Don Quixote undertook to redress the bodily wrongs of the world,
but the redressment of mental vagaries would be an enterprise more than
Quixotic. I should as soon undertake to bring the crazy skulls of Bedlam
to sound understanding, as inculcate reason into that of an Athanasian.
I am old, and tranquility is now my _summum bonum_. Keep me, therefore,
from the fire and faggots of Calvin and his victim Servetus. Happy in
the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity, I must leave
to younger athletes to encounter and lop off the false branches which
have been engrafted into it by the mythologists of the middle and modern
ages. I am not aware of the peculiar resistance to Unitarianism, which
you ascribe to Pennsylvania. When I lived in Philadelphia, there was a
respectable congregation of that sect, with a meeting-house and regular
service which I attended, and in which Doctor Priestley officiated to
numerous audiences. Baltimore has one or two churches, and their pastor,
author of an inestimable book on this subject, was elected chaplain to
the late Congress. That doctrine has not yet been preached to us: but
the breeze begins to be felt which precedes the storm; and fanaticism
is all in a bustle, shutting its doors and windows to keep it out. But
it will come, and drive before it the foggy mists of Platonism which
have so long obscured our atmosphere. I am in hopes that some of the
disciples of your institution will become missionaries to us, of these
doctrines truly evangelical, and open our eyes to what has been so long
hidden from them. A bold and eloquent preacher would be nowhere listened
to with more freedom than in this State, nor with more firmness of mind.
They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of "prove all things,
hold fast that which is good," in order to unlearn the lesson that reason
is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first
awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at
once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. The preacher might be
excluded by our hierophants from their churches and meeting-houses, but
would be attended in the fields by whole acres of hearers and thinkers.
Missionaries from Cambridge would soon be greeted with more welcome,
than from the tritheistical school of Andover. Such are my wishes, such
would be my welcomes, warm and cordial as the assurances of my esteem
and respect for you.
TO MR. THOMAS SKIDMAN.
MONTICELLO, August 29, 1822.
You must be so good, Sir, as to excuse me from entering into the optical
investigation which your letter of the 18th proposes. The hand of age
presses heavily on me. I have long withdrawn my mind from speculations of
that kind; my memory is on the wane. I am averse even to close thinking,
and writing is become slow, laborious and painful. I will make then
but a single suggestion on the subject of your proposition, to show my
respect to your request.
To distinct vision it is necessary not only that the visual angle should
be sufficient for the powers of the human eye, but that there should
be sufficient light also on the object of observation. In microscopic
observations, the enlargement of the angle of vision may be more
indulged, because auxiliary light may be concentrated on the object by
concave mirrors. But in the case of the heavenly bodies, we can have
no such aid. The moon, for example, receives from the sun but a fixed
quantity of light. In proportion as you magnify her surface, you spread
that fixed quantity over a greater space, dilute it more, and render
the object more dim. If you increase her magnitude infinitely, you dim
her face infinitely also, and she becomes invisible. When under total
eclipse, all the direct rays of the sun being intercepted, she is seen
but faintly, and would not be seen at all but for the refraction of the
solar rays in their passage through our atmosphere. In a night of extreme
darkness, a house or a mountain is not seen, as not having light enough
to impress the limited sensibility of our eye. I do suppose in fact
that Herschel has availed himself of the properties of the parabolic
mirror to the point beyond which its effect would be countervailed by
the diminution of light on the object. I barely suggest this element,
not presented to view in your letter, as one which must enter into the
estimate of the improved telescope you propose. You will receive from
the professional mathematicians whom you have consulted, remarks more
elaborate and profound, and must be so good as to accept mine merely as
testimonies of my respect.
TO MR. GEORGE F. HOPKINS.
MONTICELLO, September 5, 1822.
SIR,--Your letter of August --, was received a few days ago. Of all the
departments of science no one seems to have been less advanced for the
last hundred years than that of meteorology. The new chemistry indeed
has given us a new principle of the generation of rain, by proving
water to be a composition of different gases, and has aided our theory
of meteoric lights. Electricity stands where Dr. Franklin's early
discoveries placed it, except with its new modification of galvanism.
But the phenomena of snow, hail, halo, aurora borealis, haze, looming,
&c., are as yet very imperfectly understood. I am myself an empiric in
natural philosophy, suffering my faith to go no further than my facts.
I am pleased, however, to see the efforts of hypothetical speculation,
because by the collisions of different hypotheses, truth may be elicited
and science advanced in the end. This sceptical disposition does not
permit me to say whether your hypothesis for looming and the floating
volumes of warm air occasionally perceived, may or may not be confirmed
by future observations. More facts are yet wanting to furnish a solution
on which we may rest with confidence. I even doubt as yet whether the
looming at sea and at land are governed by the same laws. In this state
of uncertainty, I cannot presume either to advise or discourage the
publication of your essay. This must depend on circumstances of which
you must be abler to judge yourself, and therefore I return the paper
as requested, with assurances of my great respect.
TO MR. CHILES TERRIL.
MONTICELLO, September 25, 1822.
SIR,--I received on the 20th, your letter of the 13th, on the question
what is an east and west line? which, you say, has been a subject of
discussion in the newspapers. I presume, however, it must have been a
mere question of definition, and that the parties have differed only
in applying the same appellation to different things. The one defines
an east and west line to be on a great circle of the earth, passing
through the point of departure, its nadir point, and the centre of the
earth, its plane rectangular, to that of the meridian of departure. The
other considers an east and west line to be a line on the surface of
the earth, bounding a plane at right-angles with its axis, or a circle
of latitude passing through the point of departure, or in other words,
a line which, from the point of departure, passes every meridian at a
right-angle. Each party, therefore, defining the line he means, may be
permitted to call it an east and west one, or at least it becomes no
longer a mathematical but a philological question of the meaning of the
words east and west. The last is what was meant probably by the east and
west line in the treaty of Ghent. The same has been the understanding
in running the numerous east and west lines which divide our different
States. They have been run by observations of latitude at very short
intervals, uniting the points of observation by short direct lines, and
thus constituting in fact part of a polygon of very short sides.
But, Sir, I do not pretend to be an arbiter of these learned questions;
age has weaned me from such speculations, and rendered me as incompetent
as unwilling to puzzle myself with them. Your claim on me as a quondam
neighbor has induced me to hazard thus much, not indeed for the
newspapers, a vehicle to which I am never willingly committed, but to
prove my attention to your wishes, and to convey to you the assurances
of my respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
MONTEZILLO, October 15, 1822.
DEAR SIR,--I have long entertained scruples about writing this letter,
upon a subject of some delicacy. But old age has overcome them at last.
You remember the four ships ordered by Congress to be built, and the
four captains appointed by Washington, Talbot, and Truxton, and Barry,
&c., to carry an ambassador to Algiers, and protect our commerce in the
Mediterranean. I have always imputed this measure to you, for several
reasons. First, because you frequently proposed it to me while we were at
Paris, negotiating together for peace with the Barbary powers. Secondly,
because I knew that Washington and Hamilton were not only indifferent
about a navy, but averse to it. There was no Secretary of the Navy;
only four Heads of department. You were Secretary of State; Hamilton,
Secretary of the Treasury; Knox, Secretary of War; and I believe Bradford
was Attorney General. I have always suspected that you and Knox were
in favor of a navy. If Bradford was so, the majority was clear. But
Washington, I am confident, was against it in his judgment. But his
attachment to Knox, and his deference to your opinion, for I know he
had a great regard for you, might induce him to decide in favor of you
and Knox, even though Bradford united with Hamilton in opposition to
you. That Hamilton was averse to the measure, I have personal evidence;
for while it was pending, he came in a hurry and a fit of impatience,
to make a visit to me. He said he was likely to be called upon for a
large sum of money to build ships of war, to fight the Algerines, and
he asked my opinion of the measure. I answered him that I was clearly
in favor of it. For I had always been of opinion, from the commencement
of the revolution, that a navy was the most powerful, the safest and
the cheapest national defence for this country. My advice, therefore,
was, that as much of the revenue as could possibly be spared, should be
applied to the building and equipping of ships. The conversation was
of some length, but it was manifest in his looks and in his air, that
he was disgusted at the measure, as well as at the opinion that I had
expressed.
Mrs. Knox not long since wrote a letter to Doctor Waterhouse, requesting
him to procure a commission for her son, in the navy; that navy, says her
ladyship, of which his father was the parent. "For," says she, "I have
frequently heard General Washington say to my husband, the navy was your
child." I have always believed it to be Jefferson's child, though Knox
may have assisted in ushering it into the world. Hamilton's hobby was
the army. That Washington was averse to a navy, I had full proof from
his own lips, in many different conversations, some of them of length,
in which he always insisted that it was only building and arming ships
for the English. "_Si quid novisti rectius istis candidus imperti; si
non, his utere mecum._"
If I am in error in any particular, pray correct your humble servant.
TO MR. CORNELIUS CAMDEN BLATCHLY.
MONTICELLO, October 21, 1822.
SIR,--I return thanks for the pamphlet you have been so kind as to send
me on the subject of commonwealths. Its moral principles merit entire
approbation, its philanthropy especially, and its views of the equal
rights of man. That, on the principle of a communion of property, small
societies may exist in habits of virtue, order, industry, and peace,
and consequently in a state of as much happiness as heaven has been
pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity, I can readily conceive, and
indeed, have seen its proofs in various small societies which have been
constituted on that principle. But I do not feel authorized to conclude
from these that an extended society, like that of the United States, or
of an individual State, could be governed happily on the same principle.
I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to
be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and
advancing the happiness of man. That every man shall be made virtuous,
by any process whatever, is, indeed, no more to be expected, than that
every tree shall be made to bear fruit, and every plant nourishment.
The brier and bramble can never become the vine and olive; but their
asperities may be softened by culture, and their properties improved to
usefulness in the order and economy of the world. And I do hope that,
in the present spirit of extending to the great mass of mankind the
blessings of instruction, I see a prospect of great advancement in the
happiness of the human race; and that this may proceed to an indefinite,
although not to an infinite degree. Wishing every success to the views
of your society which their hopes can promise, and thanking you most
particularly for the kind expressions of your letter towards myself, I
salute you with assurances of great esteem and respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, November 1, 1822.
DEAR SIR,--I have racked my memory and ransacked my papers, to enable
myself to answer the inquiries of your favor of October the 15th; but to
little purpose. My papers furnish me nothing, my memory, generalities
only. I know that while I was in Europe, and anxious about the fate
of our seafaring men, for some of whom, then in captivity in Algiers,
we were treating, and all were in like danger, I formed, undoubtingly,
the opinion that our government, as soon as practicable, should provide
a naval force sufficient to keep the Barbary States in order; and on
this subject we communicated together, as you observe. When I returned
to the United States and took part in the administration under General
Washington, I constantly maintained that opinion; and in December, 1790,
took advantage of a reference to me from the first Congress which met
after I was in office, to report in favor of a force sufficient for
the protection of our Mediterranean commerce; and I laid before them an
accurate statement of the whole Barbary force, public and private. I think
General Washington approved of building vessels of war to that extent.
General Knox, I know, did. But what was Colonel Hamilton's opinion, I
do not in the least remember. Your recollections on that subject are
certainly corroborated by his known anxieties for a close connection
with Great Britain, to which he might apprehend danger from collisions
between their vessels and ours. Randolph was then Attorney General; but
his opinion on the question I also entirely forget. Some vessels of war
were accordingly built and sent into the Mediterranean. The additions
to these in your time, I need not note to you, who are well known to
have ever been an advocate for the wooden walls of Themistocles. Some of
those you added, were sold under an act of Congress passed while you were
in office. I thought, afterwards, that the public safety might require
some additional vessels of strength, to be prepared and in readiness
for the first moment of a war, provided they could be preserved against
the decay which is unavoidable if kept in the water, and clear of the
expense of officers and men. With this view I proposed that they should
be built in dry docks, above the level of the tide waters, and covered
with roofs. I further advised, that places for these docks should be
selected where there was a command of water on a high level, as that
of the Tyber at Washington, by which the vessels might be floated out,
on the principle of a lock. But the majority of the legislature was
against any addition to the navy, and the minority, although for it in
judgment, voted against it on a principle of opposition. We are now,
I understand, building vessels to remain on the stocks, under shelter,
until wanted, when they will be launched and finished. On my plan they
could be in service at an hour's notice. On this, the finishing, after
launching, will be a work of time.
This is all I recollect about the origin and progress of our navy. That
of the late war, certainly raised our rank and character among nations.
Yet a navy is a very expensive engine. It is admitted, that in ten or
twelve years a vessel goes to entire decay; or, if kept in repair, costs
as much as would build a new one; and that a nation who could count on
twelve or fifteen years of peace, would gain by burning its navy and
building a new one in time. Its extent, therefore, must be governed by
circumstances. Since my proposition for a force adequate to the piracies
of the Mediterranean, a similar necessity has arisen in our own seas
for considerable addition to that force. Indeed, I wish we could have
a convention with the naval powers of Europe, for them to keep down
the pirates of the Mediterranean, and the slave ships on the coast of
Africa, and for us to perform the same duties for the society of nations
in our seas. In this way, those collisions would be avoided between the
vessels of war of different nations, which beget wars and constitute
the weightiest objection to navies. I salute you with constant affection
and respect.
TO DOCTOR COOPER.
MONTICELLO, November 2, 1822.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of October the 18th came to hand yesterday. The
atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening
cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser in others, but too
heavy in all. I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of
toleration and freedom of religion, it could have arisen to the height
you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism.
The blasphemy and absurdity of the five points of Calvin, and the
impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of
reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation. In Boston, however, and
its neighborhood, Unitarianism has advanced to so great strength, as now
to humble this haughtiest of all religious sects; insomuch, that they
condescend to interchange with them and the other sects, the civilities
of preaching freely and frequently in each others' meeting houses. In
Rhode Island, on the other hand, no sectarian preacher will permit an
Unitarian to pollute his desk. In our Richmond there is much fanaticism,
but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying
parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked
husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms
as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use to a
mere earthly lover. In our village of Charlottesville, there is a good
degree of religion, with a small spice only of fanaticism. We have four
sects, but without either church or meeting-house. The court-house is the
common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. Here, Episcopalian and
Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their
Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others' preachers, and
all mix in society with perfect harmony. It is not so in the districts
where Presbyterianism prevails undividedly. Their ambition and tyranny
would tolerate no rival if they had power. Systematical in grasping
at an ascendency over all other sects, they aim, like the Jesuits, at
engrossing the education of the country, are hostile to every institution
which they do not direct, and jealous at seeing others begin to attend
at all to that object. The diffusion of instruction, to which there is
now so growing an attention, will be the remote remedy to this fever
of fanaticism; while the more proximate one will be the progress of
Unitarianism. That this will, ere long, be the religion of the majority
from north to south, I have no doubt.
In our university you know there is no Professorship of Divinity.
A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is
an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion.
Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward
an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed in the minds
of some honest friends to the institution. In our annual report to the
legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public
establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of
encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself,
a professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the university,
so near as that their students may attend the lectures there, and have
the free use of our library, and every other accommodation we can give
them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other.
This fills the chasm objected to ours, as a defect in an institution
professing to give instruction in _all_ useful sciences. I think the
invitation will be accepted, by some sects from candid intentions, and by
others from jealousy and rivalship. And by bringing the sects together,
and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their
asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the
general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality.
The time of opening our university is still as uncertain as ever. All
the pavilions, boarding houses, and dormitories are done. Nothing is now
wanting but the central building for a library and other general purposes.
For this we have no funds, and the last legislature refused all aid. We
have better hopes of the next. But all is uncertain. I have heard with
regret of disturbances on the part of the students in your seminary.
The article of discipline is the most difficult in American education.
Premature ideas of independence, too little repressed by parents beget a
spirit of insubordination, which is the great obstacle to science with
us, and a principal cause of its decay since the revolution. I look to
it with dismay in our institution, as a breaker ahead, which I am far
from being confident we shall be able to weather. The advance of age,
and tardy pace of the public patronage, may probably spare me the pain
of witnessing consequences.
I salute you with constant friendship and respect.
TO JOHN CAMPBELL, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, November 10, 1822.
SIR,--I have to acknowledge your favor of the 4th instant, which gives me
the first information I had ever received that the laurels which Colonel
Campbell so honorably won in the battle of King's Mountain, had ever been
brought into question by any one. To him has been ever ascribed so much
of the success of that brilliant action as the valor and conduct of an
able commander might justly claim. This lessens nothing the merits of his
companions in arms, officers and soldiers, who, all and every one, acted
well their parts in their respective stations. I have no papers on this
subject in my possession, all such received at that day having belonged
to the records of the council, but I remember well the deep and grateful
impression made on the mind of every one by that memorable victory. It
was the joyful annunciation of that turn of the tide of success which
terminated the revolutionary war with the seal of our independence.
The slighting expression complained of, as hazarded by the venerable
Shelby, might seem inexcusable in a younger man, but he was then old,
and I can assure you, dear Sir, from mortifying experience, that the
lapses of memory of an old man are innocent subjects of compassion more
than of blame. The descendants of Colonel Campbell may rest their heads
quietly on the pillow of his renown. History has consecrated, and will
forever preserve it in the faithful annals of a grateful country. With
the expressions of the high sense I entertain of his character, accept
the assurance to yourself of my great esteem and respect.
P. S. I received at the same time with your letter, one from Mr. William
C. Preston, on the same subject. Writing is so slow and painful to me,
that I must pray you to make for me my acknowledgments to him, and my
request that he will consider this as an answer to his as well as your
favor.
TO JAMES SMITH.
MONTICELLO, December 8, 1822.
SIR,--I have to thank you for your pamphlets on the subject of
Unitarianism, and to express my gratification with your efforts for
the revival of primitive Christianity in your quarter. No historical
fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and
uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity; and was among
the efficacious doctrines which gave it triumph over the polytheism of
the ancients, sickened with the absurdities of their own theology. Nor
was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by
the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at
the will of the fanatic Athanasius. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God
like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and
growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs. And a strong
proof of the solidity of the primitive faith, is its restoration, as soon
as a nation arises which vindicates to itself the freedom of religious
opinion, and its external divorce from the civil authority. The pure and
simple unity of the Creator of the universe, is now all but ascendant
in the eastern States; it is dawning in the west, and advancing towards
the south; and I confidently expect that the present generation will
see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States. The
eastern presses are giving us many excellent pieces on the subject, and
Priestley's learned writings on it are, or should be, in every hand.
In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one,
is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he
has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who
thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once
surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the
most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every
wind. With such persons, gullability, which they call faith, takes the
helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.
I write with freedom, because, while I claim a right to believe in
one God, if so my reason tells me, I yield as freely to others that
of believing in three. Both religions, I find, make honest men, and
that is the only point society has any right to look to. Although this
mutual freedom should produce mutual indulgence, yet I wish not to be
brought in question before the public on this or any other subject, and
I pray you to consider me as writing under that trust. I take no part in
controversies, religious or political. At the age of eighty, tranquillity
is the greatest good of life, and the strongest of our desires that of
dying in the good will of all mankind. And with the assurance of all
my good will to Unitarian and Trinitarian, to Whig and Tory, accept for
yourself that of my entire respect.
TO MR. EDWARD EVERETT.
MONTICELLO, February 24, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--I have read with much satisfaction the reply of Mr. Everett,
your brother, to the criticisms on his work on the state of Europe,
and concur with him generally in the doctrines of the reply. Certainly
_provisions_ are not allowed, by the consent of nations, to be contraband
but where everything is so, as in the ease of a blockaded town, with
which all intercourse is forbidden. On the question whether the principle
of "free bottoms making free goods, and enemy bottoms enemy goods," is
now to be considered as established in the law of nations, I will state
to you a fact within my own knowledge, which may lessen the weight of
our authority as having acted in the war of France and England on the
ancient principle "that the goods of an enemy in the bottom of a friend
are lawful prize; while those of a friend in an enemy bottom are not
so." England became a party in the general war against France on the
1st of February, 1793. We took immediately the stand of neutrality. We
were aware that our great intercourse with these two maritime nations
would subject us to harassment by multiplied questions on the duties
of neutrality, and that an important and early one would be which of
the two principles above stated should be the law of action with us? We
wished to act on the new one of "free bottoms free goods;" and we had
established it in our treaties with other nations, but not with England.
We determined therefore to avoid, if possible, committing ourselves on
this question until we could negotiate with England her acquiescence in
the new principle. Although the cases occurring were numerous, and the
ministers, Genet and Hammond, eagerly on the watch, we were able to avoid
any declaration until the massacre of St. Domingo. The whites, on that
occasion, took refuge on board our ships, then in their harbor, with
all the property they could find room for; and on their passage to the
United States, many of them were taken by British cruisers, and their
cargoes seized as lawful prize. The inflammable temper of Genet kindled
at once, and he wrote, with his usual passion, a letter reclaiming an
observance of the principle of "free bottoms free goods," as if already
an acknowledged law of neutrality. I pressed him in conversation not
to urge this point; that although it had been acted on by convention,
by the armed neutrality, it was not yet become a principle of universal
admission; that we wished indeed to strengthen it by our adoption, and
were negotiating an acquiescence on the part of Great Britain: but if
forced to decide prematurely, we must justify ourselves by a declaration
of the ancient principle, and that no general consent of nations had
as yet changed it. He was immoveable, and on the 25th of July wrote a
letter, so insulting, that nothing but a determined system of justice
and moderation would have prevented his being shipped home in the first
vessel. I had the day before answered his of the 9th, in which I had
been obliged in our own justification, to declare that the ancient was
the established principle, still existing and authoritative. Our denial,
therefore, of the new principle, and action on the old one, were forced
upon us by the precipitation and intemperance of Genet, against our
wishes, and against our aim; and our involuntary practice, therefore,
is of less authority against the new rule.
I owe you particular thanks for the copy of your translation of Buttman's
Greek Grammar, which you have been so kind as to send me. A cursory view
of it promises me a rich mine of valuable criticism. I observe he goes
with the herd of grammarians in denying an Ablative case to the Greek
language. I cannot concur with him in that, but think with the Messrs.
of Port Royal who admit an Ablative. And why exclude it? Is it because
the Dative and Ablative in Greek are always of the same form? Then there
is no Ablative to the Latin plurals, because in them as in Greek, these
cases are always in the same form. The Greeks recognized the Ablative
under the appellation of the πτωσις αφαιρετικη, which I have met with and
noted from some of the scholiasts, without recollecting where. Stephens,
Scapula, Hederic acknowledge it as one of the significations of the
word αφαιρεματικος. That the Greeks used it cannot be denied. For one
of multiplied examples which maybe produced take the following from the
Hippolytus of Euripides: "ειπε τῳ τροπῳ, δικης Επαισεν αυτον ροπτρον,"
"dic quo modo justitiæ clava percussit eum," "quo modo" are Ablatives,
then why not τω τροπῳ? And translating it into English, should we use
the [16]Dative or Ablative preposition? It is not perhaps easy to define
very critically what constitutes a case in the declension of nouns. All
agree as to the Nominative that it is simply the name of the thing. If we
admit that a distinct case is constituted by any accident or modification
which changes the relation which that bears to the actors or action
of the sentence, we must agree to the six cases at least; because, for
example, _to_ a thing, and _from_ a thing are very different accidents to
the thing. It may be said that if every distinct accident or change of
relation constitutes a different case, then there are in every language
as many cases as there are prepositions; for this is the peculiar office
of the preposition. But because we do not designate by special names
all the cases to which a noun is liable, is that a reason why we should
throw away half of those we have, as is done by those grammarians who
reject all cases, but the Nominative, Genitive, and Accusative, and in
a less degree by those also who reject the Ablative alone? as pushing
the discrimination of all the possible cases to extremities leads us to
nothing useful or practicable, I am contented with the old six cases,
familiar to every cultivated language, ancient and modern, and well
understood by all. I acknowledge myself at the same time not an adept in
the metaphysical speculations of Grammar. By analyzing too minutely we
often reduce our subject to atoms, of which the mind loses its hold. Nor
am I a friend to a scrupulous purism of style. I readily sacrifice the
niceties of syntax to euphony and strength. It is by boldly neglecting
the rigorisms of grammar, that Tacitus has made himself the strongest
writer in the world. The Hyperesitics call him barbarous; but I should
be sorry to exchange his barbarisms for their wise-drawn purisms. Some of
his sentences are as strong as language can make them. Had he scrupulously
filled up the whole of their syntax, they would have been merely common.
To explain my meaning by an English example, I will quote the motto of
one, I believe, of the regicides of Charles I., "Rebellion _to_ tyrants
is obedience to God." Correct its syntax, "Rebellion _against_ tyrants
is obedience to God," it has lost all the strength and beauty of the
antithesis. However, dear Sir, I profess again my want of familiarity
with these speculations; I hazard them without confidence, and offer
them submissively to your consideration and more practised judgment.
Although writing, with both hands crippled, is slow and painful, and
therefore nearly laid aside from necessity, I have been decoyed by my
subjects into a very long letter. What would therefore have been a good
excuse for ending with the first page, cannot be a bad one for concluding
in the fourth, with the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] See Buttman's Datives, p. 230, every one of which I
should consider as under the accident or relation called
Ablative, having no signification of _approach_ according
to his definition of the Dative.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, February 25, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--I received, in due time, your two favors of December the
2d and February the 10th, and have to acknowledge for the ladies of
my native State their obligations to you for the encomiums which you
are so kind as to bestow on them. They certainly claim no advantages
over those of their sister States, and are sensible of more favorable
circumstances existing with many of them, and happily availed, which our
situation does not offer. But the paper respecting Monticello, to which
you allude, was not written by a Virginian, but a visitant from another
State; and written by memory at least a dozen years after the visit.
This has occasioned some lapses of recollection, and a confusion of some
things in the mind of our friend, and particularly as to the volume of
slanders supposed to have been cut out of newspapers and preserved.
It would not, indeed, have been a single volume, but an encyclopedia
in bulk. But I never had such a volume; indeed, I rarely thought those
libels worth reading, much less preserving and remembering. At the end
of every year, I generally sorted all my pamphlets, and had them bound
according to their subjects. One of these volumes consisted of personal
altercations between individuals, and calumnies on each other. This
was lettered on the back, "Personalities," and is now in the library of
Congress. I was in the habit, also, while living apart from my family,
of cutting out of the newspapers such morsels of poetry, or tales, as
I thought would please, and of sending them to my grandchildren, who
pasted them on leaves of blank paper and formed them into a book. These
two volumes have been confounded into one in the recollection of our
friend. Her poetical imagination, too, has heightened the scenes she
visited, as well as the merits of the inhabitants, to whom her society
was a delightful gratification.
I have just finished reading O'Meara's Bonaparte. It places him in a
higher scale of understanding than I had allotted him. I had thought him
the greatest of all military captains, but an indifferent statesman, and
misled by unworthy passions. The flashes, however, which escaped from him
in these conversations with O'Meara, prove a mind of great expansion,
although not of distinct development and reasoning. He seizes results
with rapidity and penetration, but never explains logically the process
of reasoning by which he arrives at them. This book, too, makes us
forget his atrocities for a moment, in commiseration of his sufferings.
I will not say that the authorities of the world, charged with the care
of their country and people, had not a right to confine him for life,
as a lion or tiger, on the principle of self-preservation. There was
no safety to nations while he was permitted to roam at large. But the
putting him to death in cold blood, by lingering tortures of mind, by
vexations, insults and deprivations, was a degree of inhumanity to which
the poisonings and assassinations of the school of Borgia and the den
of Marat never attained. The book proves, also, that nature had denied
him the moral sense, the first excellence of well-organized man. If he
could seriously and repeatedly affirm that he had raised himself to power
without ever having committed a crime, it proves that he wanted totally
the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider the millions of human
lives which he had destroyed or caused to be destroyed, the desolations
of countries by plunderings, burnings, and famine, the destitutions of
lawful rulers of the world without the consent of their constituents,
to place his brothers and sisters on their thrones, the cutting up of
established societies of men and jumbling them discordantly together
again at his caprice, the demolition of the fairest hopes of mankind for
the recovery of their rights and amelioration of their condition, and
all the numberless train of his other enormities; the man, I say, who
could consider all these as no crimes, must have been a moral monster,
against whom every hand should have been lifted to slay him.
You are so kind as to inquire after my health. The bone of my arm is
well knitted, but my hand and fingers are in a discouraging condition,
kept entirely useless by an œdematous swelling of slow amendment.
God bless you and continue your good health of body and mind.
TO JUDGE JOHNSON.
MONTICELLO, March 4, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--I delayed some time the acknowledgment of your welcome letter
of December 10th, on the common lazy principle of never doing to-day what
we can put off to to-morrow, until it became doubtful whether a letter
would find you at Charleston. Learning now that you are at Washington,
I will reply to some particulars which seem to require it.
The North American Review is a work I do not take, and which is little
known in this State, consequently I have never seen its observations
on your inestimable history, but a reviewer can never let a work pass
uncensured. He must always make himself wiser than his author. He
would otherwise think it an abdication of his office of censor. On this
occasion, he seems to have had more sensibility for Virginia than she
has for herself; for, on reading the work, I saw nothing to touch our
pride or jealousy, but every expression of respect and good will which
truth could justify. The family of enemies, whose buzz you apprehend,
are now nothing. You may learn this at Washington; and their military
relation has long ago had the full-voiced condemnation of his own State.
Do not fear, therefore, these insects. What you write will be far above
their grovelling sphere. Let me, then, implore you, dear Sir, to finish
your history of parties, leaving the time of publication to the state
of things you may deem proper, but taking especial care that we do not
lose it altogether. We have been too careless of our future reputation,
while our tories will omit nothing to place us in the wrong. Besides
the five-volumed libel which represents us as struggling for office,
and not at all to prevent our government from being administered into
a monarchy, the life of Hamilton is in the hands of a man who, to the
bitterness of the priest, adds the rancor of the fiercest federalism.
Mr. Adams' papers, too, and his biography, will descend of course to
his son, whose pen, you know, is pointed, and his prejudices not in
our favor. And doubtless other things are in preparation, unknown to
us. On our part we are depending on truth to make itself known, while
history is taking a contrary set which may become too inveterate for
correction. Mr. Madison will probably leave something, but I believe,
only particular passages of our history, and these chiefly confined
to the period between the dissolution of the old and commencement of
the new government, which is peculiarly within his knowledge. After he
joined me in the administration, he had no leisure to write. This, too,
was my case. But although I had not time to prepare anything express,
my letters, (all preserved) will furnish the daily occurrences and views
from my return from Europe in 1790, till I retired finally from office.
These will command more conviction than anything I could have written
after my retirement; no day having ever passed during that period without
a letter to somebody, written too in the moment, and in the warmth and
freshness of fact and feeling, they will carry internal evidence that
what they breathe is genuine. Selections from these, after my death, may
come out successively as the maturity of circumstances may render their
appearance seasonable. But multiplied testimony, multiplied views will
be necessary to give solid establishment to truth. Much is known to one
which is not known to another, and no one knows everything. It is the
sum of individual knowledge which is to make up the whole truth, and
to give its correct current through future time. Then do not, dear Sir,
withhold your stock of information; and I would moreover recommend that
you trust it not to a single copy, nor to a single depository. Leave
it not in the power of any one person, under the distempered view of
an unlucky moment, to deprive us of the weight of your testimony, and
to purchase, by its destruction, the favor of any party or person, as
happened with a paper of Dr. Franklin's.
I cannot lay down my pen without recurring to one of the subjects of
my former letter, for in truth there is no danger I apprehend so much
as the consolidation of our government by the noiseless, and therefore
unalarming, instrumentality of the supreme court. This is the form in
which federalism now arrays itself, and consolidation is the present
principle of distinction between republicans and the pseudo-republicans
but real federalists. I must comfort myself with the hope that the judges
will see the importance and the duty of giving their country the only
evidence they can give of fidelity to its constitution and integrity in
the administration of its laws; that is to say, by every one's giving his
opinion _seriatim_ and publicly on the cases he decides. Let him prove
by his reasoning that he has read the papers, that he has considered
the case, that in the application of the law to it, he uses his own
judgment independently and unbiased by party views and personal favor
or disfavor. Throw himself in every case on God and his country; both
will excuse him for error and value him for his honesty. The very idea
of cooking up opinions in conclave, begets suspicions that something
passes which fears the public ear, and this, spreading by degrees, must
produce at some time abridgment of tenure, facility of removal, or some
other modification which may promise a remedy. For in truth there is
at this time more hostility to the federal judiciary, than to any other
organ of the government.
I should greatly prefer, as you do, four judges to any greater number.
Great lawyers are not over abundant, and the multiplication of judges
only enable the weak to out-vote the wise, and three concurrent opinions
out of four gives a strong presumption of right.
I cannot better prove my entire confidence in your candor, than by the
frankness with which I commit myself to you, and to this I add with
truth, assurances of the sincerity of my great esteem and respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, March 10, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--The sight of your well known hand writing in your favor of
25th February last, gave me great pleasure, as it proved your arm to be
restored, and your pen still manageable. May it continue till you shall
become as perfect a Calvinist as I am in one particular. Poor Calvin's
infirmities, his rheumatism, his gouts and sciatics, made him frequently
cry out, _Mon dieu, jusqu'à quand_. Lord, how long! Prat, once chief
justice of New York, always tormented with infirmities, dreamt that he
was situated on a single rock in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean. He
heard a voice:
"Why mourns the bard, Apollo bids thee rise,
Renounce the dust, and claim thy native skies."
The ladies' visit to Monticello has put my readers in requisition to read
to me Simons' travels in Switzerland. I thought I had some knowledge of
that country before, but I find I had no idea of it. How degenerated are
the Swiss. They might defend their country against France, Austria, and
Russia; neither of whom ought to be suffered to march armies over their
mountains. Those powers have practiced as much tyranny, and immorality,
as even the emperor Napoleon did over them, or over the royalists of
Germany or Italy.
Neither France, Austria, or Spain, ought to have a foot of land in Italy.
All conquerors are alike. Every one of them. _Jura negat sibi lati,
nihil non arrogat armis._ We have nothing but fables concerning Theseus,
Bacchus, and Hercules, and even Sesostris; but I dare say that every
one of them was as tyrannical and immoral as Napoleon. Nebuchadnezzar
is the first great conqueror of whom we have anything like history, and
he was as great as any of them. Alexander and Cæsar were more immoral
than Napoleon. Zingis Khan was as great a conqueror as any of them, and
destroyed as many millions of lives, and thought he had a right to the
whole globe, if he could subdue it.
What are we to think of the crusades in which three millions of lives
at least were probably sacrificed. And what right had St. Louis and
Richard Cœur de Lion to Palestine and Syria more than Alexander to
India, or Napoleon to Egypt and Italy? Right and justice have hard fare
in this world, but there is a power above who is capable and willing to
put all things right in the end; _et pour mettre chacun à sa place dans
l'universe_, and I doubt not he will.
Mr. English, a Bostonian, has published a volume of his expedition with
Ishmael Pashaw, up the river Nile. He advanced above the third cataract,
and opens a prospect of a resurrection from the dead of those vast and
ancient countries of Abyssinia and Ethiopia; a free communication with
India, and the river Niger, and the city of Tombuctoo. This, however, is
conjecture and speculation rather than certainty; but a free communication
by land between Europe and India will ere long be opened. A few American
steamboats, and our Quincy stone-cutters would soon make the Nile as
navigable as our Hudson, Potomac, or Mississippi. You see as my reason
and intellect fails, my imagination grows more wild and ungovernable,
but my friendship remains the same. Adieu.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, April 11, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--The wishes expressed in your last favor, that I may continue
in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation
of, "_Mon Dieu! jusqu'à quand!_" would make me immortal. I can never join
Calvin in addressing _his God_. He was indeed an atheist, which I can
never be; or rather his religion was dæmonism. If ever man worshipped a
false God, he did. The being described in his five points, is not the
God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the creator and benevolent
governor of the world; but a dæmon of malignant spirit. It would be more
pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the
atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed, I think that every Christian sect
gives a great handle to atheism by their general dogma, that, without
a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a
God. Now one-sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians; the
other five-sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian
revelation, are without a knowledge of the existence of a God! This gives
completely a _gain de cause_ to the disciples of Ocellus, Timæus, Spinosa,
Diderot and D'Holbach. The argument which they rest on as triumphant and
unanswerable is, that in every hypothesis of cosmogony, you must admit
an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound
philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty
when one will suffice. They say then, that it is more simple to believe
at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going
on, and may forever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see
and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior
cause, or creator of the world, a being whom we see not and know not,
of whose form, substance and mode, or place of existence, or of action,
no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or
comprehend. On the contrary, I hold, (without appeal to revelation) that
when we take a view of the universe, in its parts, general or particular,
it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction
of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its
composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in
their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces; the
structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and
atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest
particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as
man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses; it is
impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there is in
all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator
of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator
while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration
into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity
of a superintending power, to maintain the universe in its course and
order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view;
comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets,
and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are
become extinct; and were there no restoring power, all existences might
extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a
shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent
and powerful agent, that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed
through all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million
at least to unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a
creator, rather than in that of a self-existent universe. Surely this
unanimous sentiment renders this more probable, than that of the few in
the other hypothesis. Some early Christians, indeed, have believed in
the co-eternal pre-existence of both the creator and the world, without
changing their relation of cause and effect. That this was the opinion of
St. Thomas, we are informed by Cardinal Toleta, in these words: "_Deus ab
æterno fuit jam omnipotens, sicut cum produxit mundum. Ab æterno potuit
producere mundum. Si sol ab æterno esset, lumen ab æterno esset; et si
pes, similiter vestigium. At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficientis
solis et pedis; potuit ergo cum causa æterna effectus co-æterna esse.
Cujus sententia est S. Thomas theologorum primus._"--Cardinal Toleta.
Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us, that "God
is a spirit." 4. John 24. But without defining what a spirit is: πνευμα ὁ
θεος Down to the third century, we know it was still deemed material; but
of a lighter, subtler matter than our gross bodies. So says Origen, "_Deus
igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta originem, reapte corporalis est;
sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus_." These are the words
of Huet in his commentary on Origen. Origen himself says, "_appellatio_
ασωματου _apud nostros scriptores est inusitata et incognita_." So also
Tertullian; "_quis autem negabit deum esse corpus etsi deus spiritus?
Spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in sua effigie._"--Tertullian.
These two fathers were of the third century. Calvin's character of
this Supreme Being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. But the
reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those
more worthy, pure, and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of
Jesus in his discourses to the Jews; and his doctrine of the cosmogony
of the world is very clearly laid down in the three first verses of the
first chapter of John, in these words: "Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος
ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. Οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν Θεόν.
Πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο· καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἓν, ὃ γέγονεν."
Which truly translated means, "In the beginning God existed, and reason
[or mind] was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning
with God. All things were created by it, and without it was made not one
thing which was made." Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine
of Jesus, that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being,
has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person
of their tritheism, by a mistranslation of the word λογος. One of its
legitimate meanings, indeed, is "a word." But in that sense it makes an
unmeaning jargon; while the other meaning, "reason," equally legitimate,
explains rationally the eternal pre-existence of God, and his creation
of the world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that "a word," the
mere action or articulation of the organs of speech could create a world,
they undertook to make of this articulation a second pre-existing being,
and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. The
atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the
simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. The truth is, that the
greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those, calling themselves
the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a
system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in
his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation of
Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will
be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of
Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason, and freedom of thought
in these United States, will do away all this artificial scaffolding,
and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most
venerated reformer of human errors.
So much for your quotation of Calvin's "_mon Dieu! jusqu'à quand!_"
in which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I join
you cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness than
reluctance. May we meet there again, in Congress, with our ancient
colleagues, and receive with them the seal of approbation, "well done,
good and faithful servants."
TO GENERAL SAMUEL SMITH.
MONTICELLO, May 3, 1823.
DEAR GENERAL,--I duly received your favor of the 24th ult. But I am
rendered a slow correspondent by the loss of the use, totally of the one,
and almost totally of the other wrist, which renders writing scarcely and
painfully practicable. I learn with great satisfaction that wholesome
economies have been found, sufficient to relieve us from the ruinous
necessity of adding annually to our debt by new loans. The deviser of so
salutary a relief deserves truly well of his country. I shall be glad,
too, if an additional tax of one-fourth of a dollar a gallon on whiskey
shall enable us to meet all our engagements with punctuality. Viewing
that tax as an article in a system of excise, I was once glad to see it
fall with the rest of the system, which I considered as prematurely and
unnecessarily introduced. It was evident that our existing taxes were
_then_ equal to our existing debts. It was clearly foreseen also that
the surplus from excise would only become aliment for useless offices,
and would be swallowed in idleness by those whom it would withdraw
from useful industry. Considering it only as a fiscal measure, this was
right. But the prostration of body and mind which the cheapness of this
liquor is spreading through the mass of our citizens, now calls the
attention of the legislator on a very different principle. One of his
important duties is as guardian of those who from causes susceptible of
precise definition, cannot take care of themselves. Such are infants,
maniacs, gamblers, drunkards. The last, as much as the maniac, requires
restrictive measures to save him from the fatal infatuation under which
he is destroying his health, his morals, his family, and his usefulness
to society. One powerful obstacle to his ruinous self-indulgence would
be a price beyond his competence. As a sanatory measure, therefore,
it becomes one of duty in the public guardians. Yet I do not think it
follows necessarily that imported spirits should be subjected to similar
enhancement, until they become as cheap as those made at home. A tax
on whiskey is to discourage its consumption; a tax on foreign spirits
encourages whiskey by removing its rival from competition. The price
and present duty throw foreign spirits already out of competition with
whiskey, and accordingly they are used but to a salutary extent. You see
no persons besotting themselves with imported spirits, wines, liquors,
cordials, &c. Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of
sot-making. Foreign spirits, wines, teas, coffee, segars, salt, are
articles of as innocent consumption as broadcloths and silks and ought,
like them, to pay but the average _ad valorem_ duty of other imported
comforts. All of them are ingredients in our happiness, and the government
which steps out of the ranks of the ordinary articles of consumption
to select and lay under disproportionate burthens a particular one,
because it is a comfort, pleasing to the taste, or necessary to health,
and will therefore be bought, is, in that particular, a tyranny. Taxes
on consumption like those on capital or income, to be just, must be
uniform. I do not mean to say that it may not be for the general interest
to foster for awhile certain infant manufactures, until they are strong
enough to stand against foreign rivals; but when evident that they will
never be so, it is against right, to make the other branches of industry
support them. When it was found that France could not make sugar under
6 h. a lb., was it not tyranny to restrain her citizens from importing
at 1 h.? or would it not have been so to have laid a duty of 5 h. on the
imported? The permitting an exchange of industries with other nations
is a direct encouragement of your own, which without that, would bring
you nothing for your comfort, and would of course cease to be produced.
On the question of the next Presidential election, I am a mere looker on.
I never permit myself to express an opinion, or to feel a wish on the
subject. I indulge a single hope only, that the choice may fall on one
who will be a friend of peace, of economy, of the republican principles
of our constitution, and of the salutary distribution of powers made by
that between the general and the local governments, to this, I ever add
sincere prayers for your happiness and prosperity.
TO MR. MEGEAR.
MONTICELLO, May 29, 1823.
I thank you, Sir, for the copy of the letters of Paul and Amicus, which
you have been so kind as to send me, and shall learn from them with
satisfaction the peculiar tenets of the Friends, and particularly their
opinions on the incomprehensibilities (otherwise called the mysteries)
of the trinity. I think with them on many points, and especially on
missionary and Bible societies. While we have so many around us, within
the same social pale, who need instruction and assistance, why carry to
a distance, and to strangers what our own neighbors need? It is a duty
certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that
they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective
wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to
persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account,
when we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents
we know, and to supply wants we see? I do not know that it is a duty to
disturb by missionaries the religion and peace of other countries, who
may think themselves bound to extinguish by fire and fagot the heresies
to which we give the name of conversions, and quote our own example for
it. Were the Pope, or his holy allies, to send in mission to us some
thousands of Jesuit priests to convert us to their orthodoxy, I suspect
that we should deem and treat it as a national aggression on our peace
and faith. I salute you in the spirit of peace and good will.
TO THE PRESIDENT.
MONTICELLO, June 11, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--Considering that I had not been to Bedford for a twelvemonth
before, I thought myself singularly unfortunate in so timing my journey,
as to have been absent exactly at the moment of your late visit to
our neighborhood. The loss, indeed, was all my own; for in these short
interviews with you, I generally get my political compass rectified, learn
from you whereabouts we are, and correct my course again. In exchange for
this, I can give you but newspaper ideas, and little indeed of these, for
I read but a single paper, and that hastily. I find Horace and Tacitus
so much better writers than the champions of the gazettes, that I lay
those down to take up these with great reluctance. And on the question
you propose, whether we can, in any form, take a bolder attitude than
formerly in favor of liberty, I can give you but commonplace ideas.
They will be but the widow's mite, and offered only because requested.
The matter which now embroils Europe, the presumption of dictating to
an independent nation the form of its government, is so arrogant, so
atrocious, that indignation, as well as moral sentiment, enlists all
our partialities and prayers in favor of one, and our equal execrations
against the other. I do not know, indeed, whether all nations do not owe
to one another a bold and open declaration of their sympathies with the
one party, and their detestation of the conduct of the other. But farther
than this we are not bound to go; and indeed, for the sake of the world,
we ought not to increase the jealousies, or draw on ourselves the power
of this formidable confederacy. I have ever deemed it fundamental for
the United States, never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe.
Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual
jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their
forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are
nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction
of the labor, property and lives of their people. On our part, never
had a people so favorable a chance of trying the opposite system, of
peace and fraternity with mankind, and the direction of all our means
and faculties to the purposes of improvement instead of destruction.
With Europe we have few occasions of collision, and these, with a little
prudence and forbearance, may be generally accommodated. Of the brethren
of our own hemisphere, none are yet, or for an age to come will be, in
a shape, condition, or disposition to war against us. And the foothold
which the nations of Europe had in either America, is slipping from under
them, so that we shall soon be rid of their neighborhood. Cuba alone
seems at present to hold up a speck of war to us. Its possession by Great
Britain would indeed be a great calamity to us. Could we induce her to
join us in guaranteeing its independence against all the world, _except_
Spain, it would be nearly as valuable to us as if it were our own. But
should she take it, I would not immediately go to war for it; because
the first war on other accounts will give it to us; or the island will
give itself to us, when able to do so. While no duty, therefore, calls
on us to take part in the present war of Europe, and a golden harvest
offers itself in reward for doing nothing, peace and neutrality seem
to be our duty and interest. We may gratify ourselves, indeed, with a
neutrality as partial to Spain as would be justifiable without giving
cause of war to her adversary; we might and ought to avail ourselves of
the happy occasion of procuring and cementing a cordial reconciliation
with her, by giving assurance of every friendly office which neutrality
admits, and especially, against all apprehension of our intermeddling
in the quarrel with her colonies. And I expect daily and confidently to
hear of a spark kindled in France, which will employ her at home, and
relieve Spain from all further apprehensions of danger.
That England is playing false with Spain cannot be doubted. Her government
is looking one way and rowing another. It is curious to look back a little
on past events. During the ascendancy of Bonaparte, the word among the
herd of kings, was "_sauve qui peut_." Each shifted for himself, and
left his brethren to squander and do the same as they could. After the
battle of Waterloo, and the military possession of France, they rallied
and combined in common cause, to maintain each other against any similar
and future danger. And in this alliance, Louis, now avowedly, and George,
secretly but solidly, were of the contracting parties; and there can be
no doubt that the allies are bound by treaty to aid England with their
armies, should insurrection take place among her people. The coquetry
she is now playing off between her people and her allies is perfectly
understood by the latter, and accordingly gives no apprehensions to
France, to whom it is all explained. The diplomatic correspondence she is
now displaying, these double papers fabricated merely for exhibition, in
which she makes herself talk of morals and principle, as if her qualms of
conscience would not permit her to go all lengths with her Holy Allies,
are all to gull her own people. It is a theatrical farce, in which the
five powers are the actors, England the Tartuffe, and her people the
dupes. Playing thus so dextrously into each others' hands, and their
own persons seeming secured, they are now looking to their privileged
orders. These faithful auxiliaries, or accomplices, must be saved. This
war is evidently that of the general body of the aristocracy, in which
England is also acting her part. "Save but the Nobles and there shall be
no war," says she, masking her measures at the same time under the form
of friendship and mediation, and hypocritically, while a party, offering
herself as a judge, to betray those whom she is not permitted openly to
oppose. A fraudulent neutrality, if neutrality at all, is all Spain will
get from her. And Spain, probably, perceives this, and willingly winks
at it rather than have her weight thrown openly into the other scale.
But I am going beyond my text, and sinning against the adage of carrying
coals to Newcastle. In hazarding to you my crude and uninformed notions
of things beyond my cognizance, only be so good as to remember that it
is at your request, and with as little confidence on my part as profit
on yours. You will do what is right, leaving the people of Europe to act
their follies and crimes among themselves, while we pursue in good faith
the paths of peace and prosperity. To your judgment we are willingly
resigned, with sincere assurances of affectionate esteem and respect.
TO JUDGE JOHNSON.
MONTICELLO, June 12, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--Our correspondence is of that accommodating character,
which admits of suspension at the convenience of either party, without
inconvenience to the other. Hence this tardy acknowledgment of your favor
of April the 11th. I learn from that with great pleasure, that you have
resolved on continuing your history of parties. Our opponents are far
ahead of us in preparations for placing their cause favorably before
posterity. Yet I hope even from some of them the escape of precious
truths, in angry explosions or effusions of vanity, which will betray
the genuine monarchism of their principles. They do not themselves
believe what they endeavor to inculcate, that we were an opposition
party, not on principle, but merely seeking for office. The fact is,
that at the formation of our government, many had formed their political
opinions on European writings and practices, believing the experience
of old countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to
be a safer guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe were, that
men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of
order and justice, but by forces physical and moral, wielded over them
by authorities independent of their will. Hence their organization of
kings, hereditary nobles, and priests. Still further to constrain the
brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep them down by
hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees,
so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary
to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable
life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders
in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people, and
excite in them an humble adoration and submission, as to an order of
superior beings. Although few among us had gone all these lengths of
opinion, yet many had advanced, some more, some less, on the way. And
in the convention which formed our government, they endeavored to draw
the cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to lessen the
dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to subject
to them those of the States, and to weaken their means of maintaining
the steady equilibrium which the majority of the convention had deemed
salutary for both branches, general and local. To recover, therefore, in
practice the powers which the nation had refused, and to warp to their
own wishes those actually given, was the steady object of the federal
party. Ours, on the contrary, was to maintain the will of the majority
of the convention, and of the people themselves. We believed, with them,
that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with
an innate sense of justice; and that he could be restrained from wrong
and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his
own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will. We
believed that the complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests,
was not the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of associated man;
that wisdom and virtue were not hereditary; that the trappings of such a
machinery, consumed by their expense, those earnings of industry, they
were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities they produced, exposed
liberty to sufferance. We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security
the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests
on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves, and
to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely
governed, than with minds nourished in error, and vitiated and debased,
as in Europe, by ignorance, indigence and oppression. The cherishment of
the people then was our principle, the fear and distrust of them, that
of the other party. Composed, as we were, of the landed and laboring
interests of the country, we could not be less anxious for a government
of law and order than were the inhabitants of the cities, the strongholds
of federalism. And whether our efforts to save the principles and form
of our constitution have not been salutary, let the present republican
freedom, order and prosperity of our country determine. History may
distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts
at justification of those who are conscious of needing it most. Nor
will the opening scenes of our present government be seen in their true
aspect, until the letters of the day, now held in private hoards, shall
be broken up and laid open to public view. What a treasure will be found
in General Washington's cabinet, when it shall pass into the hands of
as candid a friend to truth as he was himself! When no longer, like
Cæsar's notes and memorandums in the hands of Anthony, it shall be open
to the high priests of federalism only, and garbled to say so much, and
no more, as suits their views!
With respect to his farewell address, to the authorship of which, it
seems, there are conflicting claims, I can state to you some facts. He
had determined to decline a re-election at the end of his first term,
and so far determined, that he had requested Mr. Madison to prepare for
him something valedictory, to be addressed to his constituents on his
retirement. This was done, but he was finally persuaded to acquiesce
in a second election, to which no one more strenuously pressed him than
myself, from a conviction of the importance of strengthening, by longer
habit, the respect necessary for that office, which the weight of his
character only could effect. When, at the end of this second term, his
Valedictory came out, Mr. Madison recognized in it several passages of
his draught, several others, we were both satisfied, were from the pen
of Hamilton, and others from that of the President himself. These he
probably put into the hands of Hamilton to form into a whole, and hence
it may all appear in Hamilton's hand-writing, as if it were all of his
composition.
I have stated above, that the original objects of the federalists were,
1st, to warp our government more to the form and principles of monarchy,
and, 2d, to weaken the barriers of the State governments as coördinate
powers. In the first they have been so completely foiled by the universal
spirit of the nation, that they have abandoned the enterprise, shrunk from
the odium of their old appellation, taken to themselves a participation
of ours, and under the pseudo-republican mask, are now aiming at their
second object, and strengthened by unsuspecting or apostate recruits from
our ranks, are advancing fast towards an ascendancy. I have been blamed
for saying, that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would
one day call for reformation or _revolution_. I answer by asking if a
single State of the Union would have agreed to the constitution, had it
given all powers to the General Government? If the whole opposition to
it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State, of being
subjected to the other States in matters merely its own? And if there
is any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then, to
acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to
a consolidated government, one and undivided?
You request me confidentially, to examine the question, whether the
Supreme Court has advanced beyond its constitutional limits, and
trespassed on those of the State authorities? I do not undertake it, my
dear Sir, because I am unable. Age and the wane of mind consequent on
it, have disqualified me from investigations so severe, and researches
so laborious. And it is the less necessary in this case, as having been
already done by others with a logic and learning to which I could add
nothing. On the decision of the case of Cohens vs. The State of Virginia,
in the Supreme Court of the United States, in March, 1821, Judge Roane,
under the signature of Algernon Sidney, wrote for the Enquirer a series
of papers on the law of that case. I considered these papers maturely as
they came out, and confess that they appeared to me to pulverize every
word which had been delivered by Judge Marshall, of the extra-judicial
part of his opinion; and all was extra-judicial, except the decision
that the act of Congress had not purported to give to the corporation
of Washington the authority claimed by their lottery law, of controlling
the laws of the States within the States themselves. But unable to claim
that case, he could not let it go entirely, but went on gratuitously to
prove, that notwithstanding the eleventh amendment of the constitution,
a State _could_ be brought as a defendant, to the bar of his court; and
again, that Congress might authorize a corporation of its territory to
exercise legislation within a State, and paramount to the laws of that
State. I cite the sum and result only of his doctrines, according to
the impression made on my mind at the time, and still remaining. If not
strictly accurate in circumstance, it is so in substance. This doctrine
was so completely refuted by Roane, that if he can be answered, I
surrender human reason as a vain and useless faculty, given to bewilder,
and not to guide us. And I mention this particular case as one only of
several, because it gave occasion to that thorough examination of the
constitutional limits between the General and State jurisdictions, which
you have asked for. There were two other writers in the same paper, under
the signatures of Fletcher of Saltoun, and Somers, who, in a few essays,
presented some very luminous and striking views of the question. And
there was a particular paper which recapitulated all the cases in which
it was thought the federal court had usurped on the State jurisdictions.
These essays will be found in the Enquirers of 1821, from May the 10th
to July the 13th. It is not in my present power to send them to you,
but if Ritchie can furnish them, I will procure and forward them. If
they had been read in the other States, as they were here, I think they
would have left, there as here, no dissentients from their doctrine. The
subject was taken up by our legislature of 1821-'22, and two draughts of
remonstrances were prepared and discussed. As well as I remember, there
was no difference of opinion as to the matter of right; but there was
as to the expediency of a remonstrance at that time, the general mind
of the States being then under extraordinary excitement by the Missouri
question; and it was dropped on that consideration. But this case is
not dead, it only sleepeth. The Indian Chief said he did not go to war
for every petty injury by itself, but put it into his pouch, and when
that was full, he then made war. Thank Heaven, we have provided a more
peaceable and rational mode of redress.
This practice of Judge Marshall, of travelling out of his case to
prescribe what the law would be in a moot case not before the court,
is very irregular and very censurable. I recollect another instance,
and the more particularly, perhaps, because it in some measure bore on
myself. Among the midnight appointments of Mr. Adams, were commissions
to some federal justices of the peace for Alexandria. These were signed
and sealed by him, but not delivered. I found them on the table of the
department of State, on my entrance into office, and I forbade their
delivery. Marbury, named in one of them, applied to the Supreme Court
for a mandamus to the Secretary of State, (Mr. Madison) to deliver
the commission intended for him. The Court determined at once, that
being an original process, they had no cognizance of it; and therefore
the question before them was ended. But the Chief Justice went on to
lay down what the law would be, had they jurisdiction of the case,
to-wit: that they should command the delivery. The object was clearly
to instruct any other court having the jurisdiction, what they should
do if Marbury should apply to them. Besides the impropriety of this
gratuitous interference, could anything exceed the perversion of law?
For if there is any principle of law never yet contradicted, it is that
delivery is one of the essentials to the validity of a deed. Although
signed and sealed, yet as long as it remains in the hands of the party
himself, it is in _fieri_ only, it is not a deed, and can be made so
only by its delivery. In the hands of a third person it may be made an
escrow. But whatever is in the executive offices is certainly deemed to
be in the hands of the President; and in this case, was actually in my
hands, because, when I countermanded them, there was as yet no Secretary
of State. Yet this case of Marbury and Madison is continually cited by
bench and bar, as if it were settled law, without any animadversion on
its being merely an _obiter_ dissertation of the Chief Justice.
It may be impracticable to lay down any general formula of words which
shall decide at once, and with precision, in every case, this limit of
jurisdiction. But there are two canons which will guide us safely in most
of the cases. 1st. The capital and leading object of the constitution
was to leave with the States all authorities which respected their own
citizens only, and to transfer to the United States those which respected
citizens of foreign or other States: to make us several as to ourselves,
but one as to all others. In the latter case, then, constructions should
lean to the general jurisdiction, if the words will bear it; and in
favor of the States in the former, if possible to be so construed. And
indeed, between citizens and citizens of the same State, and under their
own laws, I know but a single case in which a jurisdiction is given to
the General Government. That is, where anything but gold or silver is
made a lawful tender, or the obligation of contracts is any otherwise
impaired. The separate legislatures had so often abused that power, that
the citizens themselves chose to trust it to the general, rather than to
their own special authorities. 2d. On every question of construction,
carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted,
recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying
what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it,
conform to the probable one in which it was passed. Let us try Cohen's
case by these canons only, referring always, however, for full argument,
to the essays before cited.
1. It was between a citizen and his own State, and under a law of his
State. It was a domestic case, therefore, and not a foreign one.
2. Can it be believed, that under the jealousies prevailing against
the General Government, at the adoption of the constitution, the States
meant to surrender the authority of preserving order, of enforcing moral
duties and restraining vice, within their own territory? And this is
the present case, that of Cohen being under the ancient and general law
of gaming. Can any good be effected by taking from the States the moral
rule of their citizens, and subordinating it to the general authority,
or to one of their corporations, which may justify forcing the meaning
of words, hunting after possible constructions, and hanging inference on
inference, from heaven to earth, like Jacob's ladder? Such an intention
was impossible, and such a licentiousness of construction and inference,
if exercised by both governments, as may be done with equal right, would
equally authorize both to claim all power, general and particular, and
break up the foundations of the Union. Laws are made for men of ordinary
understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules
of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical
subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing, at
pleasure. It should be left to the sophisms of advocates, whose trade it
is, to prove that a defendant is a plaintiff, though dragged into court,
_torto collo_, like Bonaparte's volunteers, into the field in chains,
or that a power has been given, because it ought to have been given, _et
alia talia_. The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had
secured themselves against constructive powers. They were not lessoned
yet by Cohen's case, nor aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the
law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor
yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home
concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore,
to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by
the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices
transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of
the people, they may more secretly he bought and sold as at market.
But the Chief Justice says, "there must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere."
True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate
arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in
convention, at the call of Congress, or of two-thirds of the States.
Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two
of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of
our constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of
other nations is at once to force.
I rejoice in the example you set of _seriatim_ opinions. I have heard it
often noticed, and always with high approbation. Some of your brethren
will be encouraged to follow it occasionally, and in time, it may be
felt by all as a duty, and the sound practice of the primitive court
be again restored. Why should not every judge be asked his opinion, and
give it from the bench, if only by yea or nay? Besides ascertaining the
fact of his opinion, which the public have a right to know, in order
to judge whether it is impeachable or not, it would show whether the
opinions were unanimous or not, and thus settle more exactly the weight
of their authority.
The close of my second sheet warns me that it is time now to relieve
you from this letter of unmerciful length. Indeed, I wonder how I have
accomplished it, with two crippled wrists, the one scarcely able to move
my pen, the other to hold my paper. But I am hurried sometimes beyond
the sense of pain, when unbosoming myself to friends who harmonize
with me in principle. You and I may differ occasionally in details of
minor consequence, as no two minds, more than two faces, are the same
in every feature. But our general objects are the same, to preserve the
republican form and principles of our constitution and cleave to the
salutary distribution of powers which that has established. These are
the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be
in danger of foundering. To my prayers for its safety and perpetuity, I
add those for the continuation of your health, happiness, and usefulness
to your country.
TO PRESIDENT MONROE.
MONTICELLO, June 23, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--I have been lately visited by a Mr. Miralla, a native of
Buenos Ayres, but resident in Cuba for the last seven or eight years; a
person of intelligence, of much information, and frankly communicative. I
believe, indeed, he is known to you. I availed myself of the opportunity
of learning what was the state of public sentiment in Cuba as to their
future course. He says they would be satisfied to remain as they are; but
all are sensible that that cannot be; that whenever circumstances shall
render a separation from Spain necessary, a perfect independence would
be their choice, provided they could see a certainty of protection; but
that, without that prospect, they would be divided in opinion between
an incorporation with Mexico, and with the United States.--Columbia
being too remote for prompt support. The considerations in favor of
Mexico are that the Havana would be the emporium for all the produce of
that immense and wealthy country, and of course, the medium of all its
commerce; that having no ports on its eastern coast, Cuba would become
the depôt of its naval stores and strength, and, in effect, would, in
a great measure, have the sinews of the government in its hands. That
in favor of the United States is the fact that three-fourths of the
exportations from Havana come to the United States, that they are a
settled government, the power which can most promptly succor them, rising
to an eminence promising future security; and of which they would make
a member of the sovereignty, while as to England, they would be only
a colony, subordinated to her interest, and that there is not a man in
the island who would not resist her to the bitterest extremity. Of this
last sentiment I had not the least idea at the date of my late letters
to you. I had supposed an English interest there quite as strong as that
of the United States, and therefore, that, to avoid war, and keep the
island open to our own commerce, it would be best to join that power in
mutually guaranteeing its independence. But if there is no danger of
its falling into the possession of England, I must retract an opinion
founded on an error of fact. We are surely under no obligation to give
her, gratis, an interest which she has not; and the whole inhabitants
being averse to her, and the climate mortal to strangers, its continued
military occupation by her would be impracticable. It is better then to
lie still in readiness to receive that interesting incorporation when
solicited by herself. For, certainly, her addition to our confederacy
is exactly what is wanting to round our power as a nation to the point
of its utmost interest.
I have thought it my duty to acknowledge my error on this occasion, and
to repeat a truth before acknowledged, that, retired as I am, I know too
little of the affairs of the world to form opinions of them worthy of
any attention; and I resign myself with reason, and perfect confidence
to the care and guidance of those to whom the helm is committed. With
this assurance, accept that of my constant and affectionate friendship
and respect.
TO GEORGE TICKNOR.
MONTICELLO, July 16, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--I received in due time your favor of June 16th, and with it
your Syllabus of lectures on Spanish literature. I have considered this
with great interest and satisfaction, as it gives me a model of course
I wish to see pursued in the different branches of instruction in our
University, _i. e._ a methodical, critical, and profound explanation by
way of protection of every science we propose to teach. I am not fully
informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we
shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly
every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding
the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing
exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them
for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall,
on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they
shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and
sufficient age. Our institution will proceed on the principle of doing
all the good it can without consulting its own pride or ambition; of
letting every one come and listen to whatever he thinks may improve the
condition of his mind. The rock which I most dread is the discipline
of the institution, and it is that on which most of our public schools
labor. The insubordination of our youth is now the greatest obstacle to
their education. We may lessen the difficulty, perhaps, by avoiding too
much government, by requiring no useless observances, none which shall
merely multiply occasions for dissatisfaction, disobedience and revolt
by referring to the more discreet of themselves the minor discipline,
the graver to the civil magistrates, as in Edinburg. On this head I am
anxious for information of the practices of other places, having myself
had little experience of the government of youth. I presume there are
printed codes of the rules of Harvard, and if so, you would oblige me
by sending me a copy, and of those of any other academy which you think
can furnish anything useful. You flatter me with a visit "as soon as you
learn that the University is fairly opened." A visit from you at any time
will be the most welcome possible to all our family, who remember with
peculiar satisfaction the pleasure they received from your former one.
But were I allowed to name the time, it should not be deferred beyond
the autumn of the ensuing year. Our last building, and that which will
be the principal ornament and keystone, giving unity to the whole, will
then be nearly finished, and afford you a gratification compensating the
trouble of the journey. We shall then, also, be engaged in our code of
regulations preparatory to our opening, which may, perhaps, take place
in the beginning of 1825. There is no person from whose information of
the European institutions, and especially their discipline, I should
expect so much aid in that difficult work. Come, then, dear Sir, at that,
or any earlier epoch, and give to our institution the benefit of your
counsel. I know that you scout, as I do, the idea of any rivalship. Our
views are Catholic for the improvement of our country by science, and
indeed, it is better even for your own University to have its yoke natè
at this distance, rather than to force a nearer one from the increasing
necessity for it. And how long before we may expect others in the
southern, western, and middle regions of this vast country?
I send you by mail a print of the ground-plan of our institution; it
may give you some idea of its distribution and conveniences, but not of
its architecture, which being chastely classical, constitutes one of its
distinguishing characters. I am much indebted for your kind attentions
to Mr. Harrison; he is a youth of promise. I could not deny myself the
gratification of communicating to his father the part of your letter
respecting him.
Our family all join me in assurances of our friendly esteem and great
respect.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, August 15, 1823.
Watchman, what of the night? Is darkness that may be felt, to prevail
over the whole world? or can you perceive any rays of a returning dawn?
Is the devil to be the "Lord's anointed" over the whole globe? or do you
foresee the fulfilment of the prophecies according to Dr. Priestley's
interpretation of them? I know not, but I have in some of my familiar,
and frivolous letters to you, told the story four times over; but if I
have, I never applied it so well as now.
Not long after the denouement of the tragedy of Louis XVI, when I was
Vice-President, my friend the Doctor came to breakfast with me alone;
he was very sociable, very learned and eloquent, on the subject of the
French revolution. It was opening a new era in the world, and presenting a
near view of the millennium. I listened; I heard with great attention and
perfect _sang froid_. At last I asked the Doctor. Do you really believe
the French will establish a free democratical government in France? He
answered: I do firmly believe it. Will you give me leave to ask you upon
what grounds you entertain this opinion? Is it from anything you ever read
in history? Is there any instance of a Roman Catholic monarchy of five
and twenty millions at once converted into a free and national people?
No. I know of no instance like it. Is there anything in your knowledge
of human nature, derived from books, or experience, that any nation,
ancient or modern, consisting of such multitudes of ignorant people,
ever were, or ever can be converted suddenly into materials capable of
conducting a free government, especially a democratical republic? No--I
know nothing of the kind. Well then, Sir, what is the ground of your
opinion? The answer was, my opinion is founded altogether upon revelation,
and the prophecies. I take it that the ten horns of the great beast in
revelations, mean the ten crowned heads of Europe; and that the execution
of the King of France, is the falling off of the first of those horns;
and the nine monarchies of Europe will fall one after another in the same
way. Such was the enthusiasm of that great man, that reasoning machine.
After all, however, he did recollect himself so far as to say: There
is, however, a possibility of doubt; for I read yesterday a book put
into my hands, by a gentleman, a volume of travels written by a French
gentleman in 1659; in which he says he had been travelling a whole year
in England; into every part of it, and conversed freely with all ranks
of people; he found the whole nation earnestly engaged in discussing and
contriving a form of government for their future regulations; there was
but one point in which they all agreed, and in that they were unanimous:
that monarchy, nobility, and prelacy never would exist in England again.
The Doctor paused; and said: Yet, in the very next year, the whole nation
called in the King and run mad with nobility, monarchy, and prelacy. I
am no King killer; merely because they are Kings. Poor creatures; they
know no better; they believe sincerely and conscientiously that God made
them to rule the world. I would not, therefore, behead them, or send
them to St. Helena, to be treated as Bonaparte was; but I would shut
them up like the man in the iron mask; feed them well, give them as much
finery as they pleased, until they could be converted to right reason
and common sense. I have nothing to communicate from this part of the
country, except that you must not be surprised if you hear something
wonderful in Boston before long. With my profound respects for your
family, and half a century's affection for yourself, I am your humble
servant.
TO JAMES MADISON.
MONTICELLO, August 30, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--I received the enclosed letters from the President with a
request, that after perusal I would forward them to you for perusal by
yourself also, and to be returned then to him.
You have doubtless seen Timothy Pickerings' fourth of July observations
on the Declaration of Independence. If his principles and prejudices,
personal and political, gave us no reason to doubt whether he had truly
quoted the information he alleges to have received from Mr. Adams, I
should then say, that in some of the particulars, Mr. Adams' memory
has led him into unquestionable error. At the age of eighty-eight, and
forty-seven years after the transactions of Independence, this is not
wonderful. Nor should I, at the age of eighty, on the small advantage of
that difference only, venture to oppose my memory to his, were it not
supported by written notes, taken by myself at the moment and on the
spot. He says, "the committee of five, to wit, Dr. Franklin, Sherman,
Livingston, and ourselves, met, discussed the subject, and then appointed
him and myself to make the draught; that we, as a sub-committee, met,
and after the urgencies of each on the other, I consented to undertake
the task; that the draught being made, we, the sub-committee, met,
and conned the paper over, and he does not remember that he made or
suggested a single alteration." Now these details are quite incorrect.
The committee of five met; no such thing as a sub-committee was proposed,
but they unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught.
I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee, I
communicated it _separately_ to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting
their corrections, because they were the two members of whose judgments
and amendments I wished most to have the benefit, before presenting
it to the committee; and you have seen the original paper now in my
hands, with the corrections of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams interlined in
their own hand writings. Their alterations were two or three only, and
merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee,
and from them, unaltered, to Congress. This personal communication and
consultation with Mr. Adams, he has misremembered into the actings of
a sub-committee. Pickering's observations, and Mr. Adams' in addition,
"that it contained no new ideas, that it is a common-place compilation,
its sentiments hackneyed in Congress for two years before, and its
essence contained in Otis' pamphlet," may all be true. Of that I am not
to be the judge. Richard Henry Lee charged it as copied from Locke's
treatise on government. Otis' pamphlet I never saw, and whether I had
gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I do not know. I know only
that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not
consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether,
and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before. Had
Mr. Adams been so restrained, Congress would have lost the benefit of
his bold and impressive advocations of the rights of Revolution. For no
man's confident and fervid addresses, more than Mr. Adams', encouraged
and supported us through the difficulties surrounding us, which, like
the ceaseless action of gravity weighed on us by night and by day. Yet,
on the same ground, we may ask what of these elevated thoughts was new,
or can be affirmed never before to have entered the conceptions of man?
Whether, also, the sentiments of Independence, and the reasons for
declaring it, which make so great a portion of the instrument, had been
hackneyed in Congress for two years before the 4th of July, '76, or
this dictum also of Mr. Adams be another slip of memory, let history
say. This, however, I will say for Mr. Adams, that he supported the
Declaration with zeal and ability, fighting fearlessly for every word
of it. As to myself, I thought it a duty to be, on that occasion, a
passive auditor of the opinions of others, more impartial judges than
I could be, of its merits or demerits. During the debate I was sitting
by Doctor Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a little under
the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts; and it was on that
occasion, that by way of comfort, he told me the story of John Thompson,
the hatter, and his new sign.
Timothy thinks the instrument the better for having a fourth of
it expunged. He would have thought it still better, had the other
three-fourths gone out also, all but the single sentiment (the only one
he approves), which recommends friendship to his dear England, whenever
she is willing to be at peace with us. His insinuations are, that although
"the high tone of the instrument was in unison with the warm feelings of
the times, this sentiment of habitual friendship to England should never
be forgotten, and that the duties it enjoins should _especially_ be borne
in mind on every celebration of this anniversary." In other words, that
the Declaration, as being a libel on the government of England, composed
in times of passion, should now be buried in utter oblivion, to spare
the feelings of our English friends and Angloman fellow-citizens. But
it is not to wound them that we wish to keep it in mind; but to cherish
the principles of the instrument in the bosoms of our own citizens:
and it is a heavenly comfort to see that these principles are yet so
strongly felt, as to render a circumstance so trifling as this little
lapse of memory of Mr. Adams', worthy of being solemnly announced and
supported at an anniversary assemblage of the nation on its birthday. In
opposition, however, to Mr. Pickering, I pray God that these principles
may be eternal, and close the prayer with my affectionate wishes for
yourself of long life, health and happiness.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, September 4, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of August the 15th was received in due time, and
with the welcome of everything which comes from you. With its opinions
on the difficulties of revolutions from despotism to freedom, I very much
concur. The generation which commences a revolution rarely completes it.
Habituated from their infancy to passive submission of body and mind to
their kings and priests, they are not qualified when called on to think
and provide for themselves; and their inexperience, their ignorance and
bigotry make them instruments often, in the hands of the Bonapartes and
Iturbides, to defeat their own rights and purposes. This is the present
situation of Europe and Spanish America. But it is not desperate. The
light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing, has eminently
changed the condition of the world. As yet, that light has dawned on the
middling classes only of the men in Europe. The kings and the rabble,
of equal ignorance, have not yet received its rays; but it continues
to spread, and while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than
the sun return on his course. A first attempt to recover the right of
self-government may fail, so may a second, a third, &c. But as a younger
and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more
intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent one of the ever
renewed attempts will ultimately succeed. In France, the first effort
was defeated by Robespierre, the second by Bonaparte, the third by Louis
XVIII. and his holy allies: another is yet to come, and all Europe, Russia
excepted, has caught the spirit; and all will attain representative
government, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to be a
necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent
to chain and tame, than to exterminate. To attain all this, however,
rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over; yet
the object is worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation. For what
inheritance so valuable, can man leave to his posterity? The spirit
of the Spaniard, and his deadly and eternal hatred to a Frenchman,
give me much confidence that he will never submit, but finally defeat
this atrocious violation of the laws of God and man, under which he is
suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes, afford reasonable
hope, that that nation will settle down in a temperate representative
government, with an executive properly subordinated to that. Portugal,
Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece, will follow suit. You and I shall look
down from another world on these glorious achievements to man, which
will add to the joys even of heaven.
I observe your toast of Mr. Jay on the 4th of July, wherein you say that
the omission of his signature to the Declaration of Independence was by
_accident_. Our impressions as to this fact being different, I shall
be glad to have mine corrected, if wrong. Jay, you know, had been in
constant opposition to our laboring majority. Our estimate at the time
was, that he, Dickinson and Johnson of Maryland, by their ingenuity,
perseverance and partiality to our English connection, had constantly
kept us a year behind where we ought to have been in our preparations
and proceedings. From about the date of the Virginia instructions of
May the 15th, 1776, to declare Independence, Mr. Jay absented himself
from Congress, and never came there again until December, 1778. Of
course, he had no part in the discussions or decision of that question.
The instructions to their Delegates by the Convention of New York, then
sitting, to sign the Declaration, were presented to Congress on the 15th
of July only, and on that day the journals show the absence of Mr. Jay,
by a letter received from him, as they had done as early as the 29th of
May by another letter. And I think he had been omitted by the convention
on a new election of Delegates, when they changed their instructions. Of
this last fact, however, having no evidence but an ancient impression,
I shall not affirm it. But whether so or not, no agency of _accident_
appears in the case. This error of fact, however, whether yours or mine,
is of little consequence to the public. But truth being as cheap as
error, it is as well to rectify it for our own satisfaction.
I have had a fever of about three weeks, during the last and preceding
month, from which I am entirely recovered except as to strength.
TO WILLIAM SHORT.
MONTICELLO, September 8, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of July 28th, from Avon, came to hand on the
10th of August, and I have delayed answering it on the presumption of
your continued absence, but the approach of the season of frost in that
region has probably before this time turned you about to the south. I
readily conceive that by the time of your return to Philadelphia, you
will have had travelling enough for the present, and therefore acquiesce
in your proposition to give us the next season. Your own convenience
is a sufficient reason, and an auxiliary one is that we shall then have
more for you to see and approve. By that time, our rotunda, (the walls
of which will be finished this month) will have received its roof,
and will show itself externally to some advantage. Its columns only
will be wanting, as they must await their capitals from Italy. We have
just received from thence, and are now putting up, the marble capitals
of the buildings we have already erected, which completes our whole
system, except the rotunda and its adjacent gymnasia. All are now ready
to receive their occupants, and should the legislature, at their next
session, liberate our funds as is hoped, we shall ask but one year more
to procure our professors, for most of whom we must go to Europe. In
your substitution of Monticello instead of your annual visit to Black
Rock, I will engage you equal health, and a more genial and pleasant
climate; but instead of the flitting, flirting, and gay assemblage of
that place, you must be contented with the plain and sober family and
neighborly society, with the assurance that you shall hear no wrangling
about the next president, although the excitement on that subject will
then be at its acme. Numerous have been the attempts to entangle me
in that imbroglio. But at the age of eighty, I seek quiet and abjure
contention. I read but a single newspaper, Ritchie's Enquirer, the best
that is published or ever has been published in America. Yon should
read it also, to keep yourself _au fait_ of your own State, for we still
claim you as belonging to us. A city life offers you indeed more means
of dissipating time, but more frequent, also, and more painful objects of
vice and wretchedness. New York, for example, like London, seems to be a
Cloacina of all the depravities of human nature. Philadelphia doubtless
has its share. Here, on the contrary, crime is scarcely heard of, breaches
of order rare, and our societies, if not refined, are rational, moral,
and affectionate at least. Our only blot is becoming less offensive by
the great improvement in the condition and civilization of that race,
who can now more advantageously compare their situation with that of
the laborers of Europe. Still it is a hideous blot, as well from the
heteromorph peculiarities of the race, as that, with them, physical
compulsion to action must be substituted for the moral necessity which
constrains the free laborers to work equally hard. We feel and deplore
it morally and politically, and we look without entire despair to some
redeeming means not yet specifically foreseen. I am happy in believing
that the conviction of the necessity of removing this evil gains ground
with time. Their emigration to the westward lightens the difficulty
by dividing it, and renders it more practicable on the whole. And the
neighborhood of a government of their color promises a more accessible
asylum than that from whence they came. Ever and affectionately yours.
TO MR. THOMAS EARLE.
MONTICELLO, September 24, 1823.
SIR,--Your letter of August 28th, with the pamphlet accompanying it,
was not received until the 18th instant.
That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of
the dead; that those who exist not can have no use nor right in it, no
authority or power over it; that one generation of men cannot foreclose
or burthen its use to another, which comes to it in its own right and by
the same divine beneficence; that a preceding generation cannot bind a
succeeding one by its laws or contracts; these deriving their obligation
from the will of the existing majority, and that majority being removed
by death, another comes in its place with a will equally free to make
its own laws and contracts; these are axioms so self-evident that no
explanation can make them plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who
says that non-existence can control existence, or that nothing can move
something. They are axioms also pregnant with salutary consequences.
The laws of civil society indeed for the encouragement of industry,
give the property of the parent to his family on his death, and in most
civilized countries permit him even to give it, by testament, to whom
he pleases. And it is also found more convenient to suffer the laws
of our predecessors to stand on our implied assent, as if positively
re-enacted, until the existing majority positively repeals them. But
this does not lessen the right of that majority to repeal whenever a
change of circumstances or of will calls for it. Habit alone confounds
what is civil practice with natural right.
On the merits of the pamphlet I say nothing of course; having found it
necessary to decline giving opinions on books even when desired. For the
functions of a reviewer, I have neither time, talent, nor inclination, and
I trust that on reflection your indulgence will not think unreasonable
my unwillingness to embark in an office of so little enticement. With
my thanks for the pamphlet, be pleased to accept the assurance of my
great respect.
TO MR. HUGH P. TAYLOR.
MONTICELLO, October 4, 1823.
SIR,--You must, I think, have somewhat misunderstood what I may have said
to you as to manuscripts in my possession relating to the antiquities,
and particularly the Indian antiquities of our country. The only
manuscripts I now possess are some folio volumes, two of these are
the proceedings of the Virginia Company in England; the remaining four
are of the Records of the Council of Virginia from 1622 to 1700. The
account of the two first volumes you will see in the preface to Stith's
History of Virginia. They contain the records of the Virginia company,
copied from the originals, under the eye, if I recollect rightly, of
the Earl of Southampton, a member of the company, bought at the sale of
his library by Doctor Byrd, of Westover, and sold with that library to
Isaac Zane. These volumes happened at the time of the sale, to have been
borrowed by Colonel R. Bland, whose library I bought, and with this,
they were sent to me. I gave notice of it to Mr. Zane, but he never
reclaimed them. I shall deposit them in the library of the university,
where they will be most likely to be preserved with care. The other four
volumes, I am confident, are the original office records of the council.
My conjectures are that when Sr. John Randolph was about to begin the
History of Virginia which he meant to write, he borrowed these volumes
from the council office, to collect from them materials for his work.
He died before he had made any progress in that work, and they remained
in his library, probably unobserved, during the whole life of the late
Peyton Randolph, his son; from his executors I purchased his library in
a lump, and these volumes were sent to me as a part of it. I found the
leaves so rotten as often to crumble into dust on being handled; I bound
them, therefore, together, that they might not be unnecessarily opened,
and have thus preserved them forty-seven years. If my conjectures are
right, they must have been out of the public office about eighty years.
I shall deposit them also with the others in the same library of the
university, where they will be safer from injury than in a public office.
I have promised, however, to trust them to Mr. Hening, if he will copy
and publish them when he shall have finished his collection of the laws.
For this he is peculiarly qualified, as well by his diligence as by his
familiarity with our ancient manuscript characters, a familiarity very
necessary for decyphering these volumes.
I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all
the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating
to the history of our country. That I have not been remiss in this while
I had youth, health, and opportunity, is proved otherwise, as well as
by the materials I furnished towards Mr. Hening's invaluable collection
of the laws of our country; but there is a time, and that time is come
with me, when these duties are no more, when age and the wane of mind
and memory, and the feebleness of the powers of life pass them over as
a legacy to younger hands. I write now slowly, laboriously, painfully.
I am obliged, therefore, to decline all correspondence which some moral
duty does not urgently call on me to answer. I always trust that those
who write them will read their answer in my age and silence, and see
in these a manifestation that I am done with writing letters. I am
sorry, therefore, that I am not able to give any aid to the work you
contemplate, other than my best wishes for its success, and to these I
add the assurance of my great respect.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, October 12, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--I do not write with the ease which your letter of September
the 18th supposes. Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and
laborious. But while writing to you, I lose the sense of these things in
the recollection of ancient times, when youth and health made happiness
out of everything. I forget for a while the hoary winter of age, when we
can think of nothing but how to keep ourselves warm, and how to get rid
of our heavy hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid us of all
at once. Against this _tedium vitæ_, however, I am fortunately mounted
on a hobby, which, indeed, I should have better managed some thirty
or forty years ago; but whose easy amble is still sufficient to give
exercise and amusement to an octogenary rider. This is the establishment
of a University, on a scale more comprehensive, and in a country more
healthy and central than our old William and Mary, which these obstacles
have long kept in a state of languor and inefficiency. But the tardiness
with which such works proceed, may render it doubtful whether I shall
live to see it go into action.
Putting aside these things, however, for the present, I write this letter
as due to a friendship coeval with our government, and now attempted to
be poisoned, when too late in life to be replaced by new affections. I
had for sometime observed in the public papers, dark hints and mysterious
innuendos of a correspondence of yours with a friend, to whom you had
opened your bosom without reserve, and which was to be made public by
that friend or his representative. And now it is said to be actually
published. It has not yet reached us, but extracts have been given, and
such as seemed most likely to draw a curtain of separation between you
and myself. Were there no other motive than that of indignation against
the author of this outrage on private confidence, whose shaft seems to
have been aimed at yourself more particularly, this would make it the
duty of every honorable mind to disappoint that aim, by opposing to
its impression a seven-fold shield of apathy and insensibility. With
me, however, no such armor is needed. The circumstances of the times in
which we have happened to live, and the partiality of our friends at a
particular period, placed us in a state of apparent opposition, which some
might suppose to be personal also; and there might not be wanting those
who wished to make it so, by filling our ears with malignant falsehoods,
by dressing up hideous phantoms of their own creation, presenting them
to you under my name, to me under yours, and endeavoring to instil into
our minds things concerning each other the most destitute of truth. And
if there had been, at any time, a moment when we were off our guard, and
in a temper to let the whispers of these people make us forget what we
had known of each other for so many years, and years of so much trial,
yet all men who have attended to the workings of the human mind, who
have seen the false colors under which passion sometimes dresses the
actions and motives of others, have seen also those passions subsiding
with time and reflection, dissipating like mists before the rising sun,
and restoring to us the sight of all things in their true shape and
colors. It would be strange indeed, if, at our years, we were to go back
an age to hunt up imaginary or forgotten facts, to disturb the repose
of affections so sweetening to the evening of our lives. Be assured,
my dear Sir, that I am incapable of receiving the slightest impression
from the effort now made to plant thorns on the pillow of age, worth
and wisdom, and to sow tares between friends who have been such for
near half a century. Beseeching you then, not to suffer your mind to be
disquieted by this wicked attempt to poison its peace, and praying you
to throw it by among the things which have never happened, I add sincere
assurances of my unabated and constant attachment, friendship and respect.
TO THE PRESIDENT.
MONTICELLO, October 24, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--The question presented by the letters you have sent me,
is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation
since that of Independence. That made us a nation, this sets our compass
and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time
opening on us. And never could we embark on it under circumstances more
auspicious. Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle
ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe
to intermeddle with Cis-Atlantic affairs. America, North and South, has
a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her
own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart
from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicil of
despotism, our endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that
of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit;
she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it. By acceding to
her proposition, we detach her from the bands, bring her mighty weight
into the scale of free government, and emancipate a continent at one
stroke, which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty. Great
Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one, or all on
earth; and with her on our side we need not fear the whole world. With
her then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship; and
nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once
more, side by side, in the same cause. Not that I would purchase even
her amity at the price of taking part in her wars. But the war in which
the present proposition might engage us, should that be its consequence,
is not her war, but ours. Its object is to introduce and establish
the American system, of keeping out of our land all foreign powers, of
never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of our
nations. It is to maintain our own principle, not to depart from it.
And if, to facilitate this, we can effect a division in the body of the
European powers, and draw over to our side its most powerful member,
surely we should do it. But I am clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that
it will prevent instead of provoking war. With Great Britain withdrawn
from their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe
combined would not undertake such a war. For how would they propose to
get at either enemy without superior fleets? Nor is the occasion to be
slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our protest against
the atrocious violations of the rights of nations, by the interference
of any one in the internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by
Bonaparte, and now continued by the equally lawless Alliance, calling
itself Holy.
But we have first to ask ourselves a question. Do we wish to acquire to
our own confederacy any one or more of the Spanish provinces? I candidly
confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition
which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which,
with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico,
and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those
whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political
well-being. Yet, as I am sensible that this can never be obtained, even
with her own consent, but by war; and its independence, which is our
second interest, (and especially its independence of England,) can be
secured without it, I have no hesitation in abandoning my first wish
to future chances, and accepting its independence, with peace and the
friendship of England, rather than its association, at the expense of
war and her enmity.
I could honestly, therefore, join in the declaration proposed, that we
aim not at the acquisition of any of those possessions, that we will
not stand in the way of any amicable arrangement between them and the
mother country; but that we will oppose, with all our means, the forcible
interposition of any other power, as auxiliary, stipendiary, or under
any other form or pretext, and most especially, their transfer to any
power by conquest, cession, or acquisition in any other way. I should
think it, therefore, advisable, that the Executive should encourage the
British government to a continuance in the dispositions expressed in
these letters, by an assurance of his concurrence with them as far as
his authority goes; and that as it may lead to war, the declaration of
which requires an act of Congress, the case shall be laid before them
for consideration at their first meeting, and under the reasonable aspect
in which it is seen by himself.
I have been so long weaned from political subjects, and have so long
ceased to take any interest in them, that I am sensible I am not qualified
to offer opinions on them worthy of any attention. But the question now
proposed involves consequences so lasting, and effects so decisive of
our future destinies, as to rekindle all the interest I have heretofore
felt on such occasions, and to induce me to the hazard of opinions, which
will prove only my wish to contribute still my mite towards anything
which may be useful to our country. And praying you to accept it at only
what it is worth, I add the assurance of my constant and affectionate
friendship and respect.
TO M. CORAY.
MONTICELLO, October 31, 1823.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of July 10th is lately received. I recollect with
pleasure the short opportunity of acquaintance with you afforded me in
Paris, by the kindness of Mr. Paradise, and the fine editions of the
classical writers of Greece which have been announced by you from time
to time, have never permitted me to lose the recollection. Until those
of Aristotle's Ethics, and the Strategicos of Onesander, with which
you have now favored me, and for which I pray you to accept my thanks,
I had seen only your Lives of Plutarch. These I had read, and profited
much by your valuable Scholia, and the aid of a few words from a modern
Greek dictionary would, I believe, have enabled me to read your patriotic
addresses to your countrymen.
You have certainly begun at the right end towards preparing them for the
great object they are now contending for, by improving their minds and
qualifying them for self-government. For this they will owe you lasting
honors. Nothing is more likely to forward this object than a study of
the fine models of science left by their ancestors, to whom _we_ also
are all indebted for the lights which originally led ourselves out of
Gothic darkness.
No people sympathize more feelingly than ours with the sufferings of
your countrymen, none offer more sincere and ardent prayers to heaven
for their success. And nothing indeed but the fundamental principle of
our government, never to entangle us with the broils of Europe, could
restrain our generous youth from taking some part in this holy cause.
Possessing ourselves the combined blessing of liberty and order, we
wish the same to other countries, and to none more than yours, which,
the first of civilized nations, presented examples of what man should
be. Not, indeed, that the forms of government adapted to their age and
country are practicable or to be imitated in our day, although prejudices
in their favor would be natural enough to your people. The circumstances
of the world are too much changed for that. The government of Athens, for
example, was that of the people of one city making laws for the whole
country subjected to them. That of Lacedæmon was the rule of military
monks over the laboring class of the people, reduced to abject slavery.
These are not the doctrines of the present age. The equal rights of
man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be
the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal
advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these
rights can be secured, to-wit: government by the people, acting not in
person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say,
by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who either contributes by his
purse or person to the support of his country. The small and imperfect
mixture of representative government in England, impeded as it is by
other branches, aristocratical and hereditary, shows yet the power of
the representative principle towards improving the condition of man.
With us, all the branches of the government are elective by the people
themselves, except the Judiciary, of whose science and qualifications
they are not competent judges. Yet, even in that department, we call in
a jury of the people to decide all controverted matters of fact, because
to that investigation they are entirely competent, leaving thus as little
as possible, merely the law of the case, to the decision of the judges.
And true it is that the people, especially when moderately instructed,
are the only safe, because the only honest, depositories of the public
rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration
of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err
sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic
and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the
government. Hereditary bodies, on the contrary, always existing, always
on the watch for their own aggrandizement, profit of every opportunity
of advancing the privileges of their order, and encroaching on the rights
of the people.
The public papers tell us that your nation has established a government
of some kind without informing us what it is. This is certainly necessary
for the direction of the war, but I presume it is intended to be temporary
only, as a permanent constitution must be the work of quiet, leisure,
much inquiry, and great deliberation. The extent of our country was so
great, and its former division into distinct States so established,
that we thought it better to confederate as to foreign affairs only.
Every State retained its self-government in domestic matters, as better
qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction of their citizens,
than a general government so distant from its remoter citizens, and so
little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different parts.
But I presume that the extent of country with you, which may liberate
itself from the Turks, is not too large to be associated under a single
government, and that the particular constitutions of our several States,
therefore, and not that of our federal government, will furnish the
basis best adapted to your situation. There are now twenty-four of these
distinct States, none smaller perhaps than your Morea, several larger
than all Greece. Each of these has a constitution framed by itself and
for itself, but militating in nothing with the powers of the general
government in its appropriate department of war and foreign affairs. These
constitutions being in print and in every hand, I shall only make brief
observations on them, and on those provisions particularly which have
not fulfilled expectations, or which, being varied in different States,
leave a choice to be made of that which is best. You will find much good
in all of them, and no one which would be approved in all its parts.
Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of
different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable
to any other in every point. A judicious selection of the parts of each
suitable to any other, is all which prudence should attempt; this will
appear from a review of some parts of our constitutions.
Our executives are elected by the people for terms of one, two, three,
or four years, under the names of governors or presidents, and are
reëligible a second time, or after a certain term, if approved by the
people. May your Ethnarch be elective also? or does your position among
the warring powers of Europe need an office more permanent, and a leader
more stable? Surely you will make him single. For if experience has ever
taught a truth, it is that a plurality in the supreme executive will
forever split into discordant factions, distract the nation, annihilate
its energies, and force the nation to rally under a single head, generally
an usurper. We have, I think, fallen on the happiest of all modes of
constituting the executive, that of easing and aiding our President, by
permitting him to choose Secretaries of State, of finance, of war, and
of the navy, with whom he may advise, either separately or all together,
and remedy their divisions by adopting or controlling their opinions
at his discretion; this saves the nation from the evils of a divided
will, and secures to it a steady march in the systematic course which
the president may have adopted for that of his administration.
Our legislatures are composed of two houses, the senate and
representatives, elected in different modes, and for different periods,
and in some States, with a qualified veto in the executive chief. But to
avoid all temptation to superior pretensions of the one over the other
house, and the possibility of either erecting itself into a privileged
order, might it not be better to choose at the same time and in the same
mode, a body sufficiently numerous to be divided by lot into two separate
houses, acting as independently as the two houses in England, or in our
governments, and to shuffle their names together and re-distribute them
by lot, once a week for a fortnight? This would equally give the benefit
of time and separate deliberation, guard against an absolute passage by
acclamation, derange cabals, intrigues, and the count of noses, disarm
the ascendency which a popular demagogue might at anytime obtain over
either house, and render impossible all disputes between the two houses,
which often form such obstacles to business.
Our different States have differently modified their several judiciaries
as to the tenure of office. Some appoint their judges for a given term
of time; some continue them _during good behavior_, and that to be
determined on by the concurring vote of _two-thirds_ of each legislative
house. In England they are removable by a _majority_ only of each house.
The last is a practicable remedy; the second is not. The combination of
the friends and associates of the accused, the action of personal and
party passions, and the sympathies of the human heart, will forever find
means of influencing one-third of either the one or the other house, will
thus secure their impunity, and establish them in fact for life. The
first remedy is the best, that of appointing for a term of years only,
with a capacity of re-appointment if their conduct has been approved.
At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were
supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government.
Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the
most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their
removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their
decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and
unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless,
become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations
of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any
one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily
employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be
trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.
The constitutions of some of our States have made it a duty of their
government to provide with due care for the public education. This we
divide into three grades. 1. Primary schools, in which are taught reading,
writing, and common arithmetic, to every infant of the State, male and
female. 2. Intermediate schools, in which an education is given proper
for artificers and the middle vocations of life; in grammar, for example,
general history, logarithms, arithmetic, plain trigonometry, mensuration,
the use of the globes, navigation, the mechanical principles, the elements
of natural philosophy, and, as a preparation for the University, the
Greek and Latin languages. 3. An University, in which these and all other
useful sciences shall be taught in their highest degree; the expenses
of these institutions are defrayed partly by the public, and partly by
the individuals profiting of them.
But, whatever be the constitution, great care must be taken to provide
a mode of amendment, when experience or change of circumstances shall
have manifested that any part of it is unadapted to the good of the
nation. In some of our States it requires a new authority from the whole
people, acting by their representatives, chosen for this express purpose,
and assembled in convention. This is found too difficult for remedying
the imperfections which experience develops from time to time in an
organization of the first impression. A greater facility of amendment is
certainly requisite to maintain it in a course of action accommodated to
the times and changes through which we are ever passing. In England the
constitution may be altered by a single act of the legislature, which
amounts to the having no constitution at all. In some of our States,
an act passed by two different legislatures, chosen by the people, at
different and successive elections, is sufficient to make a change in
the constitution. As this mode may be rendered more or less easy, by
requiring the approbation of fewer or more successive legislatures,
according to the degree of difficulty thought sufficient, and yet safe,
it is evidently the best principle which can be adopted for constitutional
amendments.
I have stated that the constitutions of our several States vary more or
less in some particulars. But there are certain principles in which all
agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of
the life, liberty, property, and safety of the citizen.
1. Freedom of religion, restricted only from _acts_ of trespass on that
of others.
2. Freedom of person, securing every one from imprisonment, or other
bodily restraint, but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the
well-known law of _habeas corpus_.
3. Trial by jury, the best of all safe-guards for the person, the
property, and the fame of every individual.
4. The exclusive right of legislation and taxation in the representatives
of the people.
5. Freedom of the press, subject only to liability for personal injuries.
This formidable censor of the public functionaries, by arraigning them
at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must
otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for
enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral,
and social being.
I have thus, dear Sir, according to your request, given you some
thoughts on the subject of national government. They are the result
of the observations and reflections of an octogenary, who has passed
fifty years of trial and trouble in the various grades of his country's
service. They are yet but outlines which you will better fill up, and
accommodate to the habits and circumstances of your countrymen. Should
they furnish a single idea which may be useful to them, I shall fancy
it a tribute rendered to the manes of your Homer, your Demosthenes, and
the splendid constellation of sages and heroes, whose blood is still
flowing in your veins, and whose merits are still resting, as a heavy
debt, on the shoulders of the living, and the future races of men. While
we offer to heaven the warmest supplications for the restoration of your
countrymen to the freedom and science of their ancestors, permit me to
assure yourself of the cordial esteem and high respect which I bear and
cherish towards yourself personally.
TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.
MONTICELLO, November 4, 1823.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Two dislocated wrists and crippled fingers have rendered
writing so slow and laborious, as to oblige me to withdraw from nearly
all correspondence; not however, from yours, while I can make a stroke
with a pen. We have gone through too many trying scenes together, to
forget the sympathies and affections they nourished.
Your trials have indeed been long and severe. When they will end, is yet
unknown, but where they will end, cannot be doubted. Alliances, Holy or
Hellish, may be formed, and retard the epoch of deliverance, may swell
the rivers of blood which are yet to flow, but their own will close the
scene, and leave to mankind the right of self-government. I trust that
Spain will prove, that a nation cannot be conquered which determines
not to be so, and that her success will be the turning of the tide of
liberty, no more to be arrested by human efforts. Whether the state of
society in Europe can bear a republican government, I doubted, you know,
when with you, and I do now. A hereditary chief, strictly limited, the
right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public
contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses, will
go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. But the
only security of all, is in a free press. The force of public opinion
cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation
it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters
pure.
We are all, for example, in agitation even in our peaceful country.
For in peace as well as in war, the mind must be kept in motion. Who is
to be the next President, is the topic here of every conversation. My
opinion on that subject is what I expressed to you in my last letter. The
question will be ultimately reduced to the northernmost and southernmost
candidate. The former will get every federal vote in the Union, and many
republicans; the latter, all of those denominated _of the old school_;
for you are not to believe that these two parties are amalgamated, that
the lion and the lamb are lying down together. The Hartford Convention,
the victory of Orleans, the peace of Ghent, prostrated the name of
federalism. Its votaries abandoned it through shame and mortification;
and now call themselves republicans. But the name alone is changed, the
principles are the same. For in truth, the parties of Whig and Tory, are
those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these
names, or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Coté Droite and Coté
Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles, and Liberals. The sickly, weakly,
timid man, fears the people, and is a tory by nature. The healthy, strong
and bold, cherishes them, and is formed a whig by nature. On the eclipse
of federalism with us, although not its extinction, its leaders got up
the Missouri question, under the false front of lessening the measure of
slavery, but with the real view of producing a geographical division of
parties, which might insure them the next President. The people of the
north went blindfold into the snare, followed their leaders for awhile
with a zeal truly moral and laudable, until they became sensible that
they were injuring instead of aiding the real interests of the slaves,
that they had been used merely as tools for electioneering purposes;
and that trick of hypocrisy then fell as quickly as it had been got up.
To that is now succeeding a distinction, which, like that of republican
and federal, or whig and tory, being equally intermixed through every
State, threatens none of those geographical schisms which go immediately
to a separation. The line of division now, is the preservation of State
rights as reserved in the constitution, or by strained constructions of
that instrument, to merge all into a consolidated government. The tories
are for strengthening the executive and general Government; the whigs
cherish the representative branch, and the rights reserved by the States,
as the bulwark against consolidation, which must immediately generate
monarchy. And although this division excites, as yet, no warmth, yet
it exists, is well understood, and will be a principle of voting at the
ensuing election, with the reflecting men of both parties.
I thank you much for the two books you were so kind as to send me by Mr.
Gallatin. Miss Wright had before favored me with the first edition of
her American work; but her "Few days in Athens," was entirely new, and
has been a treat to me of the highest order. The matter and manner of
the dialogue is strictly ancient; and the principles of the sects are
beautifully and candidly explained and contrasted; and the scenery and
portraiture of the interlocutors are of higher finish than anything in
that line left us by the ancients; and like Ossian, if not ancient, it
is equal to the best morsels of antiquity. I augur, from this instance,
that Herculaneum is likely to furnish better specimens of modern than
of ancient genius; and may we not hope more from the same pen?
After much sickness, and the accident of a broken and disabled arm, I
am again in tolerable health, but extremely debilitated, so as to be
scarcely able to walk into my garden. The hebetude of age, too, and
extinguishment of interest in the things around me, are weaning me from
them, and dispose me with cheerfulness to resign them to the existing
generation, satisfied that the daily advance of science will enable them
to administer the commonwealth with increased wisdom. You have still
many valuable years to give to your country, and with my prayers that
they may be years of health and happiness, and especially that they may
see the establishment of the principles of government which you have
cherished through life, accept the assurance of my affectionate and
constant friendship and respect.
TO MR. PATRICK K. RODGERS.
MONTICELLO, January 29, 1824.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of the 14th, with a copy of your
mathematical principles of natural philosophy, which I have looked
into with all the attention which the rust of age and long continued
avocations of a very different character permit me to exercise. I think
them entirely worthy of approbation, both as to matter and method, and
for their brevity as a text book; and I remark particularly the clearness
and precision with which the propositions are enounced, and, in the
demonstrations, the easy form in which ideas are presented to the mind,
so as to be almost intuitive and self-evident. Of Cavallo's book, which
you say you are enjoined to teach, I have no knowledge, having never
seen it; but its character is, I think, that of mere mediocrity; and,
from my personal acquaintance with the man, I should expect no more. He
was heavy, capable enough of understanding what he read, and with memory
to retain it, but without the talent of digestion or improvement. But,
indeed, the English generally have been very stationary in latter times,
and the French, on the contrary, so active and successful, particularly
in preparing elementary books, in the mathematical and natural sciences,
that those who wish for instruction, without caring from what nation they
get it, resort universally to the latter language. Besides the earlier
and invaluable works of Euler and Bezont, we have latterly that of
Lacroix in mathematics, of Legendre in geometry, Lavoisier in chemistry,
the elementary works of Haüy in physics, Biot in experimental physics
and physical astronomy, Dumeril in natural history, to say nothing of
many detached essays of Monge and others, and the transcendent labors
of Laplace, and I am informed, by a highly instructed person recently
from Cambridge, that the mathematicians of that institution, sensible
of being in the rear of those of the continent, and ascribing the cause
much to their too long-continued preference of the geometrical over
the analytical methods, which the French have so much cultivated and
improved, have now adopted the latter; and that they have also given
up the fluxionary, for the differential calculus. To confine a school,
therefore, to the obsolete work of Cavallo, is to shut out all advances
in the physical sciences which have been so great in latter times. I
am glad, however, to learn from your work, and to expect from those it
promised in succession, which will doubtless be of equal grade, that
so good a course of instruction is pursued in William and Mary. It is
very long since I have had any information of the state of education
in that seminary, to which, as my _alma mater_, my attachment has been
ever sincere, although not exclusive. When that college was located at
the middle plantation in 1693, Charles city was a frontier county, and
there were no inhabitants above the falls of the rivers, sixty miles
only higher up. It was, therefore, a position, nearly central to the
population, as it then was; but when the frontier became extended to
the Sandy river, three hundred miles west of Williamsburg, the public
convenience called, first for a removal of the seat of government, and
latterly, not for a removal of the college, but, for the establishment of
a new one, in a more central and healthy situation; not disturbing the old
one in its possessions or functions, but leaving them unimpaired for the
benefit of those to whom it is convenient. And indeed, I do not foresee
that the number of its students is likely to be much affected; because
I presume that, at present, its distance and autumnal climate prevent
its receiving many students from above the tide-waters, and especially
from above the mountains. This is, therefore, one of the cases where
the lawyers say there is _damnum absque injuriâ_; and they instance,
as in point, the settlement of a new schoolmaster in the neighborhood
of an old one. At any rate it is one of those cases wherein the public
interest rightfully prevails, and the justice of which will be yielded
to by none, I am sure, with more dutiful and candid acquiescence than
the enlightened friends of our ancient and venerable institution. The
only rivalship, I hope, between the old and the new, will be in doing
the most good possible in their respective sections of country.
As the diagrams of your book have not been engraved, I return you the
MS. of them, which must be of value to yourself. They furnish favorable
specimens of the graphical talent of your former pupil. Permit me to
add, that I shall always be ready and happy to receive with particular
welcome the visit of which you flatter me with the hope, and to avail
myself of the occasion of assuring you personally of my great respect
and esteem.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.
MONTICELLO, February 3, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I am favored with your two letters of January the 26th and
29th, and I am glad that yourself and the friends of the University are
so well satisfied, that the provisos amendatory of the University Act are
mere nullities. I had not been able to put out of my head the Algebraical
equation, which was among the first of my college lessons, that a-a=0.
Yet I cheerfully arrange myself to your opinions. I did not suppose, nor
do I now suppose it possible, that both houses of the legislature should
ever consent, for an additional fifteen thousand dollars of revenue,
to set all the Professors and students of the University adrift; and if
foreigners will have the same confidence which we have in our legislature,
no harm will have been done by the provisos.
You recollect that we had agreed that the Visitors who are of the
legislature should fix on a certain day of meeting, after the rising of
the Assembly, to put into immediate motion the measures which this act
was expected to call for. You will of course remind the Governor that
a re-appointment of Visitors is to be made on the day following Sunday,
the 29th of this month; and as he is to appoint the day of their first
meeting, it would be well to recommend to him that which our brethren
there shall fix on. It may be designated by the Governor as the third,
fourth, &c., day after the rising of the legislature, which will give
it certainty enough.
You ask what sum would be desirable for the purchase of books and
apparatus? Certainly the largest you can obtain. Forty or fifty thousand
dollars would enable us to purchase the most essential books of texts
and reference for the schools, and such an apparatus for mathematics,
astronomy and chemistry, as may enable us to set out with tolerable
competence, if we can, through the banks and otherwise, anticipate the
whole sum at once.
I remark what you say on the subject of committing ourselves to any one
for the law appointment. Your caution is perfectly just. I hope, and am
certain, that this will be the standing law of discretion and duty with
every member of our board, in this and all cases. You know we have all,
from the beginning, considered the high qualifications of our professors,
as the only means by which we could give to our institution splendor
and pre-eminence over all its sister seminaries. The only question,
therefore, we can ever ask ourselves, as to any candidate, will be, is
he the most highly qualified? The college of Philadelphia has lost its
character of primacy by indulging motives of favoritism and nepotism, and
by conferring the appointments as if the professorships were entrusted
to them as provisions for their friends. And even that of Edinburgh,
you know, is also much lowered from the same cause. We are next to
observe, that a man is not qualified for a professor, knowing nothing
but merely his own profession. He should be otherwise well educated as
to the sciences generally; able to converse understandingly with the
scientific men with whom he is associated, and to assist in the councils
of the faculty on any subject of science on which they may have occasion
to deliberate. Without this, he will incur their contempt, and bring
disreputation on the institution. With respect to the professorship you
mention, I scarcely know any of our judges personally; but I will name,
for example, the late Judge Roane, who, I believe, was generally admitted
to be among the ablest of them. His knowledge was confined to the common
law chiefly, which does not constitute one-half of the qualification
of a really learned lawyer, much less that of a professor of law for
an University. And as to any other branches of science, he must have
stood mute in the presence of his literary associates, or of any learned
strangers or others visiting the University. Would this constitute the
splendid stand we propose to take?
In the course of the trusts I have exercised through life with powers of
appointment, I can say with truth, and with unspeakable comfort, that I
never did appoint a relation to office, and that merely because I never
saw the case in which some one did not offer, or occur, better qualified;
and I have the most unlimited confidence, that in the appointment of
Professors to our nursling institution, every individual of my associates
will look with a single eye to the sublimation of its character, and
adopt, as our sacred motto, "_detur digniori_." In this way it will
honor us, and bless our country.
I perceive that I have permitted my reflections to run into generalities
beyond the scope of the particular intimation in your letter. I will
let them go, however, as a general confession of faith, not belonging
merely to the present case.
Name me affectionately to our brethren with you, and be assured yourself
of my constant friendship and respect.
TO JARED SPARKS.
MONTICELLO, February 4, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I duly received your favor of the 13th, and with it, the
last number of the North American Review. This has anticipated the
one I should receive in course, but have not yet received, under my
subscription to the new series. The article on the African colonization
of the people of color, to which you invite my attention, I have read
with great consideration. It is, indeed, a fine one, and will do much
good. I learn from it more, too, than I had before known, of the degree
of success and promise of that colony.
In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational
objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a
colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines
the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilization and
science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for the
long course of injuries we have been committing on their population. And
considering that these blessings will descend to the _"nati natorum,
et qui nascentur ab illis,"_ we shall in the long run have rendered
them perhaps more good than evil. To fulfil this object, the colony of
Sierra Leone promises well, and that of Mesurado adds to our prospect of
success. Under this view, the colonization society is to be considered
as a missionary society, having in view, however, objects more humane,
more justifiable, and less aggressive on the peace of other nations,
than the others of that appellation.
The second object, and the most interesting to us, as coming home to
our physical and moral characters, to our happiness and safety, is to
provide an asylum to which we can, by degrees, send the whole of that
population from among us, and establish them under our patronage and
protection, as a separate, free and independent people, in some country
and climate friendly to human life and happiness. That any place on
the coast of Africa should answer the latter purpose, I have ever
deemed entirely impossible. And without repeating the other arguments
which have been urged by others, I will appeal to figures only, which
admit no controversy. I shall speak in round numbers, not absolutely
accurate, yet not so wide from truth as to vary the result materially.
There are in the United States a million and a half of people of color
in slavery. To send off the whole of these at once, nobody conceives to
be practicable for us, or expedient for them. Let us take twenty-five
years for its accomplishment, within which time they will be doubled.
Their estimated value as property, in the first place, (for actual
property has been lawfully vested in that form, and who can lawfully
take it from the possessors?) at an average of two hundred dollars
each, young and old, would amount to six hundred millions of dollars,
which must be paid or lost by somebody. To this, add the cost of their
transportation by land and sea to Mesurado, a year's provision of food
and clothing, implements of husbandry and of their trades, which will
amount to three hundred millions more, making thirty-six millions of
dollars a year for twenty-five years, with insurance of peace all that
time, and it is impossible to look at the question a second time. I am
aware that at the end of about sixteen years, a gradual detraction from
this sum will commence, from the gradual diminution of breeders, and go
on during the remaining nine years. Calculate this deduction, and it
is still impossible to look at the enterprise a second time. I do not
say this to induce an inference that the getting rid of them is forever
impossible. For that is neither my opinion nor my hope. But only that
it cannot be done in this way. There is, I think, a way in which it can
be done; that is, by emancipating the after-born, leaving them, on due
compensation, with their mothers, until their services are worth their
maintenance, and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a
proper age for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on
the subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able
to conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the Notes on
Virginia, under the fourteenth query. The estimated value of the new-born
infant is so low, (say twelve dollars and fifty cents,) that it would
probably be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six
hundred millions of dollars, the first head of expense, to thirty-seven
millions and a half; leaving only the expenses of nourishment while
with the mother, and of transportation. And from what fund are these
expenses to be furnished? Why not from that of the lands which have
been ceded by the very States now needing this relief? And ceded on no
consideration, for the most part, but that of the general good of the
whole. These cessions already constitute one fourth of the States of
the Union. It may be said that these lands have been sold; are now the
property of the citizens composing those States; and the money long ago
received and expended. But an equivalent of lands in the territories
since acquired, may be appropriated to that object, or so much, at least,
as may be sufficient; and the object, although more important to the
slave States, is highly so to the others also, if they were serious in
their arguments on the Missouri question. The slave States, too, if more
interested, would also contribute more by their gratuitous liberation,
thus taking on themselves alone the first and heaviest item of expense.
In the plan sketched in the Notes on Virginia, no particular place
of asylum was specified; because it was thought possible, that in the
revolutionary state of America, then commenced, events might open to
us some one within practicable distance. This has now happened. St.
Domingo has become independent, and with a population of that color
only; and if the public papers are to be credited, their Chief offers
to pay their passage, to receive them as free citizens, and to provide
them employment. This leaves, then, for the general confederacy, no
expense but of nurture with the mother a few years, and would call, of
course, for a very moderate appropriation of the vacant lands. Suppose
the whole annual increase to be of sixty thousand effective births,
fifty vessels, of four hundred tons burthen each, constantly employed in
that short run, would carry off the increase of every year, and the old
stock would die off in the ordinary course of nature, lessening from the
commencement until its final disappearance. In this way no violation of
private right is proposed Voluntary surrenders would probably come in
as fast as the means to be provided for their care would be competent
to it. Looking at my own State only, and I presume not to speak for the
others, I verily believe that this surrender of property would not amount
to more, annually, than half our present direct taxes, to be continued
fully about twenty or twenty-five years, and then gradually diminishing
for as many more until their final extinction; and even this half tax
would not be paid in cash, but by the delivery of an object which they
have never yet known or counted as part of their property; and those
not possessing the object will be called on for nothing. I do not go
into all the details of the burthens and benefits of this operation. And
who could estimate its blessed effects? I leave this to those who will
live to see their accomplishment, and to enjoy a beatitude forbidden
to my age. But I leave it with this admonition, to rise and be doing. A
million and a half are within their control; but six millions, (which a
majority of those now living will see them attain,) and one million of
these fighting men, will say, "we will not go."
I am aware that this subject involves some constitutional scruples.
But a liberal construction, justified by the object, may go far, and an
amendment of the constitution, the whole length necessary. The separation
of infants from their mothers, too, would produce some scruples of
humanity. But this would be straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel.
I am much pleased to see that you have taken up the subject of the duty
on imported books. I hope a crusade will be kept up against it, until
those in power shall become sensible of this stain on our legislation,
and shall wipe it from their code, and from the remembrance of man, if
possible.
I salute you with assurances of high respect and esteem.
TO ROBERT J. GARNETT.
MONTICELLO, February 14, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for the copy of Colonel Taylor's New
Views of the Constitution, and shall read them with the satisfaction
and edification which I have ever derived from whatever he has written.
But I fear it is the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Those who
formerly usurped the _name_ of federalists, which, _in fact_, they never
were, have now openly abandoned it, and are as openly marching by the
road of construction, in a direct line to that consolidation which was
always their real object. They, almost to a man, are in possession of
one branch of the government, and appear to be very strong in yours.
The three great questions of amendment now before you, will give the
measure of their strength. I mean, 1st, the limitation of the term
of the presidential service; 2d, the placing the choice of president
effectually in the hands of the people; 3d, the giving to Congress the
power of internal improvement, on condition that each State's federal
proportion of the monies so expended, shall be employed within the
State. The friends of consolidation would rather take these powers by
construction than accept them by direct investiture from the States. Yet,
as to internal improvement particularly, there is probably not a State
in the Union which would not grant the power on the condition proposed,
or which would grant it without that.
The best general key for the solution of questions of power between
our governments, is the fact that "every foreign and federal power is
given to the federal government, and to the States every power purely
domestic." I recollect but one instance of control vested in the federal,
over the State authorities in a matter purely domestic, which is that
of metallic tenders. The federal is, in truth, our foreign government,
which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate
States.
The real friends of the constitution in its federal form, if they wish it
to be immortal, should be attentive, by amendments, to make it keep pace
with the advance of the age in science and experience. Instead of this,
the European governments have resisted reformation, until the people,
seeing no other resource, undertake it themselves by force, their only
weapon, and work it out through blood, desolation and long-continued
anarchy. Here it will be by large fragments breaking off, and refusing
re-union but on condition of amendment, or perhaps permanently. If I can
see these three great amendments prevail, I shall consider it as a renewed
extension of the term of our lease, shall live in more confidence, and
die in more hope. And I do trust that the republican mass, which Colonel
Taylor justly says is the real federal one, is still strong enough to
carry these truly federo-republican amendments. With my prayers for the
issue, accept my friendly and respectful salutations.
TO MR. ISAAC ENGELBRECHT.
MONTICELLO, February 25, 1824.
SIR,--The kindness of the motive which led to the request of your letter
of the 14th instant, and which would give some value to an article from
me, renders compliance a duty of gratitude; knowing nothing more moral,
more sublime, more worthy of your preservation than David's description
of the good man, in his 15th Psalm, I will here transcribe it from Brady
& Tate's version:
Lord, who's the happy man that may to thy blest courts repair,
Not stranger-like, to visit them, but to inhabit there?
'Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves,
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart disproves.
Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor's fame to wound,
Nor hearken to a false report by malice whispered round.
Who, vice, in all its pomp and power, can treat with just neglect;
And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect.
Who, to his plighted vows and trust, has ever firmly stood,
And though he promise to his loss he makes his promise good.
Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ,
Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.
The man who by this steady course has happiness ensured,
When earth's foundation shakes, shall stand by providence secured.
Accept this as a testimony of my respect for your request, an
acknowledgment of a due sense of the favor of your opinion, and an
assurance of my good will and best wishes.
TO MR. WOODWARD.
MONTICELLO, March 24, 1824.
I have to thank you, dear Sir, for the copy I have received of your System
of Universal Science, for which, I presume, I am indebted to yourself.
It will be a monument of the learning of the author and of the analyzing
powers of his mind. Whether it may be adopted in general use is yet to be
seen. These analytical views indeed must always be ramified according to
their object. Yours is on the great scale of a methodical encyclopedia of
all human sciences, taking for the basis of their distribution, matter,
mind, and the union of both. Lord Bacon founded his first great division
on the faculties of the mind which have cognizance of these sciences.
It does not seem to have been observed by any one that the origination
of this division was not with him. It had been proposed by Charron more
than twenty years before, in his book de la Sagesse, B. 1, c. 14, and
an imperfect ascription of the sciences to these respective faculties
was there attempted. This excellent moral work was published in 1600.
Lord Bacon is said not to have entered on his great work until his
retirement from public office in 1621. Where sciences are to be arranged
in accommodation to the schools of an university, they will be grouped
to coincide with the kindred qualifications of Professors in ordinary.
For a library, which was my object, their divisions and subdivisions will
be made such as to throw convenient masses of books under each separate
head. Thus, in the library of a physician, the books of that science,
of which he has many, will be subdivided under many heads; and these
of law, of which he has few, will be placed under a single one. The
lawyer, again, will distribute his law books under many subdivisions,
his medical under a single one. Your idea of making the subject matter
of the sciences the basis of their distribution, is certainly more
reasonable than that of the faculties to which they are addressed. The
materialists will perhaps criticize a basis, one-half of which they will
say is a non-existence; adhering to the axiom of Aristotle, "_nihil est
in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu_," and affirming that we
can have no evidence of any existence which impresses no sense. Of this
opinion were most of the ancient philosophers, and several of the early
and orthodox fathers of the christian church. Indeed, Jesus himself, the
founder of our religion, was unquestionably a materialist as to man. In
all his doctrines of the resurrection, he teaches expressly that the body
is to rise in substance. In the Apostles' Creed, we all declare that we
believe in the "resurrection of the body." Jesus said that God is spirit
[πνευμα] without defining it. Tertullian supplies the definition, "_quis
negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi Deus Spiritus? spiritus etiam corporis sui
generis in suâ effigie_." And Origen, "ασωματον _accipi, docet, pro eo
quod non est simile huic nostro crassiori et visibli corpori, sed quod
est naturaliter subtile et velut aura tenue_." The modern philosophers
mostly consider thought as a function of our material organization; and
Locke particularly among them, charges with blasphemy those who deny that
Omnipotence could give the faculty of thinking to certain combinations
of matter.
Were I to re-compose my tabular view of the sciences, I should certainly
transpose a particular branch. The naturalists, you know, distribute
the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology,
botany, mineralogy. Ideology or mind, however, occupies so much space
in the field of science, that we might perhaps erect it into a fourth
kingdom or department. But, inasmuch as it makes a part of the animal
construction only, it would be more proper to subdivide zoology into
physical and moral. The latter including ideology, ethics, and mental
science generally, in my catalogue, considering ethics, as well as
religion, as supplements to law in the government of man, I had placed
them in that sequence. But certainly the faculty of thought belongs to
animal history, is an important portion of it and should there find its
place. But these are speculations in which I do not now permit myself
to labor. My mind unwillingly engages in severe investigations. Its
energies, indeed, are no longer equal to them. Being to thank you for
your hook, its subject has run away with me into a labyrinth of ideas
no longer familiar, and writing also has become a slow and irksome
operation with me. I have been obliged to avail myself of the pen of a
granddaughter for this communication. I will here, therefore, close my
task of thinking, hers of writing, and yours of reading, with assurances
of my constant and high respect and esteem.
TO MR. EDWARD EVERETT.
MONTICELLO, March 27, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for your Greek reader, which, for the
use of schools, is evidently preferable to the Collectanea Græca. These
have not arranged their selections so well in gradation from the easier
to the more difficult styles.
On the subject of the Greek ablative, I dare say that your historical
explanation is the true one. In the early stages of languages, the
distinctions of cases may well be supposed so few as to be readily
effected by changes of termination. The Greeks, in this way, seem to have
formed five, the Latins six, and to have supplied their deficiencies
as they occurred in the progress of development, by prepositive words.
In later times, the Italians, Spaniards, and French, have depended on
prepositions altogether, without any inflection of the primitive word to
denote the change of case. What is singular as to the English is, that
in its early form of Anglo-Saxon, having distinguished several cases by
changes of termination, at later periods it has dropped these, retains but
that of the genitive, and supplies all the others by prepositions. These
subjects, with me, are neither favorites nor familiar; and your letter
has occasioned me to look more into the particular one in question than I
had ever done before. Turning, for satisfaction, to the work of Tracy, the
most profound of our ideological writers, and to the volume particularly
which treats of grammar, I find what I suppose to be the correct doctrine
of the case. Omitting unnecessary words to abridge writing, I copy what
he says: "Il y a des langues qui par certains changemens de desinence,
appellés _cas_, indiquent quelquesuns des rapports des noms avec d'autres
noms; mais beaucoup de langues n'ont point de cas; et celles qui en ont,
n'en ont qu'un petit nombre, tandis que les divers rapports qu'une idée
peut avoir avec une autre sont extrêmement multipliés: ainsi, les cas
ne peuvent exprimer qu'en general, les principaux de ces rapports. Aussi
dans toutes les langues, meme dans celles qui out des _cas_, on a senti
le besoin de mots distincts, separés des autres, et expressement destinés
à cet usage; ils ce qu'on appelle des prepositions." 2 Tracy Elemens
d'Ideologie, c. 3, § 5, p. 114, and he names the Basque and Peruvian
languages, whose nouns have such various changes of termination as to
express all the relations which other languages express by prepositions,
and therefore having no prepositions. On this ground, I suppose, then,
we may rest the question of the Greek ablative. It leaves with me a
single difficulty only, to-wit: the instances where they have given the
ablative signification to the dative termination, some of which I quoted
in my former letter to you.
I have just received a letter from Coray, at Paris, of the 28th December,
in which he confirms the late naval success of the Greeks, but expresses
a melancholy fear for his nation, "qui a montré jusqu'á ce moment des
prodiges de valeur, mais qui, delivrée d'un joug de Cannibass, ne peut
encore posseder ni les leçons d'instruction, ni celles de l'expérience."
I confess I have the same fears for our South American brethren; the
qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are
the result of habit and long training, and for these they will require
time and probably much suffering.
I salute you with assurances of great esteem and respect.
TO EDWARD LIVINGSTON.
MONTICELLO, April 4, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--It was with great pleasure I learned that the good people
of New Orleans had restored you again to the councils of our country. I
did not doubt the aid it would bring to the remains of our old school in
Congress, in which your early labors had been so useful. You will find,
I suppose, on revisiting our maritime States, the names of things more
changed than the things themselves; that though our old opponents have
given up their appellation, they have not, in assuming ours, abandoned
their views, and that they are as strong nearly as they ever were. These
cares, however, are no longer mine. I resign myself cheerfully to the
managers of the ship, and the more contentedly, as I am near the end
of my voyage. I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of
human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions.
The radical idea of the character of the constitution of our government,
which I have adopted as a key in cases of doubtful construction, is,
that the whole field of government is divided into two departments,
domestic and foreign, (the States in their mutual relations being of
the latter;) that the former department is reserved exclusively to the
respective States within their own limits, and the latter assigned to
a separate set of functionaries, constituting what may be called the
foreign branch, which, instead of a federal basis, is established as
a distinct government _quoad hoc_, acting as the domestic branch does
on the citizens directly and coercively; that these departments have
distinct directories, co-ordinate, and equally independent and supreme,
each within its own sphere of action. Whenever a doubt arises to which
of these branches a power belongs, I try it by this test. I recollect
no case where a question simply between citizens of the same State, has
been transferred to the foreign department, except that of inhibiting
tenders but of metallic money, and _ex post facto_ legislation. The
causes of these singularities are well remembered.
I thank you for the copy of your speech on the question of national
improvement, which I have read with great pleasure, and recognize in it
those powers of reasoning and persuasion of which I had formerly seen
from you so many proofs. Yet, in candor, I must say it has not removed,
in my mind, all the difficulties of the question. And I should really be
alarmed at a difference of opinion with you, and suspicious of my own,
were it not that I have, as companions in sentiments, the Madisons, the
Monroes, the Randolphs, the Macons, all good men and true, of primitive
principles. In one sentiment of the speech I particularly concur. "If we
have a doubt relative to any power, we ought not to exercise it." When
we consider the extensive and deep-seated opposition to this assumption,
the conviction entertained by so many, that this deduction of powers by
elaborate construction prostrates the rights reserved to the States, the
difficulties with which it will rub along in the course of its exercise;
that changes of majorities will be changing the system backwards and
forwards, so that no undertaking under it will be safe; that there is
not a State in the Union which would not give the power willingly, by
way of amendment, with some little guard, perhaps, against abuse; I
cannot but think it would be the wisest course to ask an express grant
of the power. A government held together by the bands of reason only,
requires much compromise of opinion; that things even salutary should
not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when
they may be put into a form to be willingly swallowed, and that a great
deal of indulgence is necessary to strengthen habits of harmony and
fraternity. In such a case, it seems to me it would be safer and wiser
to ask an express grant of the power. This would render its exercise
smooth and acceptable to all, and insure to it all the facilities which
the States could contribute, to prevent that kind of abuse which all
will fear, because all know it is so much practised in public bodies, I
mean the bartering of votes. It would reconcile every one, if limited
by the proviso, that the federal proportion of each State should be
expended within the State. With this single security against partiality
and corrupt bargaining, I suppose there is not a State, perhaps not a
man in the Union, who would not consent to add this to the powers of the
general government. But age has weaned me from questions of this kind.
My delight is now in the passive occupation of reading; and it is with
great reluctance I permit my mind ever to encounter subjects of difficult
investigation. You have many years yet to come of vigorous activity, and
I confidently trust they will be employed in cherishing every measure
which may foster our brotherly union, and perpetuate a constitution of
government destined to be the primitive and precious model of what is
to change the condition of man over the globe. With this confidence,
equally strong in your powers and purposes, I pray you to accept the
assurance of my cordial esteem and respect.
TO JOHN HAMPDEN PLEASANTS.
MONTICELLO, April 19, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I received in due time your favor of the 12th, requesting
my opinion on the proposition to call a convention for amending the
constitution of the State. That this should not be perfect cannot be
a subject of wonder, when it is considered that ours was not only the
first of the American States, but the first nation in the world, at
least within the records of history, which peaceably by its wise men,
formed on free deliberation, a constitution of government for itself, and
deposited it in writing, among their archives, always ready and open to
the appeal of every citizen. The other States, who successively formed
constitutions for themselves also, had the benefit of our outline, and
have made on it, doubtless, successive improvements. One in the very
outset, and which has been adopted in every subsequent constitution, was
to lay its foundation in the authority of the nation. To our convention
no special authority had been delegated by the people to form a permanent
constitution, over which their successors in legislation should have no
powers of alteration. They had been elected for the ordinary purposes of
legislation only, and at a time when the establishment of a new government
had not been proposed or contemplated. Although, therefore, they gave
to this act the title of a constitution, yet it could be no more than
an act of legislation subject, as their other acts were, to alteration
by their successors. It has been said, indeed, that the acquiescence of
the people supplied the want of original power. But it is a dangerous
lesson to say to them "whenever your functionaries exercise unlawful
authority over you, if you do not go into actual resistance, it will be
deemed acquiescence and confirmation." How long had we acquiesced under
usurpations of the British parliament? Had that confirmed them in right,
and made our revolution a wrong? Besides, no authority has yet decided
whether this resistance must be instantaneous; when the right to resist
ceases, or whether it has yet ceased? Of the twenty-four States now
organized, twenty-three have disapproved our doctrine and example, and
have deemed the authority of their people a necessary foundation for a
constitution.
Another defect which has been corrected by most of the States is, that
the basis of our constitution is in opposition to the principle of equal
political rights, refusing to all but freeholders any participation in
the natural right of self-government. It is believed, for example, that a
very great majority of the militia, on whom the burthen of military duty
was imposed in the late war, were men unrepresented in the legislation
which imposed this burthen on them. However nature may by mental or
physical disqualifications have marked infants and the weaker sex for
the protection, rather than the direction of government, yet among the
men who either pay or fight for their country, no line of right can
be drawn. The exclusion of a majority of our freemen from the right of
representation is merely arbitrary, and an usurpation of the minority
over the majority; for it is believed that the non-freeholders compose
the majority of our free and adult male citizens.
And even among our citizens who participate in the representative
privilege, the equality of political rights is entirely prostrated by our
constitution. Upon which principle of right or reason can any one justify
the giving to every citizen of Warwick as much weight in the government
as to twenty-two equal citizens in Loudon, and similar inequalities among
the other counties? If these fundamental principles are of no importance
in actual government, then no principles are important, and it is as
well to rely on the dispositions of an administration; good or evil, as
on the provisions of a constitution.
I shall not enter into the details of smaller defects, although others
there doubtless are, the reformation of some of which might very much
lessen the expenses of government, improve its organization, and add
to the wisdom and purity of its administration in all its parts; but
these things I leave to others, not permitting myself to take sides
in the political questions of the day. I willingly acquiesce in the
institutions of my country, perfect or imperfect; and think it a duty
to leave their modifications to those who are to live under them, and
are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. The present
generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has
exercised for itself. And those in the full vigor of body and mind are
more able to judge for themselves than those who are sinking under the
wane of both. If the sense of our citizens on the question of a convention
can be fairly and fully taken, its result will, I am sure, be wise and
salutary; and far from arrogating the office of advice, no one will
more passively acquiesce in it than myself. Retiring, therefore, to the
tranquillity called for by increasing years and debility, I wish not to
be understood as intermeddling in this question; and to my prayers for
the general good, I have only to add assurances to yourself of my great
esteem.
TO MR. DAVID HARDING, PRESIDENT OF THE JEFFERSON DEBATING SOCIETY OF
HINGHAM.
MONTICELLO, April 20, 1824.
SIR.--I have duly received your favor of the 6th instant, informing
me of the institution of a debating society in Hingham, composed of
adherents to the republican principles of the revolution; and I am justly
sensible of the honor done my name by associating it with the title of
the society. The object of the society is laudable, and in a republican
nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion, and not
by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this
line, antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; and he
who studies and imitates them most nearly, will nearest approach the
perfection of the art. Among these I should consider the speeches of
Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent specimens of logic, taste,
and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leaves
not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice
of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men,
disgusting and revolting instead of persuading. Speeches measured by
the hour, die with the hour. I will not, however, further indulge the
disposition of the age to sermonize, and especially to those surrounded by
so much better advice. With my apologies, therefore, for hazarding even
these observations, and my prayers for the success of your institution,
be pleased to accept for the society and yourself the assurances of my
high consideration.
TO RICHARD RUSH.
MONTICELLO, April 26, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I have heretofore informed you that our legislature had
undertaken the establishment of an University in Virginia; that it was
placed in my neighborhood, and under the direction of a board of seven
visitors, of whom I am one, Mr. Madison another, and others equally
worthy of confidence. We have been four or five years engaged in erecting
our buildings, all of which are now ready to receive their tenants, one
excepted, which the present season will put into a state for use. The last
session of our legislature had by new donations liberated the revenue of
fifteen M. D. a year, with which they had before endowed the institution,
and we propose to open it the beginning of the next year. We require the
intervening time for seeking out and engaging Professors. As to these we
have determined to receive no one who is not of the first order of science
in his line; and as such in every branch cannot be obtained with us, we
propose to seek some of them at least in the countries ahead of us in
science, and preferably in Great Britain, the land of our own language,
habits and manners. But how to find out those who are of the first grade
of science, of sober correct habits and morals, harmonizing tempers,
talents for communication, is the difficulty. Our first step is to send
a special agent to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh,
to make the selection for us; and the person appointed for this office
is the gentleman who will hand you this letter,--Mr. Francis Walker
Gilmer,--the best-educated subject we have raised since the revolution,
highly qualified in all the important branches of science, professing
particularly that of the law, which he has practised some years at our
Supreme Court with good success and flattering prospects. His morals, his
amiable temper and discretion, will do justice to any confidence you may
be willing to place in him, for I commit him to you as his mentor and
guide in the business he goes on. We do not certainly expect to obtain
such known characters as were the Cullens, the Robertsons and Porsons of
Great Britain, men of the first eminence established there in reputation
and office, and with emoluments not to be bettered anywhere. But we know
that there is another race treading on their heels, preparing to take
their places, and as well and sometimes better qualified to fill them.
These while unsettled, surrounded by a crowd of competitors, of equal
claims and perhaps superior credit and interest, may prefer a comfortable
certainty here for an uncertain hope there, and a lingering delay even
of that. From this description we expect we may draw professors equal
to those of the highest name. The difficulty is to distinguish them;
for we are told that so overcharged are all branches of business in
that country, and such the difficulty of getting the means of living,
that it is deemed allowable in ethics for even the most honorable minds
to give highly exaggerated recommendations and certificates to enable
a friend or protegé to get into a livelihood; and that the moment our
agent should be known to be on such a mission, he would be overwhelmed
by applications from numerous pretenders, all of whom, worthy or
unworthy, would be supported by such recommendations and such names as
would confound all discrimination. On this head our trust and hope is in
you. Your knowledge of the state of things, your means of finding out a
character or two at each place, truly trustworthy, and into whose hands
you can commit our agent with entire safety, for information, caution
and co-operation, induces me to request your patronage and aid in our
endeavors to obtain such men, and such only as will fulfil our views.
An unlucky selection in the outset would forever blast our prospects.
From our information of the character of the different Universities, we
expect we should go to Oxford for our classical professor, to Cambridge
for those of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and Natural History, and to
Edinburgh for a professor of Anatomy, and the elements or outlines only of
Medicine. We have still our eye on Mr. Blaetterman for the professorship
of modern languages, and Mr. Gilmer is instructed to engage him, if no
very material objection to him may have arisen unknown to us. We can
place in Mr. Gilmer's hands but a moderate sum at present for merely
text books to begin with, and for indispensable articles of apparatus,
Mathematical, Astronomical, Physical, Chemical and Anatomical. We are in
the hope of a sum of $50,000, as soon as we can get a settlement passed
through the public offices. My experience in dealing with the bookseller
Lackington, on your recommendation, has induced me to recommend him
to Mr. Gilmer, and if we can engage his fidelity, we may put into his
hands the larger supply of books when we are ready to call for it, and
particularly what we shall propose to seek in England.
Although I have troubled you with many particulars, I yet leave abundance
for verbal explanation with Mr. Gilmer, who possesses a full knowledge
of everything, and our full confidence in everything. He takes with him
plans of our establishment, which we think it may be encouraging to show
to the persons to whom he will make propositions, as well to let them see
the comforts provided for themselves, as to show by the extensiveness
and expense of the scale, that it is no ephemeral thing to which they
are invited.
With my earnest solicitations that you will give us all your aid in an
undertaking on which we rest the hopes and happiness of our country,
accept the assurances of my sincere friendship, attachment and respect.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.
MONTICELLO, May 16, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 5th, from Williamsburg, has been duly
received, and presents to us a case of pregnant character, admitting
important issues, and requiring serious consideration and conduct; yet
I am more inclined to view it with hope than dismay. It involves two
questions. First. Shall the college of William and Mary be removed?
Second. To what place? As to the first, I never doubted the lawful
authority of the legislature over the college, as being a public
institution and endowed from the public property, by public agents for
that function, and for public purposes. Some have doubted this authority
without a relinquishment of what they call a vested right by the body
corporate. But as their voluntary relinquishment is a circumstance of the
case, it is relieved from that doubt. I certainly never wished that my
venerable _alma mater_ should be disturbed. I considered it as an actual
possession of that ancient and earliest settlement of our forefathers,
and was disposed to see it yielded as a courtesy, rather than taken as a
right. They, however, are free to renounce a benefit, and we to receive
it. Had we dissolved it on the principle of right, to give a direction
to its funds more useful to the public, the professors, although their
chartered tenure is during pleasure only, might have reasonably expected
a vale of a year or two's salary, as an intermediate support, until they
could find other employment for their talents. And notwithstanding that
their abandonment is voluntary, this should still be given them. On this
first question I think we should be absolutely silent and passive, taking
no part in it until the old institution is loosened from its foundation
and fairly placed on its wheels.
2. On the second question, to what place shall it be moved? we may take
the field boldly. Richmond, it seems, claims it, but on what ground of
advantage to the public? When the professors, their charter and funds
shall be translated to Richmond, will they become more enlightened there
than at the old place? Will they possess more science? be more capable
of communicating it? or more competent to raise it from the dead, in
a new sect, than to keep it alive in the ancient one? Or has Richmond
any peculiarities more favorable for the communication of the sciences
generally than the place which the legislature has preferred and fixed on
for that purpose? This will not be pretended. But it seems they possess
advantages for a medical school. Let us scan them. Anatomy may be as
competently taught at the University as at Richmond, the only subjects
of discretion which either place can count on are equally acquirable
at both. And as to medicine, whatever can be learned from lectures
or books, may be taught at the University of Virginia as well as at
Richmond, or even at Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, with
the inestimable additional advantage of acquiring, at the same time, the
kindred sciences by attending the other schools. But Richmond thinks it
can have a hospital which will furnish subjects for the clinical branch of
medicine. The classes of people which furnish subjects for the hospitals
of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, do not exist at Richmond.
The shipping constantly present at those places, furnish many patients.
Is there a ship at Richmond? The class of white servants in those cities
which is numerous and penniless, and whose regular resource in sickness
is always the hospital, constitutes the great body of their patients;
this class does not exist at Richmond. The servants there are slaves,
whose masters are by law obliged to take care of them in sickness as in
health, and who could not be admitted into a hospital. These resources,
then, being null, the free inhabitants alone remain for a hospital at
Richmond. And I will ask how many families in Richmond would send their
husbands, wives, or children to a hospital, in sickness, to be attended by
nurses hardened by habit against the feelings of pity, to lie in public
rooms harassed by the cries and sufferings of disease under every form,
alarmed by the groans of the dying, exposed as a corpse to be lectured
over by a clinical professor, to be crowded and handled by his students
to hear their case learnedly explained to them, its threatening symptoms
developed, and its probable termination foreboded? In vindication of
Richmond, I may surely answer that there is not in the place a family
so heartless, as, relinquishing their own tender cares of a child or
parent, to abandon them in sickness to this last resource of poverty;
for it is poverty alone which peoples hospitals, and those alone who
are on the charities of their parish would go to their hospital. Have
they paupers enough to fill a hospital? and sickness enough among these?
One reason alleged for the removal of the college to Richmond is that
Williamsburg is sickly, is happily little apt for the situation of a
hospital. No Sir; Richmond is no place to furnish subjects for clinical
lectures. I have always had Norfolk in view for this purpose. The climate
and pontine country around Norfolk render it truly sickly in itself.
It is, moreover, the rendezvous not only of the shipping of commerce,
but of the vessels of the public navy. The United States have there
a hospital already established, and supplied with subjects from these
local circumstances. I had thought and have mentioned to yourself and
our colleagues, that when our medical school has got well under way,
we should propose to the federal government the association with that
establishment, and at our own expense, of the clinical branch of our
medical school, so that our students, after qualifying themselves with
the other branches of the science here, might complete their course of
preparation by attending clinical lectures for six or twelve months at
Norfolk.
But Richmond has another claim, _as being the seat of government_. The
indisposition of Richmond towards our University has not been unfelt.
But would it not be wiser in them to rest satisfied with the government
and their local academy? Can they afford, on the question of a change of
the seat of government, by hostilizing the middle counties, to transfer
them from the eastern to the western interest? To make it their interest
to withdraw from the former that ground of claim, if used for adversary
purposes? With things as they are, let both parties remain content and
united.
If, then, William and Mary is to be removed, and not to Richmond, can
there be two opinions how its funds are to be directed to the best
advantage for the public? When it was found that that seminary was
entirely ineffectual towards the object of public education, and that one
on a better plan, and in a better situation, must be provided, what was
so obvious as to employ for that purpose the funds of the one abandoned,
with what more would be necessary, to raise the new establishment?
And what so obvious as to do now what might reasonably have been done
then, by consolidating together the institutions and their funds? The
plan sanctioned by the legislature required for our University ten
professors, but the funds appropriated will maintain but eight, and
some of these are consequently over-burthened with duties; the hundred
thousand dollars of principal which you say still remains to William
and Mary, by its interest of six thousand dollars, would give us the two
deficient professors, with an annual surplus for the purchase of books;
and certainly the legislature will see no public interest, after the
expense incurred on the new establishment, in setting up a rival in the
city of Richmond; they cannot think it better to have two institutions
crippling one another, than one of healthy powers, competent to that
highest grade of instruction which neither, with a divided support,
could expect to attain.
Another argument may eventually arise in favor of consolidation. The
contingent gift at the late session, of fifty thousand dollars, for books
and apparatus, shows a sense in the legislature that those objects are
still to be provided. If we fail in obtaining that sum, they will feel
an incumbency to provide it otherwise. What so ready as the derelict
capital of William and Mary, and the large library they uselessly
possess? Should that college then be removed, I cannot doubt that the
legislature, keeping in view its original object, will consolidate it
with the University.
But it will not be removed. Richmond is doubtless in earnest, but that the
visitors should concur is impossible. The professors are the prime-movers,
and do not mean exactly what they propose. They hold up this raw-head
and bloody-bones _in terrorem_ to us, to force us to receive them into
our institution. Men who have degraded and foundered the vessel whose
helm was entrusted to them, want now to force their incompetence on us.
I know none of them personally, but judge of them from the fact and the
opinion I hear from every one acquainted with the case, that it has been
destroyed by their incompetence and mis-management. Until the death of
Bishop Madison, it kept at its usual stand of about eighty students. It
is now dwindled to about twenty, and the professors acknowledge that on
opening our doors, theirs may be shut. Their funds in that case, would
certainly be acceptable and salutary to us. But not with the incubus of
their faculty. When they find that their feint gives us no alarm, they
will retract, will recall their grammar school, make their college useful
as a sectional school of preparation for the University, and teach the
languages, surveying, navigation, plane trigonometry, and such other
elements of science as will be useful to many whose views do not call
for a university education.
I will only add to this long letter an opinion that we had better say
as little as we can on this whole subject; give them no alarm; let them
petition for the removal; let them get the old structure completely on
wheels, and not till then put in our claim to its reception. I shall
communicate your letter, as you request, to Mr. Madison, and with it
this answer. Why can you not call on us on your way to Warminster, and
make this a subject of conversation? With my devoted respects to Mrs.
Cabell, assure her that she can be nowhere more cordially received than
by the family of Monticello. And the deviation from your direct road is
too small to merit consideration. Ever and affectionately your friend
and servant.
TO MAJOR JOHN CARTWRIGHT.
MONTICELLO, June 5, 1824.
DEAR AND VENERABLE SIR,--I am much indebted for your kind letter
of February the 29th, and for your valuable volume on the English
constitution. I have read this with pleasure and much approbation, and
think it has deduced the constitution of the English nation from its
rightful root, the Anglo-Saxon. It is really wonderful, that so many able
and learned men should have failed in their attempts to define it with
correctness. No wonder then, that Paine, who thought more than he read,
should have credited the great authorities who have declared, that the
will of parliament is the constitution of England. So Marbois, before
the French revolution, observed to me, that the Almanac Royal was the
constitution of France. Your derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons,
seems to be made on legitimate principles. Having driven out the former
inhabitants of that part of the island called England, they became
aborigines as to you, and your lineal ancestors. They doubtless had a
constitution; and although they have not left it in a written formula,
to the precise text of which you may always appeal, yet they have left
fragments of their history and laws, from which it may be inferred
with considerable certainty. Whatever their history and laws show to
have been practised with approbation, we may presume was permitted by
their constitution; whatever was not so practiced, was not permitted.
And although this constitution was violated and set at naught by Norman
force, yet force cannot change right. A perpetual claim was kept up by the
nation, by their perpetual demand of a restoration of their Saxon laws,
which shows they were never relinquished by the will of the nation. In
the pullings and haulings for these ancient rights, between the nation,
and its kings of the races of Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts, there
was sometimes gain, and sometimes loss, until the final re-conquest of
their rights from the Stuarts. The destitution and expulsion of this
race broke the thread of pretended inheritance, extinguished all regal
usurpations, and the nation re-entered into all its rights; and although
in their bill of rights they specifically reclaimed some only, yet the
omission of the others was no renunciation of the right to assume their
exercise also, whenever occasion should occur. The new King received
no rights or powers, but those expressly granted to him. It has ever
appeared to me, that the difference between the whig and the tory of
England is, that the whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source,
and the tory from the Norman. And Hume, the great apostle of toryism,
says, in so many words, note AA to chapter 42, that, in the reign of
the Stuarts, "it was the people who encroached upon the sovereign, not
the sovereign who attempted, as is pretended, to usurp upon the people."
This supposes the Norman usurpations to be rights in his successors. And
again, C, 159, "the commons established a principle, which is noble in
itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history and experience,
_that the people are the origin of all just power_." And where else will
this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the
origin of _just_ powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it
be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?
Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It presented us
an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no
occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or
to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry.
We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts.
Yet we did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position.
We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to
assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had
entered little into our former education. We established however some,
although not all its important principles. The constitutions of most of
our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they
may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves
competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative,
and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any
fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally
chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that
they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of
property, and freedom of the press. In the structure of our legislatures,
we think experience has proved the benefit of subjecting questions to
two separate bodies of deliberants; but in constituting these, natural
right has been mistaken, some making one of these bodies, and some both,
the representatives of property instead of persons; whereas the double
deliberation might be as well obtained without any violation of true
principle, either by requiring a greater age in one of the bodies, or by
electing a proper number of representatives of persons, dividing them by
lots into two chambers, and renewing the division at frequent intervals,
in order to break up all cabals. Virginia, of which I am myself a native
and resident, was not only the first of the States, but, I believe I may
say, the first of the nations of the earth, which assembled its wise men
peaceably together to form a fundamental constitution, to commit it to
writing, and place it among their archives, where every one should be
free to appeal to its text. But this act was very imperfect. The other
States, as they proceeded successively to the same work, made successive
improvements; and several of them, still further corrected by experience,
have, by conventions, still further amended their first forms. My own
State has gone on so far with its _premiere ebauche_; but it is now
proposing to call a convention for amendment. Among other improvements,
I hope they will adopt the subdivision of our counties into wards.
The former may be estimated at an average of twenty-four miles square;
the latter should be about six miles square each, and would answer to
the hundreds of your Saxon Alfred. In each of these might be, 1st. An
elementary school; 2d. A company of militia, with its officers; 3d. A
justice of the peace and constable; 4th. Each ward should take care of
their own poor; 5th. Their own roads; 6th. Their own police; 7th. Elect
within themselves one or more jurors to attend the courts of justice;
and 8th. Give in at their Folk-house, their votes for all functionaries
reserved to their election. Each ward would thus be a small republic
within itself, and every man in the State would thus become an acting
member of the common government, transacting in person a great portion of
its rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely
within his competence. The wit of man cannot devise a more solid basis
for a free, durable and well-administered republic.
With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their
relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose
the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are
co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. To the State
governments are reserved all legislation and administration, in affairs
which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government
is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States;
these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the
other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control
over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two
exceptions only to this partition of power. But, you may ask, if the
two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where is
the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little
importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them
aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor
compromised, a convention of the States must be called, to ascribe the
doubtful power to that department which they may think best. You will
perceive by these details, that we have not yet so far perfected our
constitutions as to venture to make them unchangeable. But still, in
their present state, we consider them not otherwise changeable than by
the authority of the people, on a special election of representatives
for that purpose expressly: they are until then the _lex legum_.
But can they be made unchangeable? Can one generation bind another, and
all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the
earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong
to persons, not to things, not to mere matter, unendowed with will. The
dead are not even things. The particles of matter which composed their
bodies, make part now of the bodies of other animals, vegetables, or
minerals, of a thousand forms. To what then are attached the rights and
powers they held while in the form of men? A generation may bind itself
as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared,
another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their
predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions
to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and
unalienable rights of man.
I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction, at length, of
the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges
have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part
of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced,
is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the
Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard
the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had
ever existed. But it may amuse you, to show when, and by what means,
they stole this law in upon us. In a case of _quare impedit_ in the
Year-book 34, II, 6, folio 38, (anno 1458,) a question was made, how
far the ecclesiastical law was to be respected in a common law court?
And Prisot, Chief Justice, gives his opinion in these words: "A tiel
leis qu'ils de seint eglise ont en _ancien scripture_, covient à nous
à donner credence; car ceo common ley sur quels touts manners leis sont
fondés. Et auxy, Sir, nous sumus oblègés de conustre lour ley de saint
eglise; et semblablement ils sont obligés de consustre nostre ley. Et,
Sir, si poit apperer or à nous que l'evesque ad fait come un ordinary
fera en tiel cas, adong nous devons cee adjuger bon, ou auterment nemy,"
&c. See S. C. Fitzh. Abr. Qu. imp. 89, Bro. Abr. Qu. imp. 12. Finch in
his first book, c. 3, is the first afterwards who quotes this case and
mistakes it thus: "To such laws of the church as have warrant in _holy
scripture_, our law giveth credence." And cites Prisot; mistranslating
"_ancien scripture_," into "_holy scripture_." Whereas Prisot palpably
says, "to such laws as those of holy church have in _ancient writing_,
it is proper for us to give credence," to wit, to their _ancient written_
laws. This was in 1613, a century and a half after the dictum of Prisot.
Wingate, in 1658, erects this false translation into a maxim of the common
law, copying the words of Finch, but citing Prisot, Wing. Max. 3. And
Sheppard, title, "Religion," in 1675, copies the same mistranslation,
quoting the Y. B. Finch and Wingate. Hale expresses it in these words:
"Christianity is parcel of the laws of England." 1 Ventr. 293, 3 Keb.
607. But he quotes no authority. By these echoings and re-echoings from
one to another, it had become so established in 1728, that in the case
of the King vs. Woolston, 2 Stra. 834, the court would not suffer it
to be debated, whether to write against Christianity was punishable in
the temporal court at common law? Wood, therefore, 409, ventures still
to vary the phrase, and say, that all blasphemy and profaneness are
offences by the common law; and cites 2 Stra. Then Blackstone, in 1763,
IV. 59, repeats the words of Hale, that "Christianity is part of the laws
of England," citing Ventris and Strange. And finally, Lord Mansfield,
with a little qualification, in Evans' case, in 1767, says, that "the
essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law."
Thus ingulphing Bible, Testament and all into the common law, without
citing any authority. And thus we find this chain of authorities hanging
link by link, one upon another, and all ultimately on one and the same
hook, and that a mistranslation of the words "_ancien scripture_," used
by Prisot. Finch quotes Prisot; Wingate does the same. Sheppard quotes
Prisot, Finch and Wingate. Hale cites nobody. The court in Woolston's
case, cites Hale. Wood cites Woolston's case. Blackstone quotes Woolston's
case and Hale. And Lord Mansfield, like Hale, ventures it on his own
authority. Here I might defy the best-read lawyer to produce another
scrip of authority for this judiciary forgery; and I might go on further
to show, how some of the Anglo-Saxon priests interpolated into the text
of Alfred's laws, the 20th, 21st, 22d, and 23d chapters of Exodus, and
the 15th of the Acts of the Apostles, from the 23d to the 29th verses.
But this would lead my pen and your patience too far. What a conspiracy
this, between Church and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all,
Sing Tantarara, rogues all!
I must still add to this long and rambling letter, my acknowledgments
for your good wishes to the University we are now establishing in this
State. There are some novelties in it. Of that of a professorship of
the principles of government, you express your approbation. They will be
founded in the rights of man. That of agriculture, I am sure, you will
approve; and that also of Anglo-Saxon. As the histories and laws left us
in that type and dialect, must be the text books of the reading of the
learners, they will imbibe with the language their free principles of
government. The volumes you have been so kind as to send, shall be placed
in the library of the University. Having at this time in England a person
sent for the purpose of selecting some Professors, a Mr. Gilmer of my
neighborhood, I cannot but recommend him to your patronage, counsel and
guardianship, against imposition, misinformation, and the deceptions of
partial and false recommendations, in the selection of characters. He is
a gentleman of great worth and correctness, my particular friend, well
educated in various branches of science, and worthy of entire confidence.
Your age of eighty-four and mine of eighty-one years, insure us a speedy
meeting. We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and
evil which, in the course of our long lives, we have both witnessed; and
in the meantime, I pray you to accept assurances of my high veneration
and esteem for your person and character.
TO MARTIN VAN BUREN.
MONTICELLO, June 29, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for Mr. Pickering's elaborate philippic
against Mr. Adams, Gerry, Smith, and myself; and I have delayed the
acknowledgment until I could read it and make some observations on it.
I could not have believed, that for so many years, and to such a period of
advanced age, he could have nourished passions so vehement and viperous.
It appears, that for thirty-years past, he has been industriously
collecting materials for vituperating the characters he had marked for his
hatred; some of whom, certainly, if enmities towards him had ever existed,
had forgotten them all, or buried them in the grave with themselves. As
to myself, there never had been anything personal between us, nothing but
the general opposition of party sentiment; and our personal intercourse
had been that of urbanity, as himself says. But it seems he has been all
this time brooding over an enmity which I had never felt, and that with
respect to myself, as well as others, he has been writing far and near,
and in every direction, to get hold of original letters, where he could,
copies, where he could not, certificates and journals, catching at every
gossiping story he could hear of in any quarter, supplying by suspicions
what he could find nowhere else, and then arguing on this motley farrago,
as if established on gospel evidence. And while expressing his wonder,
that "at the age of eighty-eight, the strong passions of Mr. Adams should
not have cooled;" that on the contrary, "they had acquired the mastery
of his soul," (p. 100;) that "where these were enlisted, no reliance
could be placed on his statements," (p. 104;) the facility and little
truth with which he could represent facts and occurrences, concerning
persons who were the objects of his hatred, (p. 3;) that "he is capable
of making the grossest misrepresentations, and, from detached facts,
and often from bare suspicions, of drawing unwarrantable inferences,
if suited to his purpose at the instant," (p. 171;) while making such
charges, I say, on Mr. Adams, instead of his "_ecce homo_" (p. 100;) how
justly might we say to him, "_mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur_." For
the assiduity and industry he has employed in his benevolent researches
after matter of crimination against us, I refer to his pages 13, 14,
34, 36, 46, 71, 79, 90, bis. 92, 93, bis. 101, ter. 104, 116, 118, 141,
143, 146, 150, 151, 153, 168, 171, 172. That Mr. Adams' strictures on
him, written and printed, should have excited some notice on his part,
was not perhaps to be wondered at. But the sufficiency of his motive for
the large attack on me may be more questionable. He says, (p. 4) "of Mr.
Jefferson I should have said nothing, but for his letter to Mr. Adams,
of October the 12th, 1823." Now the object of that letter was to soothe
the feelings of a friend, wounded by a publication which I thought an
"outrage on private confidence." Not a word or allusion in it respecting
Mr. Pickering, nor was it suspected that it would draw forth his pen in
justification of this infidelity, which he has, however, undertaken in
the course of his pamphlet, but more particularly in its conclusion.
He arraigns me on two grounds, my actions and my motives. The very
actions, however, which he arraigns, have been such as the great majority
of my fellow citizens have approved. The approbation of Mr. Pickering,
and of those who thought with him, I had no right to expect. My motives
he chooses to ascribe to hypocrisy, to ambition, and a passion for
popularity. Of these the world must judge between us. It is no office
of his or mine. To that tribunal I have ever submitted my actions and
motives, without ransacking the Union for certificates, letters, journals,
and gossiping tales, to justify myself and weary them. Nor shall I do
this on the present occasion, but leave still to them these antiquated
party diatribes, now newly revamped and paraded, as if they had not been
already a thousand times repeated, refuted, and adjudged against him,
by the nation itself. If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which
malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous
action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour himself. But he has
taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to him
who can alone see into them.
But whilst I leave to its fate the libel of Mr. Pickering, with the
thousands of others like it, to which I have given no other answer than
a steady course of similar action, there are two facts or fancies of his
which I must set to rights. The one respects Mr. Adams, the other myself.
He observes that my letter of October the 12th, 1823, acknowledges the
receipt of one from Mr. Adams, of September the 18th, which, having
been written a few days after Cunningham's publication, he says was
no doubt written to apologize to me for the pointed reproaches he had
uttered against me in his confidential letters to Cunningham. And thus
having "no doubt" of his conjecture, he considers it as proven, goes
on to suppose the contents of the letter, (19, 22,) makes it place Mr.
Adams at my feet suing for pardon, and continues to rant upon it, as an
undoubted fact. Now, I do most solemnly declare, that so far from being
a letter of apology, as Mr. Pickering so undoubtedly assumes, there was
not a word or allusion in it respecting Cunningham's publication.
The other allegation respecting myself, is equally false. In page 34,
he quotes Doctor Stuart as having, twenty years ago, informed him that
General Washington, "when he became a private citizen," called me to
account for expressions in a letter to Mazzei, requiring, in a tone of
unusual severity, an explanation of that letter. He adds of himself, "in
what manner the latter humbled himself and appeased the just resentment
of Washington, will never be made known, as some time after his death the
correspondence was not to be found, and a diary for an important period of
his presidency was also missing." The diary being of transactions during
his presidency, the letter to Mazzei not known here until some time _after
he became a private citizen_, and the pretended correspondence of course
after that, I know not why this lost diary and supposed correspondence
are brought together here, unless for insinuations worthy of the letter
itself. The correspondence could not be found, indeed, because it had
never existed. I do affirm that there never passed a word, written or
verbal, directly or indirectly, between General Washington and myself
on the subject of that letter. He would never have degraded himself so
far as to take to himself the imputation in that letter on the "Samsons
in combat." The whole story is a fabrication, and I defy the framers
of it, and all mankind, to produce a scrip of a pen between General
Washington and myself on the subject, or any other evidence more worthy
of credit than the suspicions, suppositions and presumptions of the two
persons here quoting and quoted for it. With Doctor Stuart I had not much
acquaintance. I supposed him to be an honest man, knew him to be a very
weak one, and, like Mr. Pickering, very prone to antipathies, boiling
with party passions, and under the dominion of these readily welcoming
fancies for facts. But come the story from whomsoever it might, it is
an unqualified falsehood.
This letter to Mazzei has been a precious theme of crimination for federal
malice. It was a long letter of business, in which was inserted a single
paragraph only of political information as to the state of our country.
In this information there was not one word which would not then have
been, or would not now be approved by every republican in the United
States, looking back to those times, as you will see by a faithful copy
now enclosed of the whole of what that letter said on the subject of
the United States, or of its government. This paragraph, extracted and
translated, got into a Paris paper at a time when the persons in power
there were laboring under very general disfavor and their friends were
eager to catch even at straws to buoy them up. To them, therefore, I have
always imputed the interpolation of an entire paragraph additional to
mine, which makes me charge my own country with ingratitude and injustice
to France. There was not a word in my letter respecting France, or any
of the proceedings or relations between this country and that. Yet this
interpolated paragraph has been the burthen of federal calumny, has been
constantly quoted by them, made the subject of unceasing and virulent
abuse, and is still quoted, as you see, by Mr. Pickering, page 33, as if
it were genuine, and really written by me. And even Judge Marshall makes
history descend from its dignity, and the ermine from its sanctity, to
exaggerate, to record, and to sanction this forgery. In the very last
note of his book, he says, "a letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Mazzei,
an Italian, was published in Florence, and re-published in the Moniteur,
with very severe strictures on the conduct of the United States." And
instead of the letter itself, he copies what he says are the remarks
of the editor, which are an exaggerated commentary on the fabricated
paragraph itself, and silently leaves to his reader to make the ready
inference that these were the sentiments of the letter. Proof is the duty
of the affirmative side. A negative cannot be positively proved. But, in
defect of impossible proof of what was not in the original letter, I have
its press-copy still in my possession. It has been shown to several, and
is open to any one who wishes to see it. I have presumed only, that the
interpolation was done in Paris. But I never saw the letter in either
its Italian or French dress, and it may have been done here, with the
commentary handed down to posterity by the Judge. The genuine paragraph,
re-translated through Italian and French into English, as it appeared here
in a federal paper, besides the mutilated hue which these translations
and re-translations of it produced generally, gave a mistranslation of a
single word, which entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant
and fertile text of misrepresentation of my political principles. The
original, speaking of an Anglican, monarchical and aristocratical party,
which had sprung up since he had left us, states their object to be
"to draw over us the substance, as they had already done the _forms_ of
the British Government." Now the "_forms_" here meant, were the levees,
birthdays, the pompous cavalcade to the state house on the meeting of
Congress, the formal speech from the throne, the procession of Congress
in a body to re-echo the speech in an answer, &c., &c. But the translator
here, by substituting _form_ in the singular number, for _forms_ in the
plural, made it mean the frame or organization of our government, or its
form of legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, coördinate and
independent; to which _form_ it was to be inferred that I was an enemy.
In this sense they always quoted it, and in this sense Mr. Pickering
still quotes it, pages 34, 35, 38, and countenances the inference. Now
General Washington perfectly understood what I meant by these forms, as
they were frequent subjects of conversation between us. When, on my return
from Europe, I joined the government in March, 1790, at New York, I was
much astonished, indeed, at the mimicry I found established of royal
forms and ceremonies, and more alarmed at the unexpected phenomenon, by
the monarchical sentiments I heard expressed and openly maintained in
every company, and among others by the high members of the government,
executive and judiciary, (General Washington alone excepted,) and by a
great part of the legislature, save only some members who had been of
the old Congress, and a very few of recent introduction. I took occasion,
at various times, of expressing to General Washington my disappointment
at these symptoms of a change of principle, and that I thought them
encouraged by the forms and ceremonies which I found prevailing, not at
all in character with the simplicity of republican government, and looking
as if wishfully to those of European courts. His general explanations
to me were, that when he arrived at New York to enter on the executive
administration of the new government, he observed to those who were
to assist him that placed as he was in an office entirely new to him,
unacquainted with the forms and ceremonies of other governments, still
less apprized of those which might be properly established here, and
himself perfectly indifferent to all forms, he wished them to consider
and prescribe what they should be; and the task was assigned particularly
to General Knox, a man of parade, and to Colonel Humphreys, who had
resided some time at a foreign court. They, he said, were the authors
of the present regulations, and that others were proposed so highly
strained that he absolutely rejected them. Attentive to the difference of
opinion prevailing on this subject, when the term of his second election
arrived, he called the Heads of departments together, observed to them
the situation in which he had been at the commencement of the government,
the advice he had taken and the course he had observed in compliance
with it; that a proper occasion had now arrived of revising that course,
of correcting it in any particulars not approved in experience; and he
desired us to consult together, agree on any changes we should think
for the better, and that he should willingly conform to what we should
advise. We met at my office. Hamilton and myself agreed at once that
there was too much ceremony for the character of our government, and
particularly, that the parade of the installation at New York ought not to
be copied on the present occasion, that the President should desire the
Chief Justice to attend him at his chambers, that he should administer
the oath of office to him in the presence of the higher officers of the
government, and that the certificate of the fact should be delivered to
the Secretary of State to be recorded. Randolph and Knox differed from
us, the latter vehemently; they thought it not advisable to change any of
the established forms, and we authorized Randolph to report our opinions
to the President. As these opinions were divided, and no positive advice
given as to any change, no change was made. Thus the forms which I had
censured in my letter to Mazzei were perfectly understood by General
Washington, and were those which he himself but barely tolerated. He had
furnished me a proper occasion for proposing their reformation, and my
opinion not prevailing, he knew I could not have meant any part of the
censure for him.
Mr. Pickering quotes, too, (page 34) the expression in the letter, of
"the men who were Samsons in the field, and Solomons in the council, but
who had had their heads shorn by the harlot England;" or, as expressed in
their re-translation, "the men who were Solomons in council, and Samsons
in combat, but whose hair had been cut off by the whore England." Now
this expression also was perfectly understood by General Washington.
He knew that I meant it for the Cincinnati generally, and that from
what had passed between us at the commencement of that institution, I
could not mean to include him. When the first meeting was called for its
establishment, I was a member of the Congress then sitting at Annapolis.
General Washington wrote to me, asking my opinion on that proposition,
and the course, if any, which I thought Congress would observe respecting
it. I wrote him frankly my own disapprobation of it; that I found the
members of Congress generally in the same sentiment; that I thought
they would take no express notice of it, but that in all appointments
of trust, honor, or profit, they would silently pass by all candidates
of that order, and give an uniform preference to others. On his way to
the first meeting in Philadelphia, which I think was in the spring of
1784, he called on me at Annapolis. It was a little after candle-light,
and he sat with me till after midnight, conversing, almost exclusively,
on that subject. While he was feelingly indulgent to the motives which
might induce the officers to promote it, he concurred with me entirely
in condemning it; and when I expressed an idea that if the hereditary
quality were suppressed, the institution might perhaps be indulged during
the lives of the officers now living, and who had actually served; "no,"
he said, "not a fibre of it ought to be left, to be an eye-sore to the
public, a ground of dissatisfaction, and a line of separation between
them and their country;" and he left me with a determination to use
all his influence for its entire suppression. On his return from the
meeting he called on me again, and related to me the course the thing
had taken. He said that from the beginning, he had used every endeavor
to prevail on the officers to renounce the project altogether, urging
the many considerations which would render it odious to their fellow
citizens, and disreputable and injurious to themselves; that he had at
length prevailed on most of the old officers to reject it, although with
great and warm opposition from others, and especially the younger ones,
among whom he named Colonel W. S. Smith as particularly intemperate. But
that in this state of things, when he thought the question safe, and the
meeting drawing to a close, Major L'Enfant arrived from France, with a
bundle of eagles, for which he had been sent there, with letters from
the French officers who had served in America, praying for admission
into the order, and a solemn act of their king permitting them to wear
its ensign. This, he said, changed the face of matters at once, produced
an entire revolution of sentiment, and turned the torrent so strongly in
an opposite direction that it could be no longer withstood; all he could
then obtain was a suppression of the hereditary quality. He added, that
it was the French applications, and respect for the approbation of the
king, which saved the establishment in its modified and temporary form.
Disapproving thus of the institution as much as I did, and conscious
that I knew him to do so, he could never suppose that I meant to include
him among the Samsons in the field, whose object was to draw over us
the _form_, as they made the letter say, of the British government, and
especially its aristocratic member, an hereditary house of lords. Add
to this, that the letter saying "that two out of the three branches
of legislature were against us," was an obvious exception of him; it
being well known that the majorities in the two branches of Senate and
Representatives, were the very instruments which carried, in opposition
to the old and real republicans, the measures which were the subjects
of condemnation in this letter. General Washington then, understanding
perfectly what and whom I meant to designate, in both phrases, and that
they could not have any application or view to himself, could find in
neither any cause of offence to himself; and therefore neither needed, nor
ever asked any explanation of them from me. Had it even been otherwise,
they must know very little of General Washington, who should believe to
be within the laws of his character what Doctor Stuart is said to have
imputed to him. Be this, however, as it may, the story is infamously
false in every article of it. My last parting with General Washington
was at the inauguration of Mr. Adams, in March, 1797, and was warmly
affectionate; and I never had any reason to believe any change on his
part, as there certainly was none on mine. But one session of Congress
intervened between that and his death, the year following, in my passage
to and from which, as it happened to be not convenient to call on him, I
never had another opportunity; and as to the cessation of correspondence
observed during that short interval, no particular circumstance occurred
for epistolary communication, and both of us were too much oppressed
with letter-writing, to trouble, either the other, with a letter about
nothing.
The truth is, that the federalists, pretending to be the exclusive
friends of General Washington, have ever done what they could to sink
his character, by hanging theirs on it, and by representing as the enemy
of republicans him, who, of all men, is best entitled to the appellation
of the father of that republic which they were endeavoring to subvert,
and the republicans to maintain. They cannot deny, because the elections
proclaimed the truth, that the great body of the nation approved the
republican measures. General Washington was himself sincerely a friend
to the republican principles of our constitution. His faith, perhaps,
in its duration, might not have been as confident as mine; but he
repeatedly declared to me, that he was determined it should have a fair
chance for success, and that he would lose the last drop of his blood in
its support, against any attempt which might be made to change it from
its republican form. He made these declarations the oftener, because
he knew my suspicions that Hamilton had other views, and he wished to
quiet my jealousies on this subject. For Hamilton frankly avowed, that
he considered the British constitution, with all the corruptions of its
administration, as the most perfect model of government which had ever
been devised by the wit of man; professing however, at the same time,
that the spirit of this country was so fundamentally republican, that
it would be visionary to think of introducing monarchy here, and that,
therefore, it was the duty of its administrators to conduct it on the
principles their constituents had elected.
General Washington, after the retirement of his first cabinet, and the
composition of his second, entirely federal, and at the head of which
was Mr. Pickering himself, had no opportunity of hearing both sides of
any question. His measures, consequently, took more the hue of the party
in whose hands he was. These measures were certainly not approved by the
republicans; yet were they not imputed to him, but to the counsellors
around him; and his prudence so far restrained their impassioned course
and bias, that no act of strong mark, during the remainder of his
administration, excited much dissatisfaction. He lived too short a time
after, and too much withdrawn from information, to correct the views
into which he had been deluded; and the continued assiduities of the
party drew him into the vortex of their intemperate career; separated
him still farther from his real friends, and excited him to actions
and expressions of dissatisfaction, which grieved them, but could not
loosen their affections from him. They would not suffer the temporary
aberration to weigh against the immeasurable merits of his life; and
although they tumbled his seducers from their places, they preserved his
memory embalmed in their hearts, with undiminished love and devotion;
and there it forever will remain embalmed, in entire oblivion of every
temporary thing which might cloud the glories of his splendid life. It
is vain, then, for Mr. Pickering and his friends to endeavor to falsify
his character, by representing him as an enemy to republicans and
republican principles, and as exclusively the friend of those who were
so; and had he lived longer, he would have returned to his ancient and
unbiased opinions, would have replaced his confidence in those whom the
people approved and supported, and would have seen that they were only
restoring and acting on the principles of his own first administration.
I find, my dear Sir, that I have written you a very long letter, or rather
a history. The civility of having sent me a copy of Mr. Pickering's
diatribe, would scarcely justify its address to you. I do not publish
these things, because my rule of life has been never to harass the
public with fendings and provings of personal slanders; and least of
all would I descend into the arena of slander with such a champion as
Mr. Pickering. I have ever trusted to the justice and consideration of
my fellow citizens, and have no reason to repent it, or to change my
course. At this time of life too, tranquillity is the _summum bonum_.
But although I decline all newspaper controversy, yet when falsehoods
have been advanced, within the knowledge of no one so much as myself,
I have sometimes deposited a contradiction in the hands of a friend,
which, if worth preservation, may, when I am no more, nor those whom I
might offend, throw light on history, and recall that into the path of
truth. And if of no other value, the present communication may amuse
you with anecdotes not known to every one.
I had meant to have added some views on the amalgamation of parties, to
which your favor of the 8th has some allusion; an amalgamation of name,
but not of principle. Tories are tories still, by whatever name they may
be called. But my letter is already too unmercifully long, and I close
it here with assurances of my great esteem and respectful consideration.
TO MR. MADISON.
MONTICELLO, July 14, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I have attentively read your letter to Mr. Wheaton on the
question whether, at the date of the message to Congress recommending the
embargo of 1807, we had knowledge of the order of council of November
11th; and according to your request I have resorted to my papers, as
well as my memory, for the testimony these might afford additional to
yours. There is no fact in the course of my life which I recollect more
strongly, than that of my being at the date of the message in possession
of an English newspaper containing a copy of the proclamation. I am
almost certain, too, that it was under the ordinary authentication of the
government; and between November 11th and December 17th, there was time
enough (thirty-five days) to admit the receipt of such a paper, which I
think came to me through a private channel, probably put on board some
vessel about sailing, the moment it appeared.
Turning to my papers, I find that I had prepared a first draught of a
message in which was this paragraph: "The British regulations had before
reduced us to a direct voyage, to a single port of their enemies, and
it is now believed they will interdict all commerce whatever with them.
A proclamation, too, of that government of----(not officially indeed
communicated to us, yet so given out to the public as to become a rule
of action with them,) seems to have shut the door on all negotiation
with us except as to the single aggression on the Chesapeake." You,
however, suggested a substitute (which I have now before me, written
with a pencil and) which, with some unimportant amendments, I preferred
to my own, and was the one I sent to Congress. It was in these words,
"the _communications_ now made, showing the great and increasing dangers
with which seamen, &c.,----ports of the United States." This shows that
we communicated to them papers of information on the subject; and as it
was our interest, and our duty, to give them the strongest information
we possessed to justify our opinion and their action on it, there can
be no doubt we sent them this identical paper. For what stronger could
we send them? I am the more strengthened in the belief that we did send
it, from the fact, which the newspapers of the day will prove, that in
the reprobations of the measure published in them by its enemies, they
indulged themselves in severe criticisms on our having considered a
newspaper as a proper document to lay before Congress, and a sufficient
foundation for so serious a measure; and considering this as no sufficient
information of the fact, they continued perseveringly to deny that we
had knowledge of the order of council when we recommended the embargo;
admitting, because they could not deny, the existence of the order,
they insisted only on our supposed ignorance of it as furnishing them
a ground of crimination. But I had no idea that this gratuitous charge
was believed by any one at this day. In addition to our testimony, I am
sure Mr. Gallatin, General Dearborne and Mr. Smith, will recollect that
we possessed the newspaper, and acted on a view of the proclamation it
contained. If you think this statement can add anything in corroboration
of yours, make what use you please of it, and accept assurances of my
constant affection and respect.
TO MR. LEWIS E. BECK, ALBANY.
I thank you, Sir, for your pamphlet on the climate of the west, and have
read it with great satisfaction. Although it does not yet establish a
satisfactory theory, it is an additional step towards it. Mine was perhaps
the first attempt, not to form a theory, but to bring together the few
facts then known, and suggest them to public attention. They were written
between forty and fifty years ago, before the close of the revolutionary
war, when the western country was a wilderness, untrodden but by the
foot of the savage or the hunter. It is now flourishing in population
and science, and after a few years more of observation and collection
of facts, they will doubtless furnish a theory of solid foundation.
Years are requisite for this, steady attention to the thermometer, to
the plants growing there, the times of their leafing and flowering, its
animal inhabitants, beasts, birds, reptiles and insects; its prevalent
winds, quantities of rain and snow, temperature of fountains, and other
indexes of climate. We want this indeed for all the States, and the work
should be repeated once or twice in a century, to show the effect of
clearing and culture towards changes of climate. My Notes give a very
imperfect idea of what our climate was, half a century ago, at this
place, which being nearly central to the State may be taken for its
medium. Latterly, after seven years of close and exact observation, I
have prepared an estimate of what it is now, which may some day be added
to the former work; and I hope something like this is doing in the other
States, which, when all shall be brought together, may produce theories
meriting confidence. I trust that yourself will not be inattentive to
this service, and that to that of the present epoch you may be able to
add a second at the distance of another half century. With this wish
accept the assurance of my respectful consideration.
TO H. LEE.
MONTICELLO, August 10, 1824.
SIR,--I have duly received your favor of the 14th, and with it the
prospectus of a newspaper which it covered. If the style and spirit of
that should be maintained in the paper itself, it will be truly worthy
of the public patronage. As to myself, it is many years since I have
ceased to read but a single paper. I am no longer, therefore, a general
subscriber for any other. Yet, to encourage the hopeful in the outset,
I have sometimes subscribed for the first year on condition of being
discontinued at the end of it, without further warning. I do the same
now with pleasure for yours; and unwilling to have outstanding accounts,
which I am liable to forget, I now enclose the price of the tri-weekly
paper. I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider
it as either desirable or useful for the public; but only that, like
religious differences, a difference in politics should never be permitted
to enter into social intercourse, or to disturb its friendships, its
charities, or justice. In that form, they are censors of the conduct of
each other, and useful watchmen for the public. Men by their constitutions
are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust
the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the
higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have
confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and
safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.
In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they
are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call
them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and ultras, whigs and
tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by
whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue
the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the
true one expressing the essence of all. A paper which shall be governed
by the spirit of Mr. Madison's celebrated report, of which you express
in your prospectus so just and high an approbation, cannot be false to
the rights of all classes. The grandfathers of the present generation
of your family I knew well. They were friends and fellow laborers with
me in the same cause and principle. Their descendants cannot follow
better guides. Accept the assurance of my best wishes and respectful
consideration.
TO MR. WM. LUDLOW.
MONTICELLO, September 6, 1824.
SIR,--The idea which you present in your letter of July 30th, of the
progress of society from its rudest state to that it has now attained,
seems conformable to what may be probably conjectured. Indeed, we have
under our eyes tolerable proofs of it. Let a philosophic observer commence
a journey from the savages of the Rocky Mountains, eastwardly towards our
sea-coast. These he would observe in the earliest stage of association
living under no law but that of nature, subscribing and covering
themselves with the flesh and skins of wild beasts. He would next find
those on our frontiers in the pastoral state, raising domestic animals
to supply the defects of hunting. Then succeed our own semi-barbarous
citizens, the pioneers of the advance of civilization, and so in his
progress he would meet the gradual shades of improving man until he
would reach his, as yet, most improved state in our seaport towns. This,
in fact, is equivalent to a survey, in time, of the progress of man
from the infancy of creation to the present day. I am eighty-one years
of age, born where I now live, in the first range of mountains in the
interior of our country. And I have observed this march of civilization
advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light,
increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that
we are at this time more advanced in civilization here than the seaports
were when I was a boy. And where this progress will stop no one can say.
Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of
amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth. You
seem to think that this advance has brought on too complicated a state
of society, and that we should gain in happiness by treading back our
steps a little way. I think, myself, that we have more machinery of
government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor
of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief
of those who maintain it. Your experiment seems to have this in view. A
society of seventy families, the number you name, may very possibly be
governed as a single family, subsisting on their common industry, and
holding all things in common. Some regulators of the family you still
must have, and it remains to be seen at what period of your increasing
population your simple regulations will cease to be sufficient to preserve
order, peace, and justice. The experiment is interesting; I shall not
live to see its issue, but I wish it success equal to your hopes, and
to yourself and society prosperity and happiness.
TO GENERAL LA FAYETTE.
MONTICELLO, October 9, 1824.
I have duly received, my dear friend and General, your letter of the
1st from Philadelphia, giving us the welcome assurance that you will
visit the neighborhood which, during the march of our enemy near it, was
covered by your shield from his robberies and ravages. In passing the
line of your former march you will experience pleasing recollections of
the good you have done. My neighbors, too, of our academical village,
who well remember their obligations to you, have expressed to you, in
a letter from a committee appointed for that purpose, their hope that
you will accept manifestations of their feelings, simple indeed, but as
cordial as any you will have received. It will be an additional honor
to the University of the State that you will have been its first guest.
Gratify them, then, by this assurance to their committee, if it has not
been done. But what recollections, dear friend, will this call up to
you and me! What a history have we to run over from the evening that
yourself, Mousnier, Bernau, and other patriots settled, in my house
in Paris, the outlines of the constitution you wished! And to trace it
through all the disastrous chapters of Robespierre, Barras, Bonaparte,
and the Bourbons! These things, however, are for our meeting. You mention
the return of Miss Wright to America, accompanied by her sister; but do
not say what her stay is to be, nor what her course. Should it lead her
to a visit of our University, which, in its architecture only, is as yet
an object, herself and her companion will nowhere find a welcome more
hearty than with Mrs. Randolph, and all the inhabitants of Monticello.
This Athenæum of our country, in embryo, is as yet but promise; and not
in a state to recall the recollections of Athens. But everything has its
beginning, its growth, and end; and who knows with what future delicious
morsels of philosophy, and by what future Miss Wright raked from its
ruins, the world may, some day, be gratified and instructed? Your son
George we shall be very happy indeed to see, and to renew in him the
recollections of your very dear family; and the revolutionary merit of
M. le Vasseur has that passport to the esteem of every American, and, to
me, the additional one of having been your friend and co-operator, and
he will, I hope, join you in making head-quarters with us at Monticello.
But all these things _à revoir_, in the meantime we are impatient that
your ceremonies at York should be over, and give you to the embraces of
friendship.
P. S. Will you come by Mr. Madison's, or let him or me know on what day
he may meet you here, and join us in our greetings?
TO MR. RUSH.
MONTICELLO, October 13, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I must again beg the protection of your cover for a letter
to Mr. Gilmer; although a little doubtful whether he may not have left
you.
You will have seen by our papers the delirium into which our citizens
are thrown by a visit from General La Fayette. He is making a triumphant
progress through the States, from town to town, with acclamations of
welcome, such as no crowned head ever received. It will have a good
effect in favor of the General with the people in Europe, but probably
a different one with their sovereigns. Its effect here, too, will be
salutary as to ourselves, by rallying us together and strengthening the
habit of considering our country as one and indivisible, and I hope we
shall close it with something more solid for him than dinners and balls.
The eclat of this visit has almost merged the Presidential question,
on which nothing scarcely is said in our papers. That question will
lie ultimately between Crawford and Adams; but, at the same time, the
vote of the people will be so distracted by subordinate candidates,
that possibly they may make no election, and let it go to the House of
Representatives. There, it is thought, Crawford's chance is best. We
have nothing else interesting before the public. Of the two questions
of the tariff and public improvements, the former, perhaps, is not yet
at rest, and the latter will excite boisterous discussions. It happens
that both these measures fall in with the western interests, and it is
their secession from the agricultural States which gives such strength to
the manufacturing and consolidating parties, on these two questions. The
latter is the most dreaded, because thought to amount to a determination
in the federal government to assume all powers non-enumerated as well as
enumerated in the constitution, and by giving a loose to construction,
make the text say whatever will relieve them from the bridle of the
States. These are difficulties for your day; I shall give them the slip.
Accept the assurance of my friendly attachment and great respect.
TO EDWARD EVERETT.
MONTICELLO, October 15, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--I have yet to thank for your Φ. Β. Κ. oration, delivered in
presence of General La Fayette. It is all excellent, much of it sublimely
so, well worthy of its author and his subject, of whom we may truly say,
as was said of Germanicus, "_fruitur famâ sui_."
Your letter of September the 10th gave me the first information that mine
to Major Cartwright had got into the newspapers; and the first notice,
indeed, that he had received it. I was a stranger to his person, but not
to his respectable and patriotic character. I received from him a long
and interesting letter, and answered it with frankness, going without
reserve into several subjects, to which his letter had led, but on which
I did not suppose I was writing for the newspapers. The publication of
a letter in such a case, without the consent of the writer, is not a
fair practice.
The part which you quote, may draw on me the host of judges and divines.
They may cavil but cannot refute it. Those who read Prisot's opinion
with a candid view to understand, and not to chicane it, cannot mistake
its meaning. The reports in the Year-books were taken very short. The
opinions of the judges were written down sententiously, as notes or
memoranda, and not with all the development which they probably used
in delivering them. Prisot's opinion, to be fully expressed, should be
thus paraphrased: "To such laws as those of holy church have recorded,
and preserved in their ancient books and writings, it is proper for
us to give credence; for so is, or so says the common law, or law of
the land, on which all manner of other laws rest for their authority,
or are founded; that is to say, the common law, or the law of the land
common to us all, and established by the authority of us all, is that
from which is derived the authority of all other special and subordinate
branches of law, such as the canon law, law merchant, law maritime, law of
Gavelkind, Borough English, corporation laws, local customs and usages,
to all of which the common law requires its judges to permit authority
in the special or local cases belonging to them. The evidence of these
laws is preserved in their ancient treatises, books and writings, in like
manner as our own common law itself is known, the text of its original
enactments having been long lost, and its substance only preserved in
ancient and traditionary writings. And if it appears, from their ancient
books, writings and records, that the bishop, in this case, according
to the rules prescribed by these authorities, has done what an ordinary
would have done in such case, then we should adjudge it good, otherwise
not." To decide this question, they would have to turn to the ancient
writings and records of the canon law, in which they would find evidence
of the laws of advowsons, _quare impedit_, the duties of bishops and
ordinaries, for which terms Prisot could never have meant to refer them
to the Old or New Testament, _les saincts scriptures_, where surely they
would not be found. A license which should permit "_ancien scripture_"
to be translated "holy scripture," annihilates at once all the evidence
of language. With such a license, we might reverse the sixth commandment
into "thou shall not omit murder." It would be the more extraordinary
in this case, where the mistranslation was to effect the adoption of the
whole code of the Jewish and Christian laws into the text of our statutes,
to convert religious offences into temporal crimes, to make the breach
of every religious precept a subject of indictment, submit the question
of idolatry, for example, to the trial of a jury, and to a court, its
punishment, to the third and fourth generation of the offender. Do we
allow to our judges this lumping legislation?
The term "common law," although it has more than one meaning, is perfectly
definite, _secundum subjectam materiem_. Its most probable origin was on
the conquest of the Heptarchy by Alfred, and the amalgamation of their
several codes of law into one, which became _common_ to them all. The
authentic text of these enactments has not been preserved; but their
substance has been committed to many ancient books and writings, so
faithfully as to have been deemed genuine from generation to generation,
and obeyed as such by all. We have some fragments of them collected by
Lambard, Wilkins and others, but abounding with proofs of their spurious
authenticity. Magna Charta is the earliest statute, the text of which
has come down to us in an authentic form, and thence downward we have
them entire. We do not know exactly when the _common_ law and _statute_
law, the _lex scripta et non scripta_, began to be contra-distinguished,
so as to give a second acceptation to the former term; whether before,
or after Prisot's day, at which time we know that nearly two centuries
and a half of statutes were in preservation. In later times, on the
introduction of the chancery branch of law, the term _common_ law began
to be used in a third sense, as the correlative of _chancery_ law. This,
however, having been long after Prisot's time, could not have been the
sense in which he used the term. He must have meant the ancient _lex non
scripta_, because, had he used it as inclusive of the _lex scripta_, he
would have put his finger on the statute which had enjoined on the judges
a deference to the laws of holy church. But no such statute existing, he
must have referred to the common law in the sense of a _lex non scripta_.
Whenever, then, the term _common law_ is used in either of these senses,
and it is never employed in any other, it is readily known in which of
them, by the context and subject matter under consideration; which, in
the present case, leave no room for doubt.
I do not remember the occasion which led me to take up this subject,
while a practitioner of the law. But I know I went into it with all the
research which a very copious law library enabled me to indulge; and I
fear not for the accuracy of any of my quotations. The doctrine might be
disproved by many other and different topics of reasoning; but having
satisfied myself of the origin of the forgery, and found how, like a
rolling snow-ball, it had gathered volume, I leave its further pursuit
to those who need further proof, and perhaps I have already gone further
than the feeble doubt you expressed might require.
I salute you with great esteem and respect.
TO ----.
MONTICELLO, December 22, 1824.
DEAR SIR,--The proposition to remove William and Mary College to
Richmond with all its present funds, and to add to it a musical school,
is nothing more nor less than to remove the University also to that
place. Because, if both remain, there will not be students enough to
make either worthy the acceptance of men of the first order of science.
They must each fall down to the level of our present academies, under
the direction of common teachers, and our state of education must stand
exactly where it now is. Few of the States have been able to maintain
one university, none two. Surely the legislature, after such an expense
incurred for a real university, and just as it is prepared to go into
action under hopeful auspices, will not consent to destroy it by this
side-wind. As to the best course to be taken with William and Mary, I
am not so good a judge as our colleagues on the spot. They have under
their eyes the workings of the enemies of the University, masked and
unmasked, and the intrigues of Richmond, which, after failing to obtain
it in the first instance, endeavors to steal its location at this late
hour. And they can best see what measures are most likely to counteract
these insidious designs. On the question of the removal, I think our
particular friends had better take no active part, but vote silently
for or against it, according to their own judgment as to the public
utility; and if they divide on the question, so much the better perhaps.
I am glad the visitors and professors have invoked the interference of
the legislature, because it is an acknowledgment of its authority on
behalf of the State to superintend and control it, of which I never had
a doubt. It is an institution established for the public good, and not
for the personal emolument of the professors, endowed from the public
lands and organized by the executive functionary whose legal office it
was. The acquiescence of both corporations under the authority of the
legislature, removes what might otherwise have been a difficulty with
some. If the question of removal be decided affirmatively, the next is,
how shall their funds be disposed of most advantageously for the State
in general? These are about one hundred thousand dollars too much for a
secondary or local institution. The giving a part of them to a school at
Winchester, and part to Hampden Sidney, is well, as far as it goes; but
does not go far enough. Why should not every part of the State participate
equally of the benefit of this reversion of right which accrues to the
whole equally? This would be no more a violation of law than the giving
it to a few. Yon know that the Rockfish report proposed an intermediate
grade of schools between the primary and the university. In that report
the objects of the middle schools are stated. See page 10 of the copy
I now enclose you. In these schools should be taught Latin and Greek,
to a good degree, French also, numerical arithmetic, the elements of
geometry, surveying, navigation, geography, the use of the globes, the
outlines of the solar system, and elements of natural philosophy. Two
professors would suffice for these, to wit: one for languages, the other
for so much of mathematics and natural philosophy as is here proposed.
This degree of education would be adapted to the circumstances of a very
great number of our citizens, who, being intended for lives of business,
would not aim at an university education. It would give us a body of
yeomanry, too, of substantial information, well prepared to become a firm
and steady support to the government; as schools of ancient languages,
too, they would be preparatories for the University.
You have now an happy opportunity of carrying this intermediate
establishment into execution without laying a cent of tax on the
people, or taking one from the treasury. Divide the State into college
districts of about eighty miles square each. There would be about eight
such districts below the Alleghany, and two beyond it, which would
be necessarily of larger extent because of the sparseness of their
population. The only advance these colleges would call for, would be
for a dwelling house for the teacher, of about one thousand two hundred
dollars cost, and a boarding house with four or five bed rooms, and a
school room for probably about twenty or thirty boys. The whole should not
cost more than five thousand dollars, but the funds of William and Mary
would enable you to give them ten thousand dollars each. The districts
might be so laid off that the principal towns and the academies now
existing might form convenient sites for their colleges; as, for example,
Williamsburgh, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Hampden Sidney, Lynchburg or
Lexington, Staunton, Winchester, &c. Thus, of William and Mary, you
will make ten colleges, each as useful as she over was, leaving one in
Williamsburg by itself, placing as good a one within a day's ride of
every man in the State, and get our whole scheme of education completely
established.
I have said that no advance is necessary but for the erection of the
buildings for these schools. Because the boys sent to them would be
exclusively of a class of parents in competent circumstances to pay
teachers for the education of their own children. The ten thousand
dollars given to each, would afford a surplus to maintain by its interest
one or two persons duly selected for their genius, from the primary
schools, of those too poor to proceed farther of their own means. You
will remember that of the three bills I originally gave you, one was
for these district colleges, and going into the necessary details. Will
you not have every member in favor of this proposition, except those who
are for gobbling up the whole funds themselves? The present professors
might all be employed in the college of Richmond or Williamsburg, or any
other they would prefer, with reasonable salaries in the meantime, until
the system should get under way. This occasion of completing our system
of education is a God-send which ought not to pass away neglected. Many
may be startled at the first idea. But reflection on the justice and
advantage of the measure will produce converts daily and hourly to it.
I certainly would not propose that the University should claim a cent
of these funds in competition with the district colleges.
Would it not be better to say nothing about the last donation of fifty
thousand dollars, and endeavor to get the money from Congress, and to
press for it immediately. I cannot doubt their allowing it, and it would
be much better to get it from them than to revive the displeasure of
our own legislature.
You are aware that we have yet two professors to appoint, to wit: of
natural history and moral philosophy, and that we have no time to lose.
I propose that such of our colleagues as are of the legislature, should
name a day of meeting, convenient to themselves, and give notice of it
by mail to Mr. Madison, General Cocke, and myself. But it should not be
till the arrival of the three professors expected at Norfolk. On their
arrival only can we publish the day of opening. Our Richmond mail-stage
arrives here on Sunday and departs on Wednesday, and arrives again on
Thursday and departs on Sunday. Each affording two spare intervening
days, and requiring from here an absence of six days.
Mr. Long, professor of ancient languages, is located in his apartments
at the University. He drew, by lot, pavilion No. 5. He appears to
be a most amiable man, of fine understanding, well qualified for his
department, and acquiring esteem as fast as he becomes known. Indeed,
I have great hope that the whole selection will fulfil our wishes. Ever
and affectionately yours.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, January 8, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--It is long since I have written to you. This proceeds from the
difficulty of writing with my crippled wrist, and from an unwillingness
to add to your inconveniences of either reading by the eyes, or writing
by the hands of others. The account I receive of your physical situation
afflicts me sincerely; but if body or mind was one of them to give way,
it is a great comfort that it is the mind which remains whole, and that
its vigor, and that of memory continues firm. Your hearing, too, is
good, as I am told. In this you have the advantage of me. The dulness
of mine makes me lose much of the conversation of the world, and much
a stranger to what is passing in it. Acquiescence is the only pillow,
although not always a soft one. I have had one advantage of you. This
Presidential election has given me few anxieties. With you this must have
been impossible, independently of the question, whether we are at last
to end our days under a civil or a military government. I am comforted
and protected from other solicitudes by the cares of our University. In
some departments of science we believe Europe to be in advance before
us, and that it would advance ourselves were we to draw from thence
instructors in these branches, and thus to improve our science, as we
have done our manufactures, by borrowed skill. I have been much squibbed
for this, perhaps by disappointed applicants for professorships, to which
they were deemed incompetent. We wait only the arrival of three of the
professors engaged in England, to open our University.
I have lately been reading the most extraordinary of all books, and at
the same time the most demonstrative by numerous and unequivocal facts.
It is Flourens's experiments on the functions of the nervous system,
in vertebrated animals. He takes out the cerebrum completely, leaving
the cerebellum and other parts of the system uninjured. The animal
loses all its senses of hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting,
is totally deprived of will, intelligence, memory, perception, &c. Yet
lives for months in perfect health, with all its powers of motion, but
without moving but on external excitement, starving even on a pile of
grain, unless crammed down its throat; in short, in a state of the most
absolute stupidity. He takes the cerebellum out of others, leaving the
cerebrum untouched. The animal retains all its senses, faculties, and
understanding, but loses the power of regulated motion, and exhibits all
the symptoms of drunkenness. While he makes incisions in the cerebrum
and cerebellum, lengthwise and crosswise, which heal and get well, a
puncture in the medulla elongata is instant death; and many other most
interesting things too long for a letter. Cabanis had proved by the
anatomical structure of certain portions of the human frame, that they
might be capable of receiving from the hand of the Creator the faculty of
thinking; Flourens proves that they have received it; that the cerebrum
is the thinking organ; and that life and health may continue, and the
animal be entirely without thought, if deprived of that organ. I wish
to see what the spiritualists will say to this. Whether in this state
the soul remains in the body, deprived of its essence of thought? or
whether it leaves it, as in death, and where it goes? His memoirs and
experiments have been reported on with approbation by a committee of
the institute, composed of Cuvier, Bertholet, Dumaril, Portal and Pinel.
But all this, you and I shall know better when we meet again, in another
place, and at no distant period. In the meantime, that the revived powers
of your frame, and the anodyne of philosophy may preserve you from all
suffering, is my sincere and affectionate prayer.
TO WILLIAM SHORT, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, January 8, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I returned the first volume of Hall by a mail of a week ago,
and by this, shall return the second. We have kept them long, but every
member of the family wished to read his book, in which case, you know,
it had a long gauntlet to run. It is impossible to read thoroughly such
writings as those of Harper and Otis, who take a page to say what requires
but a sentence, or rather, who give you whole pages of what is nothing
to the purpose. A cursory race over the ground is as much as they can
claim. It is easy for them, at this day, to endeavor to whitewash their
party, when the greater part are dead of those who witnessed what passed,
others old and become indifferent to the subject, and others indisposed
to take the trouble of answering them. As to Otis, his attempt is to
prove that the sun does not shine at mid-day; that that is not a fact
which every one saw. He merits no notice. It is well known that Harper
had little scruple about facts where detection was not obvious. By
placing in false lights whatever admits it, and passing over in silence
what does not, a plausible aspect may be presented of anything. He takes
great pains to prove, for instance, that Hamilton was no monarchist, by
exaggerating his own intimacy with him, and the impossibility, if he was
so, that he should not, at some time, have betrayed it to him. This may
pass with uninformed readers, but not with those who have had it from
Hamilton's own mouth. I am one of those, and but one of many. At my own
table, in presence of Mr. Adams, Knox, Randolph, and myself, in a dispute
between Mr. Adams and himself, he avowed his preference of monarchy over
every other government, and his opinion that the English was the most
perfect model of government ever devised by the wit of man, Mr. Adams
agreeing "if its corruptions were done away." While Hamilton insisted
that "with these corruptions it was perfect, and without them it would
be an impracticable government." Can any one read Mr. Adams' defence of
the American constitutions without seeing that he was a monarchist? And
J. Q. Adams, the son, was more explicit than the father, in his answer
to Paine's rights of man. So much for leaders. Their followers were
divided. Some went the same lengths, others, and I believe the greater
part, only wished a stronger Executive. When I arrived at New York in
1790, to take a part in the administration, being fresh from the French
revolution, while in its first and pure stage, and consequently somewhat
whetted up in my own republican principles, I found a state of things,
in the general society of the place, which I could not have supposed
possible. Being a stranger there, I was feasted from table to table,
at large set dinners, the parties generally from twenty to thirty. The
revolution I had left, and that we had just gone through in the recent
change of our own government, being the common topics of conversation, I
was astonished to find the general prevalence of monarchical sentiments,
insomuch that in maintaining those of republicanism, I had always the
whole company on my hands, never scarcely finding among them a single
co-advocate in that argument, unless some old member of Congress happened
to be present. The furthest that any one would go, in support of the
republican features of our new government, would be to say, "the present
constitution is well as a beginning, and may be allowed a fair trial;
but it is, in fact, only a stepping stone to something better." Among
their writers, Denny, the editor of the Portfolio, who was a kind of
oracle with them, and styled the Addison of America, openly avowed his
preference of monarchy over all other forms of government, prided himself
on the avowal, and maintained it by argument freely and without reserve,
in his publications. I do not, myself, know that the Essex junto of
Boston were monarchists, but I have always heard it so said, and never
doubted.
These, my dear Sir, are but detached items from a great mass of proofs
then fully before the public. They are unknown to you, because you were
absent in Europe, and they are now disavowed by the party. But, had it
not been for the firm and determined stand then made by a counter-party,
no man can say what our government would have been at this day. Monarchy,
to be sure, is now defeated, and they wish it should be forgotten that
it was ever advocated. They see that it is desperate, and treat its
imputation to them as a calumny; and I verily believe that none of them
have it now in direct aim. Yet the spirit is not done away. The same
party takes now what they deem the next best ground, the consolidation
of the government; the giving to the federal member of the government,
by unlimited constructions of the constitution, a control over all the
functions of the States, and the concentration of all power ultimately
at Washington.
The true history of that conflict of parties will never be in possession
of the public, until, by the death of the actors in it, the hoards of
their letters shall be broken up and given to the world. I should not
fear to appeal to those of Harper himself, if he has kept copies of
them, for abundant proof that he was himself a monarchist. I shall not
live to see these unrevealed proofs, nor probably you; for time will be
requisite. But time will, in the end, produce the truth. And, after all,
it is but a truth which exists in every country, where not suppressed
by the rod of despotism. Men, according to their constitutions, and the
circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion. Some
are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are
tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to
transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider
the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they
cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the
exercise of which they are competent. This is the division of sentiment
now existing in the United States. It is the common division of whig
and tory, or according to our denominations of republican and federal;
and is the most salutary of all divisions, and ought, therefore, to be
fostered, instead of being amalgamated. For, take away this, and some
more dangerous principle of division will take its place. But there is
really no amalgamation. The parties exist now as heretofore. The one,
indeed, has thrown off its old name, and has not yet assumed a new one,
although obviously consolidationists. And among those in the offices of
every denomination I believe it to be a bare minority.
I have gone into these facts to show how one-sided a view of this case
Harper has presented. I do not recall these recollections with pleasure,
but rather wish to forget them, nor did I ever permit them to affect
social intercourse. And now, least of all, am disposed to do so. Peace
and good will with all mankind is my sincere wish. I willingly leave
to the present generation to conduct their affairs as they please. And
in my general affection to the whole human family, and my particular
devotion to my friends, be assured of the high and special estimation
in which yourself is cordially held.
TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.
MONTICELLO, January 11, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--We are dreadfully nonplussed here by the non-arrival of our
three Professors. We apprehend that the idea of our opening on the 1st
of February prevails so much abroad, (although we have always mentioned
it doubtfully,) as that the students will assemble on that day without
awaiting the further notice which was promised. To send them away will
be discouraging, and to open an University without Mathematics or Natural
Philosophy would bring on us ridicule and disgrace. We therefore publish
an advertisement, stating that on _the arrival_ of these Professors,
notice will be given of the day of opening the institution.
Governor Barbour writes me hopefully of getting our fifty thousand
dollars from Congress. The proposition has been originated in the House
of Representatives, referred to the committee of claims, the chairman
of which has prepared a very favorable report, and a bill conformable,
assuming the repayment of all interest which the State has actually paid.
The legislature will certainly owe to us the recovery of this money;
for had they not given it in some measure the reverenced character of a
donation for the promotion of learning, it would never have been paid. It
is to be hoped, therefore, that the displeasure incurred by wringing it
from them at the last session, will now give way to a contrary feeling,
and even place us on a ground of some merit. Should this sentiment take
place, and the arrival of our Professors, and filling our dormitories
with students on the 1st of February, encourage them to look more
favorably towards us, perhaps it might dispose them to enlarge somewhat
their order on the same fund. You observe the Proctor has stated in
a letter accompanying our Report, that it will take about twenty-five
thousand dollars more than we have to finish the Rotunda. Besides this,
an Anatomical theatre (costing about as much as one of our hotels, say
about five thousand dollars,) is indispensable to the school of Anatomy.
There cannot be a single dissection until a proper theatre is prepared,
giving an advantageous view of the operation to those within, and
effectually excluding observation from without. Either the additional
sums, therefore, of twenty-five thousand and five thousand dollars will
be wanting, or we must be permitted to appropriate a part of the fifty
thousand to a theatre, leaving the Rotunda unfinished for the present.
Yet I should think neither of these objects an equivalent for renewing
the displeasure of the legislature. Unless we can carry their hearty
patronage with us, the institution can never flourish. I would not,
therefore, hint at this additional aid, unless it were agreeable to our
friends generally, and tolerably sure of being carried without irritation.
In your letter of December the 31st, you say my "hand-writing and my
letters have great effect there," _i. e._ at Richmond. I am sensible, my
dear Sir, of the kindness with which this encouragement is held up to me.
But my views of their effect are very different. When I retired from the
administration of public affairs, I thought I saw some evidence that I
retired with a good degree of public favor, and that my conduct in office
had been considered, by the one party at least, with approbation, and
with acquiescence by the other. But the attempt in which I have embarked
so earnestly, to procure an improvement in the moral condition of my
native State, although, perhaps, in other States it may have strengthened
good dispositions, it has assuredly weakened them within our own. The
attempt ran foul of so many local interests, of so many personal views,
and so much ignorance, and I have been considered as so particularly
its promoter, that I see evidently a great change of sentiment towards
myself. I cannot doubt its having dissatisfied with myself a respectable
minority, if not a majority of the House of Delegates. I feel it deeply,
and very discouragingly. Yet I shall not give way. I have ever found in
my progress through life, that, acting for the public, if we do always
what is right, the approbation denied in the beginning will surely follow
us in the end. It is from posterity we are to expect remuneration for
the sacrifices we are making for their service, of time, quiet and good
will. And I fear not the appeal. The multitude of fine young men whom
we shall redeem from ignorance, who will feel that they owe to us the
elevation of mind, of character and station they will be able to attain
from the result of our efforts, will insure their remembering us with
gratitude. We will not, then, be "weary in well-doing." _Usque ad aras
amicus tuus._
TO GENERAL ALEXANDER SMYTH.
MONTICELLO, January 17, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I have duly received four proof sheets of your explanation of
the Apocalypse, with your letters of December 29th and January 8th; in
the last of which you request that, so soon as I shall be of opinion that
the explanation you have given is correct, I would express it in a letter
to you. From this you must be so good as to excuse me, because I make it
an invariable rule to decline ever giving opinions on new publications
in any case whatever. No man on earth has less taste or talent for
criticism than myself, and least and last of all should I undertake to
criticize works on the Apocalypse. It is between fifty and sixty years
since I read it, and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a
maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences
of our own nightly dreams. I was, therefore, well pleased to see, in
your first proof sheet, that it was said to be not the production of
St. John, but of Cerinthus, a century after the death of that apostle.
Yet the change of the author's name does not lessen the extravagances of
the composition; and come they from whomsoever they may, I cannot so far
respect them as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events,
past or subsequent. There is not coherence enough in them to countenance
any suite of rational ideas. You will judge, therefore, from this how
impossible I think it that either your explanation, or that of any man
in "the heavens above, or on the earth beneath," can be a correct one.
What has no meaning admits no explanation; and pardon me if I say, with
the candor of friendship, that I think your time too valuable, and your
understanding of too high an order, to be wasted on these paralogisms. You
will perceive, I hope, also, that I do not consider them as revelations
of the Supreme Being, whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute
to him a pretension of revelation, couched at the same time in terms
which, he would know, were never to be understood by those to whom they
were addressed. In the candor of these observations, I hope you will
see proofs of the confidence, esteem and respect which I truly entertain
for you.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
QUINCY, January 23, 1825.
MY DEAR SIR,--We think ourselves possessed, or at least we boast that we
are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects and of the right of free
inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from
these exalted privileges in fact. There exists, I believe, throughout
the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny, or
to doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New
Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it
is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England
itself, it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker.
In America it is not much better; even in our Massachusetts, which,
I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious
zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the
last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but
substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemies upon any
book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer
must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any
arguments for investigation into the divine authority of those books?
Who would run the risk of translating Volney's Recherches Nouvelles?
Who would run the risk of translating Dapin's? But I cannot enlarge
upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a
great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human
mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be
established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons
appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that
some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them; but
as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an
awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were
repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand
it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever; but
it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which, I think, will not
bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu.
TO ----.[17]
MONTICELLO, February 3, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--Although our Professors were, on the 5th of December, still
in an English port, that they were safe raises me from the dead, for
I was almost ready to give up the ship. That was eight weeks ago; they
may therefore be daily expected.
In most public seminaries text-books are prescribed to each of the several
schools, as the _norma docendi_ in that school; and this is generally
done by authority of the trustees. I should not propose this generally
in our University, because I believe none of us are so much at the
heights of science in the several branches, as to undertake this, and
therefore that it will be better left to the Professors until occasion
of interference shall be given. But there is one branch in which we are
the best judges, in which heresies may be taught, of so interesting a
character to our own State and to the United States, as to make it a
duty in us to lay down the principles which are to be taught. It is
that of government. Mr. Gilmer being withdrawn, we know not who his
successor may be. He may be a Richmond lawyer, or one of that school of
quondam federalism, now consolidation. It is our duty to guard against
such principles being disseminated among our youth, and the diffusion
of that poison, by a previous prescription of the texts to be followed
in their discourses. I therefore enclose you a resolution which I think
of proposing at our next meeting, strictly confiding it to your own
knowledge alone, and to that of Mr. Loyall, to whom you may communicate
it, as I am sure it will harmonize with his principles. I wish it kept
to ourselves, because I have always found that the less such things are
spoken of beforehand, the less obstruction is contrived to be thrown in
their way. I have communicated it to Mr. Madison.
Should the bill for district colleges pass in the end, our scheme of
education will be complete. But the branch of primary schools may need
attention, and should be brought, like the rest, to the forum of the
legislature. The Governor, in his annual message, gives a favorable
account of them in the lump. But this is not sufficient. We should know
the operation of the law establishing these schools more in detail. We
should know how much money is furnished to each county every year, and
how much education it distributes every year, and such a statement should
be laid before the legislature every year. The sum of education rendered
in each county in each year should be estimated by adding together the
number of months which each scholar attended, and stating the sum total
of the months which all of them together attended, _e. g._, in any county
one scholar attended two months, three others four months each, eight
others six months each, then the sum of these added together will make
sixty-two months of schooling afforded in the county that year; and the
number of sixty-two months entered in a table opposite to the name of
the county, gives a satisfactory idea of the sum or quantum of education
it rendered in that year. This will enable us to take many interesting
and important views of the sufficiency of the plan established, and of
the amendments necessary to produce the greatest effect. I enclose a
form of the table which would be required, in which you will of course
be sensible that the numbers entered are at hap-hazard, and _exempli
gratia_, as I know nothing of the sums furnished or quantum of education
rendered in each or any county. I send also the form of such a resolution
as should be passed by the one or the other house, perhaps better in the
lower one, and moved by some member nowise connected with us, for the
less we appear before the house, the less we shall excite dissatisfaction.
I mentioned to you formerly our want of an anatomical hall for dissection.
But if we get the fifty thousand dollars from Congress, we can charge
to that, as the library fund, the six thousand dollars of the building
fund which we have advanced for it in books and apparatus, and repaying
from the former the six thousand dollars due to the latter, apply so
much of it as is necessary for the anatomical building. No application
on the subject need therefore be made to our legislature. But I hear
nothing of our prospects before Congress. Yours affectionately.
_Resolved_, That the Governor be requested to have prepared and laid
before the legislature, at their next session, a statement in detail of
the sum of education which, under the law establishing primary schools,
has been rendered in the schools of each county respectively; that it be
stated in a tabular form, in the first column of which table shall be
the names of the counties alphabetically arranged, and then, for every
year, two other columns, in the first of which shall be entered, opposite
to the name of each county, the sum of money furnished it in that year,
and in the second shall be stated the sum of education rendered in the
same county and year; which sum is to be estimated by adding together
the number of months of schooling which the several individuals attending
received. And that henceforward a similar statement be prepared and laid
before the legislature every year for that year.
Accomac $400 216 months schooling.
Albemarle 500 234 "
Amelia 250 183 "
Amherst 400 210 "
Augusta 800 461 "
&c.
FOOTNOTE:
[17] Address lost.
TO ----.[18]
MONTICELLO, February 20, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the copy of your Cherokee grammar, which
I have gone over with attention and satisfaction. We generally learn
languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them. But here
our reward must be the addition made to the philosophy of language. In
this point of view your analysis of the Cherokee adds valuable matter for
reflection, and strengthens our desire to see more of these languages as
scientifically elucidated. Their grammatical devices for the modification
of their words by a syllable prefixed to, or inserted in the middle,
or added to its end, and by other combinations so different from ours,
prove that if man came from one stock, his languages did not. A late
grammarian has said that all words were originally monosyllables. The
Indian languages disprove this. I should conjecture that the Cherokees,
for example, have formed their language not by single words, but by
phrases. I have known some children learn to speak, not by a word at
a time, but by whole phrases. Thus the Cherokee has no name for father
in the abstract, but only as combined with some one of his relations. A
complex idea being a fasciculus of simple ideas bundled together, it is
rare that different languages make up their bundles alike, and hence the
difficulty of translating from one language to another. European nations
have so long had intercourse with one another, as to have approximated
their complex expressions much towards one another. But I believe we shall
find it impossible to translate our language into any of the Indian, or
any of theirs into ours. I hope you will pursue your undertaking, and
that others will follow your example with other of their languages. It
will open a wide field for reflection on the grammatical organization
of languages, their structure and character. I am persuaded that among
the tribes on our two continents a great number of languages, radically
different, will be found. It will be curious to consider how so many so
radically different will be found. It will be curious to consider how so
many so radically different have been preserved by such small tribes in
coterminous settlements of moderate extent. I had once collected about
thirty vocabularies formed of the same English words, expressive of
such simple objects only as must be present and familiar to every one
under these circumstances. They wore unfortunately lost. But I remember
that on a trial to arrange them into families or dialects, I found in
one instance that about half a dozen might be so classed, in another
perhaps three or four. Bot I am sure that a third at least, if not more,
were perfectly insulation from each other. Yet this is the only index
by which we can trace their filiation.
I had received your observations on the changes proposed in Harvard
College, without knowing from whom they came to me, and had been so
much pleased with them as to have put them by for preservation. These
observations, with the report and documents to which they relate, are
a treasure of information to us; they give to our infant institution
the experience of your ancient and eminent establishment. I hope that
we shall be like cordial colleagues in office, acting in harmony and
affection for the same object. Our European professors, five in number,
are at length arrived, and excite strong presumptions that they have
been judiciously selected. We have announced our opening on the 7th of
the ensuing month of March. With sincere wishes for the prosperity of
yours, as well as ours, I pray you to accept assurances of my high esteem
and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[18] Address lost.
TO THOMAS JEFFERSON SMITH.
MONTICELLO, February 21, 1825.
This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be
in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and
excellent father has requested that I would address to you something
which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you
have to run, and I too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course.
Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore
God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself,
and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at
the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered,
be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead
it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of
your life will be under my regard. Farewell.
_The portrait of a good man by the most sublime of poets, for your
imitation._
Lord, who's the happy man that may to thy blest courts repair;
Not stranger-like to visit them, but to inhabit there?
'Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves;
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart disproves.
Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor's fame to wound;
Nor hearken to a false report, by malice whispered round.
Who vice in all its pomp and power, can treat with just neglect;
And piety, though clothed in rage, religiously respect.
Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood;
And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good.
Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ;
Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.
The man, who, by this steady course, has happiness insur'd,
When earth's foundations shake, shall stand, by Providence secur'd.
_A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life._
1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear
to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
TO EDWARD LIVINGSTON, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, March 25, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I know how apt we are to consider those whom we knew long ago,
and have not since seen, to be exactly still what they were when we knew
them; and to have been stationary in body and mind as they have been in
our recollections. Have you not been under that illusion with respect to
myself? When I had the pleasure of being a fellow-laborer with you in
the public service, age had ripened, but not yet impaired whatever of
mind I had at any time possessed. But five-and-twenty chilling winters
have since rolled over my head, and whitened every hair of it. Worn down
by time in bodily strength, unable to walk even into my garden without
too much fatigue, I cannot doubt that the mind has also suffered its
portion of decay. If reason and experience had not taught me this law
of nature, my own consciousness is a sufficient monitor, and warns me
to keep in mind the golden precept of Horace,
"Solve senescentem, maturé sanus, equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus."
I am not equal, dear Sir, to the task you have proposed to me. To examine
a code of laws newly reduced to system and text, to weigh their bearings
on each other in all their parts, their harmony with reason and nature,
and their adaptation to the habits and sentiments of those for whom
they are prepared, and whom, in this case, I do not know, is a task far
above what I am now, or perhaps ever was. I have attended to so much
of your work as has been heretofore laid before the public, and have
looked, with some attention also, into what you have now sent me. It will
certainly arrange your name with the sages of antiquity. Time and changes
in the condition and constitution of society may require occasional
and corresponding modifications. One single object, if your provision
attains it, will entitle you to the endless gratitude of society; that
of restraining judges from usurping legislation. And with no body of men
is this restraint more wanting than with the judges of what is commonly
called our general government, but what I call our foreign department.
They are practising on the constitution by inferences, analogies, and
sophisms, as they would on an ordinary law. They do not seem aware
that it is not even a _constitution_, formed by a single authority,
and subject to a single superintendence and control; but that it is a
compact of many independent powers, every single one of which claims
an equal right to understand it, and to require its observance. However
strong the cord of compact may be, there is a point of tension at which
it will break. A few such doctrinal decisions, as barefaced as that of
the Cohens, happening to bear immediately on two or three of the large
States, may induce them to join in arresting the march of government,
and in arousing the co-States to pay some attention to what is passing,
to bring back the compact to its original principles, or to modify it
legitimately by the express consent of the parties themselves, and not
by the usurpation of their created agents. They imagine they can lead
us into a consolidate government, while their road leads directly to
its dissolution. This member of the government was at first considered
as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved
that the power of declaring what the law is, _ad libitum_, by sapping and
mining, slily, and without alarm, the foundations of the constitution,
can do what open force would not dare to attempt. I have not observed
whether, in your code, you have provided against caucussing judicial
decisions, and for requiring judges to give their opinions _seriatim_,
every man for himself, with his reasons and authorities at large, to
be entered of record in his own words. A regard for reputation, and the
judgment of the world, may sometimes be felt where conscience is dormant,
or indolence inexcitable. Experience has proved that impeachment in our
forms is completely inefficient.
I am pleased with the style and diction of your laws. Plain and
intelligible as the ordinary writings of common sense, I hope it will
produce imitation. Of all the countries on earth of which I have any
knowledge, the style of the Acts of the British parliament is the most
barbarous, uncouth, and unintelligible. It can be understood by those
alone who are in the daily habit of studying such tautologous, involved
and parenthetical jargon. Where they found their model, I know not.
Neither ancient nor modern codes, nor even their own early statutes,
furnish any such example. And, like faithful apes, we copy it faithfully.
In declining the undertaking you so flatteringly propose to me, I trust
you will see but an approvable caution for the age of four score and two,
to avoid exposing itself before the public. The misfortune of a weakened
mind is an insensibility of its weakness. Seven years ago, indeed, I
embarked in an enterprise, the establishment of an University, which
placed and keeps me still under the public eye. The call was imperious,
the necessity most urgent, and the hazard of titubation less, by those
seven years, than it now is. The institution is at length happily advanced
to completion, and has commenced under auspices as favorable as I could
expect. I hope it will prove a blessing to my own State, and not unuseful
perhaps to some others. At all hazards, and secured by the aid of my able
coadjutors, I shall continue, while I am in being, to contribute to it
whatever my weakened and weakening powers can. But assuredly it is the
last object for which I shall obtrude myself on the public observation.
Wishing anxiously that your great work may obtain complete success, and
become an example for the imitation and improvement of other States, I
pray you to be assured of my unabated friendship and respect.
TO JUDGE AUGUSTUS B. WOODWARD.
MONTICELLO, April 3, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of March 25th has been duly received. The fact
is unquestionable, that the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of
Virginia, were drawn originally by George Mason, one of our really great
men, and of the first order of greatness. The history of the Preamble
to the latter is this: I was then at Philadelphia with Congress; and
knowing that the Convention of Virginia was engaged in forming a plan of
government, I turned my mind to the same subject, and drew a sketch or
outline of a Constitution, with a preamble, which I sent to Mr. Pendleton,
president of the convention, on the mere possibility that it might
suggest something worth incorporation into that before the convention.
He informed me afterwards by letter, that he received it on the day on
which the Committee of the Whole had reported to the House the plan they
had agreed to; that that had been so long in hand, so disputed inch by
inch, and the subject of so much altercation and debate; that they were
worried with the contentions it had produced, and could not from mere
lassitude, have been induced to open the instrument again; but that,
being pleased with the Preamble to mine, they adopted it in the House,
by way of amendment to the Report of the Committee; and thus my Preamble
became tacked to the work of George Mason. The Constitution, with the
Preamble, was passed on the 29th of June, and the Committee of Congress
had only the day before that reported to that body the draught of the
Declaration of Independence. The fact is, that that Preamble was prior
in composition to the Declaration; and both having the same object, of
justifying our separation from Great Britain, they used necessarily the
same materials of justification, and hence their similitude.
Withdrawn by age from all other public services and attentions to public
things, I am closing the last scenes of life by fashioning and fostering
an establishment for the instruction of those who are to come after us.
I hope its influence on their virtue, freedom, fame and happiness, will
be salutary and permanent. The form and distributions of its structure
are original and unique, the architecture chaste and classical, and the
whole well worthy of attracting the curiosity of a visit. Should it so
prove to yourself at any time, it will be a great gratification to me
to see you once more at Monticello; and I pray you to be assured of my
continued and high respect and esteem.
TO HENRY LEE, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, May 8, 1825.
DEAR SIR,-- * * * * *
That George Mason was author of the bill of rights, and of the
constitution founded on it, the evidence of the day established fully
in my mind. Of the paper you mention, purporting to be instructions to
the Virginia delegation in Congress, I have no recollection. If it were
anything more than a project of some private hand, that is to say, had
any such instructions been ever given by the convention, they would
appear in the journals, which we possess entire. But with respect to
our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those
rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American
whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort
to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed
proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of
Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never
before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said
before: but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject,
in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify
ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither
aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any
particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of
the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and
spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the
harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in
letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as
Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. The historical documents which you
mention as in your possession, ought all to be found, and I am persuaded
you will find, to be corroborative of the facts and principles advanced
in that Declaration. Be pleased to accept assurances of my great esteem
and respect.
TO MISS WRIGHT.
MONTICELLO, August 7, 1825.
I have duly received; dear Madam, your letter of July 26th, and learn
from it with much regret, that Miss Wright, your sister, is so much
indisposed as to be obliged to visit our medicinal springs. I wish she
may be fortunate in finding those which may be adapted to her case. We
have taken too little pains to ascertain the properties of our different
mineral waters, the cases in which they are respectively remedial, the
proper process in their use, and other circumstances necessary to give
us their full value. My own health is very low, not having been able
to leave the house for three months, and suffering much at times. In
this state of body and mind, your letter could not have found a more
inefficient counsellor, one scarcely able to think or to write. At the
age of eighty-two, with one foot in the grave, and the other uplifted to
follow it, I do not permit myself to take part in any new enterprises,
even for bettering the condition of man, not even in the great one which
is the subject of your letter, and which has been through life that
of my greatest anxieties. The march of events has not been such as to
render its completion practicable within the limits of time allotted to
me; and I leave its accomplishment as the work of another generation.
And I am cheered when I see that on which it is devolved, taking it up
with so much good will, and such minds engaged in its encouragement. The
abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never therefore to be
despaired of. Every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which
may do something towards the ultimate object. That which you propose
is well worthy of trial. It has succeeded with certain portions of our
white brethren, under the care of a Rapp and an Owen; and why may it
not succeed with the man of color? An opinion is hazarded by some, but
proved by none, that moral urgencies are not sufficient to induce him
to labor; that nothing can do this but physical coercion. But this is a
problem which the present age alone is prepared to solve by experiment.
It would be a solecism to suppose a race of animals created, without
sufficient foresight and energy to preserve their own existence. It is
disproved, too, by the fact that they exist, and have existed through
all the ages of history. We are not sufficiently acquainted with all the
nations of Africa, to say that there may not be some in which habits of
industry are established, and the arts practised which are necessary to
render life comfortable. The experiment now in progress in St. Domingo,
those of Sierra Leone and Cape Mesurado, are but beginning. Your
proposition has its aspects of promise also; and should it not answer
fully to calculations in figures, it may yet, in its developments, lead
to happy results. These, however, I must leave to another generation.
The enterprise of a different, but yet important character, in which I
have embarked too late in life, I find more than sufficient to occupy
the enfeebled energies remaining to me, and that to divert them to other
objects, would be a desertion of these. You are young, dear Madam, and
have powers of mind which may do much in exciting others in this arduous
task. I am confident they will be so exerted, and I pray to heaven for
their success, and that you may be rewarded with the blessings which
such efforts merit.
TO JOHN VAUGHAN, ESQ.
MONTICELLO, September 16, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I am not able to give you any particular account of the
paper handed you by Mr. Lee, as being either the original or a copy
of the Declaration of Independence, sent by myself to his grandfather.
The draught, when completed by myself, with a few verbal amendments by
Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, two members of the committee, in their own
hand-writing, is now in my own possession, and a fair copy of this was
reported to the committee, passed by them without amendment, and then
reported to Congress. This letter should be among the records of the old
Congress; and whether this or the one from which it was copied and now in
my hands, is to be called the original, is a question of definition. To
that in my hands, if worth preserving, my relations with our University
gives irresistible claims. Whenever, in the course of the composition,
a copy became overcharged, and difficult to be read with amendments, I
copied it fair, and when that also was crowded with other amendments,
another fair copy was made, &c. These rough draughts I sent to distant
friends who were anxious to know what was passing. But how many, and
to whom, I do not recollect. One sent to Mazzei was given by him to the
Countess de Tessie (aunt of Madame de Lafayette) _as the original_, and
is probably now in the hands of her family. Whether the paper sent to R.
H. Lee was one of these, or whether, after the passage of the instrument,
I made a copy for him, with the amendments of Congress, may, I think,
be known from the face of the paper. The documents Mr. Lee has given
you must be of great value, and until all these private hoards are made
public, the real history of the revolution will not be known.
TO DR. JAMES MEASE.
MONTICELLO, September 26, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--It is not for me to estimate the importance of the
circumstances concerning which your letter of the 8th makes inquiry.
They prove, even in their minuteness, the sacred attachments of our
fellow citizens to the event of which the paper of July 4th, 1776, was
but the declaration, the genuine effusion of the soul of our country at
that time. Small things may, perhaps, like the relics of saints, help to
nourish our devotion to this holy bond of our Union, and keep it longer
alive and warm in our affections. This effect may give importance to
circumstances, however small. At the time of writing that instrument,
I lodged in the house of a Mr. Graaf, a new brick house, three stories
high, of which I rented the second floor consisting of a parlor and
bed-room, ready furnished. In that parlor I wrote habitually, and in it
wrote this paper, particularly. So far I state from written proofs in
my possession. The proprietor, Graaf, was a young man, son of a German,
and then newly married. I think he was a bricklayer, and that his house
was on the south side of Market street, probably between Seventh and
Eighth streets, and if not the only house on that part of the street,
I am sure there were few others near it. I have some idea that it was a
corner house, but no other recollections throwing light on the question,
or worth communication. I am ill, therefore only add assurance of my
great respect and esteem.
TO ----.
MONTICELLO, October 25, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I know not whether the professors to whom ancient and modern
history are assigned in the University, have yet decided on the course
of historical reading which they will recommend to their schools.
If they have, I wish this letter to be considered as not written, as
their course, the result of mature consideration, will be preferable to
anything I could recommend. Under this uncertainty, and the rather as
you are of neither of these schools, I may hazard some general ideas,
to be corrected by what they may recommend hereafter.
In all cases I prefer original authors to compilers. For a course of
ancient history, therefore, of Greece and Rome especially, I should advise
the usual suite of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, Livy, Cæsar,
Suetonius, Tacitus, and Dion, in their originals if understood, and in
translations if not. For its continuation to the final destruction of
the empire we must then be content with Gibbons, a compiler, and with
Segur, for a judicious recapitulation of the whole. After this general
course, there are a number of particular histories filling up the chasms,
which may be read at leisure in the progress of life. Such is Arrian, 2
Curtius, Polybius, Sallust, Plutarch, Dionysius, Halicarnassus, Micasi,
&c. The ancient universal history should be on our shelves as a book of
general reference, the most learned and most faithful perhaps that ever
was written. Its style is very plain but perspicuous.
In modern history, there are but two nations with whose course it is
interesting to us to be intimately acquainted, to wit: France and England.
For the former, Millot's General History of France may be sufficient to
the period when 1 Davila commences. He should be followed by Perefixe,
Sully, Voltaire's Louis XIV. and XV., la Cretelles XVIII.me siècle,
Marmontel's Regence, Foulongion's French Revolution, and Madame de
Stael's, making up by a succession of particular history, the general
one which they want.
Of England there is as yet no general history so faithful as Rapin's.
He maybe followed by Ludlow, Fox, Belsham, Hume and Brodie. Hume's,
were it faithful, would be the finest piece of history which has ever
been written by man. Its unfortunate bias may be partly ascribed to
the accident of his having written backwards. His maiden work was the
History of the Stuarts. It was a first essay to try his strength before
the public. And whether as a Scotchman he had really a partiality for
that family, or thought that the lower their degradation, the more fame
he should acquire by raising them up to some favor, the object of his
work was an apology for them. He spared nothing, therefore, to wash them
white, and to palliate their misgovernment. For this purpose he suppressed
truths, advanced falsehoods, forged authorities, and falsified records.
All this is proved on him unanswerably by Brodie. But so bewitching was
his style and manner, that his readers were unwilling to doubt anything,
swallowed everything, and all England became tories by the magic of his
art. His pen revolutionized the public sentiment of that country more
completely than the standing armies could ever have done, which were so
much dreaded and deprecated by the patriots of that day.
Having succeeded so eminently in the acquisition of fortune and fame by
this work, he undertook the history of the two preceding dynasties, the
Plantagenets and Tudors. It was all-important in this second work, to
maintain the thesis of the first, that "it was the people who encroached
on the sovereign, not the sovereign who usurped on the rights of the
people." And, again, chapter 53d, "the grievances under which the English
labored [to wit: whipping, pillorying, cropping, imprisoning, fining,
&c.,] when considered in themselves, without regard to the constitution,
scarcely deserve the name, nor were they either burthensome on the
people's properties, or anywise shocking to the natural humanity of
mankind." During the constant wars, civil and foreign, which prevailed
while these two families occupied the throne, it was not difficult to
find abundant instances of practices the most despotic, as are wont
to occur in times of violence. To make this second epoch support the
third, therefore, required but a little garbling of authorities. And
it then remained, by a third work, to make of the whole a complete
history of England, on the principles on which he had advocated that of
the Stuarts. This would comprehend the Saxon and Norman conquests, the
former exhibiting the genuine form and political principles of the people
constituting the nation, and founded in the rights of man; the latter
built on conquest and physical force, not at all affecting moral rights,
nor even assented to by the free will of the vanquished. The battle of
Hastings, indeed, was lost, but the natural rights of the nation were
not staked on the event of a single battle. Their will to recover the
Saxon constitution continued unabated, and was at the bottom of all the
unsuccessful insurrections which succeeded in subsequent times. The
victors and vanquished continued in a state of living hostility, and
the nation may still say, after losing the battle of Hastings,
"What though the field is lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will
And study of revenge, immortal hate
And courage never to submit or yield."
The government of a nation may be usurped by the forcible intrusion of
an individual into the throne. But to conquer its will, so as to rest the
right on that, the only legitimate basis, requires long acquiescence and
cessation of all opposition. The whig historians of England, therefore,
have always gone back to the Saxon period for the true principles of
their constitution, while the tories and Hume, their Coryphæus, date it
from the Norman conquest, and hence conclude that the continual claim
by the nation of the good old Saxon laws, and the struggles to recover
them, were "encroachments of the people on the crown, and not usurpations
of the crown on the people." Hume, with Brodie, should be the last
histories of England to be read. If first read, Hume makes an English
tory, from whence it is an easy step to American toryism. But there is
a history, by Baxter, in which, abridging somewhat by leaving out some
entire incidents as less interesting now than when Hume wrote, he has
given the rest in the identical words of Hume, except that when he comes
to a fact falsified, he states it truly, and when to a suppression of
truth, he supplies it, never otherwise changing a word. It is, in fact,
an editic expurgation of Hume. Those who shrink from the volume of Rapin,
may read this first, and from this lay a first foundation in a basis of
truth.
For modern continental history, a very general idea may be first aimed
at, leaving for future and occasional reading the particular histories of
such countries as may excite curiosity at the time. This may be obtained
from Mollet's Northern Antiquities, Vol. Esprit et Mœurs des Nations,
Millot's Modern History, Russel's Modern Europe, Hallam's Middle Ages,
and Robertson's Charles V.
You ask what book I would recommend to be first read in law. I am very
glad to find from a conversation with Mr. Gilmer, that he considers
Coke Littleton, as methodized by Thomas, as unquestionably the best
elementary work, and the one which will be the text book of his school.
It is now as agreeable reading as Blackstone, and much more profound. I
pray you to consider this hasty and imperfect sketch as intended merely
to prove my wish to be useful to you, and that with it you will accept
the assurance of my esteem and respect.
TO THE HONORABLE J. EVELYN DENISON, M. P.
MONTICELLO, November 9, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of July 30th was duly received, and we have now
at hand the books you have been so kind as to send to our University.
They are truly acceptable in themselves, for we might have been years
not knowing of their existence; but give the greater pleasure as
evidence of the interest you have taken in our infant institution. It
is going on as successfully as we could have expected; and I have no
reason to regret the measure taken of procuring Professors from abroad
where science is so much ahead of us. You witnessed some of the puny
squibs of which I was the butt on that account. They were probably
from disappointed candidates, whose unworthiness had occasioned their
applications to be passed over. The measure has been generally approved
in the South and West; and by all liberal minds in the North. It has
been peculiarly fortunate, too, that the Professors brought from abroad
were as happy selections as could have been hoped, as well for their
qualifications in science as correctness and amiableness of character.
I think the example will be followed, and that it cannot fail to be one
of the efficacious means of promoting that cordial good will, which it
is so much the interest of both nations to cherish. These teachers can
never utter an unfriendly sentiment towards their native country; and
those into whom their instructions will be infused, are not of ordinary
significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to
the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its
friendships and fortunes. As it is our interest to receive instruction
through this channel, so I think it is yours to furnish it; for these
two nations holding cordially together, have nothing to fear from the
united world. They will be the models for regenerating the condition of
man, the sources from which representative government is to flow over
the whole earth.
I learn from you with great pleasure, that a taste is reviving in
England for the recovery of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of our language;
for a mere dialect it is, as much as those of Piers Plowman, Gower,
Douglas, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, for even much of Milton
is already antiquated. The Anglo-Saxon is only the earliest we possess
of the many shades of mutation by which the language has tapered down
to its modern form. Vocabularies we need for each of these stages from
Somner to Bailey, but not grammars for each or any of them. The grammar
has changed so little, in the descent from the earliest, to the present
form, that a little observation suffices to understand its variations. We
are greatly indebted to the worthies who have preserved the Anglo-Saxon
form, from Doctor Hickes down to Mr. Bosworth. Had they not given to the
public what we possess through the press, that dialect would by this
time have been irrecoverably lost. I think it, however, a misfortune
that they have endeavored to give it too much of a learned form, to
mount it on all the scaffolding of the Greek and Latin, to load it with
their genders, numbers, cases, declensions, conjugations, &c. Strip it
of these embarrassments, vest it in the Roman type which we have adopted
instead of our English black letter, reform its uncouth orthography,
and assimilate its pronunciation, as much as may be, to the present
English, just as we do in reading Piers Plowman or Chaucer, and with the
cotemporary vocabulary for the few lost words, we understand it as we do
them. For example, the Anglo-Saxon text of the Lord's prayer, as given
us 6th Matthew, ix., is spelt and written thus, in the equivalent Roman
type: "Faeder ure thee the eart in heafenum, si thin nama ychalgod. To
becume thin rice. Gerrurthe thin willa on eartham, swa swa on heofenum.
Ume doeghw amli can hlaf syle us to dœg. And forgyfus ure gyltas, swa swa
we forgifath urum gyltendum. And ne ge-lœdde thu us on costnunge, ae alys
us of yfele." I should spell and pronounce thus: "Father our, thou tha
art in heavenum, si thine name y-hallowed. Come thin ric-y-wurth thine
will on eartham, so so on heavenum: ourn daynhamlican loaf sell us to-day,
and forgive us our guilts so so we forgiveth ourum guiltendum. And no
y-lead thou us on costnunge, ac a-lease us of evil." And here it is to
be observed by-the-bye, that there is but the single word "temptation"
in our present version of this prayer that is not Anglo-Saxon; for the
word "trespasses" taken from the French, (οφειληματα in the original)
might as well have been translated by the Anglo-Saxon "guilts."
The learned apparatus in which Dr. Hickes and his successors have muffled
our Anglo-Saxon, is what has frightened us from encountering it. The
simplification I propose may, on the contrary, make it a regular part
of our common English education.
So little reading and writing was there among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors
of that day, that they had no fixed orthography. To produce a given sound,
every one jumbled the letters together, according to his unlettered notion
of their power, and all jumbled them differently, just as would be done
at this day, were a dozen peasants, who have learnt the alphabet, but
have never read, desired to write the Lord's prayer. Hence the varied
modes of spelling by which the Anglo-Saxons meant to express the same
sound. The word _many_, for example, was spelt in twenty different ways;
yet we cannot suppose they were twenty different words, or that they
had twenty different ways of pronouncing the same word. The Anglo-Saxon
orthography, then, is not an exact representation of the sounds meant to
be conveyed. We must drop in pronunciation the superfluous consonants,
and give to the remaining letters their present English sound; because,
not knowing the true one, the present enunciation is as likely to be
right as any other, and indeed more so, and facilitates the acquisition
of the language.
It is much to be wished that the publication of the present county
dialects of England should go on. It will restore to us our language
in all its shades of variation. It will incorporate into the present
one all the riches of our ancient dialects; and what a store this will
be, may be seen by running the eye over the county glossaries, and
observing the words we have lost by abandonment and disuse, which in
sound and sense are inferior to nothing we have retained. When these
local vocabularies are published and digested together into a single
one, it is probable we shall find that there is not a word in Shakspeare
which is not now in use in some of the counties in England, from whence
we may obtain its true sense. And what an exchange will their recovery
be for the volumes of idle commentaries and conjectures with which that
divine poet has been masked and metamorphosed. We shall find in him new
sublimities which we had never tasted before, and find beauties in our
ancient poets which are lost to us now. It is not that I am merely an
enthusiast for Palæology. I set equal value on the beautiful engraftments
we have borrowed from Greece and Rome, and I am equally a friend to the
encouragement of a judicious neology: a language cannot be too rich.
The more copious, the more susceptible of embellishment it will become.
There are several things wanting to promote this improvement. To reprint
the Saxon books in modern type; reform their orthography; publish in the
same way the treasures still existing in manuscript. And, more than all
things, we want, a dictionary on the plan of Stephens or Scapula, in
which the Saxon root, placed alphabetically, shall be followed by all
its cognate modifications of nouns, verbs, &c., whether Anglo-Saxon, or
found in the dialects of subsequent ages. We want, too, an elaborate
history of the English language. In time our country may be able to
co-operate with you in these labors, of common advantage, but as yet
it is too much a blank, calling for other and more pressing attentions.
We have too much to do in the improvements of which it is susceptible,
and which are deemed more immediately useful. Literature is not yet a
distinct profession with us. Now and then a strong mind arises, and at
its intervals of leisure from business, emits a flash of light. But the
first object of young societies is bread and covering; science is but
secondary and subsequent.
I owe apology for this long letter. It must be found in the circumstance
of its subject having made an interesting part in the tenor of your
letter, and in my attachment to it. It is a hobby which too often runs
away with me where I meant not to give up the rein. Our youth seem
disposed to mount it with me, and to begin their course where mine is
ending.
Our family recollects with pleasure the visit with which you favored us;
and join me in assuring you of our friendly and respectful recollections,
and of the gratification it will ever be to us to hear of your health
and welfare.
TO MR. LEWIS M. WISS.
MONTICELLO, November 27, 1825.
SIR,--Disqualified by age and ill health from undertaking minute
investigations, I find it will be easier for me to state to you my
proposition of a lock-dock, for laying up vessels, high and dry, than
to investigate yours. You will then judge for yourself whether any part
of mine has anticipated any part of yours.
While I was at Washington, in the administration of the government,
Congress was much divided in opinion on the subject of a navy, a part
of them wishing to go extensively into preparation of a fleet, another
part opposed to it, on the objection that the repairs and preservation
of a ship, even idle in harbor, in ten or twelve years, amount to her
original cost. It has been estimated in England, that if they could
be sure of peace a dozen years it would be cheaper for them to burn
their fleet, and build a new one when wanting, than to keep the old one
in repair during that term. I learnt that, in Venice, there were then
ships, lying on their original stocks, ready for launching at any moment,
which had been so for eighty years, and were still in a state of perfect
preservation; and that this was effected by disposing of them in docks
pumped dry, and kept so by constant pumping. It occurred to me that this
expense of constant pumping might be saved by combining a lock with the
common wet dock, wherever there was a running stream of water, the bed
of which, within a reasonable distance, was of a sufficient height above
the high-water level of the harbor. This was the case at the navy-yard,
on the eastern branch at Washington, the high-water line of which was
seventy-eight feet lower than the ground on which the Capitol stands,
and to which it was found that the water of the Tyber creek could be
brought for watering the city. My proposition then was as follows: Let
_a b_ be the high-water level of the harbor, and the vessel to be laid
up draw eighteen feet water. Make a chamber A twenty feet deep below
high water and twenty feet high above it, as _c d e f_, and at the upper
end make another chamber, B,
c f
+----------------------------------------------+
| . | g
a b | . B |
| . |
..............|..........A........+--------------------------| h
| | i
| |
d | | e
+-------------------+
the bottom of which should be in the high-water level, and the tops twenty
feet above that. _g h_ is the water of the Tyber. When the vessel is
to be introduced, open the gate at _c b a_. The tide water rises in the
chamber A to the level _b i_, and floats the vessel in with it. Shut the
gate _c b d_ and open that of _f i_. The water of the Tyber fills both
chambers to the level _c f g_, and the vessel floats into the chamber
B; then opening both gates _c b d_ and _f i_, the water flows out, and
the vessel settles down on the stays previously prepared at the bottom
_i h_ to receive her. The gate at _g h_ must of course be closed, and
the water of the feeding stream be diverted elsewhere. The chamber B is
to have a roof over it of the construction of that over the meal market
at Paris, except that that is hemispherical, this semi-cylindrical. For
this construction see Delenne's architecture, whose invention it was.
The diameter of the dome of the meal market is considerably over one
hundred feet.
It will be seen at once, that instead of making the chamber B of
sufficient width and length for a single vessel only, it may be widened
to whatever span the semi-circular framing of the roof can be trusted,
and to whatever length you please, so as to admit two or more vessels
in breadth, and as many in length as the localities render expedient.
I had a model of this lock-dock made and exhibited in the President's
house, during the session of Congress at which it was proposed. But the
advocates for a navy did not fancy it, and those opposed to the building
of ships altogether, were equally indisposed to provide protection for
them. Ridicule was also resorted to, the ordinary substitute for reason,
when that fails, and the proposition was past over. I then thought and
still think the measure wise, to have a proper number of vessels always
ready to be launched, with nothing unfinished about them, except the
planting their masts, which must of necessity be omitted, to be brought
under a roof. Having no view in this proposition but to combine for the
public a provision for defence, with economy in its preservation, I have
thought no more of it since. And if any of my ideas anticipated yours,
you are welcome to appropriate them to yourself, without objection on
my part, and, with this assurance, I pray you to accept that of my best
wishes and respects.
To ----.[19]
MONTICELLO. December 18, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--Your letters are always welcome, the last more than all others,
its subject being one of the dearest to my heart. To my grand-daughter
your commendations cannot fail to be an object of high ambition, as
a certain passport to the good opinion of the world. If she does not
cultivate them with assiduity and affection, she will illy fulfil my
parting injunctions. I trust she will merit a continuance of your favor,
and find in her new situation the general esteem she so happily possessed
in the society she left. You tell me she repeated to you an expression
of mine, that I should be willing to go again over the scenes of past
life. I should not be unwilling, without, however, wishing it; and why
not? I have enjoyed a greater share of health than falls to the lot of
most men; my spirits have never failed me except under those paroxysms
of grief which you, as well as myself, have experienced in every form,
and with good health and good spirits, the pleasures surely outweigh the
pains of life. Why not, then, taste them again, fat and lean together?
Were I indeed permitted to cut off from the train the last seven years,
the balance would be much in favor of treading the ground over again.
Being at that period in the neighborhood of our warm springs, and well
in health, I wished to be better, and tried them. They destroyed, in
a great degree, my internal organism, and I have never since had a
moment of perfect health. I have now been eight months confined almost
constantly to the house, with now and then intervals of a few days on
which I could get on horseback.
I presume you have received a copy of the life of Richard H. Lee, from
his grandson of the same name, author of the work. You and I know that
he merited much during the revolution. Eloquent, bold, and ever watchful
at his post, of which his biographer omits no proof. I am not certain
whether the friends of George Mason, of Patrick Henry, yourself, and
even of General Washington, may not reclaim some feathers of the plumage
given him, noble as was his proper and original coat. But on this subject
I will anticipate your own judgment.
I learn with sincere pleasure that you have experienced lately a great
renovation of your health. That it may continue to the ultimate period
of your wishes is the sincere prayer of _usque ad eras amicissimi tui_.
FOOTNOTE:
[19] Address lost.
TO JAMES MADISON.
MONTICELLO, December 24, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I have for some time considered the question of internal
improvement as desperate. The torrent of general opinion sets so
strongly in favor of it as to be irresistible. And I suppose that even
the opposition in Congress will hereafter be feeble and formal, unless
something can be done which may give a gleam of encouragement to our
friends, or alarm their opponents in their fancied security. I learn from
Richmond that those who think with us there are in a state of perfect
dismay, not knowing what to do or what to propose. Mr. Gordon, our
representative, particularly, has written to me in very desponding terms,
not disposed to yield indeed, but pressing for opinions and advice on
the subject. I have no doubt you are pressed in the same way, and I hope
you have devised and recommended something to them. If you have, stop
here and read no more, but consider all that follows as _non-avenue_.
I shall be better satisfied to adopt implicitly anything which you may
have advised, than anything occurring to myself. For I have long ceased
to think on subjects of this kind, and pay little attention to public
proceedings. But if you have done nothing in it, then I risk for your
consideration what has occurred to me, and is expressed in the enclosed
paper.[20] Bailey's propositions, which came to hand since I wrote the
paper, and which I suppose to have come from the President himself, show
a little hesitation in the purposes of his party; and in that state of
mind, a bolt shot critically may decide the contest by its effect on
the less bold. The olive branch held out to them at this moment may be
accepted, and the constitution thus saved at a moderate sacrifice. I say
nothing of the paper, which will explain itself. The following heads of
consideration, or some of them, may weigh in its favor:
It may intimidate the wavering. It may break the western coalition, by
offering the same thing in a different form. It will be viewed with favor
in contrast with the Georgia opposition and fear of strengthening that.
It will be an example of a temperate mode of opposition in future and
similar cases. It will delay the measure a year at least. It will give
us the chance of better times and of intervening accidents; and in no
way place us in a worse than our present situation. I do not dwell on
these topics; your mind will develop them.
The first question is, whether you approve of doing anything of the kind.
If not, send it back to me, and it shall be suppressed; for I would not
hazard so important a measure against your opinion, nor even without
its support. If you think it may be a canvass on which to put something
good, make what alterations you please, and I will forward it to Gordon,
under the most sacred injunctions that it shall be so used as that not a
shadow of suspicion shall fall on you or myself, that it has come from
either of us. But what you do, do as promptly as your convenience will
admit, lest it should be anticipated by something worse.
Ever and affectionately yours.
FOOTNOTE:
[20] See under head of "Miscellaneous Papers," the paper
here alluded to, entitled, "The solemn Declaration and
Protest of the Commonwealth of Virginia on the principles
of the Constitution of the United States of America, and on
the violations of them."
TO WILLIAM B. GILES.
MONTICELLO, December 25, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 15th was received four days ago. It found
me engaged in what I could not lay aside till this day.
Far advanced in my eighty-third year, worn down with infirmities which
have confined me almost entirely to the house for seven or eight months
past, it afflicts me much to receive appeals to my memory for transactions
so far back as that which is the subject of your letter. My memory is
indeed become almost a blank, of which no better proof can probably
be given you than by my solemn protestation, that I have not the least
recollection of your intervention between Mr. John Q. Adams and myself,
in what passed on the subject of the embargo. Not the slightest trace
of it remains in my mind. Yet I have no doubt of the exactitude of the
statement in your letter. And the less, as I recollect the interview
with Mr. Adams, to which the previous communications which had passed
between him and yourself were probably and naturally the preliminary.
That interview I remember well; not indeed in the very words which passed
between us, but in their substance, which was of a character too awful,
too deeply engraved in my mind, and influencing too materially the course
I had to pursue, ever to be forgotten. Mr. Adams called on me pending
the embargo, and while endeavors were making to obtain its repeal. He
made some apologies for the call, on the ground of our not being then
in the habit of confidential communications, but that that which he had
then to make, involved too seriously the interest of our country not
to overrule all other considerations with him, and make it his duty to
reveal it to myself particularly. I assured him there was no occasion
for any apology for his visit; that, on the contrary, his communications
would be thankfully received, and would add a confirmation the more to
my entire confidence in the rectitude and patriotism of his conduct and
principles. He spoke then of the dissatisfaction of the eastern portion
of our confederacy with the restraints of the embargo then existing, and
their restlessness under it. That there was nothing which might not be
attempted, to rid themselves of it. That he had information of the most
unquestionable certainty, that certain citizens of the eastern States
(I think he named Massachusetts particularly) were in negotiation with
agents of the British government, the object of which was an agreement
that the New England States should take no further part in the war then
going on; that, without formally declaring their separation from the
Union of the States, they should withdraw from all aid and obedience to
them; that their navigation and commerce should be free from restraint
and interruption by the British; that they should be considered and
treated by them as neutrals, and as such might conduct themselves towards
both parties; and, at the close of the war, be at liberty to rejoin
the confederacy. He assured me that there was eminent danger that the
convention would take place; that the temptations were such as might
debauch many from their fidelity to the Union; and that, to enable its
friends to make head against it, the repeal of the embargo was absolutely
necessary. I expressed a just sense of the merit of this information, and
of the importance of the disclosure to the safety and even the salvation
of our country; and however reluctant I was to abandon the measure,
(a measure which persevered in a little longer, we had subsequent and
satisfactory assurance would have effected its object completely,) from
that moment, and influenced by that information, I saw the necessity
of abandoning it, and instead of effecting our purpose by this peaceful
weapon, we must fight it out, or break the Union. I then recommended to
yield to the necessity of a repeal of the embargo, and to endeavor to
supply its place by the best substitute, in which they could procure a
general concurrence.
I cannot too often repeat, that this statement is not pretended to be in
the very words which passed; that it only gives faithfully the impression
remaining on my mind. The very words of a conversation are too transient
and fugitive to be so long retained in remembrance. But the substance
was too important to be forgotten, not only from the revolution of
measures it obliged me to adopt, but also from the renewals of it in
my memory on the frequent occasions I have had of doing justice to Mr.
Adams, by repeating this proof of his fidelity to his country, and of
his superiority over all ordinary considerations when the safety of that
was brought into question.
With this best exertion of a waning memory which I can command, accept
assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
TO WILLIAM B. GILES.
MONTICELLO, December 26, 1825.
DEAR SIR,--I wrote you a letter yesterday, of which you will be free to
make what use you please. This will contain matters not intended for the
public eye. I see, as you do, and with the deepest affliction, the rapid
strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing
towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the
consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that
too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their
power. Take together the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines
of the President, and the misconstructions of the constitutional
compact acted on by the legislature of the federal branch, and it is
but too evident, that the three ruling branches of that department are
in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of
the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions
foreign and domestic. Under the power to regulate commerce, they assume
indefinitely that also over agriculture and manufactures, and call it
regulation to take the earnings of one of these branches of industry,
and that too the most depressed, and put them into the pockets of the
other, the most flourishing of all. Under the authority to establish post
roads, they claim that of cutting down mountains for the construction of
roads, of digging canals, and aided by a little sophistry on the words
"general welfare," a right to do, not only the acts to effect that,
which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they
shall think, or pretend will be for the general welfare. And what is our
resource for the preservation of the constitution? Reason and argument?
You might as well reason and argue with the marble columns encircling
them. The representatives chosen by ourselves? They are joined in the
combination, some from incorrect views of government, some from corrupt
ones, sufficient voting together to out-number the sound parts; and
with majorities only of one, two, or three, bold enough to go forward
in defiance. Are we then _to stand to our arms_, with the hot-headed
Georgian? No. That must be the last resource, not to be thought of until
much longer and greater sufferings. If every infraction of a compact of
so many parties is to be resisted at once, as a dissolution of it, none
can ever be formed which would last one year. We must have patience and
longer endurance then with our brethren while under delusion; give them
time for reflection and experience of consequences; keep ourselves in a
situation to profit by the chapter of accidents; and separate from our
companions only when the sole alternatives left, are the dissolution of
our Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of
powers. Between these two evils, when we must make a choice, there can
be no hesitation. But in the meanwhile, the States should be watchful to
note every material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as they
occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to
which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments
or precedents of right, but as a temporary yielding to the lesser evil,
until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation. I would go
still further, and give to the federal member, by a regular amendment of
the constitution, a right to make roads and canals of intercommunication
between the States, providing sufficiently against corrupt practices in
Congress, (log-rolling, &c.,) by declaring that the federal proportion of
each State of the moneys so employed, shall be in works within the State,
or elsewhere with its consent, and with a due _salvo_ of jurisdiction.
This is the course which I think safest and best as yet.
You ask my opinion of the propriety of giving publicity to what is stated
in your letter, as having passed between Mr. John Q. Adams and yourself.
Of this no one can judge but yourself. It is one of those questions which
belong to the forum of feeling. This alone can decide on the degree of
confidence implied in the disclosure; whether under no circumstances
it was to be communicated to others? It does not seem to be of that
character, or at all to wear that aspect. They are historical facts which
belong to the present, as well as future times. I doubt whether a single
fact, known to the world, will carry as clear conviction to it, of the
correctness of our knowledge of the treasonable views of the federal
party of that day, as that disclosed by this, the most nefarious and
daring attempt to dissever the Union, of which the Hartford convention
was a subsequent chapter; and both of these having failed, consolidation
becomes the fourth chapter of the next book of their history. But this
opens with a vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who,
having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76, now look to
a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking
institutions, and moneyed incorporations under the guise and cloak of
their favored branches of manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding
and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry. This will
be to them a next best blessing to the monarchy of their first aim, and
perhaps the surest stepping-stone to it.
I learn with great satisfaction that your school is thriving well,
and that you have at its head a truly classical scholar. He is one
of three or four whom I can hear of in the State. We were obliged the
last year to receive shameful Latinists into the classical school of
the University, such as we will certainly refuse as soon as we can get
from better schools a sufficiency of those properly instructed to form
a class. We must get rid of this Connecticut Latin, of this barbarous
confusion of long and short syllables, which renders doubtful whether
we are listening to a reader of Cherokee, Shawnee, Iroquois, or what.
Our University has been most fortunate in the five professors procured
from England. A finer selection could not have been made. Besides their
being of a grade of science which has left little superior behind, the
correctness of their moral character, their accommodating dispositions,
and zeal for the prosperity of the institution, leave us nothing more
to wish. I verily believe that as high a degree of education can now be
obtained here, as in the country they left. And a finer set of youths I
never saw assembled for instruction. They committed some irregularities
at first, until they learned the lawful length of their tether; since
which it has never been transgressed in the smallest degree. A great
proportion of them are severely devoted to study, and I fear not to
say that within twelve or fifteen years from this time, a majority of
the rulers of our State will have been educated here. They shall carry
hence the correct principles of our day, and you may count assuredly
that they will exhibit their country in a degree of sound respectability
it has never known, either in our days, or those of our forefathers. I
cannot live to see it. My joy must only be that of anticipation. But
that you may see it in full fruition, is the probable consequence of
the twenty years I am ahead of you in time, and is the sincere prayer
of your affectionate and constant friend.
TO CLAIBORNE W. GOOCH.
MONTICELLO, January 9, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--I have duly received your favor of December the 31st, and
fear, with you, all the evils which the present lowering aspect of
our political horizon so ominously portends. That at some future day,
which I hoped to be very distant, the free principles of our government
might change with the change of circumstances was to be expected. But I
certainly did not expect that they would not over-live the generation
which established them. And what I still less expected was, that my
favorite western country was to be made the instrument of change. I had
ever and fondly cherished the interests of that country, relying on it
as a barrier against the degeneracy of public opinion from our original
and free principles. But the bait of local interests, artfully prepared
for their palate, has decoyed them from their kindred attachments, to
alliances alien to them. Yet although I have little hope that the torrent
of consolidation can be withstood, I should not be for giving up the ship
without efforts to save her. She lived well through the first squall,
and may weather the present one. But, dear Sir, I am not the champion
called for by our present dangers. "Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus
istis, tempus eget." A waning body, a waning mind, and waning memory,
with habitual ill health, warn me to withdraw and relinquish the arena
to younger and abler athletes. I am sensible myself, if others are not,
that this is my duty. If my distant friends know it not, those around
me can inform them that they should not, in friendship, wish to call
me into conflicts, exposing only the decays which nature has inscribed
among her unalterable laws, and injuring the common cause by a senile
and puny defence.
I will, however, say one word on the subject. The South Carolina
resolutions, Van Buren's motion, and above all Bayley's propositions,
show that other States are coming forward on the subject, and better for
any one to take the lead than Virginia, where opposition is considered
as common-place, and a mere matter of form and habit. We shall see what
our co-States propose, and before the close of the session we may shape
our own course more understandingly.
Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.
To----.[21]
MONTICELLO, January 21, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--Your favor of January 15th is received, and I am entirely
sensible of the kindness of the motives which suggested the caution it
recommended. But I believe what I have done is the only thing I could
have done with honor or conscience. Mr. Giles requested me to state a
fact which he knew himself, and of which he knew me to be possessed. What
use he intended to make of it I knew not, nor had I a right to inquire,
or to indicate any suspicion that he would make an unfair one. That was
his concern, not mine, and his character was sufficient to sustain the
responsibility for it. I knew, too, that if an uncandid use should be
made of it, there would be found those who would so prove it. Independent
of the terms of intimate friendship in which Mr. Giles and myself have
ever lived together, the world's respect entitled him to the justice
of my testimony to any truth he might call for; and how that testimony
should connect me with whatever he may do or write hereafter, and with
his whole career, as you apprehend, is not understood by me. With his
personal controversies I have nothing to do. I never took any part in
them, or in those of any other person. Add to this, that the statement
I have given him on the subject of Mr. Adams, is entirely honorable to
him in every sentiment and fact it contains. There is not a word in it
which I would wish to recall. It is one which Mr. Adams himself might
willingly quote, did he need to quote anything. It was simply that during
the continuance of the embargo, Mr. Adams informed me of a combination
(without naming any one concerned in it,) which had for its object a
severance of the Union, for a time at least. That Mr. Adams and myself
not being then in the habit of mutual consultation and confidence, I
considered it as the stronger proof of the purity of his patriotism, which
was able to lift him above all party passions when the safety of his
country was endangered. Nor have I kept this honorable fact to myself.
During the late canvas, particularly, I had more than one occasion to
quote it to persons who were expressing opinions respecting him, of which
this was a direct corrective. I have never entertained for Mr. Adams any
but sentiments of esteem and respect; and if we have not thought alike
on political subjects, I yet never doubted the honesty of his opinions,
of which the letter in question, if published, will be an additional
proof. Still, I recognize your friendship in suggesting a review of it,
and am glad of this, as of every other occasion of repeating to you the
assurance of my constant attachment and respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[21] Address lost.
TO JAMES MADISON.
MONTICELLO, February 17, 1826.
DEAR SIR,-- * * * * *
Immediately on seeing the overwhelming vote of the House of
Representatives against giving us another dollar, I rode to the
University and desired Mr. Brockenbrough to engage in nothing new, to
stop everything on hand which could be done without, and to employ all
his force and funds in finishing the circular room for the hooks, and
the anatomical theatre. These cannot be done without: and for these
and all our debts we have funds enough. But I think it prudent then
to clear the decks thoroughly, to see how we shall stand, and what we
may accomplish further. In the meantime, there have arrived for us in
different ports of the United States, ten boxes of books from Paris, seven
from London, and from Germany I know not how many; in all, perhaps, about
twenty-five boxes. Not one of these can be opened until the book-room
is completely finished, and all the shelves ready to receive their
charge directly from the boxes as they shall be opened. This cannot be
till May. I hear nothing definitive of the three thousand dollars duty
of which we are asking the remission from Congress. In the selection
of our Law Professor, we must be rigorously attentive to his political
principles. You will recollect that before the revolution, Coke Littleton
was the universal elementary book of law students, and a sounder whig
never wrote, nor of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of
the British constitution, or in what were called English liberties.
You remember also that our lawyers were then all whigs. But when his
black-letter text, and uncouth but cunning learning got out of fashion,
and the honied Mansfieldism of Blackstone became the students' hornbook,
from that moment, that profession (the nursery of our Congress) began
to slide into toryism, and nearly all the young brood of lawyers now
are of that hue. They suppose themselves, indeed, to be whigs, because
they no longer know what whigism or republicanism means. It is in our
seminary that that vestal flame is to be kept alive; it is thence it is
to spread anew over our own and the sister States. If we are true and
vigilant in our trust, within a dozen or twenty years a majority of our
own legislature will be from one school, and many disciples will have
carried its doctrines home with them to their several States, and will
have leavened thus the whole mass. New York has taken strong ground in
vindication of the constitution; South Carolina had already done the
same. Although I was against our leading, I am equally against omitting
to follow in the same line, and backing them firmly; and I hope that
yourself or some other will mark out the track to be pursued by us.
You will have seen in the newspapers some proceedings in the legislature,
which have cost me much mortification. My own debts had become
considerable, but not beyond the effect of some lopping of property,
which would have been little felt, when our friend * * * * * gave me
the _coup de grace_. Ever since that I have been paying twelve hundred
dollars a year interest on his debt, which, with my own, was absorbing
so much of my annual income, as that the maintenance of my family was
making deep and rapid inroads on my capital, and had already done it.
Still, sales at a fair price would leave me competently provided. Had
crops and prices for several years been such as to maintain a steady
competition of substantial bidders at market, all would have been safe.
But the long succession of years of stunted crops, of reduced prices,
the general prostration of the farming business, under levies for the
support of manufacturers, &c., with the calamitous fluctuations of
value in our paper medium, have kept agriculture in a state of abject
depression, which has peopled the western States by silently breaking
up those on the Atlantic, and glutted the land market, while it drew off
its bidders. In such a state of things, property has lost its character
of being a resource for debts. Highland in Bedford, which, in the days
of our plethory, sold readily for from fifty to one hundred dollars
the acre, (and such sales were many then,) would not now sell for more
than from ten to twenty dollars, or one-quarter or one-fifth of its
former price. Reflecting on these things, the practice occurred to me,
of selling, on fair valuation, and by way of lottery, often resorted to
before the Revolution to effect large sales, and still in constant usage
in every State for individual as well as corporation purposes. If it
is permitted in my case, my lands here alone, with the mills, &c., will
pay every thing, and leave me Monticello and a farm free. If refused, I
must sell everything here, perhaps considerably in Bedford, move thither
with my family, where I have not even a log hut to put my head into, and
whether ground for burial, will depend on the depredations which, under
the form of sales, shall have been committed on my property. The question
then with me was _ultrum horum_? But why afflict you with these details?
Indeed, I cannot tell, unless pains are lessened by communication with
a friend. The friendship which has subsisted between us, now half a
century, and the harmony of our political principles and pursuits, have
been sources of constant happiness to me through that long period. And
if I remove beyond the reach of attentions to the University, or beyond
the bourne of life itself, as I soon must, it is a comfort to leave that
institution under your care, and an assurance that it will not be wanting.
It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged
in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving
to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which
we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld
a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to
the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which,
protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our
lives have been devoted. To myself you have been a pillar of support
through life. Take care of me when dead, and be assured that I shall
leave with you my last affections.
TO JOHN ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, March 25, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--My grandson, Thomas J. Randolph, the bearer of this letter,
being on a visit to Boston, would think he had seen nothing were he to
leave without seeing you. Although I truly sympathize with you in the
trouble these interruptions give, yet I must ask for him permission to
pay to you his personal respects. Like other young people, he wishes to
be able in the winter nights of old age, to recount to those around him,
what he has heard and learnt of the heroic age preceding his birth, and
which of the Argonauts individually he was in time to have seen.
It was the lot of our early years to witness nothing but the dull
monotony of a colonial subservience; and of our riper years, to breast
the labors and perils of working out of it. Theirs are the Halcyon calms
succeeding the storm which our Argosy had so stoutly weathered. Gratify
his ambition then, by receiving his best bow; and my solicitude for your
health, by enabling him to bring me a favorable account of it. Mine is
but indifferent, but not so my friendship and respect for you.
TO JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
MONTICELLO, March 30, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--I am thankful for the very interesting message and documents
of which you have been so kind as to send me a copy, and will state
my recollections as to the particular passage of the message to which
you ask my attention. On the conclusion of peace, Congress, sensible
of their right to assume independence, would not condescend to ask its
acknowledgment from other nations, yet were willing, by some of the
ordinary international transactions, to receive what would imply that
acknowledgment. They appointed commissioners, therefore, to propose
treaties of commerce to the principal nations of Europe. I was then a
member of Congress, was of the committee appointed to prepare instructions
for the commissioners, was, as you suppose, the draughtsman of those
actually agreed to, and was joined with your father and Dr. Franklin,
to carry them into execution. But the stipulations making part of these
instructions, which respected privateering, blockades, contraband, and
freedom of the fisheries, were not original conceptions of mine. They had
before been suggested by Dr. Franklin, in some of his papers in possession
of the public, and had, I think, been recommended in some letter of
his to Congress. I happen only to have been the inserter of them in the
first public act which gave the formal sanction of a public authority.
We accordingly proposed our treaties, containing these stipulations,
to the principal governments of Europe. But we were then just emerged
from a subordinate condition; the nations had as yet known nothing of
us, and had not yet reflected on the relations which it might be their
interest to establish with us. Most of them, therefore, listened to our
propositions with coyness and reserve; old Frederic alone closing with us
without hesitation. The negotiator of Portugal, indeed, signed a treaty
with us, which his government did not ratify, and Tuscany was near a
final agreement. Becoming sensible, however, ourselves, that we should
do nothing with the greater powers, we thought it better not to hamper
our country with engagements to those of less significance, and suffered
our powers to expire without closing any other negotiations. Austria soon
after became desirous of a treaty with us, and her ambassador pressed
it often on me; but our commerce with her being no object, I evaded her
repeated invitations. Had these governments been then apprized of the
station we should so soon occupy among nations, all, I believe, would
have met us promptly and with frankness. These principles would then
have been established with all, and from being the conventional law with
us alone, would have slid into their engagements with one another, and
become general. These are the facts within my recollection. They have
not yet got into written history; but their adoption by our southern
brethren will bring them into observance, and make them, what they should
be, a part of the law of the world, and of the reformation of principles
for which they will be indebted to us. I pray you to accept the homage
of my friendly and high consideration.
TO THE HONORABLE EDWARD EVERETT.
MONTICELLO, April 8, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the very able and eloquent speech you have been
so kind as to send me on the amendment of the constitution, proposed by
Mr. McDuffie. I have read it with pleasure and satisfaction, and concur
with much of its contents. On the question of the lawfulness of slavery,
that is of the right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties
of another without his consent, I certainly retain my early opinions.
On that, however, of third persons to interfere between the parties,
and the effect of conventional modifications of that pretension, we are
probably nearer together. I think with you, also, that the constitution
of the United States is a compact of independent nations subject to the
rules acknowledged in similar cases, as well that of amendment provided
within itself, as, in case of abuse, the justly dreaded hut unavoidable
_ultimo ratio gentium_. The report on the Panama question mentioned in
your letter has as I suppose, got separated by the way. It will probably
come by another mail. In some of the letters you have been kind enough to
write me, I have been made to hope the favor of a visit from Washington.
It would be received with sincere welcome, and unwillingly relinquished
if no circumstance should render it inconvenient to yourself. I repeat
always with pleasure the assurances of my great esteem and respect.
TO DR. EMMETT, PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
MONTICELLO, April 27, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--It is time to think of the introduction of the school of
Botany into our institution. Not that I suppose the lectures can be begun
in the present year, but that we may this year make the preparations
necessary for commencing them the next. For that branch, I presume, can
be taught advantageously only during the short season while nature is
in general bloom, say during a certain portion of the months of April
and May, when, suspending the other branches of your department, that
of Botany may claim your exclusive attention. Of this, however, you are
to be the judge, as well as of what I may now propose on the subject of
preparation. I will do this in writing, while sitting at my table, and
at ease, because I can rally there, for your consideration, with more
composure than in extempore conversation, my thoughts on what we have
to do in the present season.
I suppose you were well acquainted, by character, if not personally,
with the late Abbé Correa, who past some time among us, first as a
distinguished savant of Europe, and afterwards as ambassador of Portugal,
resident with our government. Profoundly learned in several other branches
of science, he was so, above all others, in that of Botany; in which he
preferred an amalgamation of the methods of Linnæus and of Jussieu, to
either of them exclusively. Our institution being then on hand, in which
that was of course to be one of the subjects of instruction, I availed
myself of his presence and friendship to obtain from him a general idea
of the extent of ground we should employ, and the number and character
of the plants we should introduce into it. He accordingly sketched for me
a mere outline of the scale he would recommend, restrained altogether to
objects of use, and indulging not at all in things of mere curiosity, and
especially not yet thinking of a hot-house, or even of a green-house. I
enclose you a copy of his paper, which was the more satisfactory to me,
as it coincided with the moderate views to which our endowments as yet
confine us. I am still the more satisfied, as it seemed to be confirmed by
your own way of thinking, as I understood it in our conversation of the
other day. To your judgment altogether his ideas will be submitted, as
well as my own, now to be suggested as to the operations of the present
year, preparatory to the commencement of the school in the next.
1. Our first operation must be the selection of a piece of ground of
proper soil and site, suppose of about six acres, as M. Correa proposes.
In choosing this we are to regard the circumstances of soil, water, and
distance. I have diligently examined all our grounds with this view,
and think that that on the public road, at the upper corner of our
possessions, where the stream issues from them, has more of the requisite
qualities than any other spot we possess.[22] 170 yards square, taken at
that angle, would make the six acres we want. But the angle at the road
is acute, and the form of the ground will be trapezoid, not square. I
would take, therefore, for its breadth, all the ground between the road
and the dam of the brick ponds, extending eastwardly up the hill, as
far and as wide as our quantity would require. The bottom ground would
suit for the garden plants; the hill sides for the trees.
2. Operation. Enclose the ground with a serpentine brick wall seven feet
high. This would take about 80,000 bricks, and cost $800, and it must
depend on our finances whether they will afford that immediately, or
allow us, for awhile, but enclosure of posts and rails.
3. Operation. Form all the hill sides into level terrasses of convenient
breadth, curving with the hill, and the level ground into beds and alleys.
4. Operation. Make out a list of the plants thought necessary and
sufficient for botanical purposes, and of the trees we propose to
introduce, and take measures in time for procuring them.
As to the seeds of plants, much may be obtained from the gardeners of our
own country. I have, moreover, a special resource. For three-and-twenty
years of the last twenty-five, my good old friend Thonin, superintendent
of the garden of plants at Paris, has regularly sent me a box of seeds,
of such exotics, as to us, as would suit our climate, and containing
nothing indigenous to our country. These I regularly sent to the public
and private gardens of the other States, having as yet no employment for
them here. But during the last two years this envoi has been intermitted.
I know not why. I will immediately write and request a re-commencement
of that kind office, on the ground that we can now employ them ourselves.
They can be here in early spring.
The trees I should propose would be exotics of distinguished usefulness,
and accommodated to our climate; such as the Larch, Cedar of Libanus,
Cork, Oak, the Maronnier, Mahogany? the Catachu or Indian rubber tree
of Napul, (30°) Teak tree, or Indian oak of Burman, (23°) the various
woods of Brazil, &c.
The seed of the Larch can be obtained from a tree at Monticello. Cones
of the Cedar of Libanus are in most of our seed shops, but may be had
fresh from the trees in the English gardens. The Maronnier and Cork-oak,
I can obtain from France. There is a Maronnier at Mount Vernon, but it is
a seedling, and not therefore select. The others maybe got through the
means of our ministers and consuls in the countries where they grow, or
from the seed shops of England, where they may very possibly be found.
Lastly, a gardener of sufficient skill must be obtained.
This, dear Sir, is the sum of what occurs to me at present; think of
it, and let us at once enter on the operations.
Accept my friendly and respectful salutations.
FOOTNOTE:
[22] To wit, 19,360 square yards = 4 acres for the garden of plants.
9,680 " " = 2 acres for the plants of trees.
------
29,040 square yards = 6 acres in the whole.
TO DOCTOR JOHN P. EMMET.
MONTICELLO, May 2, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--The difficulties suggested in your favor of the 28th ult.,
are those which must occur at the commencement of every undertaking. A
full view of the subject however will, I think, solve them. In every
meditated enterprise, the means we can employ are to be estimated,
and to these must be proportioned our expectations of effect. If, for
example, to the cultivation of a given field we can devote but one hundred
dollars, we are not to expect the product which $1,000 would extract
from it. Applying this principle to the present subject of education,
from a revenue of $15,000, and with eight Professors, we cannot expect to
obtain that grade of instruction to our youth, which 15,000 guineas and
thirty or forty instructors would give. Reviewing, then, the branches of
science in which we wish our youth to obtain some instruction, we must
distribute them into so many groups as we can employ Professors, and
as equally too as practicable. We must take into account also the time
which our youths can generally afford to the whole circle of education,
and proportion the extent of instruction in each branch to the quota
of that time, and of the Professor's attention which may fall to its
share. In the smallest of our academies, two Professors alone can be
afforded,--one of languages, another of sciences, or of Philosophy, as
he is generally styled. The degree of instruction which can be given
in each branch, at these schools, must be very moderate. Yet there are
youths whose means can afford no more, and who nevertheless are glad
even of that. The most highly endowed of our Seminaries has a revenue of
perhaps $25,000 or $30,000. They consequently may subdivide the sciences
into twelve or fifteen schools, and give a proportionably more minute
degree of instruction in each. It has enabled them, for example, to have
five or six Professors of Theology. In Europe, some of their literary
institutions can afford to employ twenty, thirty, or forty Professors.
Our legislature, contemplating their means, took their stand at a revenue
of $15,000, meant for an establishment of ten Professors, but equal in
fact to eight only. Accommodating ourselves, therefore, to their views,
we had to distribute into eight groups those sciences in which we wished
our youth should receive instruction, and to content ourselves with
the portion which that number could give. On the Professors it would of
course devolve to form their lectures on such a scale of extension only,
as to give to each of the sciences allotted them its due share of their
time.
But another material question is, what is the whole term of time which
the students can give to the whole course of instruction? I should say
that three years should be allowed to general education, and two, or
rather three, to the particular profession for which they are destined.
We receive our students at the age of sixteen, expected to be previously
so far qualified in the languages, ancient and modern, as that one year
in our schools shall suffice for their last polish. A student then with
us may give his first year here to languages and Mathematics; his second
to Mathematics and Physics; his third to Physics and Chemistry, with
the other objects of that school. I particularize this distribution
merely for illustration, and not as that which either is, or perhaps
ought to be established. This would ascribe one year to Languages, two
to Mathematics, two to Physics, and one to Chemistry and its associates.
Let us see next how the items of your school may be accommodated to
this scale; but by way of illustration only, as before. The allotments
to your school are Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy, Chemistry, Geology and
Rural Economy. This last, however, need not be considered as a distinct
branch, but as one which may be sufficiently treated by seasonable
alliances with the kindred subjects of Chemistry, Botany and Zoology.
Suppose then you give twelve dozen lectures a year; say two dozen to
Botany and Zoology, two dozen to Mineralogy and Geology, and eight dozen
to Chemistry. Or I should think that Mineralogy, Geology and Chemistry
might be advantageously blended in the same course. Then your year would
be formed into two grand divisions; one-third to Botany and Zoology, and
two-thirds to Chemistry and its associates, Mineralogy and Geology. To
the last, indeed, I would give the least possible time. To learn, as far
as observation has informed us, the ordinary arrangement of the different
strata of minerals in the earth, to know from their habitual collocations
and proximities, where we find one mineral, whether another, for which we
are seeking, may be expected to be in its neighborhood, is useful. But
the dreams about the modes of creation, inquiries whether our globe has
been formed by the agency of fire or water, how many millions of years
it has cost Vulcan or Neptune to produce what the fiat of the Creator
would effect by a single act of will, is too idle to be worth a single
hour of any man's life. You will say that two-thirds of a year, or any
better estimated partition of it, can give but an inadequate knowledge
of the whole science of Chemistry. But consider that we do not expect
our schools to turn out their alumni already enthroned on the pinnacles
of their respective sciences; but only so far advanced in each as to be
able to pursue them by themselves, and to become Newtons and La Places
by energies and perseverances to be continued through life. I have said
that our original plan comprehended ten Professors, and we hope to be
able ere long to supply the other two. One should relieve the Medical
Professor from Anatomy and Surgery, and a school for the other would be
made up of the surcharges of yours, and that of Physics.
From these views of the subject, dear Sir, your only difficulty appears
to be so to proportion the time you can give to the different branches
committed to you, as to bring, within the compass of a year, for example,
that degree of instruction in each which the year will afford. This may
require some experience, and continued efforts at condensation. But,
once effected, it will place your mind at ease, and give to our country
a result proportioned to the means it furnishes, and which ought to
satisfy, and will satisfy, all reasonable men. I am certain it will
those to whom the charge and direction of this institution have been
particularly confided, and to none assuredly more than to him from whom
your doubts have drawn this unauthoritative exposition of the public
expectations. And, with this assurance, be pleased to accept that of my
sincerely friendly esteem and respect.
DEAR SIR,--After sealing the enclosed letter, it occurred to me that
being on a general subject, and one equally applicable to the cases
of your colleagues, the other Professors, I should wish it to be read
by them also. It may produce an union of views, and harmony of action,
which may be useful to the Institution. Yours affectionately.
TO ----.
MONTICELLO, May 15, 1826.
DEAR SIR,--The sentiments of justice which have dictated your letters
of the 3d and 9th inst., are worthy of all praise, and merit and meet
my thankful acknowledgments. Were your father now living and proposing,
as you are, to publish a second edition of his memoirs, I am satisfied
he would give a very different aspect to the pages of that work which
respect Arnold's invasion and surprise of Richmond, in the winter of
1780-81. He was then, I believe, in South Carolina, too distant from
the scene of those transactions to relate them on his own knowledge,
or even to sift them from the chaff of the rumors then afloat, rumors
which vanished soon before the real truth, as vapors before the sun,
obliterated by their notoriety, from every candid mind, and by the voice
of the many who, as actors or spectators knew what had truly past. The
facts shall speak for themselves.
General Washington had just given notice to all the Governors on the
sea-board, north and south, that an embarcation was taking place at
New York, destined for the _southward, as was given out there_; and on
Sunday the 31st of December, 1780, we received information that a fleet
had entered our capes. It happened fortunately that our legislature
was at that moment in session, and within two days of their rising, so
that, during these two days, we had the benefit of their presence, and
of the counsel and information of the members individually. On Monday
the 1st of January, we were in suspense as to the destination of this
fleet, whether up the bay, or up our river. On Tuesday at 10 o'clock,
however, we received information that they had entered James river;
and, on general advice, we instantly prepared orders for calling in the
militia, one-half from the nearer counties, and a fourth from the more
remote, which would constitute a force of between four and five thousand
men, of which orders the members of the legislature, which adjourned
that day, took charge, each to his respective county; and we began the
removal of everything from Richmond. The wind being fair and strong, the
enemy ascended the river as rapidly almost as the expresses could ride,
who were dispatched to us from time to time, to notify their progress.
At 5 P. M. on Thursday, we learnt that they had then been three hours
landed at Westover. The whole militia of the adjacent counties were now
called for, and to come on individually, without waiting any regular
array. At 1 P. M. the next day, (Friday,) they entered Richmond, and
on Saturday, after twenty-four hours possession, burning some houses,
destroying property, &c., they retreated, encamped that evening ten miles
below, and reached their shipping at Westover the next day, (Sunday.)
By this time had assembled three hundred militia under Colonel Nicholas,
six miles above Westover, and two hundred under General Nelson, at
Charles city Court House, eight miles below. Two or three hundred at
Petersburg had put themselves under General Smallwood, of Maryland,
accidentally there on his passage through the State; and Baron Steuben
with eight hundred, and Colonel Gibson with one thousand, were also
on the south side of James river, aiming to reach Hood's before the
enemy should have passed it, where they hoped they could arrest them.
But the wind, having shifted, carried them down as prosperously as it
had brought them up the river. Within the first five days, therefore,
about twenty-five hundred men had collected at three or four different
points, ready for junction. I was absent myself from Richmond (but always
within observing distance of the enemy) three days only, during which
I was never off my horse but to take food or rest, and was everywhere
where my presence could be of any service; and I may with confidence
challenge any one to put his finger on the point of time when I was in a
state of remissness from any duty of my station. But I was not with the
army! true; for first, where was it? second, I was engaged in the more
important function of taking measures to collect an army; and, without
military education myself, instead of jeopardizing the public safety by
pretending to take its command, of which I knew nothing, I had committed
it to persons of the art, men who knew how to make the best use of it,
to Steuben for instance, to Nelson and others, possessing that military
skill and experience, of which I had none.
Let our condition, too, at that time be duly considered. Without arms,
without money of effect, without a regular soldier in the State, or a
regular officer, except Steuben, a militia scattered over the country,
and called at a moment's warning to leave their families and firesides,
in the dead of winter, to meet an enemy ready marshalled, and prepared
at all points to receive them. Yet had time been given them by the hasty
retreat of that enemy, I have no doubt but the rush to arms, and to the
protection of their country, would have been as rapid and universal as in
the invasion during our late war, when, at the first moment of notice,
our citizens rose in mass, from every part of the State, and without
waiting to be marshalled by their officers, armed themselves, and marched
off by ones and by twos, as quickly as they could equip themselves.
Of the individuals of the same house one would start in the morning, a
second at noon, a third in the evening, no one waiting an hour for the
company of another. This I saw myself on the late occasion, and should
have seen on the former had wind, and tide, and a Howe, instead of an
Arnold, slackened their pace ever so little.
And is the surprise of an open and unarmed place, although called a city,
and even a capital, so unprecedented as to be a matter of indelible
reproach? Which of our own capitals during the same war, was not in
possession of the same enemy, not merely by surprise and for a day only,
but permanently? That of Georgia? of South Carolina? North Carolina?
Pennsylvania? New York? Connecticut? Rhode Island? Massachusetts? And
if others were not, it was because the enemy saw no object in taking
possession of them. Add to the list in the late war, Washington, the
metropolis of the Union, covered by a fort, with troops and a dense
population. And what capital on the continent of Europe, (St. Petersburg
and its regions of ice excepted,) did not Bonaparte take and hold at
his pleasure? Is it then just that Richmond and its authorities alone
should be placed under the reproach of history, because, in a moment
of peculiar denudation of resources, by the _coup de main_ of an enemy,
led on by the hand of fortune directing the winds and weather to their
wishes, it was surprised and held for twenty-four hours? Or strange
that that enemy with such advantages, should be enabled then to get off,
without risking the honors he had achieved by burnings and destructions
of property peculiar to his principles of warfare? We, at least, may
leave these glories to their own trumpet.
During this crisis of trial I was left alone, unassisted by the
co-operation of a single public functionary. For, with the legislature,
every member of the council had departed to take care of his own family.
Unaided even in my bodily labors, but by my horse, and he, exhausted
at length by fatigue, sunk under me in the public road, where I had to
leave him, and with my saddle and bridle on my shoulders, to walk afoot
to the nearest farm, where I borrowed an unbroken colt, and proceeded
to Manchester, opposite to Richmond, which the enemy had evacuated a
few hours before.
Without further pursuing these minute details, I will here ask the
favor of you to turn to Girardin's History of Virginia, where such of
them as are worthy the notice of history, are related in that scale of
extension which its objects admit. That work was written at Milton,
within two or three miles of Monticello; and at the request of the
author, I communicated to him every paper I possessed on the subject,
of which he made the use he thought proper for his work. [See his pages
453, 460, and the appendix xi.-xv.] I can assure you of the truth of
every fact he has drawn from these papers, and of the genuineness of
such as he has taken the trouble of copying. It happened that during
those eight days of incessant labor, for the benefit of my own memory,
I carefully noted every circumstance worth it. These memorandums were
often written on horseback, and on scraps of paper taken out of my
pocket at the moment, fortunately preserved to this day, and now lying
before me. I wish you could see them. But my papers of that period are
stitched together in large masses, and so tattered and tender as not to
admit removal further than from their shelves to a reading table. They
bear an internal evidence of fidelity which must carry conviction to
every one who sees them. We have nothing in our neighborhood which could
compensate the trouble of a visit to it, unless perhaps our University,
which I believe you have not seen, and I can assure you is worth seeing.
Should you think so, I would ask as much of your time at Monticello
as would enable you to examine these papers at your ease. Many others
too are interspersed among them, which have relation to your object,
many letters from Generals Gates, Greene, Stephens and others engaged
in the Southern war, and in the North also. All should be laid open to
you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or
would wish unknown to the whole world. During the invasions of Arnold,
Phillips and Cornwallis, until my time of office had expired, I made it
a point, once a week, by letters to the President of Congress, and to
General Washington, to give them an exact narrative of the transactions
of the week. These letters should still be in the office of state in
Washington, and in the presses at Mount Vernon. Or, if the former were
destroyed by the conflagrations of the British, the latter are surely
safe, and may be appealed to in corroboration of what I have now written.
There is another transaction, very erroneously stated in the same work,
which although not concerning myself, is within my own knowledge, and I
think it a duty to communicate it to you. I am sorry that not being in
possession of a copy of the memoirs, I am not able to quote the page,
and still less the facts themselves, verbatim from the text. But of the
substance, as recollected, I am certain. It is said there that, about
the time of Tarleton's expedition up the north branch of James river
to Charlottesville and Monticello, Simcoe was detached up the southern
branch, and penetrated as far as New London, in Bedford, where he
destroyed a depôt of arms, &c., &c. I was with my family, at the time, at
a possession I have within three miles of New London, and I can assure
you of my own knowledge that he did not advance to within fifty miles
of New London. Having reached the lower end of Buckingham, as I have
understood, he heard of a deposit of arms, and a party of new recruits
under Baron Steuben, somewhere in Prince Edward; he left the Buckingham
road immediately, at or near Francisco's, pushed directly south at this
new object, was disappointed, and returned to and down James river to
head quarters. I had then returned to Monticello myself, and from thence
saw the smokes of his conflagration of houses and property on that river,
as they successively arose in the horizon at a distance of twenty-five
or thirty miles. I must repeat that his excursion from Francisco's is
not from my own knowledge, but as I have heard it from the inhabitants
on the Buckingham road, which for many years I travelled six or eight
times a year. The particulars of that, therefore, may need inquiry and
correction.
These are all the recollections within the scope of your request, which
I can state with precision and certainty; and of these you are free to
make what use you think proper in the new edition of your father's work;
and with which I pray you to accept the assurances of my great esteem
and respect.
TO MR. WEIGHTMAN.
MONTICELLO, June 24, 1826.
RESPECTED SIR,--The kind invitation I receive from you, on the part of
the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their
celebration on the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one
of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the
fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the
honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It
adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a
personal participation in the rejoicings of that day. But acquiescence
is a duty, under circumstances not placed among those we are permitted to
control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged
there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of
that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and
doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission
or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that
our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity,
continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I
believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to
all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish
ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to
assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we
have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of
reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the
rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already
laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has
not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and
spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These
are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return
of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an
undiminished devotion to them.
I will ask permission here to express the pleasure with which I
should have met my ancient neighbors of the city of Washington and
its vicinities, with whom I passed so many years of a pleasing social
intercourse; an intercourse which so much relieved the anxieties of the
public cares, and left impressions so deeply engraved in my affections,
as never to be forgotten. With my regret that ill health forbids me
the gratification of an acceptance, be pleased to receive for yourself,
and those for whom you write, the assurance of my highest respect and
friendly attachments.
BOOK III.
OFFICIAL PAPERS
PART I.--REPORTS AND OPINIONS WHILE SECRETARY
OF STATE.
" II.--INAUGURAL ADDRESSES AND MESSAGES.
" III.--REPLIES TO PUBLIC ADDRESSES.
" IV.--INDIAN ADDRESSES.
INTRODUCTORY TO BOOK III.
This division of the work embraces all the important official papers of
Thomas Jefferson, from the time at which he entered upon the duties of
the Secretaryship of State to the end of his Presidential term, with
the exception of his official letters, a part of which will be found
printed in Book II., devoted to his general correspondence, both official
and private. It being the wish of the Library committee, under whose
supervision this work has been prepared, that it should be compressed
within as few volumes as was consistent with justice to the reputation
of the author, and the great body of Mr. Jefferson's official letters
having been already published among the American State Papers and Sparks'
Diplomatic Correspondence, the most interesting and valuable only have
been selected for re-publication in this work, as specimens of the
author's manner in the preparation of such papers. All omitted here will
be found in the publications just referred to.
The official papers embraced in this division of the work, have been
classified, for the purposes of easy reference, under the following heads:
PART I.--_Reports and Opinions while Secretary of State._--Under this head
are included Jefferson's Reports to Congress, which have been published
before; also, his Reports to the President, and his Cabinet Opinions,
both of which were private, and are now for the first time given to the
public. It seems to have been the practice of Washington, to take the
written opinions of his Secretaries upon important points arising during
his administration, and the opinions of Jefferson, here published, were
given in reply to questions propounded and points submitted to him by
the President, in conformity with this practice. They relate to a great
variety of matters connected with the early history of our government,
and the principles of interpretation to be applied to the Federal
Constitution, and will be found interesting and valuable.
PART II.--_Inaugural Address and Messages._--During the administration
of Washington and Adams, it was the custom of the President, at the
opening of each session of Congress, to meet both Houses in person, and
deliver a written speech, to which, in the course of a few days, each
House would return an answer through a committee appointed to wait upon
him, he, at the same time, returning a brief reply. Mr. Jefferson, at
the beginning of his Presidential term, changed this system. Instead
of meeting the Houses of Congress in person, and addressing to them a
speech, he sent them a written message, thus substituting messages for
speeches. His reasons for this change were the greater convenience of
messages over speeches, the economy of time, and the relief of Congress
from the necessity of answering on subjects in regard to which they were
often very imperfectly informed. The general opinion of the country at
the time seems to have approved the change; and the mode of communicating
with Congress by messages in preference to speeches, has been invariably
adopted by the Presidents ever since.
This division of the work contains Jefferson's Inaugural Address and
regular and special messages.
PART III.--_Replies to Public Addresses._--The public addresses received
by Mr. Jefferson, and answered by him, were very numerous. This was
particularly the case at the time of the Embargo, the attack on the
Chesapeake, and the termination of his Presidential service. The plan of
this work does not admit the publication of the whole of these Addresses
and Replies; nor, indeed, is there any necessity for it. It is only
necessary that a few of the Replies should be published, as specimens of
the rest. This has been done, selecting such as have the highest claim,
and omitting none which possess any historical value.
PART IV.--_Indian Addresses._--There is a number of these Addresses.
They possess a certain interest as exhibiting the humane policy of our
government towards the Indians, our efforts to civilize them, to make
them agriculturists, to keep them at peace with ourselves and with each
other, and the manner in which their lands were acquired from them, always
by purchase, with their own free consent. Some of the most important
have, therefore, been incorporated in the work.
PART I.
REPORTS AND OPINIONS WHILE SECRETARY OF STATE.
I.--_Report on the methods for obtaining Fresh Water from Salt._
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred by the House of
Representatives of the United States, the petition of Jacob Isaacs of
Newport in Rhode Island, has examined into the truth and importance of
the allegations therein set forth, and makes thereon the following report:
The petitioner sets forth, that by various experiments, with considerable
labor and expense, he has discovered a method of converting salt-water
into fresh, in the proportion of 8 parts out of 10, by a process so
simple that it may be performed on board of vessels at sea by the common
iron caboose, with small alterations, by the same fire, and in the same
time, which is used for cooking the ship's provisions, and offers to
convey to the government of the United States a faithful account of
his art or secret, to be used by, or within the United States, on their
giving to him a reward suitable to the importance of the discovery, and
in the opinion of government, adequate to his expenses and the time he
has devoted to the bringing it into effect.
In order to ascertain the merit of the petitioner's discovery, it becomes
necessary to examine the advances already made in the art of converting
salt-water into fresh.
Lord Bacon, to whom the world is indebted for the first germs of so
many branches of science, had observed, that with a heat sufficient for
distillation, salt will not rise in vapor, and that salt-water distilled
is fresh; and it would seem, that all mankind might have observed that
the earth is supplied with fresh water chiefly by exhalation from the
sea, which is, in fact, an insensible distillation effected by the heat
of the sun; yet this, although the most obvious, was not the first idea
in the essays for converting salt-water into fresh; filtration was tried
in vain, and congelation could be resorted to only in the coldest regions
and seasons. In all the earlier trials by distillation, some mixture was
thought necessary to aid the operation by a partial precipitation of the
salt, and other foreign matters contained in sea-water. Of this kind,
were the methods of Sir Richard Hawkins in the sixteenth century, of
Glauber, Hauton, and Lister, in the seventeenth, and of Hales, Appleby,
Butler, Chapman, Hoffman, and Dore, in the eighteenth; nor was there
anything in these methods worthy noting on the present occasion, except
the very simple still contrived extempore by Captain Chapman, and made
from such materials as are to be found on board every ship, great or
small; this was a common pot, with a wooded lid of the usual form; in
the centre of which a hole was bored to receive perpendicularly, a short
wooden tube made with an inch-and-a-half auger, which perpendicular
tube received at its top, and at an acute angle, another tube of wood
also, which descended until it joined a third of pewter made by rolling
up a dish and passing it obliquely through a cask of cold water; with
this simple machine he obtained two quarts of fresh water an hour, and
observed that the expense of fuel would be very trifling, if the still
was contrived to stand on the fire along with the ship's boiler.
In 1762, Doctor Lind, proposing to make experiment of several different
mixtures, first distilled rain-water, which he supposed would be the
purest, and then sea-water, without any mixture, which he expected
would be the least pure, in order to arrange between these two supposed
extremes, the degree of merit of the several ingredients he meant to
try; "to his great surprise," as he confesses, the sea-water distilled
without any mixture, was as pure as the rain-water; he pursued the
discovery and established the fact, that a pure and potable fresh water
may be obtained from salt-water by simple distillation, without the
aid of any mixture for fining or precipitating its foreign contents.
In 1767, he proposed an extempore still, which, in fact, was Chapman's,
only substituting a gun-barrel instead of Chapman's pewter tube, and the
hand-pump of the ship to be cut in two obliquely and joined again at an
acute angle, instead of Chapman's wooden tubes bored expressly; or instead
of the wooden lid and upright tube, he proposed a tea-kettle (without
its lid or handle) to be turned bottom upwards over the mouth of the
pot by way of still-head, and a wooden tube leading from the spout to a
gun-barrel passing through a cask of water, the whole luted with equal
parts of chalk and meal moistened with salt-water. With this apparatus
of a pot, tea-kettle, and gun-barrel, the Dolphin, a twenty-gun ship,
in her voyage around the world in 1768, from 56 gallons of sea-water
and with 9 lbs. of wood and 69 lbs. of pit-coal made 42 gallons of good
fresh water, at the rate of 8 gallons an hour. The Dorsetshire, in her
passage from Gibraltar to Mahon in 1769, made 19 quarts of pure water in
four hours with 10 lbs. of wood, and the Slambal in 1773, between Bombay
and Bengal, with the hand-pump, gun-barrel, and a pot of 6 gallons of
sea-water, made ten quarts of fresh water in three hours.
In 1771, Dr. Irvin putting together Lind's idea of distilling without
a mixture, Chapman's still, and Dr. Franklin's method of cooling by
evaporation, obtained a premium of five thousand pounds from the British
parliament. He wet his tube constantly with a mop instead of passing
it through a cask of water; he enlarged its bore also, in order to
give a free passage to the vapor, and thereby increase its quantity by
lessening the resistance or pressure on the evaporating surface. This
last improvement was his own; it doubtless contributed to the success
of his process; and we may suppose the enlargement of the tube to be
useful to that point at which the central parts of the vapor passing
through it would begin to escape condensation. Lord Mulgrave used his
method in his voyage towards the north pole in 1773, making from 34 to
40 gallons of fresh water a day, without any great addition of fuel, as
he says.
M. de Bougainville, in his voyage round the world, used very successfully
a still which had been contrived in 1763 by Poyssonier to guard against
the water being thrown over from the boiler into the pipe, by the
agitation of the ship. In this, one singularity was, that the furnace or
fire-box was in the middle of the boiler, so that the water surrounded
it in contact. This still, however, was expensive, and occupied much room.
Such was the advances already made in the art of obtaining fresh from
salt-water, when Mr. Isaacs, the petitioner, suggested his discovery. As
the merit of this could be ascertained by experiment only, the Secretary
of State asked the favor of Mr. Rittenhouse, President of the American
Philosophical Society, of Dr. Wistar, professor of chemistry in the
college at Philadelphia, and Dr. Hutchinson, professor of chemistry in
the University of Pennsylvania, to be present at the experiments. Mr.
Isaacs fixed the pot, a small caboose, with a tin cap and straight tube
of tin passing obliquely through a cask of cold water; he made use of a
mixture, the composition of which he did not explain, and from 24 pints
of sea-water, taken up about three miles out of the Capes of Delaware,
at flood-tide, he distilled 22 pints of fresh water in four hours with
20 lbs. of seasoned pine, which was a little wetted by having lain in
the rain.
In a second experiment of the 21st of March, performed in a furnace,
and five-gallon still at the college, from 32 pints of sea-water he
drew 31 pints of fresh water in 7 hours and 24 minutes, with 51 lbs. of
hickory, which had been cut about six months. In order to decide whether
Mr. Isaacs' mixture contributed in any and what degree to the success
of the operation, it was thought proper to repeat his experiment under
the same circumstances exactly, except the omission of the mixture.
Accordingly, on the next day, the same quantity of sea-water was put
into the same still, the same furnace was used, and fuel from the same
parcel; it yielded, as his had done, 31 pints fresh water in 11 minutes
more of time, and with 10 lbs. less of wood.
On the 24th of March, Mr. Isaacs performed a third experiment. For this,
a common iron pot of three and a half gallons was fixed in brick work,
and the fine from the hearth wound once around this pot spirally, and
then passed off up a chimney.
The cap was of tin, and a straight tin tube of about two inches diameter
passing obliquely through a barrel of water, served instead of a worm.
From sixteen pints of sea-water he drew off fifteen pints of fresh water,
in two hours fifty-five minutes, with 3 lbs. of dry hickory and 8 lbs. of
seasoned pine. This experiment was also repeated the next day, with the
same apparatus, and fuel from the same parcel; but without the mixture,
sixteen pints of sea-water yielded in like manner fifteen pints of fresh
in one minute more of time, and with ½ lb. less of wood. On the whole,
it was evident that Mr. Isaacs' mixture produced no advantage either in
the process or result of the distillation.
The distilled water in all these instances, was found on experiment to be
as pure as the best pump water of the city; its taste, indeed, was not
as agreeable, but it was not such as to produce any disgust. In fact,
we drink, in common life, in many places, and under many circumstances,
and almost always at sea, a worse tasted and probably a less wholesome
water.
The obtaining fresh from salt-water was for ages considered as an
important desideratum for the use of navigators. The process for doing
this by simple distillation is so efficacious, the erecting an extempore
still with such utensils as are found on board of every ship, is so
practicable, as to authorize the assertion that this desideratum is
satisfied to a very useful degree. But though this has been done for
upwards of thirty years, though its reality has been established by the
actual experience of several vessels which have had recourse to it,
yet neither the fact nor the process is known to the mass of seamen,
to whom it would be the most useful, and for whom it was principally
wanted. The Secretary of State is therefore of opinion that since the
subject has now been brought under observation, it should be made the
occasion of disseminating its knowledge generally and effectually among
the seafaring citizens of the United States. The following is one of the
many methods which might be proposed for doing this: Let the clearance
for every vessel sailing from the ports of the United States be printed
on a paper, in the back whereof shall be a printed account of the essays
which have been made for obtaining fresh from salt-water, mentioning
shortly those which have been unsuccessful, and more fully those which
have succeeded, describing the methods which have been found to answer
for constructing extempore stills of such implements as are generally
on board of every vessel, with a recommendation in all cases where they
shall have occasion to resort to this expedient for obtaining water,
to publish the result of their trial in some gazette on their return to
the United States, or to communicate it for publication to the office of
the Secretary of State, in order that others may, by their success, be
encouraged to make similar trials, and be benefited by any improvements
or new ideas which may occur to them in practice.
II. _Opinion on the proposition for establishing a Woollen Manufactory
in Virginia._
The House of Delegates of Virginia seemed disposed to adventure £2,500
for the encouragement of this undertaking, but the Senate did not concur.
By their returning to the subject, however, at a subsequent session, and
wishing more specific propositions, it is probable they might be induced
to concur, if they saw a certain provision that their money would not
be paid for nothing. Some unsuccessful experiments heretofore may have
suggested this caution.
Suppose the propositions brought into some such shape as this: The
undertaker is to contribute £1,000, the State £2,500, viz.: the undertaker
having laid out his £1,000 in the necessary implements to be brought
from Europe, and these being landed in Virginia as a security that he
will proceed, let the State pay for
the first necessary purposes then to occur £1,000
Let it pay him a stipend of £100 a year for the first three
years 300
Let it give him a bounty (suppose one-third) on every
yard of woollen cloth equal to good plains, which he
shall weave for five years, not exceeding £250 a year
(20,000 yards) the four first years, and £200 the fifth 1,200
------
£2,500
To every workman whom he shall import, let them give, after he shall
have worked in the manufactory five years, warrants for ---- acres of
land, and pay the expenses of survey, patents, &c. [This last article
is to meet the proposition of the undertaker. I do not like it, because
it tends to draw off the manufacturer from his trade. I should better
like a premium to him on his continuance in it; as, for instance, that
he should be free from State taxes as long as he should carry on his
trade.]
The President's intervention seems necessary till the contracts shall be
concluded. It is presumed he would not like to be embarrassed afterwards
with the details of superintendence. Suppose, in his answer to the
Governor of Virginia, he should say that the undertaker being in Europe,
more specific propositions cannot be obtained from him in time to be laid
before this assembly; that in order to secure to the State the benefits
of the establishment, and yet guard them against an unproductive grant
of money, he thinks some plan like the preceding one might be proposed
to the undertaker.
That as it is not known whether he would accept it exactly in that form,
it might disappoint the views of the State were they to prescribe that
or any other form rigorously, consequently that a discretionary power
must be given to a certain extent.
That he would willingly coöperate with their executive in effecting the
contract, and certainly would not conclude it on any terms worse for
the State than those before explained, and that the contracts being once
concluded, his distance and other occupations would oblige him to leave
the execution open to the Executive of the State.
III. _The Report on Copper Coinage, communicated to the House of
Representatives, April 15th, 1790._
April 14, 1790.
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred, by the House
of Representatives, the letter of John H. Mitchell, reciting
certain proposals for supplying the United States with copper
coinage, has had the same under consideration, according to
instructions, and begs leave to report thereon as follows:
The person who wishes to undertake the supply of a copper coinage, sets
forth, that the superiority of his apparatus and process for coining,
enables him to furnish a coinage better and cheaper than can be done by
any country or person whatever; that his dies are engraved by the first
artist in that line in Europe; that his apparatus for striking the edge
at the same blow with the faces, is new, and singularly ingenious; that
he coins by a press on a new principle, and worked by a fire-engine, more
regularly than can be done by hand; that he will deliver any quantity
of coin, of any size and device, of pure, unalloyed copper, wrapped
in paper and packed in casks, ready for shipping, for fourteen pence
sterling the pound.
The Secretary of State has before been apprized, from other sources
of information, of the great improvements made by this undertaker, in
sundry arts; he is acquainted with the artist who invented the method of
striking the edge, and both faces of the coin at one blow; he has seen
his process and coins, and sent to the former Congress some specimens of
them, with certain offers from him, before he entered into the service
of the present undertaker, (which specimens he takes the liberty of now
submitting to the inspection of the House, as proofs of the superiority
of this method of coinage, in gold and silver as well as copper.)
He is, therefore, of opinion, that the undertaker, aided by that artist,
and by his own excellent machines, is truly in a condition to furnish
coin in a state of higher perfection than has ever yet been issued
by any nation; that perfection in the engraving is among the greatest
safeguards against counterfeits, because engravers of the first class
are few, and elevated by their rank in their art, far above the base
and dangerous business of counterfeiting. That the perfection of coins
will indeed disappear, after they are for some time worn among other
pieces, and especially where the figures are rather faintly relieved,
as on those of this artist; yet, their high finishing, while new, is
not the less a guard against counterfeits, because these, if carried to
any extent, may be ushered into circulation new, also, and consequently,
may be compared with genuine coins in the same state; that, therefore,
whenever the United States shall be disposed to have a coin of their
own, it will be desirable to aim at this kind of perfection. That this
cannot be better effected, than by availing themselves, if possible,
of the services of the undertaker, and of this artist, whose excellent
methods and machines are said to have abridged, as well as perfected,
the operations of coinage. These operations, however, and their expense,
being new, and unknown here, he is unable to say whether the price
proposed be reasonable or not. He is also uncertain whether, instead of
the larger copper coin, the Legislature might not prefer a lighter one
of billon, or mixed metal, as is practised, with convenience, by several
other nations--a specimen of which kind of coinage is submitted to their
inspection.
But the propositions under consideration suppose that the work is to be
carried on in a foreign country, and that the implements are to remain
the property of the undertaker; which conditions, in his opinion, render
them inadmissible, for these reasons:
Coinage is peculiarly an attribute of sovereignty. To transfer its
exercise into another country, is to submit it to another sovereign.
Its transportation across the ocean, besides the ordinary dangers of the
sea, would expose it to acts of piracy, by the crews to whom it would
be confided, as well as by others apprized of its passage.
In time of war, it would offer to the enterprises of an enemy, what have
been emphatically called the sinews of war.
If the war were with the nation within whose territory the coinage is,
the first act of war, or reprisal, might be to arrest this operation,
with the implements and materials coined and uncoined, to be used at
their discretion.
The reputation and principles of the present undertaker are safeguards
against the abuses of a coinage, carried on in a foreign country, where
no checks could be provided by the proper sovereign, no regulations
established, no police, no guard exercised; in short, none of the numerous
cautions hitherto thought essential at every mint; but in hands less
entitled to confidence, these will become dangers. We may be secured,
indeed, by proper experiments as to the purity of the coin delivered
us according to contract, but we cannot be secured against that which,
though less pure, shall be struck in the genuine die, and protected
against the vigilance of Government, till it shall have entered into
circulation.
We lose the opportunity of calling in and re-coining the clipped money
in circulation, or we double our risk by a double transportation.
We lose, in like manner, the resource of coining up our household plate
in the instant of great distress.
We lose the means of forming artists to continue the works, when the
common accidents of mortality shall have deprived us of those who began
them.
In fine, the carrying on a coinage in a foreign country, as far as the
Secretary knows, is without example; and general example is weighty
authority.
He is, therefore, of opinion, on the whole, that a mint, whenever
established, should be established at home; that the superiority, the
merit, and means of the undertaker, will suggest him as the proper person
to be engaged in the establishment and conduct of a mint, on a scale
which, relinquishing nothing in the perfection of the coin, shall be
duly proportioned to our purposes.
And, in the meanwhile, he is of opinion the present proposals should be
declined.
IV.--_Opinion on the question whether the Senate has the right to negative
the grade of persons appointed by the Executive to fill Foreign Missions._
NEW YORK, April 24, 1790.
The constitution having declared that the President shall _nominate_
and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall _appoint_
ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, the President desired
my opinion whether the Senate has a right to negative the _grade_ he may
think it expedient to use in a foreign mission as well as the _person_
to be appointed.
I think the Senate has no right to negative the _grade_.
The constitution has divided the powers of government into three branches,
Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, lodging each with a distinct
magistracy. The Legislative it has given completely to the Senate and
House of Representatives. It has declared that the Executive powers
shall be vested in the President, submitting special articles of it to
a negative by the Senate, and it has vested the Judiciary power in the
courts of justice, with certain exceptions also in favor of the Senate.
The transaction of business with foreign nations is Executive altogether.
It belongs, then, to the head of that department, except as to such
portions of it as are specially submitted to the Senate. Exceptions are
to be construed strictly.
The constitution itself indeed has taken care to circumscribe this one
within very strict limits; for it gives the _nomination_ of the foreign
agents to the President, the _appointments_ to him and the Senate jointly,
and the _commissioning_ to the President.
This analysis calls our attention the strict import of each term. To
_nominate_ must be to _propose_. _Appointment_ seems that act of the will
which constitutes or makes the agent, and the _commission_ is the public
evidence of it. But there are still other acts previous to these not
specially enumerated in the constitution, to wit: 1st. The destination
of a mission to the particular country where the public service calls
for it, and second the character or grade to be employed in it. The
natural order of all these is first, destination; second, grade; third,
nomination; fourth, appointment; fifth, commission. If _appointment_ does
not comprehend the neighboring acts of _nomination_ or _commission_,
(and the constitution says it shall not, by giving them exclusively to
the President,) still less can it pretend to comprehend those previous
and more remote, of _destination_ and _grade_.
The constitution, analyzing the three last, shows they do not comprehend
the two first. The fourth is the only one it submits to the Senate,
shaping it into a right to say that "A or B is unfit to be appointed."
Now, this cannot comprehend a right to say that "A or B is indeed fit
to be appointed," but the grade fixed on is not the fit one to employ,
or, "our connections with the country of his destination are not such
as to call for any mission."
The Senate is not supposed by the constitution to be acquainted with
the concerns of the Executive department. It was not intended that these
should be communicated to them, nor can they therefore be qualified to
judge of the necessity which calls for a mission to any particular place,
or of the particular grade, more or less marked, which special and secret
circumstances may call for. All this is left to the President. They are
only to see that no unfit person be employed.
It may be objected that the Senate may by continual negatives on
the _person_, do what amounts to a negative on the _grade_, and so,
indirectly, defeat this right of the President. But this would be a
breach of trust; an abuse of power confided to the Senate, of which that
body cannot be supposed capable. So the President has a power to convoke
the Legislature, and the Senate might defeat that power by refusing
to come. This equally amounts to a negative on the power of convoking.
Yet nobody will say they possess such a negative, or would be capable
of usurping it by such oblique means. If the constitution had meant to
give the Senate a negative on the grade or destination, as well as the
person, it would have said so in direct terms, and not left it to be
effected by a sidewind. It could never mean to give them the use of one
power through the abuse of another.
V.--_Opinion upon the validity of a grant made by the State of Georgia
to certain companies of individuals, of a tract of country whereof the
Indian right had never been extinguished, with power to such individuals
to extinguish the Indian right._
May 3d, 1790.
The State of Georgia, having granted to certain individuals a tract of
country, within their chartered limits, whereof the Indian right has
never yet been acquired; with a proviso in the grants, which implies
that those individuals may take measures for extinguishing the Indian
rights under the authority of that Government, it becomes a question
how far this grant is good?
A society, taking possession of a vacant country, and declaring they mean
to occupy it, does thereby appropriate to themselves as prime occupants
what was before common. A practice introduced since the discovery of
America, authorizes them to go further, and to fix the limits which they
assume to themselves; and it seems, for the common good, to admit this
right to a moderate and reasonable extent.
If the country, instead of being altogether vacant, is thinly occupied
by another nation, the right of the native forms an exception to that of
the new comers; that is to say, these will only have a right against all
other nations except the natives. Consequently, they have the exclusive
privilege of acquiring the native right by purchase or other just means.
This is called the right of preëmption, and is become a principle of
the law of nations, fundamental with respect to America. There are but
two means of acquiring the native title. First, war; for even war may,
sometimes, give a just title. Second, contracts or treaty.
The States of America before their present union possessed completely,
each within its own limits, the exclusive right to use these two means
of acquiring the native title, and, by their act of union, they have as
completely ceded both to the general government. Art. 2d, Section 1st.
"The President shall have power, by and with the advice of the Senate,
to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur."
Art. 1st, Section 8th, "The Congress shall have power to declare war, to
raise and support armies." Section 10th, "No State shall enter into any
treaty, alliance or confederation. No State shall, without the consent
of Congress, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into
any agreement or compact with another State or with a foreign power,
or engage in war, unless actually invaded or in such imminent danger as
will not admit of delay."
These paragraphs of the constitution, declaring that the general
government shall have, and that the particular ones shall not have, the
right of war and treaty, are so explicit that no commentary can explain
them further, nor can any explain them away. Consequently, Georgia,
_possessing the exclusive right to acquire the native title_, but having
relinquished the _means_ of doing it to the general government, can only
have put her grantee into her own condition. She could convey to them
the exclusive right to acquire; but she could not convey what she had
not herself, that is, the means of acquiring.
For these they must come to the general government, in whose hands they
have been wisely deposited for the purposes both of peace and justice.
What is to be done? The right of the general government is, in my
opinion, to be maintained. The case is sound, and the means of doing it
as practicable as can ever occur. But respect and friendship should, I
think, mark the conduct of the general towards the particular government,
and explanations should be asked and time and color given them to tread
back their steps before coercion is held up to their view. I am told
there is already a strong party in Georgia opposed to the act of their
government.
I should think it better then that the first measures, while firm, be
yet so temperate as to secure their alliance and aid to the general
government.
Might not the eclat of a proclamation revolt their pride and passion,
and throw them hastily into the opposite scale? It will be proper indeed
to require from the government of Georgia, in the first moment, that
while the general government shall be expecting and considering her
explanations, things shall remain in _statu quo_, and not a move be made
towards carrying what they have begun into execution.
Perhaps it might not be superfluous to send some person to the Indians
interested, to explain to them the views of government and to watch with
their aid the territory in question.
VI.--_Opinion in favor of the resolutions of May 21st, 1790 directing
that, in all cases where payment had not been already made, the debts
due to the soldiers of Virginia and North Carolina, should be paid to
the original claimants or their attorneys, and not to their assignees._
June 3d, 1790.
The accounts of the soldiers of Virginia and North Carolina, having
been examined by the proper officer of government, the balances due
to each individual ascertained, and a list of these balances made out,
this list became known to certain persons before the soldiers themselves
had information of it, and those persons, by unfair means, as is said,
and for very inadequate considerations, obtained assignments from many
of the soldiers of whatever sum should be due to them from the public,
without specifying the amount.
The legislature, to defeat this fraud, passed resolutions on the 21st
of May, 1796, directing that where payment had not been made to the
original claimant in person or his representatives, it shall be made
to him or them personally, or to their attorney, producing a power for
that purpose, attested by two justices of the county where he resides,
and specifying the certain sum he is to receive.
It has been objected to these resolutions that they annul transfers of
property which were good by the laws under which they were made; that
they take from the assignees their lawful property; are contrary to the
principles of the constitution, which condemn retrospective laws; and
are, therefore, not worthy of the President's approbation.
I agree in an almost unlimited condemnation of retrospective laws. The
few instances of wrong which they redress are so overweighed by the
insecurity they draw over all property and even over life itself, and
by the atrocious violations of both to which they lead that it is better
to live under the evil than the remedy.
The only question I shall make is, whether these resolutions annul acts
which were valid when they were done?
This question respects the laws of Virginia and North Carolina only.
On the latter I am not qualified to decide, and therefore beg leave to
confine myself to the former.
By the common law of England (adopted in Virginia) the conveyance of a
right to a debt or other thing whereof the party is not in possession,
is not only void, but severely punishable under the names of Maintenance
and Champerty. The Law-merchants, however, which is permitted to have
course between merchants, allows the assignment of a _bill of exchange_
for the convenience of commerce. This, therefore, forms one exception to
the general rule, that a mere right or thing in action is not assignable.
A second exception has been formed by an English statute (copied into the
laws of Virginia) permitting _promissory notes_ to be assigned. The laws
of Virginia have gone yet further than the statute, and have allowed,
as a third exception, that a _bond_ should be assigned, which cannot
be done even at this day in England. So that, in Virginia, when a debt
has been settled between the parties and put into the form of a bill of
exchange, promissory note or bond, the law admits it to be transferred
by assignment. In all other cases the assignment of a debt is void.
The debts from the United States to the soldiers of Virginia, not having
been put into either of these forms, the assignments of them were void
in law.
A creditor may give an order on his debtor in favor of another, but if
the debtor does not accept it, he must be sued in the creditor's name;
which shows that the _order_ does not transfer the property of the
debts. The creditor may appoint another to be his attorney to receive
and recover his debt, and he may covenant that when received the attorney
may apply it to his own use. But he must sue as attorney to the original
proprietor, and not in his own right.
This proves that a _power of attorney_, with such a _covenant_, does
not transfer the property of the debt. A further proof in both cases is,
that the original creditor may at any time before payment or acceptance
revoke either his order or his power of attorney.
In that event the person in whose favor they were given has recourse to
a court of equity. When there, the judge examines whether he has done
equity. If he finds his transaction has been a fair one, he gives him
aid. If he finds it has been otherwise, not permitting his court to be
made a handmaid to fraud, he leaves him without remedy in equity as he
was in law. The assignments in the present case, therefore, if unfairly
obtained, as seems to be admitted, are void in equity as they are in law.
And they derive their nullity from the laws under which they were made,
not from the new resolutions of Congress. These are not retrospective.
They only direct their treasurer not to give validity to an assignment
which had it not before, by payments to the assignee until he in whom
the legal property still is, shall order it in such a form as to show
he is apprized of the sum he is to part with, and its readiness to be
paid into his or any other hands, and that he chooses, notwithstanding,
to acquiesce under the fraud which has been practised on him. In that
case he has only to execute before two justices a power of attorney to
the same person, expressing the specific sum of his demand, and it is to
be complied with. Actual payment, in this case, is an important act. If
made to the assignee, it would put the burthen of proof and process on
the original owner. If made to that owner, it puts it on the assignee,
who must then come forward and show that his transaction has been that
of an honest man.
Government seems to be doing in this what every individual, I think,
would feel himself bound to do in the case of his own debt. For, being
free in the law, to pay to the one or the other, he would certainly give
the advantage to the party who has suffered wrong rather than to him
who has committed it.
It is not honorable to take a mere legal advantage, when it happens to
be contrary to justice.
But it is honorable to embrace a salutary principle of law when a
relinquishment of it is solicited only to support a fraud.
I think the resolutions, therefore, merit approbation. I have before
professed my incompetence to say what are the laws of North Carolina
on this subject. They, like Virginia, adopted the English laws in the
gross. These laws forbid in general the buying and selling of debts, and
their policy in this is so wise that I presume they had not changed it
till the contrary be shown.
VII.--_Plan for establishing uniformity in the Coinage, Weights,
and Measures of the United States. Communicated to the House of
Representatives, July 13, 1790._
NEW YORK, July 4, 1790.
SIR:--In obedience to the order of the House of Representatives of
January 15th, I have now the honor to enclose you a report on the subject
of measures, weights, and coins. The length of time which intervened
between the date of the order and my arrival in this city, prevented my
receiving it till the 15th of April; and an illness which followed soon
after added, unavoidably, some weeks to the delay; so that it was not
till about the 20th May that I was able to finish the report. A desire
to lessen the number of its imperfections induced me still to withhold
it awhile, till, on the 15th of June, came to my hands, from Paris, a
printed copy of a proposition made by the Bishop of Autun, to the National
Assembly of France, on the subject of weights and measures; and three
days afterwards I received, through the channel of the public papers,
the speech of Sir John Riggs Miller, of April 13th, in the British House
of Commons, on the same subject. In the report which I had prepared, and
was then about to give in, I had proposed the latitude of 38°, as that
which should fix our standard, because it was the medium latitude of
the United States; but the proposition before the National Assembly of
France, to take that of 45° as being a middle term between the equator
and both poles, and a term which consequently might unite the nations of
both hemispheres, appeared to me so well chosen, and so just, that I did
not hesitate a moment to prefer it to that of 38°. It became necessary,
of course, to conform all my calculations to that standard--an operation
which has been retarded by my other occupations.
These circumstances will, I hope, apologize for the delay which has
attended the execution of the order of the House; and, perhaps, a
disposition on their part to have due regard for the proceedings of other
nations, engaged on the same subject, may induce them still to defer
deciding ultimately on it till their next session. Should this be the
case, and should any new matter occur in the meantime, I shall think it
my duty to communicate it to the House, as supplemental to the present
report.
I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most profound respect,
Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred, by the House of
Representatives, to prepare and report a proper plan or plans for
establishing uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the
United States, in obedience thereto, makes the following report:--
To obtain uniformity in measures, weights, and coins, it is necessary
to find some measure of invariable length, with which, as a standard,
they may be compared.
There exists not in nature, as far as has been hitherto observed, a
single subject or species of subject, accessible to man, which presents
one constant and uniform dimension.
The globe of the earth itself, indeed, might be considered as invariable
in all its dimensions, and that its circumference would furnish an
invariable measure; but no one of its circles, great or small, is
accessible to admeasurement through all its parts, and the various trials
to measure definite portions of them, have been of such various result
as to show there is no dependence on that operation for certainty.
Matter, then, by its mere extension, furnishing nothing invariable, its
motion is the only remaining resource.
The motion of the earth round its axis, though not absolutely uniform
and invariable, may be considered as such for every human purpose. It is
measured obviously, but unequally, by the departure of a given meridian
from the sun, and its return to it, constituting a solar day. Throwing
together the inequalities of solar days, a mean interval, or day, has
been found, and divided, by very general consent, into 86,400 equal parts.
A pendulum, vibrating freely, in small and equal arcs, may be so adjusted
in its length, as, by its vibrations, to make this division of the
earth's motion into 86,400 equal parts, called seconds of mean time.
Such a pendulum, then, becomes itself a measure of determinate length,
to which all others may be referred to as to a standard.
But even a pendulum is not without its uncertainties.
1. The difficulty of ascertaining, in practice, its centre of oscillation,
as depending on the form of the bob, and its distance from the point
of suspension; the effect of the weight of the suspending wire towards
displacing the centre of oscillation; that centre being seated within
the body of the bob, and therefore inaccessible to the measure, are
sources of considerable uncertainty.
2. Both theory and experience prove that, to preserve its isochronism,
it must be shorter towards the equator, and longer towards the poles.
3. The height of the situation above the common level, as being an
increment to the radius of the earth, diminishes the length of the
pendulum.
4. The pendulum being made of metal, as is best, it varies its length
with the variations in the temperature of the atmosphere.
5. To continue small and equal vibrations, through a sufficient length
of time, and to count these vibrations, machinery and a power are
necessary, which may exert a small but constant effort to renew the
waste of motion; and the difficulty is so to apply these, as that they
shall neither retard or accelerate the vibrations.
1. In order to avoid the uncertainties which respect the centre of
oscillation, it has been proposed by Mr. Leslie, an ingenious artist
of Philadelphia, to substitute, for the pendulum, a uniform cylindrical
rod, without a bob.
Could the diameter of such a rod be infinitely small, the centre of
oscillation would be exactly at two-thirds of the whole length, measured
from the point of suspension. Giving it a diameter which shall render it
sufficiently inflexible, the centre will be displaced, indeed; but, in
a second rod not the (1) six hundred thousandth part of its length, and
not the hundredth part as much as in a second pendulum with a spherical
bob of proper diameter. This displacement is so infinitely minute,
then, that we may consider the centre of oscillation, for all practical
purposes, as residing at two-thirds of the length from the centre of
suspension. The distance between these two centres might be easily and
accurately ascertained in practice. But the whole rod is better for a
standard than any portion of it, because sensibly defined at both its
extremities.
2. The uncertainty arising from the difference of length requisite for
the second pendulum, or the second rod, in different latitudes, may
be avoided by fixing on some one latitude, to which our standard shall
refer. That of 38°, as being the middle latitude of the United States,
might seem the most convenient, were we to consider ourselves alone; but
connected with other nations by commerce and science, it is better to
fix on that parallel which bids fairest to be adopted by them also. The
45th, as being the middle term between the equator and pole, has been
heretofore proposed in Europe, and the proposition has been lately renewed
there under circumstances which may very possibly give it some effect.
This parallel is distinguished with us also as forming our principal
northern boundary. Let the completion of the 45th degree, then, give
the standard for our union, with the hope that it may become a line of
union with the rest of the world.
The difference between the second rod for 45° of latitude, and that for
31°, our other extreme, is to be examined.
The second _pendulum_ for 45° of latitude, according to Sir Isaac Newton's
computation, must be of (2) 39.14912 inches English measure; and a
_rod_, to vibrate in the same time, must be of the same length between
the centres of suspension and oscillation; and, consequently, its whole
length 58.7 (or, more exactly, 58.72368) inches. This is longer than
the rod which shall vibrate seconds in the 31° of latitude, by about
1/679 part of its whole length; a difference so minute, that it might
be neglected, as insensible, for the common purposes of life, but, in
cases requiring perfect exactness, the second rod, found by trial of
its vibrations in any part of the United States, may be corrected by
computation for the (3) latitude of the place, and so brought exactly
to the standard of 45°.
3. By making the experiment in the level of the ocean, the difference
will be avoided, which a higher position might occasion.
4. The expansion and contraction of the rod with the change of
temperature, is the fourth source of uncertainty before mentioned.
According to the high authority so often quoted, an iron rod, of given
length, may vary, between summer and winter, in temperate latitudes,
and in the common exposure of house clocks, from 1/1728 to 1/2592 of
its whole length, which, in a rod of 58.7 inches, will be from about
two to three hundredths of an inch. This may be avoided by adjusting and
preserving the standard in a cellar, or other place, the temperature of
which never varies. Iron is named for this purpose, because the least
expansible of the metals.
5. The practical difficulty resulting from the effect of the machinery
and moving power is very inconsiderable in the present state of the arts;
and, in their progress towards perfection, will become less and less.
To estimate and obviate this, will be the artist's province. It is as
nothing when compared with the sources of inaccuracy hitherto attending
measures.
Before quitting the subject of the inconveniences, some of which attend
the pendulum alone, others both the pendulum and rod, it must be added
that the rod would have an accidental but very precious advantage over
the pendulum in this country, in the event of our fixing the foot at the
nearest aliquot part of either; for the difference between the common
foot, and those so to be deduced, would be three times greater in the
case of the pendulum than in that of the rod.
Let the standard of measure, then, be a uniform cylindrical rod of iron,
of such length as, in latitude 45°, in the level of the ocean, and in a
cellar, or other place, the temperature of which does not vary through
the year, shall perform its vibrations in small and equal arcs, in one
second of mean time.
A standard of invariable length being thus obtained, we may proceed
to identify, by that, the measures, weights and coins of the United
States; but here a doubt presents itself as to the extent of the
reformation meditated by the House of Representatives. The experiment
made by Congress in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty-six,
by declaring that there should be one money of account and payment
through the United States, and that its parts and multiples should be
in a decimal ratio,[23] has obtained such general approbation, both at
home and abroad, that nothing seems wanting but the actual coinage, to
banish the discordant pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings of the
different States, and to establish in their stead the new denominations.
Is it in contemplation with the House of Representatives to extend a
like improvement to our measures and weights, and to arrange them also
in a decimal ratio? The facility which this would introduce into the
vulgar arithmetic would, unquestionably, be soon and sensibly felt by
the whole mass of the people, who would thereby be enabled to compute
for themselves whatever they should have occasion to buy, to sell, or
to measure, which the present complicated and difficult ratios place
beyond their computation for the most part. Or, is it the opinion of the
Representatives that the difficulty of changing the established habits
of a whole nation opposes an insuperable bar to this improvement? Under
this uncertainty, the Secretary of State thinks it his duty to submit
alternative plans, that the House may, at their will, adopt either the
one or the other, exclusively, or the one for the present and the other
for a future time, when the public mind may be supposed to have become
familiarized to it.
I. And first, on the supposition that the present measures and weights
are to be retained but to be rendered uniform and invariable, by bringing
them to the same invariable standard.
The first settlers of these States, having come chiefly from England,
brought with them the measures and weights of that country. These alone
are generally established among us, either by law or usage; and these,
therefore, are alone to be retained and fixed. We must resort to that
country for information of what they are, or ought to be.
This rests, principally, on the evidence of certain standard measures and
weights, which have been preserved, of long time, in different deposits.
But differences among these having been known to exist, the House of
Commons, in the years 1757 and 1758, appointed committees to inquire into
the original standards of their weights and measures. These committees,
assisted by able mathematicians and artists, examined and compared with
each other the several standard measures and weights, and made reports
on them in the years 1758 and 1759. The circumstances under which these
reports were made entitle them to be considered, as far as they go, as
the best written testimony existing of the standard measures and weights
of England; and as such, they will be relied on in the progress of this
report.
MEASURES OF LENGTH.
The measures of length in use among us are:
The league of 3 miles, The fathom of 2 yards,
The mile of 8 furlongs, The ell of a yard and quarter,
The furlong of 40 poles or perches, The yard of 3 feet,
The foot of 12 inches, and
The pole or perch of 5½ yards, The inch of 10 lines.
On this branch of their subject, the committee of 1757-1758, says that
the standard measures of length at the receipt of the exchequer, are
a yard, supposed to be of the time of Henry VII., and a yard and ell
supposed to have been made about the year 1601; that they are brass
rods, very coarsely made, their divisions not exact, and the rods bent;
and that in the year 1742, some members of the Royal Society had been
at great pains in taking an exact measure of these standards, by very
curious instruments, prepared by the ingenious Mr. Graham; that the
Royal Society had had a brass rod made pursuant to their experiments,
which was made so accurately, and by persons so skilful and exact, that
it was thought not easy to obtain a more exact one; and the committee,
in fact, found it to agree with the standards at the exchequer, as near
as it was possible. They furnish no means, to persons at a distance, of
knowing what this standard is. This, however, is supplied by the evidence
of the second pendulum, which, according to the authority before quoted,
is, at London, 39.1682 English inches, and, consequently, the second
rod there is of 58.7523 of the same inches. When we shall have found,
then, by actual trial, the second rod for 45° by adding the difference
of their computed length, to wit: 287/10000 of an inch, or rather 3/10
of a line (which in practice will endanger less error than an attempt
at so minute a fraction as the ten thousandth parts of an inch) we shall
have the second rod of London, or a true measure of 58¾ English inches.
Or, to shorten the operation, without varying the result,
Let the standard rod of 45° be divided into 587⅕ equal parts, and
let each of these parts be declared a line.
10 lines an inch, 5½ yards a perch or pole,
12 inches a foot, 40 poles or perches a furlong,
3 feet a yard, 8 furlongs a mile,
3 feet 9 inches an ell, 3 miles a league.
6 feet a fathom,
SUPERFICIAL MEASURES
Our measures of surface are, the acre of 4 roods and the rood of 40
square poles; so established by a statute of 33 Edw. 1. Let them remain
the same.
MEASURES OF CAPACITY.
The measures of capacity in use among us are of the following names and
proportions:
The gill, four of which make a pint.
Two pints make a quart.
Two quarts a pottle.
Two pottles a gallon.
Two gallons a peck, dry measure.
Eight gallons make a measure called a firkin, in liquid substances, and
a bushel, dry.
Two firkins, or bushels, make a measure called a rundlet or kilderkin,
liquid, and a strike, dry.
Two kilderkins, or strikes, make a measure called a barrel, liquid, and
a coomb, dry; this last term being ancient and little used.
Two barrels, or coombs, make a measure called a hogshead, liquid, or a
quarter, dry; each being the quarter of a ton.
A hogshead and a third make a tierce, or third of a ton.
Two hogsheads make a pipe, butt, or puncheon; and
Two pipes make a ton.
But no one of these measures is of a determinate capacity. The report
of the committee of 1757-8, shows that the gallon is of very various
content; and that being the unit, all the others must vary with it.
The gallon and bushel contain--
224 and 1792 cubic inches, according to the standard wine
gallon preserved at Guildhall.
231 and 1848, according to the statute of 5th of Anne. 264.8
and 2118.4, according to the ancient Rumford quart, of 1228,
examined by the committee.
265.5 and 2124, according to three standard bushels preserved
in the Exchequer, to wit: one of Henry VII., without a rim;
one dated 1091, supposed for 1591, or 1601, and one dated 1601.
266.25 and 2130, according to the ancient Rumford gallon of
1228, examined by the committee.
268.75 and 2150, according to the Winchester bushel, as declared
by statute 13, 14, William III., which has been the model for
some of the grain States.
271, less 2 spoonfuls, and 2168, less 16 spoonfuls, according
to a standard gallon of Henry VII., and another dated 1601,
marked E. E., both in the Exchequer.
271 and 2168, according to a standard gallon in the Exchequer,
dated 1601, marked E., and called the corn gallon.
272 and 2176, according to the three standard corn gallons
last mentioned, as measured in 1688, by an artist for the
Commissioners of the Excise, generally used in the seaport
towns, and by mercantile people, and thence introduced into
some of the grain States.
277.18 and 2217.44, as established for the measure of coal by
the statute 12 Anne.
278 and 2224, according to the standard bushel of Henry VII.,
with a copper rim, in the Exchequer.
278.4 and 2227.2 according to two standard pints of 1601 and
1602, in the Exchequer.
280 and 2240, according to the standard quart of 1601, in the
Exchequer.
282 and 2256, according to the standard gallon for beer and
ale in the Treasury.
There are, moreover, varieties on these varieties, from the barrel to
the ton, inclusive; for, if the barrel be of herrings, it must contain
28 gallons by the statute 13 Eliz. c. 11. If of wine, it must contain
31½ gallons by the statute 2 Henry VI. c. 11, and 1 Rich. III. c. 15.
If of beer or ale, it must contain 34 gallons by the statute 1 William
and Mary, c. 24, and the higher measures in proportion.
In those of the United States which have not adopted the statutes of
William and Mary, and of Anne before cited, nor their substance, the wine
gallon of 231 cubic inches rests on the authority of very long usage,
before the 5th of Anne, the origin and foundation of which are unknown;
the bushel is the Winchester bushel, by the 11 Henry VII. undefined; and
the barrel of ale 32 gallons, and of beer 36 gallons, by the statute 23
Henry VIII c. 4.
The Secretary of State is not informed whether there have been any, and
what, alterations of these measures by the laws of the particular States.
It is proposed to retain this series of measures, but to fix the gallon
to one determinate capacity, as the unit of measure, both wet and dry;
for convenience is in favor of abolishing the distinction between wet
and dry measures.
The wine gallon, whether of 224 or 231 cubic inches, may be altogether
disregarded, as concerning, principally, the mercantile and the wealthy,
the least numerous part of the society, and the most capable of reducing
one measure to another by calculation. This gallon is little used among
the mass of farmers, whose chief habits and interests are in the size
of the corn bushel.
Of the standard measures before stated, two are principally distinguished
in authority and practice. The statute bushel of 2150 cubic inches, which
gives a gallon of 268.75 cubic inches, and the standard gallon of 1601,
called the corn gallon of 271 or 272 cubic inches, which has introduced
the mercantile bushel of 2276 inches. The former of these is most used
in some of the grain States, the latter in others. The middle term of
270 cubic inches may be taken as a mutual compromise of convenience,
and as offering this general advantage: that the bushel being of 2160
cubic inches, is exactly a cubic foot and a quarter, and so facilitates
the conversion of wet and dry measures into solid contents and tonnage,
and simplifies the connection of measures and weights, as will be shown
hereafter. It may be added, in favor of this, as a medium measure, that
eight of the standard, or statute measures before enumerated, are below
this term, and nine above it.
The measures to be made for use, being four sided, with
rectangular sides and bottom.
The pint will be 3 inches square, and 3¾ inches deep;
The quart 3 inches square, and 7½ inches deep;
The pottle 3 inches square, and 15 inches deep, or 4½, 5, and
6 inches;
The gallon 6 inches square, and 7½ inches deep, or 5, 6, and
9 inches;
The peck 6, 9, and 10 inches;
The half bushel 12 inches square, and 7½ inches deep; and
The bushel 12 inches square, and 15 inches deep, or 9, 15,
and 16 inches.
Cylindrical measures have the advantage of superior strength, but square
ones have the greater advantage of enabling every one who has a rule
in his pocket, to verify their contents by measuring them. Moreover,
till the circle can be squared, the cylinder cannot be cubed, nor its
contents exactly expressed in figures.
Let the measures of capacity, then, for the United States be--
A gallon of 270 cubic inches;
The gallon to contain 2 pottles;
The pottle 2 quarts;
The quart 2 pints;
The pint 4 gills;
Two gallons to make a peck;
Eight gallons a bushel or firkin;
Two bushels, or firkin, a strike or kilderkin;
Two strikes, or kilderkins, a coomb or barrel;
Two coombs, or barrels, a quarter or hogshead;
A hogshead and a third one tierce;
Two hogsheads a pipe, butt, or puncheon; and
Two pipes a ton.
And let all measures of capacity of dry subjects be stricken
with a straight strike.
WEIGHTS.
There are two series of weights in use among us; the one called
avoirdupois, the other troy.
_In the Avoirdupois series_:
The pound is divided into 16 ounces;
The ounce into 16 drachms;
The drachm into 4 quarters.
_In the Troy series_:
The pound is divided into 12 ounces;
The ounce (according to the subdivision of the apothecaries)
into 8 drachms;
The drachm into 3 scruples;
The scruple into 20 grains.
According to the subdivision for gold and silver, the ounce is divided
into twenty pennyweights, and the pennyweight into twenty-four grains.
So that the pound troy contains 5760 grains, of which 7000 are requisite
to make the pound avoirdupois; of course the weight of the pound troy
is to that of the 7000, or as 144 to 175.
It is remarkable that this is exactly the proportion of the ancient
liquid gallon of Guildhall of 224 cubic inches, to the corn gallon of
272; for 224 are to 272 as 144 to 175. (4.)
It is further remarkable still, that this is also the exact proportion
between the specific weight of any measure of wheat, and of the same
measure of water: for the statute bushel is of 64 pounds of wheat. Now
as 144 to 175, so are 64 pounds to 77.7 pounds; but 77.7 pounds is known
to be the weight of (5.) 2150.4 cubic inches of pure water, which is
exactly the content of the Winchester bushel, as declared by the statute
13, 14, Will. 3. That statute determined the bushel to be a cylinder of
18½ inches diameter, and 8 inches depth. Such a cylinder, as nearly as it
can be cubed, and expressed in figures, contains 2150.425 cubic inches;
a result which reflects authority on the declaration of Parliament, and
induces a favorable opinion of the care with which they investigated
the contents of the ancient bushel, and also a belief that there might
exist evidence of it at that day, unknown to the committees of 1758 and
1759.
We find, then, in a continued proportion 64 to 77.7 as 224 to 272, and as
144 to 175, that is to say, the specific weight of a measure of wheat,
to that of the same measure of water, as the cubic contents of the wet
gallon, to those of the dry; and as the weight of a pound troy to that
of a pound avoirdupois.
This seems to have been so combined as to render it indifferent whether
a thing were dealt out by weight or measure; for the dry gallon of wheat,
and the liquid one of wine, were of the same weight; and the avoirdupois
pound of wheat, and the troy pound of wine, were of the same measure.
Water and the vinous liquors, which enter most into commerce, are so
nearly of a weight, that the difference, in moderate quantities, would
be neglected by both buyer and seller; some of the wines being a little
heavier, and some a little lighter, than water.
Another remarkable correspondence is that between weights and measures.
For 1000 ounces avoirdupois of pure water fill a cubic foot, with
mathematical exactness.
What circumstances of the times, or purposes of barter or commerce, called
for this combination of weights and measures, with the subjects to be
exchanged or purchased, are not now to be ascertained. But a triple set
of exact proportionals representing weights, measures, and the things
to be weighed and measured, and a relation so integral between weights
and solid measures, must have been the result of design and scientific
calculation, and not a mere coincidence of hazard. It proves that the dry
and wet measures, the heavy and light weights, must have been original
parts of the system they compose--contrary to the opinion of the committee
of 1757, 1758, who thought that the avoirdupois weight was not an ancient
weight of the kingdom, nor ever even a legal weight, but during a single
year of the reign of Henry VIII.; and, therefore, concluded, otherwise
than will be here proposed, to suppress it altogether. Their opinion was
founded chiefly on the silence of the laws as to this weight. But the
harmony here developed in the system of weights and measures, of which
the avoirdupois makes an essential member, corroborated by a general
use, from very high antiquity, of that, or of a nearly similar weight
under another (6.) name, seem stronger proofs that this is legal weight,
than the mere silence of the written laws is of the contrary.
Be this as it may, it is in such general use with us, that, on the
principle of popular convenience, its higher denominations, at least, must
be preserved. It is by the avoirdupois pound and ounce that our citizens
have been used to buy and sell. But the smaller subdivisions of drachms
and quarters are not in use with them. On the other hand, they have been
used to weigh their money and medicine with the pennyweights and grains
troy weight, and are not in the habit of using the pounds and ounces
of that series. It would be for their convenience, then, to suppress
the pound and ounce troy, and the drachm and quarter avoirdupois; and
to form into one series the avoirdupois pound and ounce, and the troy
pennyweight and grain. The avoirdupois ounce contains 18 pennyweights
5½ grains troy weight. Divide it, then, into 18 pennyweights, and the
pennyweight, as heretofore, into 24 grains, and the new pennyweight will
contain between a third and a quarter of a grain more than the present
troy pennyweight; or, more accurately, it will be to that as 875 to
864--a difference not to be noticed, either in money or medicine, below
the denomination of an ounce.
But it will be necessary to refer these weights to a determinate mass of
some substance, the specific gravity of which is invariable. Rain water
is such a substance, and may be referred to everywhere, and through
all time. It has been found by accurate experiments that a cubic foot
of rain water weighs 1000 ounces avoirdupois, standard weights of the
exchequer. It is true that among these standard weights the committee
report small variations; but this experiment must decide in favor of
those particular weights, between which, and an integral mass of water,
so remarkable a coincidence has been found. To render this standard more
exact, the water should be weighed always in the same temperature of
air; as heat, by increasing its volume, lessens its specific gravity.
The cellar of uniform temperature is best for this also.
Let it, then, be established that an ounce is of the weight of a cube
of rain water, of one-tenth of a foot; or, rather, that it is the
thousandth part of the weight of a cubic foot of rain water, weighed
in the standard temperature; that the series of weights of the United
States shall consist of pounds, ounces, pennyweights, and grains; whereof
24 grains shall be one pennyweight;
18 pennyweights one ounce;
16 ounces one pound.
COINS.
Congress, in 1786, established the money unit at 375.64 troy grains
of pure silver. It is proposed to enlarge this by about the third of a
grain in weight, or a mill in value; that is to say, to establish it at
376 (or, more exactly, 375.989343) instead of 375.64 grains; because it
will be shown that this, as the unit of coin, will link in system with
the units of length, surface, capacity, and weight, whenever it shall be
thought proper to extend the decimal ratio through all these branches.
It is to preserve the possibility of doing this, that this very minute
alteration is proposed.
We have this proportion, then, 875 to 864, as 375.989343 grains troy to
371.2626277; the expression of the unit in the new grains.
Let it be declared, therefore, that the money unit, or dollar of the
United States, shall contain 371.262 American grains of pure silver.
If nothing more, then, is proposed, than to render uniform and stable
the system we already possess, this may be effected on the plan herein
detailed; the sum of which is: 1st. That the present measures of length
be retained, and fixed by an invariable standard. 2d. That the measures
of surface remain as they are, and be invariable also as the measures of
length to which they are to refer. 3d. That the unit of capacity, now so
equivocal, be settled at a medium and convenient term, and defined by
the same invariable measures of length. 4th. That the more known terms
in the two kinds of weights be retained, and reduced to one series, and
that they be referred to a definite mass of some substance, the specific
gravity of which never changes. And 5th. That the quantity of pure silver
in the money unit be expressed in parts of the weights so defined.
In the whole of this no change is proposed, except an insensible one in
the troy grain and pennyweight, and the very minute one in the money unit.
II. But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the
citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough
reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins,
reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established in
their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal affairs
of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide
plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary.
The unit of measure is still that which must give law through the whole
system; and from whatever unit we set out, the coincidences between the
old and new ratios will be rare. All that can be done, will be to choose
such a unit as will produce the most of these. In this respect the second
rod has been found, on trial, to be far preferable to the second pendulum.
MEASURES OF LENGTH.
Let the second rod, then, as before described, be the standard of measure;
and let it be divided into five equal parts, each of which shall be
called a foot; for, perhaps, it may be better generally to retain the
name of the nearest present measure, where there is one tolerably near.
It will be about one quarter of an inch shorter than the present foot.
Let the foot be divided into 10 inches;
The inch into 10 lines;
The line into 10 points;
Let 10 feet make a decad;
10 decads one rood;
10 roods a furlong;
10 furlongs a mile.
SUPERFICIAL MEASURES.
Superficial measures have been estimated, and so may continue to be, in
squares of the measures of length, except in the case of lands, which
have been estimated by squares, called roods and acres. Let the rood be
equal to a square, every side of which is 100 feet. This will be 6.483
English feet less than the English (7.) rood every way, and 1311 square
feet less in its whole contents; that is to say, about one-eighth; in
which proportion, also, 4 roods will be less than the present acre.
MEASURES OF CAPACITY.
Let the unit of capacity be the cubic foot, to be called a bushel. It
will contain 1620.05506862 cubic inches, English; be about one-fourth
less than that before proposed to be adopted as a medium; one-tenth less
than the bushel made from 8 of the Guildhall gallons; and one-fourteenth
less than the bushel made from 8 Irish gallons of 217.6 cubic inches.
Let the bushel be divided into 10 pottles;
Each pottle into 10 demi-pints;
Each demi-pint into 10 metres, which will be of a cubic inch each.
Let 10 bushels be a quarter, and
10 quarters a last, or double ton.
The measures for use being four-sided, and the sides and bottoms
rectangular, the bushel will be a foot cube.
The pottle 5 inches square and four inches deep;
The demi-pint 2 inches square, and 2½ inches deep;
The metre, an inch cube.
WEIGHTS.
Let the weight of a cubic inch of rain water, or the thousandth part of
a cubic foot, be called an ounce; and let the ounce be divided into 10
double scruples:
The double scruple into 10 carats;
The carat into 10 minims or demi-grains;
The minim into 10 mites.
Let 10 ounces make a pound;
10 pounds a stone;
16 stones a kental;
10 kentals a hogshead.
COINS.
Let the money unit, or dollar, contain eleventh-twelfths of an ounce of
pure silver. This will be 376 troy grains, (or more exactly, 375.959343
troy grains,) which will be about a third of a grain, (or more exactly,
.349343 of a grain,) more than the present unit. This, with the twelfth
of alloy already established, will make the dollar or unit, of the weight
of an ounce, or of a cubic inch of rain water, exactly. The series of
mills, cents, dimes, dollars, and eagles, to remain as already established
(8.)
The second rod, or the second pendulum, expressed in the measures of
other countries, will give the proportion between their measures and
those of the United States.
Measures, weights and coins, thus referred to standards unchangeable
in their nature, (as is the length of a rod vibrating seconds, and the
weight of a definite mass of rain water,) will themselves be unchangeable.
These standards, too, are such as to be accessible to all persons, in all
times and places. The measures and weights derived from them fall in so
nearly with some of those now in use, as to facilitate their introduction;
and being arranged in decimal ratio, they are within the calculation of
every one who possesses the first elements of arithmetic, and of easy
comparison, both for foreigners and citizens, with the measures, weights,
and coins of other countries.
A gradual introduction would lessen the inconveniences which might attend
too sudden a substitution, even of an easier for a more difficult system.
After a given term, for instance, it might begin in the custom-houses,
where the merchants would become familiarized to it. After a further
term, it might be introduced into all legal proceedings, and merchants
and traders in foreign commodities might be required to use it in
their dealings with one another. After a still further term, all other
descriptions of people might receive it into common use. Too long a
postponement, on the other hand, would increase the difficulties of its
reception with the increase of our population.
_Appendix, containing illustrations and developments of some passages
of the preceding report._
(1.) In the second pendulum with a spherical bob, call the distance
between the centres of suspension and of the bob, 2x19.575, or 2d, and
the radius of the bob = _r_; then 2d:r::r: rr/2d and ⅖ of this last
proportional expresses the displacement of the centre of oscillation, to
wit: 2rr/5x2d=rr/5d. Two inches have been proposed as a proper diameter
for such a bob. In that case r will be = 1. inch, and _rr_/5d = 1/9787
inches.
In the cylindrical second rod, call the length of the rod, 3 x 19.575.
or 3d, and its radius = _r_ and _rr_/2x3d=_rr_/6d will express the
displacement of the centre of oscillation. It is thought the rod will
be sufficiently inflexible if it be ⅕ of an inch in diameter. Then _r_
will be = .1 inch, and _rr_/6d = 1/11745 inches, which is but the 120th
part of the displacement in the case of the pendulum with a spherical
bob, and but the 689,710th part of the whole length of the rod. If the
rod be even of half an inch diameter, the displacement will be but 1/1879
of an inch, or 1/110356 of the length of the rod.
(2.) Sir Isaac Newton computes the pendulum for 45° to be 36 pouces
8.428 lignes. Picard made the English foot 11 pouces 2.6 lignes, and
Dr. Maskelyne 11 pouces 3.11 lignes. D'Alembert states it at 11 pouces
3 lignes, which has been used in these calculations as a middle term,
and gives us 36 pouces 8.428 lignes = 39.1491 inches. This length for
the pendulum of 45° had been adopted in this report before the Bishop
of Autun's proposition was known here. He relies on Mairan's ratio for
the length of the pendulum in the latitude of Paris, to wit: 504:257::72
pouces to a 4th proportional, which will be 36.71428 pouces=39.1619
inches, the length of the pendulum for latitude 48° 50'. The difference
between this and the pendulum for 45° is .0113 of an inch; so that
the pendulum for 45° would be estimated, according to Mairan, at
39.1619--.0113 = 39.1506 inches, almost precisely the same with Newton's
computation herein adopted.
(3.) Sir Isaac Newton's computations for the different degrees of
latitude, from 30° to 45°, are as follows:
Pieds. Lignes.
30° 3 7.948
35 3 8.099
40 3 8.261
41 3 8.294
42 3 8.327
43 3 8.361
44 3 8.394
45 3 8.428
(4.) Or, more exactly, 144:175::224:272.2.
(5.) Or, more exactly, 62.5:1728::77.7:2150.39.
(6.) The merchant's weight.
(7.) The Eng. rood contains 10,890 sq. feet = 104.355 feet sq.
(8.) _The Measures, Weights, and Coins of the Decimal System, estimated
in those of England, now used in the United States_.
1. MEASURES OF LENGTH.
Feet. Equivalent in English measure.
The point, .001 .011 inch.
The line, .01 .117
The inch, .1 1.174, about 1/7 more than the Eng. inch.
The foot, 1. } 11.744736 } about 1/48 less than the
} .978728 feet, } English foot.
The decad, 10. 9.787, about 1/48 less than the 10 feet
rod of the carpenters.
The rood, 100. 97.872, about 1/16 less than the side of
an English square rood.
The furlong, 1000. 978.728, about ⅓ more than the Eng. fur.
The mile, 10000. 9787.28, about 1-6/7 English mile, nearly
the Scotch and Irish mile, and ½
the German mile.
2. SUPERFICIAL MEASURE.
Roods.
The hundredth, .01 95.69 square feet English.
The tenth, .1 957.9
The rood, 1. 9579.085
The double acre, 10. 2.199, or say 2.2 acres English.
The square furlong, 100. 22.
3. MEASURE OF CAPACITY.
Bushels. Cub. Inches
The metre, .001 1.62
The demi-pint, .01 16.2, about 1/24 less than the English
half-pint.
The pottle, .1 162.005, about ⅙ more than the English
pottle.
The bushel, 1. { 1620.05506862 }
{ .937531868414884352 cub feet. }
about ¼ less than the middle sized
English bushel.
The quarter, 10. 9.375, about ⅕ less than the Eng. qr.
The last, 100. 93.753, about 1/7 more than the Eng. last.
4. WEIGHTS.
Pounds. Avoirdupois. Troy.
Mite, .00001 .041 grains, about ⅕
less than the English
mite.
Minim, or } .0001 .4101, about ⅕ less
demi-grain, } than half-grain troy.
Carat, .001 .4101, about 1/40 more
than the carat troy.
Double } .01 41.017, about 1/40
scruple, } more than 2 scruples
troy.
Ounce, .1 { 9375318684148 } { 410.170192431
{ 84352 oz. } { .85452 oz.
about 1/16 less than the ounce avoirdupois.
Pound, 1. { 9.375 } .712101 lb., about ¼
{ .585957417759 lb. } less than the pound troy.
Stone, 10. { 93.753 oz. } 7.121 about ¼ less
{ 5.8595 lb. } than the English stone
of 8 lbs. avoirdupois.
Kental, 100. { 937.531 oz. } 71.21 about 4/10 less
{ 58.5957 lb. } than the English kental
of 100 lbs. avoirdupois.
Hogshead, 1000. { 9375.318 oz. } 712.101
{ 585.9574 lb. }
5. COINS.
Dollars.
The mill, .001
The cent, .01
The dime, .1
Troy grains.
Dollar, 1. {375.98934306 pure silver.
{ 34.18084937 alloy.
------------
Eagle, 10. 410.17019243
_Postscript._
January 10, 1791.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that the measures, weights, and
coins, proposed in the preceding report, will be derived altogether from
mechanical operations, viz.: A rod, vibrating seconds, divided into five
equal parts, one of these subdivided, and multiplied decimally, for every
measure of length, surface, and capacity, and these last filled with
water, to determine the weights and coins. The arithmetical estimates in
the report were intended only to give an idea of what the new measures,
weights, and coins, would be nearly, when compared with the old. The
length of the standard or second rod, therefore, was assumed from that of
the pendulum; and as there has been small differences in the estimates
of the pendulum by different persons, that of Sir Isaac Newton was
taken, the highest authority the world has yet known. But, if even he
has erred, the measures, weights, and coins proposed, will not be an atom
the more or less. In cubing the new foot, which was estimated at .978728
of an English foot, or 11.744736 English inches, an arithmetical error
of an unit happened in the fourth column of decimals, and was repeated
in another line in the sixth column, so as to make the result one ten
thousandth and one millionth of a foot too much. The thousandth part of
this error (about one ten millionth of a foot) consequently fell on the
metre of measure, the ounce weight, and the unit of money. In the last
it made a difference of about the twenty-fifth part of a grain Troy, in
weight, or the ninety-third of a cent in value. As it happened, this error
was on the favorable side, so that the detection of it approximates our
estimate of the new unit exactly that much nearer to the old, and reduces
the difference between them to 34, instead of 38 hundredths of a grain
Troy; that is to say, the money unit instead of 375.64 Troy grains of
pure silver, as established heretofore, will now be 375.98934306 grains,
as far as our knowledge of the length of the second pendulum enables us
to judge; and the current of authorities since Sir Isaac Newton's time,
gives reason to believe that his estimate is more probably above than
below the truth, consequently future corrections of it will bring the
estimate of the new unit still nearer to the old.
The numbers in which the arithmetical error before mentioned showed
itself in the table, at the end of the report, have been rectified, and
the table re-printed.
The head of superficial measures in the last part of the report, is
thought to be not sufficiently developed. It is proposed that the rood
of land, being 100 feet square, (and nearly a quarter of the present
acre,) shall be the unit of land measure. This will naturally be divided
into tenths and hundredths, the latter of which will be a square decad.
Its multiples will also, of course, be tens, which may be called double
acres, and hundreds, which will be equal to a square furlong each. The
surveyor's chain should be composed of 100 links of one foot each.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] See Vol. I. p. 162.
VIII.--_Opinion upon the question whether the President should veto the
Bill, declaring that the seat of government shall be transferred to the
Potomac, in the year 1790._
July 15, 1790.
A bill having passed both houses of Congress, and being now before the
President, declaring that the seat of the federal government shall be
transferred to the Potomac in the year 1790, that the session of Congress
next ensuing the present shall be held in Philadelphia, to which place
the offices shall be transferred before the 1st of December next, a
writer in a public paper of July 13, has urged on the consideration
of the President, that the constitution has given to the two houses
of Congress the exclusive right to adjourn themselves; that the will
of the President mixed with theirs in a decision of this kind, would
be an inoperative ingredient, repugnant to the constitution, and that
he ought not to permit them to part, in a single instance, with their
constitutional rights; consequently, that he ought to negative the bill.
That is now to be considered.
Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of
self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature.
Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that
of their majority; for the law of the _majority_ is the natural law of
every society of men. When a certain description of men are to transact
together a particular business, the times and places of their meeting and
separating, depend on their own will; they make a part of the natural
right of self-government. This, like all other natural rights, may be
abridged or modified in its exercise by their own consent, or by the
law of those who depute them, if they meet in the right of others; but
as far as it is not abridged or modified, they retain it as a natural
right, and may exercise them in what form they please, either exclusively
by themselves, or in association with others, or by others altogether,
as they shall agree.
Each house of Congress possesses this natural right of governing itself,
and, consequently, of fixing its own times and places of meeting, so
far as it has not been abridged by the law of those who employ them,
that is to say, by the Constitution. This act manifestly considers them
as possessing this right of course, and therefore has nowhere given it
to them. In the several different passages where it touches this right,
it treats it as an existing thing, not as one called into existence by
them. To evince this, every passage of the constitution shall be quoted,
where the right of adjournment is touched; and it will be seen that no
one of them pretends to give that right; that, on the contrary, every
one is evidently introduced either to enlarge the right where it would
be too narrow, to restrain it where, in its natural and full exercise,
it might be too large, and lead to inconvenience, to defend it from the
latitude of its own phrases, where these were not meant to comprehend
it, or to provide for its exercise by others, when they cannot exercise
it themselves.
"A majority of each house shall constitute a quorum to do business; but
a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to
compel the attendance of absent members." Art. 1. Sec. 5. A majority
of every collection of men being naturally necessary to constitute its
will, and it being frequently to happen that a majority is not assembled,
it was necessary to enlarge the natural right by giving to "a smaller
number than a majority" a right to compel the attendance of the absent
members, and, in the meantime, to adjourn from day to day. This clause,
then, does not pretend to give to a majority a right which it knew that
majority would have of themselves, but to a number _less than a majority_,
a right to which it knew that lesser number could not have of themselves.
"Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without the
consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other
place than that in which the two houses shall be sitting." Ibid. Each
house exercising separately its natural right to meet when and where it
should think best, it might happen that the two houses would separate
either in time or place, which would be inconvenient. It was necessary,
therefore, to keep them together by restraining their natural right of
deciding on separate times and places, and by requiring a concurrence
of will.
But, as it might happen that obstinacy, or a difference of object, might
prevent this concurrence, it goes on to take from them, in that instance,
the right of adjournment altogether, and to transfer it to another, by
declaring, Art. 2, Sec. 3, that "in case of disagreement between the
two houses, with respect to the time of adjournment, the President may
adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper."
These clauses, then, do not import a gift, to the two houses, of a general
right of adjournment, which it was known they would have without that
gift, but to restrain or abrogate the right it was known they would have,
in an instance where, exercised in its full extent, it might lead to
inconvenience, and to give that right to another who would not naturally
have had it. It also gives to the President a right, which he otherwise
would not have had, "to convene both houses, or either of them, on
extraordinary occasions." Thus substituting the will of another, where
they are not in a situation to exercise their own.
"Every order, resolution, or vote, to which the concurrence of the Senate
and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of
adjournment), shall be presented to the President for his approbation,
&c." Art. 1, Sec. 7. The latitude of the general words here used would
have subjected the natural right of adjournment of the two houses to the
will of the President, which was not intended. They therefore expressly
"except questions of adjournment" out of their operation. They do not
here give a right of adjournment, which it was known would exist without
their gift, but they defend the existing right against the latitude of
their own phrases, in a case where there was no good reason to abridge
it. The exception admits they will have the right of adjournment, without
pointing out the source from which they will derive it.
These are all the passages of the constitution (one only excepted, which
shall be presently cited) where the right of adjournment is touched;
and it is evident that none of these are introduced to give that right;
but every one supposes it to be existing, and provides some specific
modification for cases where either a defeat in the natural right, or
a too full use of it, would occasion inconvenience.
The right of adjournment, then, is not given by the constitution, and
consequently it may be modified by law without interfering with that
instrument. It is a natural right, and, like all other natural rights,
may be abridged or regulated in its exercise by law; and the concurrence
of the third branch in any law regulating its exercise is so efficient
an ingredient in that law, that the right cannot be otherwise exercised
but after a repeal by a new law. The express terms of the constitution
itself show that this right may be modified _by law_, when, in Art. 1,
Sec. 4. (the only remaining passage on the subject not yet quoted) it
says, "The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such
meeting shall be the first Monday in December, unless they shall, _by
law_, appoint a different day." Then another day may be appointed _by
law_; and the President's assent is an efficient ingredient in that law.
Nay further, they cannot adjourn over the first Monday of December but
by _a law_. This is another constitutional abridgment of their natural
right of adjournment; and completing our review of all the clauses in
the constitution which touch that right, authorizes us to say no part
of that instrument gives it; and that the houses hold it, not from the
constitution, but from nature.
A consequence of this is, that the houses may, by a joint resolution,
remove themselves from place to place, because it is a part of their
right of self-government; but that as the right of self-government does
not comprehend the government of others, the two houses cannot, by a
joint resolution of their majorities only, remove the executive and
judiciary from place to place. These branches possessing also the rights
of self-government from nature, cannot be controlled in the exercise of
them but by a law, passed in the forms of the constitution. The clause
of the bill in question, therefore, was necessary to be put into the form
of a law, and to be submitted to the President, so far as it proposes to
effect the removal of the Executive and Judiciary to Philadelphia. So far
as respects the removal of the present houses of legislation thither, it
was not necessary to be submitted to the President; but such a submission
is not repugnant to the constitution. On the contrary, if he concurs,
it will so far fix the next session of Congress at Philadelphia that it
cannot be changed but by a regular law.
The sense of Congress itself is always respectable authority. It has been
given very remarkably on the present subject. The address to the President
in the paper of the 13th is a complete digest of all the arguments urged
on the floor of the Representatives against the constitutionality of the
bill now before the President; and they were overruled by a majority of
that house, comprehending the delegation of all the States south of the
Hudson, except South Carolina. At the last session of Congress, when
the bill for remaining a certain term at New York, and then removing
to Susquehanna or Germantown was objected to on the same ground, the
objection was overruled by a majority comprehending the delegations of
the northern half of the union with that of South Carolina. So that the
sense of every State in the union has been expressed, by its delegation,
against this objection South Carolina excepted, and excepting also Rhode
Island, which has never yet had a delegation in place to vote on the
question. In both these instances, the Senate concurred with the majority
of the Representatives. The sense of the two houses is stronger authority
in this case, as it is given against their own supposed privilege.
It would be as tedious, as it is unnecessary, to take up and discuss one
by one, the objections proposed in the paper of July 13. Every one of
them is founded on the supposition that the two houses hold their right
of adjournment from the constitution. This error being corrected, the
objections founded on it fall of themselves.
It would also be work of mere supererogation to show that, granting
what this writer takes for granted (that the President's assent would
be an inoperative ingredient, because excluded by the constitution, as
he says), yet the particular views of the writer would be frustrated,
for on every hypothesis of what the President may do, Congress must go
to Philadelphia. 1. If he assents to the bill, that assent makes good
law of the part relative to the Patomac; and the part for holding the
next session at Philadelphia is good, either as an ordinance, or a vote
of the two houses, containing a complete declaration of their will in
a case where it is competent to the object; so that they must go to
Philadelphia in that case. 2. If he dissents from the bill it annuls
the part relative to the Patomac; but as to the clause for adjourning
to Philadelphia, his dissent being as inefficient as his assent, it
remains a good ordinance or vote, of the two houses for going thither,
and consequently they must go in this case also. 3. If the President
withholds his will out of the bill altogether, by a ten days' silence,
then the part relative to the Potomac becomes a good law without his
will, and that relative to Philadelphia is good also, either as a law,
or an ordinance, or a vote of the two houses; and consequently in this
case also they go to Philadelphia.
IX.--_Opinion respecting the expenses and salaries of foreign Ministers._
July 17, 1790.
The bill on the intercourse with foreign nations restrains the President
from allowing to Ministers Plenipotentiary, or to Congress, more than
$9,000, and $4,500 for their "personal services, and other expenses."
This definition of the objects for which the allowance is provided
appearing vague, the Secretary of State thought it his duty to confer
with the gentlemen heretofore employed as ministers in Europe, to
obtain from them, in aid of his own information, an enumeration of the
expenses incident to these offices, and their opinion which of them
would be included within the fixed salary, and which would be entitled
to be charged separately. He, therefore, asked a conference with the
Vice-President, who was acquainted with the residences of London and the
Hague, and the Chief Justice, who was acquainted with that of Madrid,
which took place yesterday.
The Vice-President, Chief Justice, and Secretary of State, concurred in
the opinion that the salaries named by the act are much below those of
the same grade at the courts of Europe, and less than the public good
requires they should be. Consequently, that the expenses not included
within the definition of the law, should be allowed as an additional
charge.
1. _Couriers, Gazettes, Translating necessary papers, Printing necessary
papers, Aids to poor Americans._--All three agreed that these ought to
be allowed as additional charges, not included within the meaning of
the phrase, "his personal services, and other expenses."
2. _Postage, Stationary, Court-fees._--One of the gentlemen being of
opinion that the phrase "personal services, and other expenses," was
meant to comprehend all the _ordinary expenses_ of the office, considered
this second class of expenses as _ordinary_, and therefore included in
the fixed salary. The first class before mentioned, he had viewed as
_extraordinary_. The other two gentlemen were of opinion this second
class was also out of the definition, and might be allowed in addition to
the salary. One of them, particularly, considered the phrase as meaning
"personal services and personal expenses," that is, expenses for his
personal accommodation, comforts, and maintenance. This second class of
expenses is not within that description.
3. _Ceremonies;_ such as diplomatic and public dinners, galas, and
illuminations. One gentleman only was of opinion these might be allowed.
The expenses of the first class may probably amount to about fifty dollars
a year. Those of the second, to about four or five hundred dollars. Those
of the third are so different at different courts, and so indefinite in
all of them, that no general estimate can be proposed.
The Secretary of State thought it his duty to lay this information before
the President, supposing it might be satisfactory to himself, as well
as to the diplomatic gentlemen, to leave nothing uncertain as to their
allowances; and because, too, a previous determination is in some degree
necessary to the forming an estimate which may not exceed the whole sum
appropriated.
The Secretary of State has also consulted on the subject of the Morocco
consulship, with Mr. Barclay, who furnished him with the note, of which
a copy accompanies this. Considering all circumstances, Mr. Barclay is
of opinion, we had better have only a consul there, and that he should be
the one now residing at Morocco, because, as secretary to the Emperor, he
sees him every day, and possesses his ear. He is of opinion six hundred
dollars a year might suffice for him, and that it should be proposed to
him not as a salary, but as a sum in gross intended to cover his expenses,
and to save the trouble of keeping accounts. That this consul should be
authorized to appoint agents in the seaports, who would be sufficiently
paid by the consignments of vessels. He thinks the consul at Morocco
would most conveniently receive his allowance through the channel of
our Chargé at Madrid, on whom, also, this consulate had better be made
dependent for instructions, information, and correspondence, because of
the daily intercourse between Morocco and Cadiz.
The Secretary of State, on a view of Mr. Barclay's note, very much
doubts the sufficiency of the sum of six hundred dollars; he supposes a
little money there may save a great deal; but he is unable to propose any
specific augmentation till a view of the whole diplomatic establishments
and its expenses, may furnish better grounds for it.
[Appended to this note, were the following estimate of the expenses
of foreign ministers, and of the probable calls on our foreign fund,
from July 1, 1790, to July 1, 1791.--ED.]
_Estimate of the Expenses of a Minister Plenipotentiary._
July 19, 1790.
Minister Plenipotentiary, his salary $9,000
His outfit, suppose it to happen once in seven years,
will average 1,285
His return at a quarter's salary will average 321
Extras, viz.: Gazettes, Translating, Printing, Aids to poor
American sailors, Couriers, and Postage, about 350
His Secretary 1,350
-------
$12,396
_Estimate for a Chargé des Affaires._
Chargé des Affaires, his salary $4,500
His outfit, once in seven years, equal to an annual sum of 643
His return at a quarter's salary, do 161
Extras, as above 350
------
$5,654
The Agent at the Hague, his salary $1,300
Extras 100
-----
$1,400
_Estimate of the Annual Expenses of the Establishment proposed._
France, a Minister Plenipotentiary $12,306
London, do. do. 12,306
Madrid, a Chargé des Affaires 5,654
Lisbon, do. do. do. 5,654
Hague, an agent 1,400
Morocco, a consul 1,800
Presents to foreign ministers on taking leave, at $1,000
each, more or less, according to their favor and time.
There will be five of them. If exchanged once in seven
years, it will be annually 715
-----
$39,835
_Estimate of the probable calls on our foreign fund from July 1, 1790,
when the act for foreign intercourse passed, to July 1, 1791._
France, a Minister Plenipotentiary, his outfit $9,000
His salary, suppose it to commence August 1st 8,250
Extras 320
Secretary 1,237.5 - $18,807.5
Chargé, suppose him to remain till November 1st. Salary 1,500
Extras 117
His return, a quarter's salary 1,125 - 2,742
Madrid, a Chargé, his salary 4,500
Extras 350 - 4,850
Lisbon, a Chargé, (or Resident,) his outfit 4,500
His salary, suppose it to commence January 1, 1791 2,250
Extras 175 - 6,925
London, an Agent, suppose to commence October 1st, at
$1,350 salary 1,012.5
Extras, (at $100 a year) 75 - 1,087.5
Hague, an Agent 1,400
Morocco, Consul 1,800 - 3,200
Presents to foreign Ministers. The dye about 500
Two medals and chains 2,000 - 2,500
---------
$40,112
X.--_Opinion in regard to the continuance of the monopoly of the commerce
of the Creek nation, enjoyed by Col. McGillivray_:
July 29th, 1790.
Colonel McGillivray, with a company of British merchants, having hitherto
enjoyed a monopoly of the commerce of the Creek nation, with a right
of importing their goods duty free, and considering these privileges
as the principal sources of his power over that nation, is unwilling to
enter into treaty with us, unless they can be continued to him. And the
question is how this may be done consistently with our laws, and so as
to avoid just complaints from those of our citizens who would wish to
participate of the trade?
Our citizens, at this time, are not permitted to trade in that nation.
The nation has a right to give us their peace, and to withhold their
commerce, to place it under whatever monopolies or regulations they
please. If they insist that only Colonel McGillivray and his company
shall be permitted to trade among them, we have no right to say the
contrary. We shall even gain some advantage in substituting citizens of
the United States instead of British subjects, as associates of Colonel
McGillivray, and excluding both British and Spaniards from the country.
Suppose, then, it be expressly stipulated by treaty, that no person
be permitted to trade in the Creek country, without a license from the
President, that but a fixed number shall be permitted to trade there at
all, and that the goods imported for and sent to the Creek nation, shall
be duty free. It may further be either expressed that the person licensed
shall be approved by the leader or leaders of the nation, or without
this, it may be understood between the President and McGillivray that the
stipulated number of licenses shall be sent to him blank, to fill up. A
treaty made by the President, with the concurrence of two-thirds of the
Senate, is a law of the land, and a law of superior order, because it not
only repeals past laws, but cannot itself be repealed by future ones.[24]
The treaty, then, will legally control the duty acts, and the acts for
licensing traders, in this particular instance. When a citizen applies
for a license, who is not of McGillivray's partnership, he will be told
that but a given number could be licensed by the treaty, and that the
number is full. It seems that in this way no law will be violated, and
no just cause of complaint will be given; on the contrary, the treaty
will have bettered our situation, though not in the full degree which
might have been wished.
FOOTNOTE:
[24] [At a later period, upon reviewing this opinion, the
following note was appended by Mr. Jefferson.--Ed.--viz.]
"Unless with the consent or default of the other
contracting party. It may well be doubted, too, and perhaps
denied, that the treaty power can control a law. The
question here proposed was then of the first impression.
Subsequent investigations have proved that the contrary
position is the more general truth."
XI.--_Opinion respecting our foreign debt._
August 26, 1790.
On consideration of the letter of our banker, of January 25th, 1790, the
Secretary of the Treasury's answer to it, and the draught of powers and
instructions to him, I am of opinion, as I always have been, that the
purchase of our debt to France by private speculators, would have been
an operation extremely injurious to our credit; and that the consequence
foreseen by our banker, that the purchasers would have been obliged, in
order to make good their payments, to deluge the markets of Amsterdam
with American paper of all sorts, and to sell it at any price, was a
probable one. And the more so, as we know that the particular individuals
who were engaged in that speculation, possess no means of their own
adequate to the payments they would have had to make. While we must
not doubt that these motives, together with a proper regard for the
credit of the United States, had real and full weight with our bankers,
towards inducing them to counterwork these private speculations; yet, to
ascribe their industry in this business wholly to these motives, might
lead to a too great and dangerous confidence in them. It was obviously
their interest to defeat all such speculations, because they tended to
take out of their hands, or at least to divide with them, the profits
of the great operation of transferring the French debt to Amsterdam, an
object of first rate magnitude to them, and on the undivided enjoyments
of which they might count, if private speculators could be baffled. It
has been a contest of dexterity and cunning, in which our champions have
obtained the victory. The manœuvre of opening a loan of three millions
of florins, has, on the whole, been useful to the United States, and
though unauthorized, I think should be confirmed. The measure proposed
by the Secretary of the Treasury, of sending a superintendent of their
future operations, will effectually prevent their doing the like again,
and the funding laws leave no danger that such an expedient might at
any future time be useful to us.
The report of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the draught of
instructions, present this plan to view: First, to borrow on the best
terms we can, not exceeding those limited by the law, such a sum as may
answer all demands of principal or interest of the foreign debts, due,
or to become due before the end of 1791. [This I think he supposes will
be about three and a half millions of dollars.] Second, to consider two
of the three millions of florins already borrowed by our bankers as,
so far, an execution of this operation; consequently, that there will
remain but about two and a half millions of dollars to be borrowed on
the old terms. Third, to borrow no more as yet, towards completing the
transfer of the French debt to Amsterdam, unless we can do it on more
advantageous terms. Fourth, to consider the third millions of florins
already borrowed by our bankers, as, so far, an execution of the powers
given the President to borrow two millions of dollars, by the act of the
12th of August. The whole of this appears to me to be wise. If the third
million be employed in buying up our _foreign paper_, on the exchange
of Amsterdam, by creating a demand for that species of paper, it will
excite a cupidity in the monied men to obtain more of it by new loans,
and consequently enable us to borrow more and on lower terms. The saving
of interest, too, on the sum so to be bought, may be applied in buying
up more principal, and thereby keep this salutary operation going.
I would only take the liberty of suggesting the insertion of some
such clause as the following, into the instructions: "The agents to be
employed shall never open a loan for more than one million of dollars at
a time, nor open a new loan till the preceding one has been filled, and
expressly approved by the President of the United States." A new man,
alighting on the exchange of Amsterdam, with powers to borrow twelve
millions of dollars, will be immediately beset with bankers and brokers,
who will pour into his ear, from the most unsuspected quarters, such
informations and suspicions as may lead him exactly into their snares.
So wonderfully dexterous are they in wrapping up and complicating their
propositions, they will make it evident, even to a clear-headed man, (not
in the habit of this business,) that two and two make five. The agent,
therefore, should be guarded, even against himself, by putting it out
of his power to extend the effect of any erroneous calculation beyond
one million of dollars. Were he able, under a delusive calculation, to
commit such a sum as twelve millions of dollars, what would be said of the
government? Our bankers told me themselves that they would not choose,
in the conduct of this great loan, to open for more than two or three
millions of florins at a time, and certainly never for more than five.
By contracting for only one million of dollars at a time, the agent will
have frequent occasions of trying to better the terms. I dare say that
this caution, though not expressed in the instructions, is intended by
the Secretary of the Treasury to be carried into their execution. But,
perhaps, it will be desirable for the President, that his sense of it
also should be expressed in writing.
XII.--_Opinion upon the question what the answer of the President
should be in case Lord Dorchester should apply for permission to march
troops through the territory of the United States, from Detroit to the
Mississippi._
GEORGE WASHINGTON TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
UNITED STATES, August 27, 1790.
Provided the dispute between Great Britain and Spain should come to
the decision of arms, from a variety of circumstances (individually
unimportant and inconclusive, but very much the reverse when compared
and combined,) there is no doubt in my mind, that New Orleans, and
the Spanish posts above it on the Mississippi, will be among the first
attempts of the former; and that the reduction of them will be undertaken
by a combined operation from Detroit.
The _consequences_ of having so formidable and enterprizing a people
as the British on both our flanks and rear, with their navy in front,
as they respect our western settlements which may be seduced thereby,
as they regard the security of the Union and its commerce with the West
Indies, are too obvious to need enumeration.
What then should be the answer of the Executive of the United States to
Lord Dorchester, in case he should apply for permission to march troops
through the territory of the said States from Detroit to the Mississippi?
What notice ought be taken of the measure, if it should be undertaken
without leave, which is the most probable proceeding of the two?
The opinion of the Secretary of State is requested in writing upon the
above statements.
_Opinion on the questions stated in the President's note of August 27th,
1790._
August 28, 1790.
I am so deeply impressed with the magnitude of the dangers which will
attend our government, if Louisiana and the Floridas be added to the
British empire, that, in my opinion, we ought to make ourselves parties
in the _general war_ expected to take place, should this be the only
means of preventing the calamity.
But I think we should defer this step as long as possible; because war is
full of chances, which may relieve us from the necessity of interfering;
and if necessary, still the later we interfere, the better we shall be
prepared.
It is often indeed more easy to prevent the capture of a place, than
to retake it. Should it be so in the case in question, the difference
between the two operations of preventing and retaking, will not be so
costly as two, three, or four years more of war.
So that I am for preserving neutrality as long, and entering into the
war as late, as possible.
If this be the best course, it decides, in a good degree, what should
be our conduct, if the British ask leave to march troops through our
territory, or march them without leave.
It is well enough agreed, in the laws of nations, that for a neutral power
to give or refuse permission to the troops of either belligerent party
to pass through their territory, is no breach of neutrality, provided
the same refusal or permission be extended to the other party.
If we give leave of passage then to the British troops, Spain will have
no just cause of complaint against us, provided we extend the same leave
to her when demanded.
If we refuse, (as indeed we have a right to do,) and the troops should
pass notwithstanding, of which there can be little doubt, we shall stand
committed. For either we must enter immediately into the war, or pocket
an acknowledged insult in the face of the world; and one insult pocketed
soon produces another.
There is indeed a middle course, which I should be inclined to prefer;
that is, to avoid giving any answer. They will proceed notwithstanding,
but to do this under our silence, will admit of palliation, and produce
apologies, from military necessity; and will leave us free to pass it
over without dishonor, or to make it a handle of quarrel hereafter, if
we should have use for it as such. But, if we are obliged to give an
answer, I think the occasion not such as should induce us to hazard that
answer which might commit us to the war at so early a stage of it; and
therefore that the passage should be permitted.
If they should pass without having asked leave, I should be for expressing
our dissatisfaction to the British court, and keeping alive an altercation
on the subject, till events should decide whether it is most expedient
to accept their apologies, or profit of the aggression as a cause of war.
XIII.--_Opinion on the question whether it will be expedient to notify to
Lord Dorchester the real object of the expedition preparing by Governor
St. Clair._
August 29, 1790.
On considering more fully the question whether it will be expedient to
notify to Lord Dorchester the real object of the expedition preparing
by Governor St. Clair, I still think it will not be expedient. For,
if the notification be early, he will get the Indians out of the way,
and defeat our object. If it be so late as not to leave him time to
withdraw them before our stroke be struck, it will then be so late also
as not to leave him time to withdraw any secret aids he may have sent
them. And the notification will betray to him that he may go on without
fear in his expedition against the Spaniards, and for which he may yet
have sufficient time after our expedition is over. On the other hand,
if he should suspect our preparations are to prevent his passing our
territory, these suspicions may induce him to decline his expedition,
as, even should he think he could either force or steal a passage, he
would not divide his troops, leaving (as he would suppose) an enemy
between them able to take those he should leave, and cut off the return
of those he should carry. These suspicions, too, would mislead both him
and the Indians, and so enable us to take the latter more completely by
surprise, and prevent him from sending secret aid to those whom he would
not suppose the objects of the enterprise; thus effecting a double purpose
of preventing his enterprise, and securing our own. Might it not even
be expedient, with a view to deter his enterprise, to instruct Governor
St. Clair either to continue his pursuit of the Indians till the season
be too far advanced for Lord Dorchester to move; or, on disbanding his
militia, to give them general orders (which might reach the ears of Lord
Dorchester) to be ready to assemble at a moment's warning, though no
such assembly be really intended?
Always taking care neither to say nor do, against their passage, what
might directly commit either our peace or honor.
XIV.--_Opinion on proceedings to be had under the Residence act._
November 29, 1790.
A territory not exceeding ten miles square (or, I presume, one hundred
square miles in any form) to be located by metes and bounds.
Three commissioners to be appointed. I suppose them not entitled to any
salary.
[If they live near the place they may, in some instances, be influenced
by self interest, and partialities; but they will push the work with
zeal. If they are from a distance, and northwardly, they will be more
impartial, but may affect delays.]
The commissioners to purchase or accept "such quantity of land on the
east side of the river as the President shall deem _proper for the United
States_," viz., for the federal Capitol, the offices, the President's
house and gardens, the town house, market house, public walks and
hospital. For the President's house, offices and gardens, I should think
two squares should be consolidated. For the Capitol and offices, one
square. For the market, one square. For the public walks, nine squares
consolidated.
The expression "such quantity of land as the President shall deem _proper
for the United States_," is vague. It may therefore be extended to the
acceptance or purchase of land enough for the town; and I have no doubt
it is the wish, and perhaps expectation. In that case, it will be to
be laid out in lots and streets. I should propose these to be at right
angles, as in Philadelphia, and that no street be narrower than one
hundred feet, with foot ways of fifteen feet. Where a street is long and
level, it might be one hundred and twenty feet wide. I should prefer
squares of at least two hundred yards every way, which will be about
eight acres each.
The commissioners should have some taste in architecture, because they
may have to decide between different plans.
They will, however, be subject to the President's direction in every point.
When the President shall have made up his mind as to the spot for the
town, would there be any impropriety in his saying to the neighboring
land holders, "I will fix the town here if you will join and purchase
and give the lands." They may well afford it by the increase of value
it will give to their own circumjacent lands.
The lots to be sold out in breadths of fifty feet; their depths to extend
to the diagonal of the square.
I doubt much whether the obligation to build the houses at a given
distance from the street, contributes to its beauty. It produces a
disgusting monotony; all persons make this complaint against Philadelphia.
The contrary practice varies the appearance, and is much more convenient
to the inhabitants.
In Paris it is forbidden to build a house beyond a given height; and it
is admitted to be a good restriction. It keeps down the price of ground,
keeps the houses low and convenient, and the streets light and airy.
Fires are much more manageable where houses are low.
XV.--_Report by the Secretary of State to the President of the United
States on the Report of the Secretary of the Government north-west of
the Ohio._
December 14, 1790.
The Secretary of State having had under his consideration the report
made by the Secretary of the Government north-west of the Ohio, of his
proceedings for carrying into effect the resolution of Congress of August
29th, 1788, respecting the lands of the inhabitants of Port Vincennes,
makes the following report thereon to the President of the United States:
The resolution of Congress of August 29th, 1788, had confirmed in their
possessions and titles the French and Canadian inhabitants and other
settlers at that post, who, in or before the year 1783, had settled
there, and had professed themselves citizens of the United States or
any of them, and had made a donation to every head of a family, of the
same description of four hundred acres of land, part of a square to be
laid off adjoining the improvements at the post.
The Secretary of the north-western government, in the absence of the
Governor, has carried this resolution into effect, as to all the claims
to which he thought it could be clearly applied: there remain, however,
the following description of cases, on which he asks further instructions:
1. Certain cases within the letter of the resolution, but rendered
doubtful by the condition annexed, to the grants of lands in the Illinois
country. The cases of these claimants, fifteen in number, are specially
stated in the papers hereto annexed, number 2, and the lands are laid
off for them but remain ungranted till further orders.
2. Certain persons who, by removals from one part of the territory to
another, are not of the letter of the resolutions, but within its equity,
as they conceive.
3. Certain heads of families, who became such soon after the year 1783,
who petition for a participation of the donation, and urge extraordinary
militia service to which they are exposed.
4. One hundred and fifty acres of land within the village granted under
the former government of that country, to the Piankeshaw Indians, and
on their removal sold by them in parcels to individual inhabitants, who
in some instances have highly improved them both before and since the
year 1783.
5. Lands granted both before and after 1783, by authority from the
commandant of the post, who, according to the usage under the French
and British governments, thinking himself authorized to grant lands,
delegated that authority to a court of civil and criminal jurisdiction,
whose grants before 1783, amount to twenty-six thousand acres, and between
that and 1787, (when the practice was stopped,) to twenty-two thousand
acres. They are generally in parcels from four hundred acres down to
the size of house lots; and some of them under considerable improvement.
Some of the tenants urge that they were induced by the court itself to
come and settle these lands under assurance of their authority to grant
them, and that a loss of the lands and improvements will involve them in
ruin. Besides these small grants, there are some much larger, sometimes
of many leagues square, which a sense of their impropriety has prevented
the grantees from bringing forward. Many pretended grants, too, of this
class are believed to be forgeries, and are, therefore, to be guarded
against.
6. Two thousand four hundred acres of good land, and three thousand acres
of sunken land, held under the French, British, and American governments,
as commons for the use of the inhabitants of the village generally, and
for thirty years past kept under inclosure for these purposes.
The legislature alone being competent to authorize the grant of lands
in cases as yet unprovided for by the laws. The Secretary of State is of
opinion that the report of the Secretary of the north-western government,
with the papers therein referred to, should be laid before Congress for
their determination. Authentic copies of them are herewith enclosed to
the President of the United States.
XVI.--_Opinion on certain proceedings of the Executive in the
North-western Territory._
December 14, 1790.
The Secretary of State having had under his consideration, the journal
of the proceedings of the Executive in the North-western Territory,
thinks it his duty to extract therefrom, for the notice of the President
of the United States, the articles of April 25th, June 6th, 28th, and
29th. Some of which are hereto annexed.
Conceiving that the regulations, purported in these articles, are
beyond the competence of the executive of the said government, that they
amount, in fact, to laws, and as such, could only flow from its regular
legislature. That it is the duty of the general government to guard its
subordinate members from the encroachments of each other, even when they
are made through error or inadvertence, and to cover its citizens from
the exercise of powers not authorized by the law. The Secretary of State
is of opinion that the said articles be laid before the Attorney General
for consideration, and if he finds them to be against law, that his
opinion be communicated to the Governor of the North-western Territory,
for his future conduct.
[The following are the extracts alluded to above.]
_Extracts from the Journal of the Proceedings in the Executive
Department of government in the Territory of the United States, north-west
of the Ohio, reported to the President of the United States, by Winthrop
Sargent, Secretary._
April 25, 1790.--The governor was pleased to issue the following order,
viz.: All the inhabitants are forbidden to entertain any strangers, white,
Indian, or negro, let them come from whatsoever place, without acquainting
the officer commanding the troops, of the names of such strangers, and
the place from whence they came. And every stranger arriving at Cahokia,
is ordered to present himself to said officer within two hours after
his arrival, on pain of imprisonment.
June 6, 1790.--The Governor at Kaskaskias, was pleased to make the
following proclamation:
The practice of selling spirituous liquors to the Indians in the villages
being attended with very ill consequences, it is expressly prohibited;
and all and every person transgressing this order, will be liable to
be tried and fined at the pleasure of the court of quarter sessions of
the peace. And as it may be necessary that spirituous liquors should be
vended in small quantities to white travellers and others; to prevent
all danger of imposition and extortion, no person whosoever shall sell
in any of the villages or their environs, spirituous liquors to any
white person, traveller, or inhabitant, in any quantity less than one
quart at one time, without obtaining a license from the governor, which
license shall not be granted but upon the recommendation of the Justices
of the Peace in their court of quarter sessions, and on his or their
giving security in the sum of two hundred dollars, to abide by all the
regulations made by law respecting retailers of spirituous liquors,
and the orders of the said court of quarter sessions in the premises
in the meantime. And for every offence, he or they shall be liable to
prosecution by indictment and fine at the pleasure of the court, and to
the forfeiture of their bonds.
Nor shall any person undertake or exercise the calling or occupation of
an Inn-holder or Tavern-keeper, without obtaining in the same manner,
and under the same restrictions and penalties, a license for so doing.
PROCLAMATION.--Whereas, his Excellency, Arthur St. Clair, Esq., governor
and commander-in-chief of this Territory, did by proclamation given
at the Kaskaskias the 10th instant, strictly prohibit all persons, not
citizens of the United States or the Territory, from hunting or killing
any kind of game within the same, either for the flesh or skins, upon
penalty _not only_ of forfeiting the flesh and skins which they might
acquire, but also prosecution and punishment as trespassers.
And it appearing to me to be particularly essential to the interests
of this country, that an observance of the order and prohibition should
be obtained, I do hereby call upon all civil and military officers, who
now are, or hereafter may be appointed, to use their best endeavors for
detecting and bringing to justice every person who shall violate the
same. And, whereas, it appears to me to be expedient that government
should receive information of all characters, foreigners and others,
coming into the Territory, I do hereby order and direct that any person
arriving at this, or any of the military posts of the United States
within the same, should present himself to the commanding officer of
the troops in two hours next after his arrival; and the inhabitants are
hereby forbidden to entertain such characters, whether whites, Indians,
or negroes, without immediate information thereof to the said commanding
officers.
Given under my hand and seal at the town of Post Vincennes, and county
of Knox, this 28th day of June, A. D. 1790, and of the Independence of
the United States, the fourteenth.
(Signed,)
WINTHROP SARGENT.
June 29, 1790.--It is to be considered as a standing order hereafter,
that no person enrolled in the militia shall leave the village or
stations, for a longer absence than twenty-four hours, without informing
him (Mayor Hamtramck) or the commanding officer for the time being, of
their intention. And all intelligence or discoveries of Indians, to be
immediately reported.
(Signed,)
WINTHROP SARGENT.
XVII.--_Report on certain letters from the President to Mr. Gouverneur
Morris, and from Mr. Morris to the President, relative to our difficulties
with England_--1790.
December 15, 1790.
The Secretary of State having had under consideration the two letters
of October 13th, 1789, from the President of the United States, to Mr.
Gouverneur Morris; and those of Mr. Morris to the President, of January
22d, April 7th, 13th, May 1st, 29th, July 3d, August 16th, and September
18th, referred to him by the President, makes the following report
thereon:
The President's letter of January 22d, authorized Mr. Morris to enter
into conference with the British ministers in order to discover their
sentiments on the following subjects:
1. Their retention of the western posts contrary to the treaty of peace.
2. Indemnification for the negroes carried off against the stipulations
of the same treaty.
3. A treaty for the regulation of the commerce between the two countries.
4. The exchange of a minister.
The letters of Mr. Morris before mentioned, state the communications,
oral and written, which have passed between him and the ministers; and
from these the Secretary of State draws the following inferences:
1. That the British court is decided not to surrender the posts in any
event; and that they will urge as a pretext that though our courts of
justice are now open to British subjects, they were so long shut after
the peace as to have defeated irremedially the recovery of debts in many
cases. They suggest, indeed, the idea of an indemnification on our part.
But probably were we disposed to admit their right to indemnification,
they would take care to set it so high as to insure a disagreement.
2. That as to indemnification for the negroes, their measures for
concealing them were in the first instance so efficacious, as to reduce
our demand for them, so far as we can support it by direct proof, to be
very small indeed. Its smallness seems to have kept it out of discussion.
Were other difficulties removed, they would probably make none of this
article.
3. That they equivocate on every proposal of a treaty of commerce, and
authorize in their communications with Mr. Morris the same conclusions
which have been drawn from those they had had from time to time with
Mr. Adams, and those through Mayor Beckwith; to wit, that they do not
mean to submit their present advantages in commerce to the risk which
might attend a discussion of them, whereon some reciprocity could not
fail to be demanded. Unless, indeed, we would agree to make it a treaty
of _alliance_ as well as _commerce_, so as to undermine our obligations
with France. This method of stripping that rival nation of its alliances,
they tried successfully with Holland, endeavored at it with Spain, and
have plainly and repeatedly suggested to us. For this they would probably
relax some of the rigors they exercise against our commerce.
4. That as to a minister, their Secretary for foreign affairs is disposed
to exchange one, but meets with opposition in his cabinet, so as to
render the issue uncertain.
From the whole of which, the Secretary of State is of opinion that Mr.
Morris' letters remove any doubts which might have been entertained as
to the intentions and dispositions of the British cabinet.
That it would be dishonorable to the United States, useless and even
injurious, to renew the propositions for a treaty of commerce, or for
the exchange of a minister; and that these subjects should now remain
dormant, till they shall be brought forward earnestly by them.
That the demands of the posts, and of indemnification for the negroes,
should not be again made till we are in readiness to do ourselves the
justice which may be refused.
That Mr. Morris should be informed that he has fulfilled the object of his
agency to the satisfaction of the President, inasmuch as he has enabled
him to judge of the real views of the British cabinet, and that it is
his pleasure that the matters committed to him be left in the situation
in which the letter shall find them.
That a proper compensation be given to Mr. Morris for his services herein,
which having been begun on the 22d of January, and ended the 18th of
September, comprehend a space of near eight months; that the allowance
to an agent may be properly fixed anywhere between the half and the
whole of what is allowed to a Chargé d'affaires; which, according to the
establishment of the United States at the time of this appointment, was
at the rate of $3,000 a year; consequently, that such a sum of between
one and two thousand dollars be allowed him as the President shall deem
proper, on a view of the interference which this agency may have had
with Mr. Morris' private pursuits in Europe.
XVIII.--_Report relative to the Mediterranean trade._
December 28, 1790.
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred by the House of
Representatives so much of the speech of the President of the United
States to both Houses of Congress, as relates to the trade of the United
States in the Mediterranean, with instructions to report thereupon to
the House, has had the same under consideration, and thereupon makes
the following report:
The loss of the records of the custom houses in several of the States,
which took place about the commencement and during the course of the
late war, has deprived us of official information, as to the extent of
our commerce and navigation in the Mediterranean sea. According to the
best which may be obtained from other sources meriting respect, it may be
concluded that about one-sixth of the wheat and flour exported from the
United States, and about one-fourth in value of their dried and pickled
fish, and some rice, found their best markets in the Mediterranean ports;
that these articles constituted the principal part of what we sent into
that sea; that that commerce loaded outwards from eighty to one hundred
ships, annually, of twenty thousand tons, navigated by about twelve
hundred seamen. It was abandoned early in the war. And after the peace
which ensued, it was obvious to our merchants, that their adventures
into that sea would be exposed to the depredations of the piratical
States on the coast of Barbary. Congress, too, was very early attentive
to this danger, and by a commission of the 12th of May, 1784, authorized
certain persons, named ministers plenipotentiary for that purpose, to
conclude treaties of peace and amity with the Barbary powers. And it
being afterwards found more expedient that the negotiations should be
carried on at the residences of those powers. Congress, by a farther
commission, bearing date the 11th of March, 1785, empowered the same
ministers plenipotentiary to appoint agents to repair to the said powers
at their proper residences, and there to negotiate such treaties. The
whole expenses were limited to eighty thousand dollars. Agents were
accordingly sent to Morocco and Algiers.
Before the appointment of the one to Morocco, it was known that a
cruiser of that State had taken a vessel of the United States; and that
the emperor, on the friendly interposition of the court of Madrid had
liberated the crew, and made restitution of the vessel and cargo, as
far as their condition admitted. This was a happy presage of the liberal
treaty he afterwards concluded with our agent, still under the friendly
mediation of Spain, and at an expense of between nine and ten thousand
dollars only. On his death, which has taken place not long since, it
becomes necessary, according to their usage, to obtain immediately a
recognition of the treaty by his successor, and consequently, to make
provision for the expenses which may attend it. The amount of the former
furnishes one ground of estimate; but the character and dispositions of
the successor, which are unknown here, may influence it materially. The
friendship of this power is important, because our Atlantic as well as
Mediterranean trade is open to his annoyance, and because we carry on
a useful commerce with his nation.
The Algerines had also taken two vessels of the United States, with
twenty-one persons on board, whom they retained as slaves. On the arrival
of the agent sent to that regency, the dey refused utterly to treat of
peace on any terms, and demanded 59,496 dollars for the ransom of our
captives. This mission therefore proved ineffectual.
While these negotiations were on foot at Morocco and Algiers, an
ambassador from Tripoli arrived in London. The ministers plenipotentiary
of the United States met him in person. He demanded for the peace of that
State, thirty thousand guineas; and undertook to engage that of Tunis
for a like sum. These demands were beyond the limits of Congress, and
of reason, and nothing was done. Nor was it of importance, as, Algiers
remaining hostile, the peace of Tunis and Tripoli was of no value, and
when that of the former should be obtained, theirs would soon follow.
Our navigation, then, into the Mediterranean, has not been resumed at
all since the peace. The sole obstacle has been the unprovoked war of
Algiers; and the sole remedy must be to bring that war to an end, or to
palliate its effects. Its effects may, perhaps, be palliated by insuring
our ships and cargoes destined for that sea, and by forming a convention
with the regency, for the ransom of our seamen, according to a fixed
tariff. That tariff will, probably, be high, and the rate of insurance
so settled, in the long run, as to pay for the vessels and cargoes
captured, and something more. What proportion will be captured nothing
but experience can determine. Our commerce differs from that of most of
the nations with whom the predatory States are in habits of war. Theirs
is spread all over the face of the Mediterranean, and therefore must
be sought for all over its face. Ours must all enter at a strait only
five leagues wide; so that their cruisers, taking a safe and commanding
position near the strait's mouth, may very effectually inspect whatever
enters it. So safe a station, with a certainty of receiving for their
prisoners a good and stated price, may tempt their cupidity to seek our
vessels particularly. Nor is it certain that our seamen could be induced
to engage in that navigation, though with the security of Algerine faith
that they would be liberated on the payment of a fixed sum. The temporary
deprivation of liberty, perhaps chains, the danger of the pest, the perils
of the engagement preceding their surrender, and possible delays of the
ransom, might turn elsewhere the choice of men, to whom all the rest of
the world is open. In every case, these would be embarrassments which
would enter into the merchants' estimate, and endanger the preference of
foreign bottoms not exposed to them. And upon the whole, this expedient
does not fulfil our wish of a complete re-establishment of our commerce
in that sea.
A second plan might be to obtain peace by purchasing it. For this we
have the example of rich and powerful nations, in this instance counting
their interest more than their honor. If, conforming to their example,
we determine to purchase a peace, it is proper to inquire what a peace
may cost. This being merely a matter of conjecture, we can only compare
together such opinions as have been obtained, and from them form one
for ourselves.
Mr. Wolf, a respectable Irishman, who had resided very long at Algiers,
thought a peace might be obtained from that regency, and the redemption of
our captives included, for sixty or seventy thousand pounds sterling.[25]
His character and opinion both merited respect. Yet his estimate being the
lowest of all who have hazarded an opinion on this subject, one is apt
to fear his judgment might have been biassed by the hope he entertained
that the United States would charge him with this negotiation.
Captain O'Brien, one of our captives, who had been in Algiers four years
and a half at the date of his last letter, a very sensible man, and to
whom we are indebted for very minute information, supposes that peace
alone, might be bought for that sum, that is to say, for three hundred
and twenty-two thousand dollars.
The Tripoline ambassador, before mentioned, thought that peace could be
made with the three smaller powers for ninety thousand pounds sterling, to
which were to be added the expenses of the mission and other incidental
expenses. But he could not answer for Algiers; they would demand more.
The ministers plenipotentiary, who conferred with him, had judged that
as much must be paid to Algiers as to the other three powers together;
and consequently, that according to this measure, the peace of Algiers
would cost from an hundred to an hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds
sterling; or from four hundred and sixty to five hundred and seventy-five
thousand dollars.
The latter sum seemed to meet the ideas of the Count de Vergennes, who,
from a very long residence at Constantinople, was a good judge of what
related to the porte, or its dependencies.
A person whose name is not free to be mentioned here, a native of the
continent of Europe, who had long lived, and still lives at Algiers,
with whom the minister plenipotentiary of the United States, at Paris,
had many and long conversations, and found his information full, clear,
and consistent, was of opinion the peace of Algiers could not be bought
by the United States for less than one million of dollars. And when that
is paid, all is not done. On the death of a dey, (and the present one is
between seventy and eighty years of age,) respectable presents must be
made to the successor, that he may recognize the treaty and very often
he takes the liberty of altering it. When a consul is sent or changed,
new presents must be made. If these events leave a considerable interval,
occasion must be made of renewing presents. And with all this they must
see that we are in condition to chastise an infraction of the treaty;
consequently some marine force must be exhibited in their harbor from
time to time.
The late peace of Spain with Algiers is said to have cost from three
to five millions of dollars. Having received the money, they take the
vessels of that nation on the most groundless pretexts; counting, that
the same force which bound Spain to so hard a treaty, may break it with
impunity.
Their treaty with France, which had expired, was about two years ago
renewed for fifty years. The sum given at the time of renewal is not
known. But presents are to be repeated every ten years, and a tribute
of one hundred thousand dollars to be annually paid. Yet perceiving that
France, embarrassed at home with her domestic affairs, was less capable
of acting abroad, they took six vessels of that nation in the course of
the last year, and retain the captives, forty-four in number, in slavery.
It is the opinion of Captain O'Brien, that those nations are best treated
who pay a smaller sum in the beginning, and an annual tribute afterwards.
In this way he informs us that the Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and Venetians
pay to Algiers, from twenty-four to thirty thousand dollars a year,
each; the two first in naval stores, the two last chiefly in money. It
is supposed, that the peace of the Barbary States costs Great Britain
about sixty thousand guineas, or two hundred and eighty thousand dollars
a year. But it must be noted that these facts cannot be authentically
advanced; as from a principle of self-condemnation, the governments keep
them from the public eye as much as possible.
Nor must we omit finally to recollect, that the Algerines, attentive
to reserve always a sufficient aliment for their piracies, will never
extend their peace beyond certain limits, and consequently, that we may
find ourselves in the case of those nations to whom they refuse peace
at any price.
The third expedient is to repel force by force. Several statements are
hereto annexed of the naval force of Algiers, taken in 1785, 1786, 1787,
1788, and 1789, differing in small degrees, but concurring in the main.
From these it results that they have usually had about nine chebecs,
from ten to thirty-six guns, and four galleys, which have been reduced
by losses to six chebecs and four galleys. They have a forty-gun frigate
on the stocks, and expect two cruisers from the grand seignior. The
character of their vessels is, that they are sharp built and swift, but
so light as not to stand the broadside of a good frigate. Their guns are
of different calibres, unskilfully pointed and worked. The vessels illy
manœuvred, but crowded with men, one third Turks, the rest Moors, of
determined bravery, and resting their sole hopes on boarding. But two of
these vessels belong to the government, the rest being private property.
If they come out of the harbor together, they separate immediately in
quest of prey; and it is said they were never known to act together
in any instance. Nor do they come out at all, when they know there are
vessels cruising for them. They perform three cruises a year, between
the middle of April and November, when they unrig and lay up for the
winter. When not confined within the straits, they rove northwardly to
the channel, and westwardly to the westward islands.
They are at peace at present, with France, Spain, England, Venice, the
United Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark; and at war with Russia, Austria,
Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Genoa, and Malta.
Should the United States propose to vindicate their commerce by arms,
they would, perhaps, think it prudent to possess a force equal to the
whole of that which may be opposed to them. What that equal force would
be, will belong to another department to say.
At the same time it might never be necessary to draw out the whole at
once, nor perhaps any proportion of it, but for a small part of the
year; as it is reasonable to presume that a concert of operation might
be arranged among the powers at war with the Barbary States, so as that,
each performing a tour of given duration, and in given order, a constant
cruise during the eight temperate months of every year, may be kept
up before the harbor of Algiers, till the object of such operations be
completely obtained. Portugal has singly, for several years past, kept
up such a cruise before the straits of Gibraltar, and by that means has
confined the Algerines closely within. But two of their vessels have
been out of the straits in the last five years. Should Portugal effect a
peace with them, as has been apprehended for some time, the Atlantic will
immediately become the principal scene of their piracies; their peace
with Spain having reduced the profits of their Mediterranean cruises
below the expenses of equipment.
Upon the whole, it rests with Congress to decide between war, tribute,
and ransom, as the means of re-establishing our Mediterranean commerce.
If war, they will consider how far our own resources shall be called
forth, and how far they will enable the Executive to engage, in the
forms of the constitution, the co-operation of other powers. If tribute
or ransom, it will rest with them to limit and provide the amount; and
with the Executive, observing the same constitutional forms, to take
arrangements for employing it to the best advantage.
No. 1.--_Extract of a letter from Richard O'Brien, one of the American
captives at Algiers, to Congress. Algiers, December 26, 1789._
"It was the opinion of Mr. John Wolf, who resided many years in this
city, that the United States of America may obtain a peace for one hundred
years with this regency, for the sum of sixty or seventy thousand pounds
sterling, and the redemption of fifteen Americans included. Mr. Wolf was
the British _chargé des affaires_ in Algiers, and was much the friend
of America, but he is no more.
"I have now been four years and a half in captivity, and I have much
reason to think, that America may obtain a peace with Algiers for the sum
of sixty-five or seventy thousand pounds, considering the present state
of Algiers. That this regency would find it their interest to take two
or three American cruisers in part payment for making a peace; and also
would take masts, yards, plank, scantling, tar, pitch, and turpentine,
and Philadelphia iron, as a part payment; all to be regulated at a
certain fixed price by treaty."
No. 2.--_Extract of a letter from the Honorable John Adams, Minister
Plenipotentiary for the United States at London, to the Honorable John
Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs. London, February 22, 1786_
"On Monday evening another conference was held with the Tripolitan
ambassador. When he began to explain himself concerning his demands, he
said they would be different according to the duration of the treaty.
If that were perpetual, they would be greater; if for a term of years,
less; his advice was that it should be perpetual. Once signed by the
bashaw, dey, and other officers, it would be indissoluble and binding
forever upon all their successors. But if a temporary treaty were made,
it might be difficult and expensive to revive it. For a perpetual treaty,
such as they now had with Spain, a sum of thirty thousand guineas must
be paid upon the delivery of the articles signed by the dey and other
officers. If it were agreed to, he would send his secretary by land to
Marseilles, and from thence, by water, to Tripoli, who should bring it
back by the same route, signed by the dey, &c. He had proposed so small
a sum in consideration of the circumstances, but declared it was not
half of what had been lately paid them by Spain. If we chose to treat
upon a different plan, he would make a treaty perpetual upon the payment
of twelve thousand five hundred guineas for the first year, and three
thousand guineas annually, until the thirty thousand guineas were paid. It
was observed that these were large sums, and vastly beyond expectation;
but his excellency answered, that they never made a treaty for less.
Upon the arrival of a prize, the dey and other officers are entitled,
by their laws, to large shares, by which they might make greater profits
than those sums amounted to, and they never would give up this advantage
for less.
"He was told, that although there was full power to treat, the American
ministers were limited to a much smaller sum; so that it would be
impossible to do anything until we wrote to Congress and know their
pleasure. Colonel Smith was present at this, as he had been at the
last conference, and agreed to go to Paris, to communicate all to Mr.
Jefferson, and persuade him to come here, that we may join in farther
conferences, and transmit the result to Congress.
"The ambassador believed that Tunis and Morocco would treat upon the
same terms, but could not answer for Algiers. They would demand more.
When Mr. Jefferson arrives, we shall insist upon knowing the ultimatum,
and transmit it to Congress.
"Congress will perceive that one hundred and twenty thousand guineas will
be indispensable to conclude with the four powers at this rate, besides
a present to the ambassadors, and their incidental charges. Besides
this, a present of five hundred guineas is made, upon the arrival of
a consul in each State. No man wishes more fervently that the expense
could be less, but the fact cannot be altered, and the truth ought not
to be concealed.
"It may be reasonably concluded that this great affair cannot be finished
for much less than two hundred thousand pounds sterling."
No. 3.--_Extract of a Letter from the Honorable Thomas Jefferson, Minister
Plenipotentiary for the United States at Paris, to the Honorable John
Jay, Secretary for foreign Affairs. Paris, May 23, 1786._
"Letters received both from Madrid and Algiers, while I was in London,
having suggested that treaties with the States of Barbary would be much
facilitated by a previous one with the Ottoman Porte, it was agreed
between Mr. Adams and myself, that on my return I should consult, on this
subject, the Count De Vergennes, whose long residence at Constantinople
rendered him the best judge of its expediency. Various circumstances
have put it out of my power to consult him till to-day. I stated to him
the difficulties we were likely to meet with at Algiers, and asked his
opinion, what would be the probable expense of a diplomatic mission
to Constantinople, and what its effects at Algiers. He said that the
expense would be very great; for that presents must be made at that
court, and every one would be gaping after them; and that it would not
procure us a peace at Algiers one penny the cheaper. He observed that
the Barbary States acknowledged a sort of vassalage to the Porte, and
availed themselves of that relation when anything was to be gained by
it; but that whenever it subjected them to the demand from the Porte,
they totally disregarded it; that money was the sole agent. He cited the
present example of Spain, which, though having a treaty with the Porte,
would probably be obliged to buy a peace at Algiers, at the expense of
upwards of six millions of livres. I told him we had calculated, from
the demands and information of the Tripoline ambassador at London, that
to make peace with the four Barbary States would cost us between two
and three hundred thousand guineas, if bought with money.
"The sum did not seem to exceed his expectations. I mentioned to him, that
considering the uncertainty of a peace, when bought, perhaps Congress
might think it more eligible to establish a cruise of frigates in the
Mediterranean, and even blockade Algiers. He supposed it would require
ten vessels, great and small. I observed to him that M. De Massiac had
formerly done it with five; he said it was true, but that vessels of
relief would be necessary. I hinted to him that I thought the English
capable of administering aid to the Algerines. He seemed to think it
impossible, on account of the scandal it would bring on them. I asked him
what had occasioned the blockade by M. De Massiac, he said an infraction
of their treaty by the Algerines."
No. 4.--_Extract of a Letter from Richard O'Brien to the Hon. Thomas
Jefferson. Algiers, April 28, 1787._
"It seems the Neapolitan ambassador had obtained a truce with this
regency for three months; and the ambassador wrote his court of his
success; but about the 1st of April, when the cruisers were fitting out,
the ambassador went to the dey, and hoped the dey would give the necessary
orders to the captains of his cruisers not to take the Neapolitan vessels.
The dey said the meaning of the truce was not to take the Neapolitan
cruisers, but if his chebecks should meet the Neapolitan merchantmen to
take them and send them for Algiers. The ambassador said, the Neapolitan
cruisers would not want a pass on those terms. The dey said, if his
chebecks should meet either men of war or merchant vessels, to take them;
so gave orders accordingly. The Algerines sailed the 9th instant, and
are gone, I believe, off the coast of Italy. This shows there is very
little confidence to be put in the royal word. No principle of national
honor will bind those people; and I believe not much confidence to be
put in them in treaties. The Algerines are not inclinable to a peace
with the Neapolitans. I hear of no negotiation. When the two frigates
arrive with the money for the ransom of the slaves, I believe they are
done with the Neapolitans."
_Extract of a Letter from Richard O'Brien to the Hon. Thomas Jefferson.
Algiers, June 13, 1789._
"The cruisers had orders to take the Danes; but I believe Denmark,
suspecting that on account of their alliance with Russia, that the grand
seignior would order the regency of Algiers to make war against the
Danes; accordingly, the Danes have evacuated the Mediterranean seas,
until the affairs of Europe are more settled. The Danish ship with
the tribute is shortly expected. She is worth fifty thousand dollars;
so that the Algerines will not make known publicly their intention of
breaking with Denmark, until this ship arrives with the tribute. I am
very sure that Mr. Robindar is very sensible of the intention of those
sea-robbers, the terror and scourge of the Christians. The reason the
Algerines have not committed any depredations on the English, is, that
the cruisers have not met with any of them richly loaded; for if they
had met a rich ship from London for Livorna, they would certainly have
brought her into port, and said that such ship was loaded for the enemy
of Algiers at Livorna; but if that was not a sufficient excuse, hove
overboard or clipt the pass.
"Consul Logie has been treated with much contempt by the Algerine
ministry; and you may depend, that when the dey goes to his long home,
that his successor will not renew the peace with Great Britain, without
a large sum of money is paid, and very valuable presents. This I well
know; the whole ministry says, that the peace with the English is very
old, and that the English must conform to the custom of other nations,
in giving the government here money and presents. In fact, the Algerines
are trying their endeavors to find some nation to break the peace with
them. I think, if they had treated the English in such a manner as they
have the French, that the English would resent it."
_Extract of a Letter from Richard O'Brien to the Hon. Thomas Jefferson.
Algiers, June 13, 1789._
"What dependence or faith could be given to a peace with the Algerines,
considering their present haughtiness, and with what contempt and
derision do they treat all nations; so that, in my opinion, until the
Algerines more strictly adhere to the treaties they have already made,
it would be impolitic in any nation to try to make a peace here; for I
see they take more from the nations they are at peace with, than from
those they are at declared war with. The Portuguese, I hope, will keep
the Algerines inside the straits; for only consider the bad consequence
of the Algerines going into the mar Grandi. Should the Portuguese make
a sudden peace with this regency, the Algerines would immediately go
out of the straits, and of course, take many an American."
No. 5.--_Extract of a Letter from the Hon. John Adams, Esq., Minister
Plenipotentiary of the United States at the Court of Great Britain, to
the Hon. John Jay, Esq., Secretary for Foreign Affairs. February 16,
1786._
"The American commerce can be protected from these Africans only
by negotiation, or by war. If presents should be exacted from us, as
ample as those which are given by England, the expense may amount to
sixty thousand pounds sterling a year, an enormous sum to be sure; but
infinitely less than the expense of fighting. Two frigates of 30 guns
each would cost as much to fit them for the sea, besides the accumulating
charges of stores, provisions, pay, and clothing. The powers of Europe
generally send a squadron of men of war with their ministers, and offer
battle at the same time that they propose treaties and promise presents."
No. 6.--_Several statements of the Marine force of Algiers.--Public and
private_
May 20, 1786.--Mr. Lamb says it consists of
9 Chebecs } from 36 to 8 guns; manned, the largest with 400 men,
10 Row Galleys} and so in proportion.
May 27, 1787.--Mr. Randall furnishes two statements, viz.:
A more general one--1 Setye of 34 guns.
2 " " 32 "
1 " " 26 "
1 " " 24 "
1 Chebec 20 "
1 " " 18 "
1 " " 10 "
---
8
4 half-galleys, carrying from 120 to 130 Moors.
3 galliots of 70, 60, and 50 Moors.
A more particular one as follows:
1 of 32 guns, viz. 2 eighteens, 24 nines, 6 fours, and 450 men.
1 of 28 " " 2 twelves, 24 " 2 sixes, " 400 "
1 of 24 " " 20 fours, " 350 "
1 of 20 " " 20 sixes, " 300 "
2 of 18 " " 18 " " 260 "
1 of 16 " " 16 " " 250 "
2 small craft.
---
9
55 gun-boats, carrying 1 twelve pounder each, for defence of the
harbor.
June 8, 1786.--A letter from the three American captains, O'Brien,
Coffin, and Stephens, state them
as 1 of 32
1 of 30
3 of 24
3 of 18
1 of 12
---
9 and 55 gun-boats.
September 25, 1787.--Captain O'Brien furnishes the following statement
1 of 30 guns, 400 men, 106 feet length, straight keel.
1 of 26 " 320 " 96 " " " "
2 of 22 " 240 " 80 " " " "
1 of 22 " 240 " 75 " " " "
1 of 22 " 240 " 70 " " " "
1 of 18 " 200 " 70 " " " "
1 of 16 " 180 " 64 " " " "
1 of 12 " 150 " 50 " " " "
---
9
Galleys 1 of 4 " 70 " 40 " " " "
2 of 2 " 46 " 32 " " " "
1 of 2 " 40 " 32 " " " "
February 5, 1788.--Statement by the inhabitants of Algiers, spoken of
in the report.
9 vessels from 36 down to 20 guns.
4 or 5 smaller.
About this date the Algerines lost two or three vessels, stranded or taken.
December, 1789.--Captain O'Brien furnishes the latest statement.
1 ship of 24 guns, received lately from France.
5 large cruisers.
---
6 3 galleys, and 60 gun-boats.
In the fall of 1789, they laid the keel of a 40 gun frigate, and they
expect two cruisers from the grand seignior.
No. 7.--_Translation of a Letter from Count D'Estaing to the Hon. Thomas
Jefferson, Esq. Paris, May 17, 1784._
SIR,--In giving you an account of an opinion of Mr. Massiac, and
which absolutely corresponds with my own, I cannot too much observe how
great a difference may take place in the course of forty years between
the means which he required and those which political circumstances,
that I cannot ascertain, may exact.
This Secretary of State, afterwards vice-Admiral, had the modesty, when a
captain, to propose a means for the reduction of Algiers, less brilliant
to himself, but more sure and economical than the one government was
about to adopt. They wanted him to undertake a bombardment; he proposed
a simple blockade. All the force he requested was a single man-of-war,
two strong frigates, and two sloops-of-war.
I am convinced, that by blocking up Algiers by cross-anchoring, and with
a long tow, that is to say, with several cables spliced to each other,
and with iron chains, one might, if necessary, always remain there, and
there is no Barbarian power thus confined, which would not sue for peace.
During the war before last the English remained, even in winter, at
anchor before Morbian, on the coast of Brittany, which is a much more
dangerous coast. Expeditious preparation for sailing of the vessels
which form the blockade, which should be of a sufficient number to
prevent anything from entering or going out, while the rest remain at
their stations, the choice of these stations, skilful manœuvres, strict
watch during the night, every precaution against the element which every
seaman ought to be acquainted with; also, against the enemy to prevent
the sudden attack of boats, and to repel them in case they should make
an attack by boats prepared for the purpose, frequent refreshments for
the crews, relieving the men, an unshaken constancy and exactness in
service, are the means, which in my opinion, would render the event
indubitable. Bombardments are but transitory. It is, if I may so express
myself, like breaking glass windows with guineas. None have produced
effect against the barbarians. Even an imperfect blockade, were one
to have the patience and courage to persist therein, would occasion a
perpetual evil, it would be insupportable in the long run. To obtain the
end proposed no advantage ought to be lost. If several powers would come
to a good understanding, and pursue a plan formed on the principles of
humanity; if they were not counteracted by others, it would require but
a few years to compel the barbarians to cease being pirates; they would
become merchants in spite of themselves. It is needless to observe, that
the unsuccessful attempts of Spain, and those under which the republic
of Venice, perhaps, hides other views, have increased the strength as
well as the self-love of all the barbarians. We are assured that the
Algerines have fitted out merchantmen with heavy cannon. This would
render it necessary to block the place with two ships, so that one of
the two might remain moored near the bar, while the other might prepare
to support such of the frigates as should give chase. But their chebecs,
even their frigates, and all their vessels, although overcharged with
men, are moreover so badly armed and manœuvred that assistance from
without would be most to be feared.
Your excellency has told me the only true means of bringing to terms the
only people who can take a pleasure in disturbing our commerce. You see,
I speak as an American citizen; this title, dear to my heart, the value
of which I justly prize, affords me the happy opportunity of offering,
still more particularly, the homage, the sincere attachment, and the
respect with which I have the honor to be, &c.
ESTAING.
FOOTNOTE:
[25] See No. 1 accompanying this report.
XIX.--_Report on the Algerine Prisoners._
December 28, 1790.
The Secretary of State, having had under consideration the situation
of the citizens of the United States in captivity at Algiers, makes the
following report thereupon to the President of the United States:
When the House of Representatives, at their late session, were pleased to
refer to the Secretary of State, the petition of our citizens in captivity
at Algiers, there still existed some expectation that certain measures,
which had been employed to effect their redemption, the success of which
depended on their secrecy, might prove effectual. Information received
during the recess of Congress has so far weakened those expectations, as
to make it now a duty to lay before the President of the United States,
a full statement of what has been attempted for the relief of these our
suffering citizens, as well before, as since he came into office, that
he may be enabled to decide what further is to be done.
On the 25th of July, 1785, the schooner Maria, Captain Stevens, belonging
to a Mr. Foster, of Boston, was taken off Cape St. Vincents, by an
Algerine corsair; and, five days afterwards, the ship Dauphin, Captain
O'Brien, belonging to Messieurs Irvins of Philadelphia, was taken by
another Algerine, about fifty leagues westward of Lisbon. These vessels,
with their cargoes and crews, twenty-one persons in number, were carried
into Algiers.
Congress had some time before commissioned ministers plenipotentiary for
entering into treaties of amity and commerce with the Barbary Powers, and
to send to them proper agents for preparing such treaties. An agent was
accordingly appointed for Algiers, and his instructions prepared, when
the Ministers Plenipotentiary received information of these captures.
Though the ransom of captives was not among the objects expressed in
their commissions, because at their dates the case did not exist, yet
they thought it their duty to undertake that ransom, fearing that the
captives might be sold and dispersed through the interior and distant
countries of Africa, if the previous orders of Congress should be waited
for. They therefore added a supplementary instruction to the agent to
negotiate their ransom. But, while acting thus without authority, they
thought themselves bound to offer a price so moderate as not to be
disapproved. They therefore restrained him to two hundred dollars a man;
which was something less than had been just before paid for about three
hundred French captives, by the Mathurins, a religious order of France,
instituted in ancient times for the redemption of Christian captives
from the infidel Powers. On the arrival of the agent at Algiers, the dey
demanded fifty-nine thousand four hundred and ninety-six dollars for the
twenty-one captives, and could be brought to abate but little from that
demand. The agent, therefore, returned in 1786, without having effected
either peace or ransom.
In the beginning of the next year, 1787, the Minister Plenipotentiary of
the United States at Paris procured an interview with the general of the
religious order of Mathurins, before mentioned, to engage him to lend
his agency, at the expense of the United States, for the redemption of
their captive citizens. He proffered at once all the services he could
render, with the liberality and the zeal which distinguish his character.
He observed, that he had agents on the spot, constantly employed in
seeking out and redeeming the captives of their own country; that these
should act for us, as for themselves; that nothing could be accepted for
their agency; and that he would only expect that the price of redemption
should be ready on our part, so as to cover the engagement into which he
should enter. He added, that, by the time all expenses were paid, their
last redemption had amounted to near two thousand five hundred livres
a man, and that he could by no means flatter us that they could redeem
our captives as cheap as their own. The pirates would take advantage of
its being out of their ordinary line. Still he was in hopes they would
not be much higher.
The proposition was then submitted to Congress, that is to say, in
February, 1787, and on the 19th of September, in the same year, their
Minister Plenipotentiary at Paris received their orders to embrace the
offers of the Mathurins. This he immediately notified to the general,
observing, however, that he did not desire him to enter into any
engagements till a sufficient sum to cover them should be actually
deposited in Paris. The general wished that the whole might be kept
rigorously secret, as, should the barbarians suspect him to be acting for
the United States, they would demand such sums as he could never agree to
give, even with our consent, because it would injure his future purchases
from them. He said he had information from his agent at Algiers, that our
captives received so liberal a daily allowance as to evince that it came
from a public source. He recommended that this should be discontinued;
engaging that he would have an allowance administered to them, much
short indeed of what they had hitherto received, but such as was given
to his own countrymen, quite sufficient for physical necessities, and
more likely to prepare the opinion, that as they were subsisted by his
charity, they were to be redeemed by it also. These ideas, suggested to
him by the danger of raising his market, were approved by the Minister
Plenipotentiary; because, this being the first instance of a redemption
by the United States, it would form a precedent, because a high price
given by us might induce these pirates to abandon all other nations in
pursuit of Americans; whereas, the contrary would take place, could our
price of redemption be fixed at the lowest point.
To destroy, therefore, every expectation of a redemption by the United
States, the bills of the Spanish consul at Algiers, who had made the kind
advances before spoken of for the sustenance of our captives, were not
answered. On the contrary, a hint was given that these advances had better
be discontinued, as it was not known that they would be reimbursed. It
was necessary even to go further, and to suffer the captives themselves
and their friends to believe for awhile, that no attention was paid
to them, no notice taken of their letters. They are still under this
impression. It would have been unsafe to trust them with a secret, the
disclosure of which might forever prevent their redemption, by raising
the demands of the captors to sums which a due regard for our seamen,
still in freedom, would forbid us to give. This was the most trying of
all circumstances, and drew from them the most afflicting reproaches.
It was a twelvemonth afterwards before the money could be deposited in
Paris, and the negotiation be actually put into train. In the meantime
the general had received information from Algiers of a very considerable
change of prices there. Within the last two or three years the Spaniards,
the Neapolitans, and the Russians, had redeemed at exorbitant sums.
Slaves were become scarce, and would hardly be sold at any price. Still
he entered on the business with an assurance of doing the best in his
power; and he was authorized to offer as far as three thousand livres,
or five hundred and fifty-five dollars a man. He wrote immediately to
consult a confidential agent at Marseilles, on the best mode of carrying
this business into effect; from whom he received the answer No. 2, hereto
annexed.
Nothing further was known of his progress or prospects, when the House
of Representatives were pleased, at their last session, to refer the
petition of our captives at Algiers to the Secretary of State. The
preceding narrative shows that no report could have then been made without
risking the object, of which some hopes were still entertained. Later
advices, however, from the chargé des affaires of the United States, at
Paris, informs us, that these measures, though not yet desperate, are
not to be counted on. Besides the exorbitance of price, before feared,
the late transfer of the lands and revenues of the clergy in France
to the public, by withdrawing the means, seems to have suspended the
proceedings of the Mathurins in the purposes of their institution.
It is time, therefore, to look about for something more promising,
without relinquishing, in the meanwhile, the chance of success through
them. Endeavors to collect information, which have been continued a
considerable time, as to the ransoms which would probably be demanded
from us, and those actually paid by other nations, enable the Secretary
of State to lay before the President the following short view, collected
from original papers now in his possession, or from information delivered
to him personally. Passing over the ransoms of the Mathurins, which are
kept far below the common level by special circumstances:
In 1786, the dey of Algiers demanded from our agent $59,496 for twenty-one
captives, which was $2,833 a man. The agent flattered himself they could
be ransomed for $1,200 apiece. His secretary informed us, at the same
time, that Spain had paid $1,600.
In 1787, the Russians redeemed at $1,546 a man.
In 1788, a well-informed inhabitant of Algiers assured the Minister
Plenipotentiary of the United States at Paris, that no nation had
redeemed, since the Spanish treaty, at less than from £250 to £300
sterling, the medium of which is $1,237. Captain O'Brien, at the same
date, thinks we must pay $1,800, and mentions a Savoy captain, just
redeemed at $4,074.
In 1789, Mr. Logie, the English consul at Algiers, informed a person who
wished to ransom one of our common sailors, that he would cost from £450
to £500 sterling, the mean of which is $2,137. In December of the same
year, Captain O'Brien thinks our men will now cost $2,290 each, though
a Jew merchant believes he could get them for $2,264.
In 1790, July 9th, a Mr. Simpson, of Gibraltar, who, at some particular
request, had taken pains to find for what sum our captives could be
redeemed, finds that the fourteen will cost $34,79,228, which is $2,485
a man. At the same date, one of them, a Scotch boy, a common mariner,
was actually redeemed at 8,000 livres, equal to $1,481, which is within
nineteen dollars of the price Simpson states for common men; and the
chargé des affaires of the United States at Paris is informed that
the whole may be redeemed at that rate, adding fifty per cent. on the
captains, which would bring it to $1,571 a man.
It is found then that the prices are 1,200, 1,237, 1,481, 1,546, 1,571,
1,600, 1,800, 2,137, 2,264, 2,485, 2,833, and 2,920 dollars a man, not
noticing that of $4,074, because it was for a captain.
In 1786, there were 2,200 captives in Algiers, which, in 1789, had been
reduced by death or ransom to 655. Of ours six have died, and one has
been ransomed by his friends.
From these facts and opinions, some conjecture may be formed of the
terms on which the liberty of our citizens may be obtained.
But should it be thought better to repress force by force, another
expedient for their liberation may perhaps offer. Captures made on the
enemy may perhaps put us into possession of some of their mariners, and
exchange be substituted for ransom. It is not indeed a fixed usage with
them to exchange prisoners. It is rather their custom to refuse it.
However, such exchanges are sometimes effected, by allowing them more
or less of advantage. They have sometimes accepted of two Moors for a
Christian, at others they have refused five or six for one. Perhaps
Turkish captives may be objects of greater partiality with them, as
their government is entirely in the hands of Turks, who are treated in
every instance as a superior order of beings. Exchange, too, will be more
practicable in our case, as our captives have not been sold to private
individuals, but are retained in the hands of the Government.
The liberation of our citizens has an intimate connection with
the liberation of our commerce in the Mediterranean, now under the
consideration of Congress. The distresses of both proceed from the same
cause, and the measures which shall be adopted for the relief of the
one, may, very probably, involve the relief of the other.
XX.--_The Secretary of State, to whom was referred by the House of
Representatives, the representation from the General Court of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on the subjects of the cod and whale
fisheries, together with the several papers accompanying it, has had
the same under consideration, and thereupon makes the following report_:
February 1, 1791.
The representation sets forth that, before the late war, about four
thousand seamen, and about twenty-four thousand tons of shipping, were
annually employed from that State, in the whale fishery, the produce
whereof was about three hundred and fifty thousand pounds lawful money
a year.
That, previous to the same period, the cod fishery of that State employed
four thousand men, and twenty-eight thousand tons of shipping, and
produced about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.
That these branches of business, annihilated during the war, have been,
in some degree, recovered since; but that they labor under many and
heavy embarrassments, which, if not removed, or lessened, will render
the fisheries every year less extensive and important.
That these embarrassments are, heavy duties on their produce abroad,
and bounties on that of their competitors; and duties at home on several
articles, particularly used in the fisheries.
And it asks that the duties be taken off; that bounties be given to
the fishermen; and the national influence be used abroad, for obtaining
better markets for their produce.
The cod and whale fisheries, carried on by different persons, from
different ports, in different vessels, in different seas, and seeking
different markets, agree in one circumstance, in being as unprofitable
to the adventurer, as important to the public. A succinct view of their
rise, progress, and present state, with different nations, may enable
us to note the circumstances which have attended their prosperity, and
their decline; to judge of the embarrassments which are said to oppress
ours; to see whether they depend on our own will, and may, therefore,
be remedied immediately by ourselves, or, whether depending on the will
of others, they are without the reach of remedy from us, either directly
or indirectly.
Their history being as unconnected as their practice, they shall be
separately considered.
Within twenty years after the supposed discovery of Newfoundland, by
the Cabots, we find that the abundance of fish on its banks, had already
drawn the attention of the people of Europe. For, as early as 1517, or
1519, we are told of fifty ships being seen there at one time. The first
adventurers in that fishery were the Biscayans, of Spain, the Basques
and Bas-Bretons, of France, all united anciently in language, and still
in habits, and in extreme poverty. The last circumstance enabled them
long to retain a considerable share of the fishery. In 1577, the French
had one hundred and fifty vessels there; the Spaniards had still one
hundred, and the Portuguese fifty, when the English had only fifteen.
The Spaniards and Portuguese seem at length to have retired silently, the
French and English claiming the fishery exclusively, as an appurtenance
to their adjacent colonies, and the profits being too small for nations
surcharged with the precious metals proceeding from their mines.
Without materials to trace the intermediate progress, we only know that,
so late as 1744, the French employed there five hundred and sixty-four
ships, and twenty-seven thousand five hundred seamen, and took one million
two hundred and forty-six thousand quintals of fish, which was three
times the extent to which England and her colonies together, carried
this fishery at that time.
The English, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, had employed,
generally, about one hundred and fifty vessels in the Newfoundland
fishery. About 1670 we find them reduced to eighty, and one hundred,
the inhabitants of New England beginning now to supplant them. A little
before this, the British Parliament perceiving that their citizens were
unable to subsist on the scanty profits which sufficed for their poorer
competitors, endeavored to give them some advantage by prohibiting the
importation of foreign fish; and, at the close of the century, they
formed some regulations for their government and protection, and remitted
to them some duties. A successful war enabled them, in 1713, to force
from the French a cession of the Island of Newfoundland; under these
encouragements, the English and American fisheries began to thrive. In
1731 we find the English take two hundred thousand quintals of fish,
and the Americans two hundred and thirty thousand, besides the refuse
fish, not fit for European markets. They continue to gain ground, and
the French to lose it, insomuch that, about 1755, they are said to
have been on a par; and, in 1768, the French have only two hundred and
fifty-nine vessels, of twenty-four thousand four hundred and twenty tons,
nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-two seamen, taking two hundred
thousand quintals, while America alone, for some three or four years
before that, and so on, to the commencement of the late war, employed
six hundred and sixty-five vessels, of twenty-five thousand six hundred
and fifty tons, and four thousand four hundred and five seamen, and
took from three hundred and fifty thousand to upwards of four hundred
thousand quintals of fish, and England a still greater quantity, five
hundred and twenty-six thousand quintals, as is said.
Spain had formally relinquished her pretensions to a participation in
these fisheries, at the close of the preceding war; and, at the end
of this, the adjacent continent and islands being divided between the
United States, the English and French, (for the last retained two small
islands merely for this object,) the right of fishing was appropriated
to them also.
France, sensible of the necessity of balancing the power of England on the
water, and, therefore, of improving every resource for raising seamen, and
seeing that her fishermen could not maintain their competition without
some public patronage, adopted the experiment of bounties on her own
fish, and duties on that of foreign nations brought into her markets.
But, notwithstanding this, her fisheries dwindle, from a change taken
place, insensibly, in the character of her navigation, which, from being
the most economical, is now become the most expensive. In 1786, she is
said to have employed but seven thousand men in this fishery, and to have
taken four hundred and twenty-six thousand quintals; and, in 1787, but
six thousand men, and one hundred and twenty-eight thousand quintals.
She seems not yet sensible that the unthriftiness of her fisheries
proceeds from the want of economy, and not the want of markets; and that
the encouragement of our fishery abridges that of a rival nation, whose
power on the ocean has long threatened the loss of all balance on that
element.
The plan of the English Government, since the peace, has been to prohibit
all foreign fish in their markets, and they have given from eighteen to
fifty thousand pounds sterling on every fishing vessel complying with
certain conditions. This policy is said to have been so far successful,
as to have raised the number of seamen employed in that business, in
1786, to fourteen thousand, and the quantity of fish taken, to 732,000
quintals.
* * * * *
The fisheries of the United States, annihilated during the war; their
vessels, utensils, and fishermen destroyed; their markets in the
Mediterranean and British America lost, and their produce dutied in those
of France; their competitors enabled by bounties to meet and undersell
them at the few markets remaining open, without any public aid, and,
indeed, paying aids to the public;--such were the hopeless auspices under
which this important business was to be resumed. Yet it was resumed, and,
aided by the mere force of natural advantages, they employed, during
the years 1786, 1787, 1788, and 1789, on an average, five hundred and
thirty-nine vessels, of nineteen thousand one hundred and eighty-five
tons, three thousand two hundred and eighty-seven seamen, and took
two hundred and fifty thousand six hundred and fifty quintals of fish.
* * * * * And an official paper * * * * * shows that, in the last of
those years, our exportation amounted to three hundred and seventy-five
thousand and twenty quintals, and thirty thousand four hundred and
sixty-one barrels; deduction made of three thousand seven hundred and
one quintals, and six thousand three hundred and forty-three barrels of
foreign fish, received and re-exported. * * * * * Still, however, the
calculations * * * * * which accompany the representation, show that
the profits of the sales in the years 1787 and 1788, were too small to
afford a living to the fishermen, and on those of 1789, there was such
a loss as to withdraw thirty-three vessels, of the town of Marblehead
alone, from the further pursuit of this business; and the apprehension
is, that, without some public aid, those still remaining will continue
to withdraw, and this whole commerce be engrossed by a single nation.
This rapid view of the cod fishery enables us to discern under what
policy it has nourished or declined in the hands of other nations, and
to mark the fact, that it is too poor a business to be left to itself,
even with the nation most advantageously situated.
It will now be proper to count the advantages which aid, and the
disadvantages which oppose us, in this conflict.
Our advantages are--
1. The neighborhood of the great fisheries, which permits our fishermen
to bring home their fish to be salted by their wives and children.
2. The shore fisheries, so near at hand, as to enable the vessels to run
into port in a storm, and so lessen the risk, for which distant nations
must pay insurance.
3. The winter fisheries, which, like household manufactures employ
portions of time, which would otherwise be useless.
4. The smallness of the vessels, which the shortness of the voyage enables
us to employ, and which, consequently, require but a small capital.
5. The cheapness of our vessels, which do not cost above the half of
the Baltic fir vessels, computing price and duration.
6. Their excellence as sea boats, which decreases the risk and quickens
the return.
7. The superiority of our mariners in skill, activity, enterprise,
sobriety, and order.
8. The cheapness of provisions.
9. The cheapness of casks, which, of itself, is said to be equal to an
extra profit of fifteen per cent.
These advantages are of such force, that, while experience has proved
that no other nation can make a mercantile profit on the Newfoundland
fishery, nor can support it without national aid, we can make a living
profit, if vent for our fish can be procured.
Of the disadvantages opposed to us, those which depend on ourselves, are--
Tonnage and naval duties on the vessels employed in the fishery.
Impost duties on salt.
On tea, rum, sugar, molasses, hooks, lines, and leads, duck, cordage, and
cables, iron, hemp, and twine, used in the fishery; coarse woollens, worn
by the fishermen, and the poll tax levied by the State on their persons.
The statement No. 6, shows the amount of these, exclusive of the State
tax and drawback on the fish exported, to be $5 25 per man, or $57 75
per vessel of sixty-five tons. When a business is so nearly in equilibrio
that one can hardly discern whether the profit be sufficient to continue
it or not, smaller sums than these suffice to turn the scale against
it. To these disadvantages, add ineffectual duties on the importation
of foreign fish. In justification of these last, it is urged that the
foreign fish received, is in exchange for the produce of agriculture.
To which it may be answered, that the thing given, is more merchantable
than that received in exchange, and agriculture has too many markets to
be allowed to take away those of the fisheries. It will rest, therefore,
with the wisdom of the Legislature to decide, whether prohibition should
not be opposed to prohibition, and high duty to high duty, on the fish
of other nations; whether any, and which, of the naval and other duties
may be remitted, or an equivalent given to the fisherman, in the form of
a drawback, or bounty; and whether the loss of markets abroad, may not,
in some degree, be compensated, by creating markets at home; to which
might contribute the constituting fish a part of the military ration,
in stations not too distant from navigation, a part of the necessary
sea stores of vessels, and the encouraging private individuals to let
the fishermen share with the cultivator, in furnishing the supplies of
the table. A habit introduced from motives of patriotism, would soon be
followed from motives of taste; and who will undertake to fix the limits
to this demand, if it can be once excited, with a nation which doubles,
and will continue to double, at very short periods?
Of the disadvantages which depend on others, are--
1. The loss of the Mediterranean markets.
2. Exclusions from the markets of some of our neighbors.
3. High duties in those of others; and,
4. Bounties to the individuals in competition with us.
The consideration of these will find its place more aptly, after a
review of the condition of our whale fishery shall have led us to the
same point. To this branch of the subject, therefore, we will now proceed.
The whale fishery was first brought into notice of the southern nations of
Europe, in the fifteenth century, by the same Biscayans and Basques who
led the way to the fishery of Newfoundland. They began it on their own
coasts, but soon found that the principal residence of the whale was in
the Northern seas, into which, therefore, they pursued him. In 1578 they
employed twenty-five ships in that business. The Dutch and Hamburghers
took it up after this, and about the middle of the seventeenth century
the former employed about two hundred ships, and the latter about three
hundred and fifty.
The English endeavored also to participate of it. In 1672, they offered
to their own fishermen a bounty of six shillings a ton, on the oil
they should bring home, and instituted, at different times, different
exclusive companies, all of which failed of success. They raised their
bounty, in 1733, to twenty shillings a ton, on the admeasurement of the
vessel. In 1740, to thirty shillings, with a privilege to the fishermen
against being impressed. The Basque fishery, supported by poverty alone,
had maintained but a feeble existence, before competitors aided by the
bounties of their nation, and was, in fine, annihilated by the war of
1745, at the close of which the English bounty was raised to forty
shillings. From this epoch, their whale fishery went on between the
limits of twenty-eight and sixty-seven vessels, till the commencement
of the last war.
The Dutch, in the meantime, had declined gradually to about one hundred
and thirty ships, and have, since that, fallen down to less than half that
number. So that their fishery, notwithstanding a bounty of thirty florins
a man, as well as that of Hamburg, is now nearly out of competition.
In 1715, the Americans began their whale fishery. They were led to it
at first by the whales which presented themselves on their coasts. They
attacked them there in small vessels of forty tons. As the whale, being
infested, retired from the coast, they followed him farther and farther
into the ocean, still enlarging their vessels with their adventures, to
sixty, one hundred, and two hundred tons. Having extended their pursuit
to the Western Islands, they fell in, accidentally, with the spermaceti
whale, of a different species from that of Greenland, which alone had
hitherto been known in commerce: more fierce and active, and whose oil
and head matter was found to be more valuable, as it might be used in
the interior of houses without offending the smell. The distinction now
first arose between the Northern and Southern fisheries: the object of
the former being the Greenland whale, which frequents the Northern coasts
and seas of Europe and America; that of the latter being the spermaceti
whale, which was found in the Southern seas, from the Western Islands
and coast of Africa, to that of Brazil, and still on to the Falkland
Islands. Here, again, within soundings, on the coast of Brazil, they
found a third species of whale, which they called the black or Brazil
whale, smaller than the Greenland, yielding a still less valuable
oil, fit only for summer use, as it becomes opaque at 50 degrees of
Fahrenheit's termometer, while that of the spermaceti whale is limpid
to 41, and of the Greenland whale to 36, of the same thermometer. It is
only worth taking, therefore, when it falls in the way of the fishermen,
but not worth seeking, except when they have failed of success against
the spermaceti whale, in which case, this kind, easily found and taken,
serves to moderate their loss.
In 1771 the Americans had one hundred and eighty-three vessels, of
thirteen thousand eight hundred and twenty tons, in the Northern fishery,
and one hundred and twenty-one vessels, of fourteen thousand and twenty
tons, in the Southern, navigated by four thousand and fifty-nine men.
At the beginning of the late war, they had one hundred and seventy-seven
vessels in the Northern, and one hundred and thirty-two in the Southern
fishery. At that period, our fishery being suspended, the English
seized the opportunity of pushing theirs. They gave additional bounties
of £500, £400, £300, £200, £100 sterling, annually, to the five ships
which should take the greatest quantities of oil. The effect of which
was such, as, by the year 1786, to double the quantity of common oil
necessary for their own consumption. Finding, on a review of the subject,
at that time, that their bounties had cost the Government £13 10_s._
sterling a man, annually, or sixty per cent. on the cargoes, a part of
which went consequently to ease the purchases of this article made by
foreign nations, they reduced the northern bounty from forty to thirty
shillings the ton of admeasurement.
They had, some little time before, turned their attention to the Southern
fishery, and given very great bounties in it, and had invited the
fishermen of the United States to conduct their enterprises. Under their
guidance, and with such encouragement, this fishery, which had only begun
with them in 1784 or 1785, was rising into value. In 1788 they increased
their bounties, and the temptations to our fishermen, under the general
description of _foreigners who had been employed in the whale fishery_,
to pass over with their families and vessels to the British dominions,
either in America or Europe, but preferably to the latter. The effect of
these measures had been prepared, by our whale oils becoming subject,
in their market, to the foreign duty of £18 5_s._ sterling the ton,
which, being more than equal to the price of the common oil, operated
as a prohibition on that, and gave to their spermaceti oil a preference
over ours to that amount.
* * * * *
The fishermen of the United States, left without resource, by the loss
of their market, began to think of accepting the British invitation,
and of removing, some to Nova Scotia, preferring smaller advantages in
the neighborhood of their ancient country and friends, others to Great
Britain, postponing country and friends to high premiums.
The Government of France could not be inattentive to these proceedings.
They saw the danger of letting four or five thousand seamen, of the
best in the world, be transferred to the marine strength of another
nation, and carry over with them an art, which they possessed almost
exclusively. To give time for a counterplan, the Marquis de Lafayette,
the valuable friend and citizen of this, as well as that country, wrote
to a gentleman in Boston, to dissuade the fishermen from accepting
the British proposals, and to assure them that their friends in France
would endeavor to do something for them. A vessel was then arrived from
Halifax at Nantucket, to take off those who had proposed to remove. Two
families had gone abroad, and others were going. In this moment, the
letter arriving, suspended their designs. Not another went abroad, and
the vessel returned to Halifax with only the two families.
The plan adopted by the French ministry, very different from that of
the first mover, was to give a counter invitation to the Nantucket men
to remove and settle in Dunkirk, offering them a bounty of fifty livres
(between nine and ten dollars) a ton on the admeasurement of the vessels
they should equip for the whale fishery, with some other advantages.
Nine families only, of thirty-three persons, accepted the invitation.
This was in 1785. In 1786, the ministry were led to see that their
invitation would produce but little effect, and that the true means
of preventing the emigration of our fishermen to the British dominions
would be to enable them still to follow their calling from their native
country, by giving them a new market for their oils, instead of the old
one they had lost. The duties were, therefore, abated on American whale
oil immediately, and a further abatement promised by the letter No. 8,
and, in December, 1787, the arrêt No. 9 was passed.
The rival fishermen immediately endeavored to turn this measure to
their own advantage, by pouring their whale oils into the markets of
France, where they were enabled, by the great premiums received from
their Government, perhaps, too, by extraordinary indemnifications, to
undersell both the French and American fishermen. To repel this measure,
France shut her ports to all foreign fish oils whatever, by the arrêt
No. 10. The British whale fishery fell, in consequence, the ensuing year
from two hundred and twenty-two to one hundred and seventy-eight ships.
But this general exclusion has palsied our fishery also. On the 7th of
December, 1788, therefore, by the arrêt No. 11, the ports of France still
remaining shut to all other nations, were again opened to the produce
of the whale fisheries of the United States, continuing, however, their
endeavors to recover a share in this fishery themselves, by the aid of
our fishermen. In 1784, 1785, 1786, they had had four ships. In 1787,
three. In 1788, seventeen in the two fisheries of four thousand five
hundred tons. These cost them in bounty 225,000 livres, which divided
on one thousand five hundred and fifty tons of oil, the quantity they
took, amounted to 145 livres (near twenty-seven dollars) the ton, and,
on about one hundred natives on board the seventeen ships, (for there
were one hundred and fifty Americans engaged by the voyage) came to
2,225 livres, or about 416⅔ dollars a man.
We have had, during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, on an average,
ninety-one vessels, of five thousand eight hundred and twenty tons, in
the northern, and thirty-one of four thousand three hundred and ninety
tons in the southern fishery. * * * * *
These details will enable Congress to see with what a competition we
have to struggle for the continuance of this fishery, not to say its
increase. Against prohibitory duties in one country, and bounties to
the adventurers in both of those which are contending with each other
for the same object, ours have no auxiliaries, but poverty and rigorous
economy. The business, unaided, is a wretched one. The Dutch have
peculiar advantages for the northern fishery, as being within six or
eight days' sail of the grounds, as navigating with more economy than any
other nation in Europe, their seamen content with lower wages, and their
merchants with lower profit. Yet the memorial No. 13, from a committee of
the whale merchants to the States General of Holland, in the year 1775,
states that fourteen millions of guilders, equal to five million six
hundred thousand dollars, has been lost in that fishery in forty-seven
years, being about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year. The
States General, thereupon, gave a bounty of thirty guilders a man to
the fishermen. A person immediately acquainted with the British whale
fishery, and whose information merits confidence, has given assurance
that the ships employed in their northern fishery, in 1788, sunk £800
each, on an average, more than the amount of the produce and bounties.
An English ship of three hundred tons and forty-two seamen, in this
fishery, generally brings home, after a four months' voyage, twenty-five
tons of oil, worth £437 10_s._ sterling; but the wages of the officers
and seamen will be £400; there remain but £37 10_s._, not worth taking
into account, towards the outfit and merchants' profit. These, then,
must be paid by the Government; and it is on this idea that the British
bounty is calculated.
Our vessels for the northern fishery average sixty-four tons, and cost,
when built, fitted out, and victualled for the first voyage, about
three thousand dollars. They have taken, on an average, the three last
years, according to the statement No. 12, eighteen tons of oil, worth,
at our market, nine hundred dollars, which are to pay all expenses, and
subsist the fishermen and merchant. Our vessels for the southern fishery
average one hundred and forty tons, and cost, when built, fitted out,
and victualled, for their first voyage, about six thousand five hundred
dollars. They have taken on an average, the three last years, according
to the same statement, thirty-two tons of oil each, worth at our market
three thousand two hundred dollars, which are, in like manner, to pay
all expenses, and subsist the owners and navigators. These expenses
are great, as the voyages are generally of twelve months' duration. No
hope can arise of their condition being bettered by an augmentation of
the price of oil. This is kept down by the competition of the vegetable
oils, which answer the same purposes, not quite so well, but well enough
to become preferable, were the price to be raised, and so well, indeed,
as to be more generally used than the fish oils for lighting houses and
cities.
The American whale fishery is principally followed by the inhabitants
of the island of Nantucket--a sand bar of about fifteen miles long, and
three broad, capable of maintaining, by its agriculture, about twenty
families; but it employed in these fisheries, before the war, between
five or six thousand men and boys; and, in the only harbor it possesses,
it had one hundred and forty vessels, one hundred and thirty-two of which
were of the larger kind, as being employed in the southern fishery. In
agriculture, then, they have no resource; and, if that of their fishery
cannot be pursued from their own habitations, it is natural they should
seek others from which it can be followed, and preferably those where
they will find a sameness of language, religion, laws, habits, and
kindred. A foreign emissary has lately been among them, for the purpose
of renewing the invitations to a change of situation. But, attached to
their native country, they prefer continuing in it, if their continuance
there can be made supportable.
This brings us to the question, what relief does the condition of this
fishery require?
1. A remission of duties on the articles used for their calling.
2. A retaliating duty on foreign oils, coming to seek a competition with
them in or from our ports.
3. Free markets abroad.
1. The remission of duties will stand on nearly the same ground with
that to the cod fishermen.
2. The only nation whose oil is brought hither for competition with our
own, makes ours pay a duty of about eighty-two dollars the ton, in their
ports. Theirs is brought here, too, to be reshipped fraudulently, under
our flag, into ports where it could not be received under theirs, and
ought not to be covered by ours, if we mean to preserve our own admission
into them.
The 3d and principal object is to find markets for the vent of oil.
Portugal, England, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Russia, the Hanse
towns, supply themselves and something more. Spain and Italy receive
supplies from England, and need the less, as their skies are clearer.
France is the only country which can take our surplus, and they take
principally of the common oil; as the habit is but commencing with
them of ascribing a just value to spermaceti whale. Some of this,
however, finds its vent there. There was, indeed, a particular interest
perpetually soliciting the exclusion of our oils from their markets. The
late government there saw well that what we should lose thereby would be
gained by others, not by themselves. And we are to hope that the present
government, as wise and friendly, will also view us, not as rivals,
but as co-operators against a common rival. Friendly arrangements with
them, and accommodation to mutual interest, rendered easier by friendly
dispositions existing on both sides, may long secure to us this important
resource for our seamen. Nor is it the interest of the fisherman alone,
which calls for the cultivation of friendly arrangements with that
nation; besides five-eights of our whale oil, and two-thirds of our salted
fish, they take from us one-fourth of our tobacco, three-fourths of our
live stock * * * * * a considerable and growing portion of our rice,
great supplies, occasionally, of other grain; in 1789, which, indeed,
was extraordinary, four millions of bushels of wheat, and upwards of
a million of bushels of rye and barley * * * * * and nearly the whole
carried in our own vessels. * * * * * They are a free market now, and
will, in time, be a valuable one for ships and ship timber, potash, and
peltry.
England is the market for the greatest part of our spermaceti oil. They
impose on all our oils a duty of eighteen pounds five shillings sterling
the ton, which, as to the common kind, is a prohibition, as has been
before observed, and, as to the spermaceti, gives a preference of theirs
over ours to that amount, so as to leave, in the end, but a scanty benefit
to the fishermen; and, not long since, by a change of construction,
without any change of law, it was made to exclude our oils from their
ports, when carried in our vessels. On some change of circumstance,
it was construed back again to the reception of our oils, on paying
always, however, the same duty of eighteen pounds five shillings. This
serves to show that the tenure by which we hold the admission of this
commodity in their markets, is as precarious as it is hard. Nor can it
be announced that there is any disposition on their part to arrange this
or any other commercial matter, to mutual convenience. The _ex parte_
regulations which they have begun for mounting their navigation on the
ruins of ours, can only be opposed by counter regulations on our part.
And the loss of seamen, the natural consequence of lost and obstructed
markets for our fish and oil, calls, in the first place, for serious and
timely attention. It will be too late when the seaman shall have changed
his vocation, or gone over to another interest. If we cannot recover and
secure for him these important branches of employment, it behooves us to
replace them by others equivalent. We have three nurseries for forming
seamen:
1. Our coasting trade, already on a safe footing.
2. Our fisheries, which, in spite of natural advantages, give just cause
of anxiety.
3. Our carrying trade, our only resource of indemnification for what we
lose in the other. The produce of the United States, which is carried
to foreign markets, is extremely bulky. That part of it which is now
in the hands of foreigners, and which we may resume into our own,
without touching the rights of those nations who have met us in fair
arrangements by treaty, or the interests of those who, by their voluntary
regulations, have paid so just and liberal a respect to our interests,
as being measured back to them again, places both parties on as good
ground, perhaps, as treaties could place them--the proportion, I say,
of our carrying trade, which may be resumed without affecting either of
these descriptions of nations, will find constant employment for ten
thousand seamen, be worth two millions of dollars, annually, will go
on augmenting with the population of the United States, secure to us a
full indemnification for the seamen we lose, and be taken wholly from
those who force us to this act of self protection in navigation.
Hence, too, would follow, that their Newfoundland ships, not receiving
provisions from us in their bottoms, nor permitted (by a law of their
own) to receive in ours, must draw their subsistence from Europe, which
would increase that part of their expenses in the proportion of four to
seven, and so far operate as a duty towards restoring the level between
them and us. The tables No. 2 and 12, will show the quantity of tonnage,
and, consequently, the mass of seamen whose interests are in distress;
and No. 17, the materials for indemnification.
If regulations exactly the counterpart of those established against
us, would be ineffectual, from a difference of circumstances, other
regulations equivalent can give no reasonable ground of complaint to any
nation. Admitting their right of keeping their markets to themselves,
ours cannot be denied of keeping our carrying trade to ourselves. And
if there be anything unfriendly in this, it was in the first example.
The loss of seamen, unnoticed, would be followed by other losses in a long
train. If we have no seamen, our ships will be useless, consequently our
ship timber, iron, and hemp; our ship building will be at an end, ship
carpenters go over to other nations, our young men have no call to the
sea, our produce, carried in foreign bottoms, be saddled with war-freight
and insurance in times of war; and the history of the last hundred years
shows, that the nation which is our carrier has three years of war for
every four years of peace. (No. 18.) We lose, during the same periods,
the carriage for belligerent powers, which the neutrality of our flag
would render an incalculable source of profit; we lose at this moment
the carriage of our own produce to the annual amount of two millions
of dollars, which, in the possible progress of the encroachment, may
extend to five or six millions, the worth of the whole, with an increase
in the proportion of the increase of our numbers. It is easier, as well
as better, to stop this train at its entrance, than when it shall have
ruined or banished whole classes of useful and industrious citizens.
It will doubtless be thought expedient that the resumption suggested
should take effect so gradually, as not to endanger the loss of
produce for the want of transportation; but that, in order to create
transportation, the whole plan should be developed, and made known at
once, that the individuals who may be disposed to lay themselves out
for the carrying business, may make their calculations on a full view
of all circumstances.
On the whole, the historical view we have taken of these fisheries,
proves they are so poor in themselves, as to come to nothing with distant
nations, who do not support them from their treasury. We have seen that
the advantages of our position place our fisheries on a ground somewhat
higher, such as to relieve our treasury from giving them support; but not
to permit it to draw support from them, nor to dispense the government
from the obligation of effectuating free markets for them; that, for
the great proportion of our salted fish, for our common oil, and a part
of our spermaceti oil, markets may perhaps be preserved, by friendly
arrangements towards those nations whose arrangements are friendly to
us, and the residue be compensated by giving to the seamen thrown out
of business the certainty of employment in another branch, of which we
have the sole disposal.
XXI.--_Opinion against the constitutionality of a National Bank._
February 15, 1791.
The bill for establishing a National Bank undertakes among other things:--
1. To form the subscribers into a corporation.
2. To enable them in their corporate capacities to receive grants of
land; and so far is against the laws of _Mortmain_.[26]
3. To make alien subscribers capable of holding lands; and so far is
against the laws of _alienage_.
4. To transmit these lands, on the death of a proprietor, to a certain
line of successors; and so far changes the course of _Descents_.
5. To put the lands out of the reach of forfeiture or escheat; and so
far is against the laws of _Forfeiture and Escheat_.
6. To transmit personal chattels to successors in a certain line; and
so far is against the laws of _Distribution_.
7. To give them the sole and exclusive right of banking under the national
authority; and so far is against the laws of Monopoly.
8. To communicate to them a power to make laws paramount to the laws of
the States; for so they must be construed, to protect the institution
from the control of the State legislatures; and so, probably, they will
be construed.
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground:
That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the
people." [XIIth amendment.] To take a single step beyond the boundaries
thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession
of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.
The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill,
have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the
Constitution.
1. They are not among the powers specially enumerated: for these are:
1st. A power to lay taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the
United States; but no debt is paid by this bill, nor any tax laid. Were
it a bill to raise money, its origination in the Senate would condemn
it by the Constitution.
2d. "To borrow money." But this bill neither borrows money nor ensures
the borrowing it. The proprietors of the bank will be just as free as any
other money holders, to lend or not to lend their money to the public.
The operation proposed in the bill, first, to lend them two millions,
and then to borrow them back again, cannot change the nature of the
latter act, which will still be a payment, and not a loan, call it by
what name you please.
3. To "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the States,
and with the Indian tribes." To erect a bank, and to regulate commerce,
are very different acts. He who erects a bank, creates a subject of
commerce in its bills; so does he who makes a bushel of wheat, or digs a
dollar out of the mines; yet neither of these persons regulates commerce
thereby. To make a thing which may be bought and sold, is not to prescribe
regulations for buying and selling. Besides, if this was an exercise
of the power of regulating commerce, it would be void, as extending as
much to the internal commerce of every State, as to its external. For
the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the
internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the
commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively with
its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say,
its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the
Indian tribes. Accordingly the bill does not propose the measure as a
regulation of trade, but as "productive of considerable advantages to
trade." Still less are these powers covered by any other of the special
enumerations.
II. Nor are they within either of the general phrases, which are the
two following:--
1. To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States,
that is to say, "to lay taxes for _the purpose_ of providing for the
general welfare." For the laying of taxes is the _power_, and the general
welfare the _purpose_ for which the power is to be exercised. They are
not to lay taxes _ad libitum for any purpose they please_; but only
to _pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union_. In like
manner, they are not _to do anything they please_ to provide for the
general welfare, but only to _lay taxes_ for that purpose. To consider
the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as
giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which
might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and
subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.
It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of
instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good
of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good
or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.
It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either
of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the
other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the
others useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given
them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated
powers, and those without which, as means, these powers could not be
carried into effect. It is known that the very power now proposed _as
a means_ was rejected as _an end_ by the Convention which formed the
Constitution. A proposition was made to them to authorize Congress to
open canals, and an amendatory one to empower them to incorporate. But
the whole was rejected, and one of the reasons for rejection urged in
debate was, that then they would have a power to erect a bank, which
would render the great cities, where there were prejudices and jealousies
on the subject, adverse to the reception of the Constitution.
2. The second general phrase is, "to make all laws _necessary_ and
proper for carrying into execution the enumerated powers." But they can
all be carried into execution without a bank. A bank therefore is not
_necessary_, and consequently not authorized by this phrase.
It has been urged that a bank will give great facility or convenience
in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true: yet the Constitution
allows only the means which are "_necessary_," not those which are merely
"convenient" for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of
construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated
power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity
may not torture into a _convenience_ in some instance _or other_, to
_some one_ of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up
all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before
observed. Therefore it was that the Constitution restrained them to
the _necessary_ means, that is to say, to those means without which the
grant of power would be nugatory.
But let us examine this convenience and see what it is. The report on
this subject, page 3, states the only _general_ convenience to be, the
preventing the transportation and re-transportation of money between the
States and the treasury, (for I pass over the increase of circulating
medium, ascribed to it as a want, and which, according to my ideas of
paper money, is clearly a demerit.) Every State will have to pay a sum
of tax money into the treasury; and the treasury will have to pay, in
every State, a part of the interest on the public debt, and salaries
to the officers of government resident in that State. In most of the
States there will still be a surplus of tax money to come up to the
seat of government for the officers residing there. The payments of
interest and salary in each State may be made by treasury orders on the
State collector. This will take up the great export of the money he has
collected in his State, and consequently prevent the great mass of it
from being drawn out of the State. If there be a balance of commerce
in favor of that State against the one in which the government resides,
the surplus of taxes will be remitted by the bills of exchange drawn for
that commercial balance. And so it must be if there was a bank. But if
there be no balance of commerce, either direct or circuitous, all the
banks in the world could not bring up the surplus of taxes, but in the
form of money. Treasury orders then, and bills of exchange may prevent
the displacement of the main mass of the money collected, without the
aid of any bank; and where these fail, it cannot be prevented even with
that aid.
Perhaps, indeed, bank bills may be a more _convenient_ vehicle than
treasury orders. But a little _difference_ in the degree of _convenience_,
cannot constitute the necessity which the constitution makes the ground
for assuming any non-enumerated power.
Besides; the existing banks will, without a doubt, enter into arrangements
for lending their agency, and the more favorable, as there will be a
competition among them for it; whereas the bill delivers us up bound
to the national bank, who are free to refuse all arrangement, but on
their own terms, and the public not free, on such refusal, to employ any
other bank. That of Philadelphia, I believe, now does this business, by
their post-notes, which, by an arrangement with the treasury, are paid
by any State collector to whom they are presented. This expedient alone
suffices to prevent the existence of that _necessity_ which may justify
the assumption of a non-enumerated power as a means for carrying into
effect an enumerated one. The thing may be done, and has been done, and
well done, without this assumption; therefore, it does not stand on that
degree of _necessity_ which can honestly justify it.
It may be said that a bank whose bills would have a currency all over the
States, would be more convenient than one whose currency is limited to
a single State. So it would be still more convenient that there should
be a bank, whose bills should have a currency all over the world. But
it does not follow from this superior conveniency, that there exists
anywhere a power to establish such a bank; or that the world may not go
on very well without it.
Can it be thought that the Constitution intended that for a shade or two
of _convenience_, more or less, Congress should be authorized to break
down the most ancient and fundamental laws of the several States; such
as those against Mortmain, the laws of Alienage, the rules of descent,
the acts of distribution, the laws of escheat and forfeiture, the laws
of monopoly? Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means, can
justify such a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our
whole system of jurisprudence. Will Congress be too straight-laced to
carry the constitution into honest effect, unless they may pass over the
foundation-laws of the State government for the slightest convenience
of theirs?
The negative of the President is the shield provided by the constitution
to protect against the invasions of the legislature: 1. The right of the
Executive. 2. Of the Judiciary. 3. Of the States and State legislatures.
The present is the case of a right remaining exclusively with the States,
and consequently one of those intended by the Constitution to be placed
under its protection.
It must be added, however, that unless the President's mind on a view of
everything which is urged for and against this bill, is tolerably clear
that it is unauthorised by the Constitution; if the pro and the con
hang so even as to balance his judgment, a just respect for the wisdom
of the legislature would naturally decide the balance in favor of their
opinion. It is chiefly for cases where they are clearly misled by error,
ambition, or interest, that the Constitution has placed a check in the
negative of the President.
FOOTNOTE:
[26] Though the Constitution controls the laws of Mortmain
so far as to permit Congress itself to hold land for
certain purposes, yet not so far as to permit them to
communicate a similar right to other corporate bodies.
XXII.--_Opinion relative to locating the Ten Mile Square for the Federal
Government, and building the Federal city._
March 11, 1791.
Objects which may merit the attention of the President, at Georgetown.
The commissioners to be called into action.
Deeds of cession to be taken from the land-holders.
Site of the capitol and President's house to be determined on.
Proclamation completing the location of the territory, and fixing the
site of the capitol.
Town to be laid off. Squares of reserve are to be decided on for the
capitol, President's house, offices of government, townhouse, prison,
market, and public walks.
Other squares for present sale designated.
Terms of sale to be settled. As there is not as yet a town legislature,
and things may be done before there is one to prevent them, which yet it
would be desirable to prevent, it would seem justifiable and expedient
that the President should form a capitulary of such regulations as he may
think necessary to be observed, until there shall be a town legislature
to undertake this office; such capitulary to be indented, signed, sealed,
and recorded, according to the laws of conveyance in Maryland. And to
be referred to in every deed for conveyance of the lots to purchasers,
so as to make a part thereof. The same thing might be effected, by
inserting special covenants for every regulation in every deed; but the
former method is the shortest. I cannot help again suggesting here one
regulation formerly suggested, to wit: To provide for the extinguishment
of fires, and the openness and convenience of the town, by prohibiting
houses of excessive height. And making it unlawful to build on any one's
purchase any house with more than two floors between the common level
of the earth and the eaves, nor with any other floor in the roof than
one at the eaves. To consider in what way the contracts for the public
buildings shall be made, and whether as many bricks should not be made
this summer as may employ brick-layers in the beginning of the season
of 1792, till more can be made in that season.
With respect to the amendment of the location so as to include
Bladensburgh. I am of opinion it may be done with the consent of the
legislature of Maryland, and that that consent may be so far counted
on, as to render it expedient to declare the location at once.
[Illustration]
The location A B C D A having been once made, I consider as obligatory
and unalterable, but by consent of parties, except so far as was
necessary to render it practicable by a correction of the beginning.
That correction might be lawfully made either by stopping at the river,
or at the spring of Hunting creek, or by lengthening the course from the
court-house so that the second course should strike the mouth of Hunting
creek. I am of opinion, therefore, that the beginning at the mouth of
Hunting creek, is legally justifiable. But I would advise the location
E F G H E to be hazarded so as to include Bladensburgh, because it is
a better location, and I think will certainly be confirmed by Maryland.
That State will necessarily have to pass another act confirming whatever
location shall be made, because her former act authorized the delegates
_then_ in office, to convey the lands. But as they were not located, no
conveyance has been made, and those persons are now out of office, and
dispersed. Suppose the non-concurrence of Maryland should defeat the
location E F G H E, it can only be done on this principle, that the first
location A B C D A was valid, and unalterable, but by mutual consent.
Then their non-concurrence will re-establish the first location A B C D
A, and the second location will be good for the part E I D K E without
their concurrence, and this will place us where we should be were we
now to complete the location E B C K E. Consequently, the experiment of
an amendment proposed can lose nothing, and may gain, and probably will
gain, the better location.
When I say it can lose nothing, I count as nothing, the triangle A I E,
which would be in neither of the locations. Perhaps this might be taken
in afterwards, either with or without the consent of Virginia.
XXIII.--_Report on the policy of securing particular marks to
Manufacturers, by law._
December 9, 1791.
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred by the House of
Representatives the petition of Samuel Breck and others, proprietors of a
sail-cloth manufactory in Boston, praying that they may have the exclusive
privilege of using particular marks for designating the sail-cloth of
their manufactory, has had the same under consideration, and thereupon
Reports, That it would, in his opinion, contribute to fidelity in the
execution of manufacturers, to secure to every manufactory an exclusive
right to some mark on its wares, proper to itself.
That this should be done by general laws, extending equal right to every
case to which the authority of the Legislature should be competent.
That these cases are of divided jurisdiction: Manufactures made and
consumed within a State being subject to State legislation, while those
which are exported to foreign nations, or to another State, or into
the Indian Territory, are alone within the legislation of the General
Government.
That it will, therefore, be reasonable for the General Government to
provide in this behalf by law for those cases of manufacture generally,
and those only which relate to commerce with foreign nations, and among
the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.
And that this may be done by permitting the owner of every manufactory, to
enter in the records of the court of the district wherein his manufactory
is, the name with which he chooses to mark or designate his wares, and
rendering it penal in others to put the same mark to any other wares.
XXIV.--_Opinion relative to the demolition of Mr. Carroll's house by
Major L'Enfant, in laying out the Federal City._
December 11, 1791.
Observations on Major L'Enfant's letter of December 7th, 1791, to the
President, justifying his demolition of the house of Mr. Carroll, of
Duddington.
He says that "Mr. Carroll erected his house partly on a main street,
and altogether on ground to which the public had a more immediate title
than himself could claim." When blaming Mr. Carroll, then, he considers
this as a street; but when justifying himself, he considers it not yet
as a street, for to account for his not having pointed out to Carroll
a situation where he might build, he says, "The President had not yet
sanctioned the plan for the distribution of the city, nor determined
if he would approve the situation of the several areas proposed to him
in that plan for public use, and that I would have been highly to be
blamed to have anticipated his opinion thereon." This latter exculpation
is solid; the first is without foundation. The plan of the city has not
yet been definitely determined by the President. Sale to individuals, or
partition decide the plan as far as these sales or partitions go. A deed
with the whole plan annexed, executed by the President, and recorded, will
ultimately fix it. But till a sale, or partition, or deed, it is open
to alteration. Consequently, there is as yet no such thing as a street,
except adjacent to the lots actually sold or divided; the erection of
a house in any part of the ground cannot as yet be a nuisance in law.
Mr. Carroll is tenant in common of the soil with the public, and the
erection of a house by a tenant in common on the common property, is no
nuisance. Mr. Carroll has acted imprudently, intemperately, foolishly;
but he has not acted illegally. There must be an establishment of the
streets, before his house can become a nuisance in the eye of the law.
Therefore, till that establishment, neither Major L'Enfant, nor the
commissioners, would have had a right to demolish his house, without
his consent.
The Major says he had as much right to pull down a house, as to cut down
a tree.
This is true, if he has received no authority to do either, but still
there will be this difference: To cut down a tree or to demolish a house
in the soil of another, is a trespass; but the cutting a tree, in this
country, is so slight a trespass, that a man would be thought litigious
who should prosecute it; if he prosecuted civilly, a jury would give
small damages; if criminally, the judge would not inflict imprisonment,
nor impose but a small fine. But the demolition of a house is so gross
a trespass, that any man would prosecute it; if civilly, a jury would
give great damages; if criminally, the judge would punish heavily by
fine and imprisonment. In the present case, if Carroll was to bring a
civil action, the jury would probably punish his folly by small damages;
but if he were to prosecute criminally, the judge would as probably
vindicate the insult on the laws, and the breach of the peace, by heavy
fines and imprisonment. So that if Major L'Enfant is right in saying he
had as much authority to pull down a house as to cut down a tree, still
he would feel a difference in the punishment of the law.
But is he right in saying he had as much authority to pull down a house
as to cut down a tree? I do not know what have been the authorities
given him expressly or by _implication_, but I can very readily conceive
that the authorities which he has received, whether from the President
or from the commissioners, whether verbal or written, may have gone to
the demolition of trees, and not houses. I am sure he has received no
authority, either from the President or commissioners, either expressly
or by implication, to pull down houses. An order to him to mark on the
ground the lines of the streets and lots, might imply an order to remove
trees or _small_ obstructions, _where they insuperably prevented his
operations_; but a person must know little of geometry who could not,
in an open field, designate streets and lots, even where a line passed
through a house, without pulling the house down.
In truth, the blame on Major L'Enfant, is for having pulled down the
house, of his own authority, and when he had reason to believe he was
in opposition, to the sentiments of the President; and his fault is
aggravated by its having been done to gratify private resentment against
Mr. Carroll, and most probably not because it was necessary; and the
style in which he writes the justification of his act, shows that a
continuation of the same resentment renders him still unable to acquiesce
under the authority from which he has been reproved.
He desires a line of demarcation between his office, and that of the
commissioners.
What should be this line? and who is to draw it? If we consider the
matter under the _act of Congress_ only, the President has authority
only to name the commissioners, and to approve or disapprove certain
proceedings of theirs. They have the whole executive power, and stand
between the President and the subordinate agents. In this view, they may
employ or dismiss, order and countermand, take on themselves such parts
of the execution as they please, and assign other parts to subordinate
agents. Consequently, under the _act of Congress_, their will is the
line of demarcation between subordinate agents, while no such line
can exist between themselves and their agents. Under the deed from the
proprietors to the President, his powers are much more ample. I do not
accurately recollect the tenor of the deed; but I am pretty sure it was
such as to put much more ample power into the hands of the President,
and to commit to him the whole execution of whatever is to be done under
the deed; and this goes particularly to the laying out the town: so
that as to this, the President is certainly authorized to draw the line
of demarcation between L'Enfant and the commissioners. But I believe
there is no necessity for it, as far as I have been able to judge, from
conversations and consultations with the commissioners. I think they
are disposed to follow implicitly the will of the President, whenever
they can find it out; but L'Enfant's letters do not breathe the same
moderation or acquiescence; and I think it would be much safer to say
to him, "the orders of the commissioners are your line of demarcation,"
than by attempting to define his powers, to give him a line where he
may meet with the commissioners foot to foot, and chicane and raise
opposition to their orders whenever he thinks they pass his line. I
confess, that on a view of L'Enfant's proceedings and letters latterly,
I am thoroughly persuaded that, to render him useful, his temper must
be subdued; and that the only means of preventing his giving constant
trouble to the President, is to submit him to the unlimited control of
the commissioners; we know the discretion and forbearance with which
they will exercise it.
XXV.--_Opinion relative to certain lands on Lake Erie, sold by the United
States to Pennsylvania._
December 19, 1791.
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred, by the President of the
United States, a letter from the Governor of Pennsylvania, with the
documents therein mentioned, on the subject of certain lands on Lake
Erie, having had the same under consideration, thereupon Reports:--
That Congress, by their resolution of June 6th, 1788, directed the
Geographer General of the United States to ascertain the quantity of
land belonging to the United States between Pennsylvania and Lake Erie,
and authorized a sale thereof.
That a sale was accordingly made to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
That Congress, by their resolution of September 4th, 1788, relinquished to
the said commonwealth all their right to the government and jurisdiction
of the said tract of land; but the right of soil was not transferred by
the resolution.
That a survey of the said tract has been since made, and the amount of
the purchase money been settled between the comptrollers of the United
States and of the said commonwealth, and that the Governor of Pennsylvania
declares in the said letter, to the President of the United States, that
he is ready to close the transaction on behalf of the said commonwealth.
That there is no person at present authorized, by law, to convey to the
said commonwealth the right of soil, in the said tract of land.
And the Secretary of State is therefore of opinion that the said letter
and documents should be laid before the legislature of the United States
to make such provision by law for conveying the said right of soil, as
they in their wisdom shall think fit.
XXVI.--_Report relative to negotiations with Spain to secure the free
navigation of the Mississippi, and a port on the same._
December 22, 1791.
The Secretary of State reports to the President of the United States,
that one of the commissioners of Spain, in the name of both, has lately
communicated to him verbally, by order of his court, that his Catholic
Majesty, apprized of our solicitude to have some arrangement made
respecting our free navigation of the river Mississippi, and the use of
a port thereon, is ready to enter into treaty thereon at Madrid.
The Secretary of State is of opinion that this overture should be attended
to without delay, and that the proposal of treating at Madrid, though not
what might have been desired, should yet be accepted, and a commission
plenipotentiary made out for the purpose.
That Mr. Carmichael, the present chargé de affaires of the United States
at Madrid, from the local acquaintance which he must have acquired with
persons and circumstances, would be an useful and proper member of the
commission; but that it would be useful also to join with him some person
more particularly acquainted with the circumstances of the navigation
to be treated of.
That the fund appropriated by the act providing the means of intercourse
between the United States and foreign nations, will insufficiently furnish
the ordinary and regular demands on it, and is consequently inadequate
to the mission of an additional commissioner express from hence.
That, therefore, it will be advisable, on this account, as well as for
the sake of despatch, to constitute some one of the ministers of the
United States in Europe, jointly with Mr. Carmichael, commissioners
plenipotentiary for the special purpose of negotiating and concluding,
with any person or persons duly authorized by his Catholic Majesty, a
convention or treaty for the free navigation of the river Mississippi by
the citizens of the United States, under such accommodations with respect
to a port, and other circumstances, as may render the said navigation
practicable, useful, and free from dispute; saving to the President and
Senate their respective rights as to their ratification of the same; and
that the said negotiation be at Madrid, or such other place in Spain,
as shall be desired by his Catholic Majesty.
March 18, 1792.
The appointment of Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Short, as commissioners to
negotiate, with the court of Spain, a treaty or convention relative to
the navigation of the Mississippi, and which perhaps may be extended to
other interests, rendering it necessary that the subjects to be treated
of should be developed, and the conditions of arrangement explained:
The Secretary of State reports to the President of the United States
the following observations on the subjects of negotiation between the
United States of America and the court of Spain, to be communicated by
way of instruction to the commissioners of the United States, appointed
as before mentioned, to manage that negotiation.
These subjects are,
I. Boundary.
II. The navigation of the Mississippi.
III. Commerce.
I. As to boundary, that between Georgia and Florida is the only one which
will need any explanation. Spain sets up a claim to possessions within
the State of Georgia, founded on her having rescued them by force from
the British during the late war. The following view of the subject seems
to admit no reply:
The several States now comprising the United States of America, were, from
their first establishment, separate and distinct societies, dependent on
no other society of men whatever. They continued at the head of their
respective governments the executive magistrate who presided over the
one they had left, and thereby secured, in effect, a constant amity with
the nation. In this stage of their government their several boundaries
were fixed; and particularly the southern boundary of Georgia, the only
one now in question, was established at the 31st degree of latitude
from the Apalachicola westwardly; and the western boundary, originally
the Pacific ocean, was, by the treaty of Paris, reduced to the middle
of the Mississippi. The part which our chief magistrate took in a war,
waged against us by the nation among whom he resided, obliged us to
discontinue him, and to name one within every State. In the course of
this war we were joined by France as an ally, and by Spain and Holland
as associates; having a common enemy, each sought that common enemy
wherever they could find him. France, on our invitation, landed a large
army within our territories, continued it with us two years, and aided
us in recovering sundry places from the possession of the enemy. But she
did not pretend to keep possession of the places rescued. Spain entered
into the remote western part of our territory, dislodged the common
enemy from several of the posts they held therein, to the annoyance
of Spain; and perhaps thought it necessary to remain in some of them,
as the only means of preventing their return. We, in like manner,
dislodged them from several posts in the same western territory, to wit:
Vincennes, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, &c., rescued the inhabitants, and retained
constantly afterwards both them and the territory under our possession
and government. At the conclusion of the war, Great Britain, on the
30th of November, 1782, by treaty acknowledged our independence, and
our boundary, to wit: the Mississippi to the west, and the completion of
the 31st degree, &c. to the south. In her treaty with Spain, concluded
seven weeks afterwards, to wit, January 20th, 1783, she ceded to her
the two Floridas, which had been defined in the proclamation of 1763,
and Minorca; and by the eighth article of the treaty, Spain agreed
to restore, _without compensation_, all the territories conquered by
her, and not included in the treaty, either under the head of cessions
or restitutions, that is to say, all except Minorca and the Floridas.
According to this stipulation, Spain was expressly bound to have delivered
up the possessions she had taken within the limits of Georgia, to Great
Britain, if they were conquests on Great Britain, who was to deliver
them over to the United States; or rather, she should have delivered
them to the United States themselves, as standing _quoad hoc_ in the
place of Great Britain. And she was bound by natural rights to deliver
them to the same United States on a much stronger ground, as the real
and only proprietors of those places which she had taken possession
of in a moment of danger, without having had any cause of war with the
United States, to whom they belonged, and without having declared any;
but, on the contrary, conducting herself in other respects as a friend
and associate. _Vattel_, 1. 3, 122.
It is an established principle, that conquest gives only an inchoate
treaty of peace, which does not become perfect till confirmed by the
treaty of peace, and by a renunciation or abandonment by the former
proprietor. Had Great Britain been that former proprietor, she was so far
from confirming to Spain the right to the territory of Georgia, invaded
by Spain, that she expressly relinquished to the United States any right
that might remain in her; and afterwards completed that relinquishment,
by procuring and consolidating with it the agreement of Spain herself to
restore such territory without compensation. It is still more palpable,
that a war existing between two nations, as Spain and Great Britain,
could give to neither the right to seize and appropriate the territory
of a third, which is even neutral, much less which is an associate in
the war, as the United States were with Spain. See, on this subject,
_Grotius_, 1. 3, c. 6, § 26. _Puffendorf_, 1. 8, c. 17, § 23. _Vattel_,
1. 3, § 197, 198.
On the conclusion of the general peace, the United States lost no time
in requiring from Spain an evacuation of their territory This has been
hitherto delayed by means which we need not explain to that court, but
which have been equally contrary to our right and to our consent.
Should Spain pretend, as has been intimated, that there was a secret
article of treaty between the United States and Great Britain, agreeing,
if at the close of the war the latter should retain the Floridas, that
then the southern boundary of Georgia should be the completion of the
32d degree of latitude, the commissioners may safely deny all knowledge
of the fact, and refuse conference on any such postulatum. Or, should
they find it necessary to enter into any argument on the subject, they
will of course do it hypothetically; and in that way may justly say, on
the part of the United States; suppose that the United States, exhausted
by a bloody and expensive war with Great Britain, might have been
willing to have purchased peace by relinquishing, under a particular
contingency, a small part of their territory, it does not follow that
the same United States, recruited and better organized, must relinquish
the same territory to Spain without striking a blow. The United States,
too, have irrevocably put it out of their power to do it, by a new
constitution, which guarantees every State against the invasion of its
territory. A disastrous war, indeed, might, by necessity, supersede this
stipulation, (as necessity is above all law,) and oblige them to abandon
a part of a State; but nothing short of this can justify or obtain such
an abandonment.
The southern limits of Georgia depend chiefly on,
1. The charter of Carolina to the lords proprietors, in 1663, extending
southwardly to the river Matheo, now called St. John, supposed in the
charter to be in latitude 31, and so west in a direct line as far as
the South Sea. See the charter in 4th[27] Memoires de l'Amerique, 554.
2. On the proclamation of the British King, in 1763, establishing the
boundary between Georgia and the two Floridas to begin on the Mississippi,
in thirty-one degrees of latitude north of the equator, and running
eastwardly to the Appalachicola; thence, along the said river to the
mouth of the Flint; thence, in a direct line, to the source of St. Mary's
river, and down the same to the ocean. This proclamation will be found
in Postlethwayte voce "British America."
3. On the treaties between the United States and Great Britain, of
November 30, 1782, and September 3, 1783, repeating and confirming these
ancient boundaries,--
There was an intermediate transaction, to wit: a convention concluded at
the Pardo, in 1739, whereby it was agreed that Ministers Plenipotentiary
should be immediately appointed by Spain and Great Britain for settling
the limits of Florida and Carolina. The convention is to be found in the
collections of treaties. But the proceedings of the Plenipotentiaries
are unknown here. _Qu._ If it was on that occasion that the southern
boundary of Carolina was transferred from the latitude of Matheo or St.
John's river further north to the St. Mary's? Or was it the proclamation
of 1763, which first removed this boundary? [If the commissioners can
procure in Spain a copy of whatever was agreed on in consequence of the
convention of the Pardo, it is a desirable State paper here.]
To this demonstration of our rights may be added the explicit declaration
of the court of Spain, that she would accede to them. This took place
in conversations and correspondence thereon between Mr. Jay, Minister
Plenipotentiary for the United States at the court at Madrid, the Marquis
de La Fayette, and the Count de Florida Blanca. Monsieur de La Fayette,
in his letter of February 19, 1783, to the Count de Florida Blanca,
states the result of their conversations on limits in these words:
"With respect to limits, his Catholic Majesty has adopted those that
are determined by the preliminaries of the 30th of November, between the
United States and the court of London." The Count de Florida Blanca, in
his answer of February 22d, to M. de La Fayette, says, "although it is his
Majesty's intention to abide for the present by the limits established
by the treaty of the 30th of November, 1782, between the English and
the Americans, the King intends to inform himself particularly whether
it can be in any ways inconvenient or prejudicial to settle that affair
amicably with the United States;" and M. de La Fayette, in his letter of
the same day to Mr. Jay, wherein he had inserted the preceding, says,
"on receiving the answer of the Count de Florida Blanca, (to wit: his
answer, before mentioned, to M. de La Fayette,) I desired an explanation
respecting the addition that relates to the limits. I was answered, that
it was a fixed principle to abide by the limits established by the treaty
between the English and the Americans; that his remark related only to
mere unimportant details, which he wished to receive from the Spanish
commandants, which would be amicably regulated, and _would by no means
oppose the general principle_. I asked him, before the Ambassador of
France, [M. de Montmorin,] whether he would give me his word of honor
for it; he assured me he would, and that I might engage it to the United
States." See the report sent herewith.
II.--The navigation of the Mississippi.
Our right to navigate that river, from its source to where our southern
boundary strikes it, is not questioned. It is from that point downwards,
only, that the exclusive navigation is claimed by Spain; that is to
say, where she holds the country on both sides, to wit: Louisiana on
the west, and Florida on the east.
Our right to participate in the navigation of that part of the river,
also, is to be considered, under
1. The Treaty of Paris of 1763,
2. The Revolution Treaty of 1782-3.
3. The law of nature and nations.
1. The war of 1755-1763, was carried on jointly by Great Britain and
the thirteen colonies, now the United States of America, against France
and Spain. At the peace which was negotiated by our common magistrate, a
right was secured to the subjects of Great Britain (the common designation
of all those under his government) to navigate the Mississippi in its
whole breadth and length, from its source to the sea, and expressly
that part which is between the island of New Orleans and the right bank
of the river, as well as the passage both in and out of its mouth;
and that the vessels should not be stopped, visited, or subjected to
the payment of any duty whatsoever. These are the words of the treaty,
article VII. Florida was at the same time ceded by Spain, and its extent
westwardly was fixed to the lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas, and the
river Mississippi; and Spain received soon after from France a cession
of the island of New Orleans, and all the country she held westward of
the Mississippi, subject of course to our right of navigating between
that country and the island previously granted to us by France. This
right was not parcelled out to us in severalty, that is to say, to each
the exclusive navigation of so much of the river as was adjacent to our
several shores--in which way it would have been useless to all--but it
was placed on that footing on which alone it could be worth anything,
to wit: as a right to all to navigate the whole length of the river in
common. The import of the terms and the reason of the thing prove it
was a right of common in the whole, and not a several right to each of a
particular part. To which may be added the evidence of the stipulation
itself, that we should navigate between New Orleans and the western
bank, which, being adjacent to none of our States, could be held by us
only as a right of common. Such was the nature of our right to navigate
the Mississippi, as far as established by the treaty of Paris.
2. In the course of the Revolutionary war, in which the thirteen colonies,
Spain, and France, were opposed to Great Britain, Spain took possession
of several posts held by the British in Florida. It is unnecessary to
inquire whether the possession of half a dozen posts scattered through
a country of seven or eight hundred miles extent, could be considered
as the possession and conquest of that country. If it was, it gave
still but an inchoate right, as was before explained, which could not
be perfected but by the relinquishment of the former possession at the
close of the war; but certainly it could not be considered as a conquest
_of the river_, even against Great Britain, since the possession of
the shores, to wit, of the island of New Orleans on the one side, and
Louisiana on the other, having undergone no change, the right in the water
would remain the same, if considered only in its relation to them; and
if considered as a distinct right, independent of the shores, then no
naval victories obtained by Spain over Great Britain, in the course of
the war, gave her the color of conquest over any water which the British
fleet could enter. Still less can she be considered as having conquered
the river, as against the United States, with whom she was not at war.
We had a common right of navigation in the part of the river between
Florida, the island of New Orleans, and the western bank, and nothing
which passed between Spain and Great Britain, either during the war, or
at its conclusion, could lessen that right. Accordingly, at the treaty
of November, 1782, Great Britain confirmed the rights of the United
States to the navigation of the river, from its source to its mouth,
and in January, 1783, completed the right of Spain to the territory of
Florida, by an absolute relinquishment of all her rights in it. This
relinquishment could not include the navigation held by the United States
in their own right, because this right existed in themselves only, and
was not in Great Britain. If it added anything to the rights of Spain
respecting the river between the eastern and western banks, it could only
be that portion of right which Great Britain had retained to herself in
the treaty with the United States, held seven weeks before, to wit, a
right of using it in common with the United States.
So that as by the treaty of 1763, the United States had obtained a common
right of navigating the whole river from its source to its mouth, so
by the treaty of 1782, that common right was confirmed to them by the
only power who could pretend claims against them, founded on the state
of war; nor has that common right been transferred to Spain by either
conquest or cession.
But our right is built on ground still broader and more unquestionable,
to wit:
3. On the law of nature and nations.
If we appeal to this, as we feel it written on the heart of man, what
sentiment is written in deeper characters than that the ocean is free
to all men, and their rivers to all their inhabitants? Is there a man,
savage or civilized, unbiased by habit, who does not feel and attest
this truth? Accordingly, in all tracts of country united under the same
political society, we find this natural right universally acknowledged and
protected by laying the navigable rivers open to all their inhabitants.
When their rivers enter the limits of another society, if the right of
the upper inhabitants to descend the stream is in any case obstructed,
it is an act of force by a stronger society against a weaker, condemned
by the judgment of mankind. The late case of Antwerp and the Scheldt
was a striking proof a general union of sentiment on this point; as it
is believed that Amsterdam had scarcely an advocate out of Holland, and
even there its pretensions were advocated on the ground of treaties,
and not of natural right. (The commissioners would do well to examine
thoroughly what was written on this occasion.) The commissioners will
be able perhaps to find, either in the practice or the pretensions of
Spain, as to the Dauro, Tagus, and Guadiana, some acknowledgments of
this principle on the part of that nation. This sentiment of right in
favor of the upper inhabitants must become stronger in the proportion
which their extent of country bears to the lower. The United States
hold 600,000 square miles of habitable territory on the Mississippi and
its branches, and this river and its branches afford many thousands of
miles of navigable waters penetrating this territory in all its parts.
The inhabitable grounds of Spain below our boundary and bordering on
the river, which alone can pretend any fear of being incommoded by our
use of the river, are not the thousandth part of that extent. This vast
portion of the territory of the United States has no other outlet for
its productions, and these productions are of the bulkiest kind. And in
truth, their passage down the river may not only be innocent, as to the
Spanish subjects on the river, but cannot fail to enrich them far beyond
their present condition. The real interests then of all the inhabitants,
upper and lower, concur in fact with their rights.
If we appeal to the law of nature and nations, as expressed by writers
on the subject, it is agreed by them, that, were the river, where it
passes between Florida and Louisiana, the exclusive right of Spain, still
an innocent passage along it is a natural right in those inhabiting its
borders above. It would indeed be what those writers call an imperfect
right, because the modification of its exercise depends in a considerable
degree on the conveniency of the nation through which they are to pass.
But it is still a right as real as any other right, however well-defined;
and were it to be refused, or to be so shackled by regulations, not
necessary for the peace or safety of its inhabitants, as to render its
use impracticable to us, it would then be an injury, of which we should
bee entitled to demand redress. The right of the upper inhabitants to
use this navigation is the counterpart to that of those possessing the
shore below, and founded in the same natural relations with the soil
and water. And the line at which their rights meet is to be advanced
or withdrawn, so as to equalize the inconveniences resulting to each
party from the exercise of the right by the other. This estimate is to
be fairly made with a mutual disposition to make equal sacrifices, and
the numbers on each side are to have their due weight in the estimate.
Spain holds so very small a tract of habitable land on either side below
our boundary, that it may in fact be considered as a strait of the sea;
for though it is eighty leagues from our boundary to the mouth of the
river, yet it is only here and there in spots and slips that the land
rises above the level of the water in times of inundation. There are,
then, and ever must be, so few inhabitants on her part of the river,
that the freest use of its navigation may be admitted to us without
their annoyance. For authorities on this subject, see Grot. 1. 2. c. 2
§ 11, 12, 13, c. 3. § 7, 8, 12. Puffendorf, 1. 3. c. 3. § 3, 4, 5, 6.
Wolff's Inst. § 310, 311, 312. Vattel, 1. 1. § 292. 1. 2. § 123 to 139.
[Illustration]
It is essential to the interests of both parties that the navigation
of the river be free to both, on the footing on which it was defined by
the treaty of Paris, viz.: through its whole breadth. The channel of the
Mississippi is remarkably winding, crossing and recrossing perpetually
from one side to the other of the general bed of the river. Within the
elbows thus made by the channel, there is generally an eddy setting
upwards, and it is by taking advantage of these eddies, and constantly
crossing from one to another of them, that boats are enabled to ascend
the river. Without this right the whole river would be impracticable
both to the Americans and Spaniards.
It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means,
without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow
their end. Thus, a right to navigate a river, draws to it a right to
moor vessels to its shores, to land on them in cases of distress, or
for other necessary purposes, &c. This principle is founded in natural
reason, is evidenced by the common sense of mankind, and declared by
the writers before quoted. See Grot. 1. 2. c. 2. § 15. Puffend. 1. 3.
c. 3. § 8. Vattel, 1. 2. § 129.
The Roman law, which, like other municipal laws, placed the navigation
of their rivers on the footing of nature, as to their own citizens,
by declaring them public,[28] (flumina publica sunt, hoc est populi
Romani, Inst. 2. t. 1. § 2,) declared also that the right to the use
of the shores was incident to that of the water. Ibid, § 1, 3, 4, 5.
The laws of every country probably do the same. This must have been so
understood between France and Great Britain, at the treaty of Paris, when
a right was ceded to British subjects to navigate the whole river, and
expressly that part between the island of New Orleans and the western
bank, without stipulating a word about the use of the shores, though
both of them belonged then to France, and were to belong immediately
to Spain. Had not the use of the shores been considered as incident to
that of the water, it would have been expressly stipulated; since its
necessity was too obvious to have escaped either party. Accordingly, all
British subjects used the shores habitually for the purposes necessary
to the navigation of the river; and when a Spanish Governor undertook
at one time to forbid this, and even cut loose the vessels fastening
to their shores, a British frigate went immediately, moored itself to
the shore opposite to the town of New Orleans, and set out guards with
orders to fire on such as might attempt to disturb her moorings. The
Governor acquiesced, the right was constantly exercised afterwards, and
no interruption ever offered.
This incidental right extends even beyond the shores, where circumstances
render it necessary to the exercise of the principal right; as, in the
case of a vessel damaged, where the mere shore could not be a safe deposit
for her cargo till she could be repaired, she may remove it into safe
ground off the river. The Roman law shall be quoted here too, because it
gives a good idea both of the extent and the limitations of this right.
Ins. 1. 2. t. 1. § 4. [29]Riparum quoque usus publicus est, ut volunt
jura gentium, sicut et ipsius fluminis usus publicus est. Itaque et
navigium ad ripes appellere, et funes de arboribus ibi natis religare,
et navis onera in his locis reponere, liberum quique est sicuti nec per
flumen ipsum navigare quisquam prohibetur. And again, §5, [30]littorum
quoque usus publicus, sive juri gentium est, ut et ipsius maris et
ob id data est facultas volentibus, casas ibi sibi componere, in quas
se recipere possint, &c. Again, § 1. [31]Nemo igitur ad littora maris
accedere prohibitur; veluti deambulare aut navem appellere, sic tamen ut
a villis, id est domiciliis monumentisque ibi positis, et ab edificiis
abstineat, nec iis damnum inferat.
Among incidental rights are those of having pilots, buoys, beacons,
landmarks, light-houses, &c., to guide the navigators. The establishment
of these at joint expense, and under joint regulations, may be the
subject of a future convention. In the meantime, both should be free to
have their own, and refuse those of the other, both as to use and expense.
Very peculiar circumstances attending the river Mississippi, require
that the incidental right of accommodation on the shore, which needs only
occasional exercise on other rivers, should be habitual and constant on
this. Sea vessels cannot navigate that river, nor the river vessels go
to sea. The navigation would be useless then without an entrepôt where
these vessels might safely deposit their own cargoes, and take those
left by the others; and where warehouses and keepers might be constantly
established for the safeguard of the cargoes. It is admitted, indeed, that
the incidental right thus extended into the territory of the bordering
inhabitants, is liable to stricter modifications in proportion as it
interferes with their territorial right. But the inconveniences of both
parties are still to have their weight, and reason and moderation on
both sides are to draw the line between them. As to this, we count much
on the liberality of Spain, on her concurrence in opinion with us, that
it is for the interest of both parties to remove completely this germ of
discord from between us, and draw our friendship as close as circumstances
proclaim that it should be, and on the considerations which make it
palpable that a convenient spot placed under our exclusive occupation,
and exempted from the jurisdiction and police of their government, is
far more likely to preserve peace than a mere free port, where eternal
altercations would keep us in eternal ill humor with each other. The
policy of this measure, and indeed of a much larger concession, having
been formerly sketched in a paper of July 12th, 1790, sent to the
commissioners severally, they are now referred to that.
If this be agreed to, the manner of fixing on that extra territorial
spot becomes highly interesting. The most desirable to us, would be a
permission to send commissioners to choose such spot, below the town of
New Orleans, as they should find most convenient.
If this be refused, it would be better now to fix on the spot. Our
information is, that the whole country below the town, and for sixty
miles above it, on the western shore, is low, marshy, and subject to
such deep inundation for many miles from the river, that if capable
of being reclaimed at all by banking, it would still never afford an
entrepôt sufficiently safe; that on the eastern side the only lands below
the town, not subject to inundation, are at the Detour aux Anglais, or
English Turn, the highest part of which, is that whereon the fort St.
Marie formerly stood. Even this is said to have been raised by art, and
to be very little above the level of the inundations. This spot then
is what we would fix on, if obliged now to decide, with from one to
as many square miles of the circumjacent lands as can be obtained, and
comprehending expressly the shores above and below the site of the fort as
far as possible. But as to the spot itself, the limits, and even whether
it shall be extra territorial, or only a free port, and what regulations
it shall be laid under, the convenience of that Government is entitled
to so much respect and attention on our part, that the arrangement must
be left to the management of the commissioners, who will doubtless use
their best efforts to obtain all they can for us.
The worst footing on which the determination of the ground could be
placed, would be a reference to joint commissioners; because their
disagreement, a very probable, nay, a certain event, would undo the
whole convention, and leave us exactly where we now are. Unless indeed
they will engage to us, in case of such disagreement, the highest ground
at the Detour aux Anglais, of convenient extent, including the landings
and harbor thereto adjacent. This would ensure us that ground, unless
better could be found and mutually preferred, and close the delay of
right under which we have so long labored for peace-sake.
It will probably be urged, because it was urged on a former occasion,
that, if Spain _grants_ to us the right of navigating the Mississippi,
other nations will become entitled to it by virtue of treaties giving
them the rights of the _most favored nation_.
Two answers may be given to this:
1. When those treaties were made, no nations could be under contemplation
but those then existing, or those at most who might exist under
similar circumstances. America did not then exist as a nation; and the
circumstances of her position and commerce, are so totally dissimilar to
everything then known, that the treaties of that day were not adapted
to any such being. They would better fit even China than America;
because, as a manufacturing nation, China resembles Europe more. When
we solicited France to admit our whale oils into her ports, though she
had excluded all foreign whale oils, her minister made the objection
now under consideration, and the foregoing answer was given. It was
found to be solid; and the whale oils of the United States are in
consequence admitted, though those of Portugal and the Hanse towns, and
of all other nations, are excluded. Again, when France and England were
negotiating their late treaty of commerce, the great dissimilitude of
our commerce (which furnishes raw materials to employ the industry of
others, in exchange for articles whereon industry has been exhausted)
from the commerce of the European nations (which furnishes things ready
wrought only) was suggested to the attention of both negotiators, and
that they should keep their nations free to make particular arrangements
with ours, by communicating to each other only the rights of the most
favored European nation. Each was separately sensible of the importance
of the distinction; and as soon as it was proposed by the one, it was
acceded to by the other, and the word _European_ was inserted in their
treaty. It may fairly be considered then as the rational and received
interpretation of the diplomatic term, "gentis amicissimæ"[32] that it
has not in view a nation unknown in many cases at the time of using the
term, and so dissimilar in all cases as to furnish no ground of just
reclamation to any nation.
But the decisive answer is, that Spain does not grant us the navigation
of the river. We have an inherent right to it; and she may repel the
demand of any other nation by candidly stating her act to have been,
what in truth it is, a recognition only, and not a grant.
If Spain apprehends that other nations may claim access to our ports in
the Mississippi, under their treaties with us, giving them a right to
come and trade in all our ports, though we would not choose to insert an
express stipulation against them, yet we shall think ourselves justified
to acquiesce in fact, under any regulations Spain may from time to time
establish against their admission.
Should Spain renew another objection, which she relied much on before
that the English at the Revolution treaty could not cede to us what
Spain had taken from them by conquest, and what of course they did not
possess themselves, the preceding observations furnish sufficient matter
for refutation.
To conclude the subjects of boundary and navigation, each of the following
conditions is to be considered by the commissioners as a _sine quâ non_.
1. That our southern boundary remain established at the completion of
thirty-one degrees of latitude on the Mississippi, and so on to the
ocean, as has been before described, and our western one along the middle
of the channel of the Mississippi, however that channel may vary, as
it is constantly varying, and that Spain cease to occupy or to exercise
jurisdiction in any part northward or eastward of these boundaries.
2. That our right be acknowledged of navigating the Mississippi, in its
whole breadth and length, from its source to the sea, as established by
the treaty of 1763.
3. That neither the vessels, cargoes, or the persons on board, be stopped,
visited, or subjected to the payment of any duty whatsoever; or, if a
visit must be permitted, that it be under such restrictions as to produce
the least possible inconvenience. But it should be altogether avoided,
if possible, as the parent of perpetual broils.
4. That such conveniences be allowed us ashore, as may render our right
of navigation practicable and under such regulations as may _bonâ fide_
respect the preservation of peace and order alone, and may not have in
object to embarrass our navigation, or raise a revenue on it. While the
substance of this article is made a _sine quâ non_, the modifications
of it are left altogether to the discretion and management of the
commissioners.
We might add, as a fifth _sine quâ non_, that no phrase should be admitted
in the treaty which could express or imply that we take the navigation
of the Mississippi as a _grant_ from Spain. But, however disagreeable it
would be to subscribe to such a sentiment, yet, were the conclusion of a
treaty to hang on that single objection, it would be expedient to waive
it, and to meet, at a future day, the consequences of any resumption
they may pretend to make, rather than at present, those of a separation
without coming to any agreement.
We know not whether Spain has it in idea to ask a compensation for the
ascertainment of our right.
1. In the first place, she cannot in reason ask a compensation for
yielding what we have a right to, that is to say, the navigation of the
river, and the conveniences incident to it of natural right.
2. In the second place, we have a claim on Spain for indemnification
for nine years' exclusion from that navigation, and a reimbursement
of the heavy duties (not less for the most part than 15 per cent. on
extravagant valuations) levied on the commodities she has permitted
to pass to New Orleans. The relinquishment of this will be no unworthy
equivalent for any accommodations she may indulge us with, beyond the
line of our strict right. And this claim is to be brought into view
in proper time and manner, merely to be abandoned in consideration of
such accommodations. We have nothing else to give in exchange. For as
to territory, we have neither the right nor the disposition to alienate
an inch of what belongs to any member of our Union. Such a proposition,
therefore, is totally inadmissible, and not to be treated of for a moment.
3. On the former conferences on the navigation of the Mississippi,
Spain chose to blend with it the subject of commerce; and, accordingly,
specific propositions thereon passed between the negotiators. Her object,
then, was to obtain our renunciation of the navigation, and to hold out
commercial arrangements, perhaps as a lure to us; perhaps, however, she
might then, and may now, really set a value on commercial arrangements
with us, and may receive them as a consideration for accommodating us in
the navigation; or, may wish for them, to have the appearance of receiving
a consideration. Commercial arrangements, if acceptable in themselves,
will not be the less so if coupled with those relating to navigation and
boundary. We have only to take care that they be acceptable in themselves.
There are two principles which may be proposed as the basis of a
commercial treaty: 1. That of exchanging the privileges of _native
citizens_; or,
2. Those of _the most favored nation_.
1. With the nations holding important possessions in America, we are ready
to exchange the rights of native citizens, provided they be extended
through the whole possessions of both parties, but the propositions of
Spain, made on the former occasion, (a copy of which accompanies this,)
were, that we should give their merchants, vessels, and productions,
the privilege of native merchants, vessels, and productions, through
the whole of our possessions, and they give the same to ours only in
Spain and the Canaries. This is inadmissible, because unequal; and, as
we believe that Spain is not ripe for an equal exchange on this basis,
we avoid proposing it.
2. Though treaties, which merely exchange the rights of the most
favored nations, are not without all inconvenience, yet they have
their conveniences also. It is an important one, that they leave each
party free to make what internal regulations they please, and to give
what preferences they find expedient to native merchants, vessels, and
productions. And as we already have treaties on this basis, with France,
Holland, Sweden, and Prussia, the two former of which are perpetual, it
will be but small additional embarrassment to extend it to Spain. On the
contrary, we are sensible it is right to place that nation on the most
favored footing, whether we have a treaty with them or not, and it can
do us no harm to secure by treaty a reciprocation of the right.
Of the four treaties before mentioned, either the French or the Prussian
might be taken as a model. But it would be useless to propose the
Prussian; because we have already supposed that Spain would never consent
to those articles which give to each party access to all the dominions
of the other; and, without this equivalent, we would not agree to tie
our own hands so materially in war, as would be done by the 23d article,
which renounces the right of fitting out privateers, or of capturing
merchant vessels. The French treaty, therefore, is proposed as the model.
In this, however, the following changes are to be made.
We should be admitted to all the dominions of Spain, to which any other
foreign nation is, or may be admitted.
Article 5 being an exemption from a particular duty in France, will of
course be omitted, as inapplicable to Spain.
Article 8 to be omitted, as unnecessary with Morocco, and inefficacious,
and little honorable with any of the Barbary powers. But it may furnish
occasion to sound Spain on the project of a convention of the powers
at war with the Barbary States, to keep up, by rotation, a constant
cruise of a given force on their coasts, till they shall be compelled
to renounce forever, and against all nations, their predatory practices.
Perhaps the infidelities of the Algerines to their treaty of peace with
Spain, though the latter does not choose to break openly, may induce
her to subsidize _us_ to cruise against them with a given force.
Article 9 and 10, concerning fisheries, to be omitted, as inapplicable.
Article 11. The first paragraph of this article, respecting the _droit
d'aubaine_, to be omitted; that law being supposed peculiar to France.
Article 17, giving asylum in the ports of either to the armed vessels
of the other, with the prizes taken from the enemies of that other,
must be qualified as it is in the 19th article of the Prussian treaty;
as the stipulation in the latter part of the article, "that no shelter
or refuge shall be given in the ports of the one to such as shall have
made prize on the subjects of the other of the parties," would forbid us
in case of a war between France and Spain, to give shelter in our ports
to prizes made by the latter on the former, while the first part of
the article would oblige us to shelter those made by the former on the
latter--a very dangerous covenant, and which ought never to be repeated
in any other instance.
Article 29. Consuls should be received in all the ports at which the
vessels of either party may be received.
Article 30, concerning free ports in Europe and America. Free ports in
the Spanish possessions in America, and particularly at the Havana, San
Domingo, in the island of that name, and St. John of Porto Rico, are
more to be desired than expected. It can, therefore, only be recommended
to the best endeavors of the commissioners to obtain them. It will be
something to obtain for our vessels, flour, &c., admission to those ports
during their pleasure. In like manner, if they could be prevailed on
to re-establish our right of cutting log-wood in the bay of Campeachy,
on the footing on which it stood before the treaty of 1763, it would be
desirable, and not endanger, to us, any contest with the English, who,
by the Revolution treaty, are restrained to the south-eastern parts of
Yucatan.
Article 31. The _act_ of ratification, on our part, may require a
twelvemonth from the date of the treaty, as the Senate meets regularly
but once a year; and to return it to Madrid, for exchange, may require
four months more. It would be better, indeed, if Spain would send her
ratification to be exchanged by her representative here.
The treaty must not exceed twelve or fifteen years' duration, except
the clauses relating to boundary, and the navigation of the Mississippi,
which must be perpetual and final. Indeed, these two subjects had better
be in a separate instrument.
There might have been mentioned a third species of arrangement, that
of making special agreements on every special subject of commerce,
and of setting a tariff of duty to be paid on each side, on every
particular article; but this would require in our commissioners a very
minute knowledge of our commerce, as it is impossible to foresee every
proposition of this kind which might be brought into discussion, and
to prepare them for it by information and instruction from hence. Our
commerce, too, is, as yet, rather in a course of experiment, and the
channels in which it will ultimately flow, are not sufficiently known to
enable us to provide for it by special agreement. Nor have the exigencies
of our new government, as yet, so far developed themselves, as that we
can know to what degree we may or must have recourse to commerce for
the purposes of revenue. No common consideration, therefore, ought to
induce us, as yet, to arrangements of this kind. Perhaps nothing should
do it with any nation, short of the privileges of natives in all their
possessions, foreign and domestic.
It were to be wished, indeed, that some positively favorable stipulations
respecting our grain, flour, and fish, could be obtained, even on our
giving reciprocal advantages to some other commodities of Spain, say
her wines and brandies.
But, 1st. If we quit the ground of the _most favored nation_, as to
certain articles for our convenience, Spain may insist on doing the same
for other articles for her convenience, and thus our commissioners will
get themselves on the ground of a treaty of _detail_, for which they
will not be prepared.
2d. If we grant favor to the wines and brandies of Spain, then Portugal
and Spain will demand the same; and in order to create an equivalent,
Portugal may lay a duty on our fish and grain, and France, a prohibition
on our whale oils, the removal of which will be proposed as an equivalent.
This much, however, as to grain and flour, may be attempted. There has,
not long since, been a considerable duty laid on them in Spain. This
was while a treaty on the subject of commerce was pending between us and
Spain, as that court considers the matter. It is not generally thought
right to change the state of things pending a treaty concerning them.
On this consideration, and on the motive of cultivating our friendship,
perhaps the commissioners may induce them to restore this commodity
to the footing on which it was, on opening the conferences with Mr.
Gardoqui, on the 26th day of July, 1785. If Spain says, "do the same by
your tonnage on our vessels," the answer may be, that our foreign tonnage
affects Spain very little, and other nations very much; whereas the duty
on flour in Spain affects us very much, and other nations very little.
Consequently, there would be no equality in reciprocal relinquishment,
as there had been none in the reciprocal innovation; and Spain, by
insisting on this, would, in fact, only be aiding the interests of her
rival nations, to whom we should be forced to extend the same indulgence.
At the time of opening the conferences, too, we had, as yet, not erected
any system; our government itself being not yet erected. Innovation then
was unavoidable on our part, if it be innovation to establish a system.
We did it on fair and general ground; on ground favorable to Spain. But
they had a system, and, therefore, innovation was avoidable on their part.
It is known to the commissioners that we found it expedient to ask
the interposition of France, lately, to bring on this settlement of
our boundary, and the navigation of the Mississippi. How far that
interposition has contributed to produce it, is uncertain. But we have
reason to believe that her further interference would not produce an
agreeable effect on Spain. The commissioners, therefore, are to avoid
all further communications on the subject with the ministers of France,
giving them such explanations as may preserve their good dispositions.
But if, ultimately, they shall find themselves unable to bring Spain to
agreement on the subject of the navigation and boundary, the interposition
of France, as a mutual friend, and the guarantee of our limits, is then
to be asked, in whatever light Spain may choose to consider it.
Should the negotiations on the subject of navigation and boundary
assume, at any time, an unhopeful aspect, it may be proper that Spain
should be given to understand, that, if they are discontinued without
coming to any agreement, the Government of the United States cannot be
responsible for the longer forbearance of their western inhabitants. At
the same time the abandonment of the negotiation should be so managed
as that, without engaging us to a further suspension of the exercise of
our rights, we may not be committed to resume them on the instant. The
present turbid situation of Europe cannot leave us long without a safe
occasion of resuming our territory and navigation, and of carving for
ourselves those conveniences, on the shores, which may facilitate and
protect the latter effectually and permanently.
We had a right to expect that, pending a negotiation, all things would
have remained in _statu quo_, and that Spain would not have proceeded
to possess herself of other parts of our territory. But she has lately
taken and fortified a new post on the Walnut hills, above the mouth
of the Yazoo river, and far above the 31st degree. This garrison ought
to have been instantly dislodged; but for our wish to be in friendship
with Spain, and our confidence in her assurances "to bide by the limits
established in our treaty with England," complaints of this unfriendly
and uncandid procedure may be brought forward or not, as the commissioners
shall see expedient.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Mr. Short is desired to purchase this book at
Amsterdam, or Paris, as he may not find it at Madrid, and
when it shall have answered the purposes of this mission,
let it be sent here for the use of the Secretary of State's
office.
[28] Rivers belong to the public, that is to say to the
Roman people.
[29] "The use of the banks belong also to the public by
the laws of nations, as the use of the river itself does.
Therefore, every one is free to moor his vessel to the
bank, to fasten his cables to the trees growing on it, to
deposit the cargo of his vessel in those places in like
manner as every one is free to navigate the river itself."
[30] "The use of the shores also belongs to the public, or
is under the law of nations, as is that of the sea itself.
Therefore it is, that those who choose, have a right to
build huts there, into which they may betake themselves."
[31] "Nobody, therefore, is prohibited from landing on the
sea shore, walking there, or mooring their vessel there,
so nevertheless that they keep out of the villas, that is,
the habitations, monuments, and public buildings, erected
there, and do them no injury."
[32] "The most favored nation."
XXVII.--_Report on the case of Charles Russell and others, claiming
certain lands._
January 21, 1792.
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred, by the President of the
United States, the letter of the Governor of Virginia of January 7th,
1792, with the report of a committee of the House of Delegates of that
commonwealth, of December 12th, 1791, and resolution of the General
Assembly thereon, of December 17th, on the case of Charles Russell,
late an officer in the service of the said commonwealth, stating that a
considerable part of the tract of country allotted for the officers and
soldiers having fallen into the State of North Carolina on the extension
of their common boundary, the legislature of the said State had, in
1781, passed an act substituting in lieu thereof the tract of country
between the said boundary and the rivers Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee,
and subjecting the same to the claims of their officers and soldiers.
That the said Charles Russell had in consequence thereof, directed
warrants for two thousand six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds acres
of land to be located within the said tract of country; but that the
same belonging to the Chickasaws, he is unable to obtain a right thereto,
and that there are other officers and soldiers of the said commonwealth
under like circumstances:
Reports, That the tract of country before described, is within the
boundaries of the Chickasaw nation as established by the treaty of
Hopewell, the 16th day of January 1786.
That the right of occupancy of the said lands, therefore, being vested
in the said nation, the case of the said Charles Russell, and other
officers and soldiers of the said commonwealth, becomes proper to be
referred to the legislature of the United States for their consideration.
XXVIII.--_Report relative to negotiations at Madrid._
March 7, 1792.
The Secretary of State having understood, from communications with
the commissioners of his Catholic Majesty, subsequent to that which
he reported to the President on the 22d of December last, that though
they considered the navigation of the Mississippi as the principal
object of negotiation between the two countries, yet it was expected by
their court that the conferences would extend to all the matters which
were under negotiation on the former occasion with Mr. Gardoqui, and
particularly to some arrangements of commerce, is of opinion, that,
to renew the conferences on this subject also, since they desire it,
will be but friendly and respectful, and can lead to nothing without
our own consent; and that, to refuse it, might obstruct the settlement
of the questions of navigation and boundary; and, therefore, reports
to the President of the United States, the following observations and
instructions to the commissioners of the United States, appointed to
negotiate with the court of Spain a treaty or convention relative to the
navigation of the Mississippi; which observations and instructions, he
is of opinion, should be laid before the Senate of the United States,
and their decision be desired, whether they will advise and consent that
a treaty be entered into by the commissioners of the United States with
Spain conformable thereto.
After stating to our commissioners the foundation of our rights to
navigate the Mississippi, and to hold our southern boundary at the 31st
degree of latitude, and that each of these is to be a _sine quâ non_,
it is proposed to add as follows:
On the former conferences on the navigation of the Mississippi, Spain
chose to blend with it the subject of commerce; and, accordingly,
specific propositions thereon passed between the negotiators. Her object
then was to obtain our renunciation of the navigation, and to hold out
commercial arrangements perhaps as a lure to us. Perhaps, however, she
might then, and may now, really set a value on commercial arrangements
with us, and may receive them as a consideration for accommodating us in
the navigation, or may wish for them to have the appearance of receiving
a consideration. Commercial arrangements, if acceptable in themselves,
will not be the less so, if coupled with those relating to navigation and
boundary. We have only to take care that they be acceptable in themselves.
* * * * *
XXIX.--_Opinion on the Bill apportioning Representation._
April 4, 1792.
The Constitution has declared that representatives and direct taxes shall
be apportioned among the several States according to their respective
numbers. That the number of representatives shall not exceed one for
every 30,000, but each State shall have at least one representative, and
until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall
be entitled to choose 3, Massachusetts 2.
The bill for apportioning representatives among the several States,
without explaining any principle at all, which may show its conformity
with the constitution, to guide future apportionments, says, that New
Hampshire shall have 3 members, Massachusetts 16, &c. We are, therefore,
to find by experiment what has been the principle of the bill; to do
which, it is proper to state the federal or representable numbers of
each State, and the numbers allotted to them by the bill. They are as
follows:--
Members.
Vermont 85,532 3
New Hampshire 141,823 5
Massachusetts 475,327 16
Rhode Island 68,444 2
Connecticut 285,941 8
New York 352,915 11
New Jersey 179,556 6
Pennsylvania 432,880 14
Delaware 55,538 2
Maryland 278,513 9
Virginia 630,558 21
Kentucky 68,705 2
North Carolina 353,521 11
South Carolina 206,236 6
Georgia 70,843 2
--------- ---
3,636,312 120
It happens that this representation, whether tried as between great and
small States, or as between north and south, yields, in the present
instance, a tolerably just result; and, consequently, could not be
objected to on that ground, if it were obtained by the process prescribed
in the Constitution; but if obtained by any process out of that, it
becomes arbitrary and inadmissible.
The 1st member of the clause of the Constitution above cited is express,
that representatives shall be apportioned among the several States
according to their _respective numbers_. That is to say, they shall
be apportioned by some common ratio--for proportion, and ratio, are
equivalent words; and, in the definition of _proportion among numbers_,
that they have a ratio common to all, or in other words, a common divisor.
Now, trial will show that there is no common ratio, or divisor, which,
applied to the numbers of each State, will give to them the number of
representatives allotted in this bill. For trying the several ratios of
29, 30, 31, 32, 33, the allotments would be as follows:--
29 30 31 32 33 The Bill
-- -- -- -- -- --------
Vermont 2 2 2 2 2 3
New Hampshire 4 4 4 4 4 5
Massachusetts 16 15 15 14 14 16
Rhode Island 2 2 2 2 2 2
Connecticut 8 7 7 7 7 8
New York 12 11 11 11 10 11
New Jersey 6 5 5 5 5 6
Pennsylvania 14 14 13 13 13 14
Delaware 1 1 1 1 1 2
Maryland 9 9 8 8 8 9
Virginia 21 21 20 19 19 21
Kentucky 2 2 2 2 2 2
North Carolina 12 11 11 11 10 12
South Carolina 7 6 6 6 6 7
Georgia 2 2 2 2 2 2
--- --- --- --- --- ---
118 112 109 107 105 120
Then the bill reverses the constitutional precept, because, by it,
representatives are _not_ apportioned among the several States, according
to their respective numbers.
It will be said that, though, for taxes, there may always be found a
divisor which will apportion them among the States according to numbers
exactly, without leaving any remainder, yet, for _representatives_, there
can be no such common ratio, or divisor, which, applied to the several
numbers, will divide them exactly, without a remainder or fraction. I
answer, then, that taxes must be divided _exactly_, and representatives
_as nearly_ as the _nearest ratio_ will admit; and the fractions must
be neglected, because the Constitution calls absolutely that there be
an _apportionment or common ratio_, and if any fractions result from
the operation, it has left them unprovided for. In fact it could not
but foresee that such fractions would result, and it meant to submit
to them. It knew they would be in favor of one part of the Union at one
time, and of another at another, so as, in the end, to balance occasional
irregularities. But instead of such a _single_ common ratio, or uniform
divisor, as prescribed by the Constitution, the bill has applied _two
ratios_, at least, to the different States, to wit, that of 30,026 to
the seven following: Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia; and that of 27,770 to the eight others,
namely: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey,
Delaware, North Carolina, and South Carolina, as follows:--
Rhode Island 68,444 divided by 30,026 gives 2
New York 352,915 " " " 11
Pennsylvania 432,880 " " " 14
Maryland 278,513 " " " 9
Virginia 630,558 " " " 21
Kentucky 58,705 " " " 2
Georgia 70,843 " " " 2
Vermont 85,532 divided by 27,770 gives 3
New Hampshire 141,823 " " " 5
Massachusetts 475,327 " " " 16
Connecticut 235,941 " " " 8
New Jersey 179,556 " " " 6
Delaware 55,538 " " " 2
North Carolina 353,521 " " " 12
South Carolina 206,236 " " " 7
And if _two_ ratios be applied, then _fifteen_ may, and the distribution
become arbitrary, instead of being apportioned to numbers. Another member
of the clause of the Constitution which has been cited, says "the number
of representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000, but each State
shall have at least one representative." This last phrase proves that
it had no contemplation that all fractions, or _numbers below the common
ratio_ were to be unrepresented; and it provides especially that in the
case of a State whose whole number shall be below the common ratio, one
representative shall be given to it. This is the single instance where
it allows representation to any smaller number than the common ratio,
and by providing especially for it in this, shews it was understood
that, without special provision, the smaller number would in this case,
be involved in the general principle. The first phrase of the above
citations, that "the number of representatives shall not exceed one for
every 30,000," is violated by this bill which has given to eight States
a number exceeding one for every 30,000, to wit, one for every 27,770.
In answer to this, it is said that this phrase may mean either the 30,000
_in each State_, or the 30,000 _in the whole Union_, and that in the
latter case it serves only to find the amount of the whole representation;
which, in the present state of population, is 120 members. Suppose the
phrase might bear both meanings, which will common sense apply to it?
Which did the universal understanding of our country apply to it? Which
did the Senate and Representatives apply to it during the pendency of the
first bill, and even till an advanced stage of this second bill, when
an ingenious gentleman found out the doctrine of fractions, a doctrine
so difficult and inobvious, as to be rejected at first sight by the very
persons who afterwards became its most zealous advocates?
The phrase stands in the midst of a number of others, every one of which
relates to States in their separate capacity. Will not plain common sense
then, understand it, like the rest of its context, to relate to States
in their separate capacities?
But if the phrase of one for 30,000 is only meant to give the aggregate
of representatives, and not at all to influence their apportionment
among the States, then the 120 being once found, in order to apportion
them, we must recur to the former rule which does it according to the
numbers of _the respective States_; and we must take the _nearest common
divisor_, as the ratio of distribution, that is to say, that divisor
which, applied to every State, gives to them such numbers as, added
together, come nearest to 120. This nearest common ratio will be found
to be 28,658, and will distribute 119 of the 120 members, leaving only
a single residuary one. It will be found too to place 96,648 fractional
numbers in the eight northernmost States, and 106,582 in the seven
southernmost. The following table shows it:
Ratio, 28,658 Fraction.
------
Vermont 85,832 2 27,816
New Hampshire 141,823 4 26,391
Massachusetts 475,327 16 13,599
Rhode Island 68,444 2 10,728
Connecticut 235,941 8 5,077
New York 352,915 12 6,619
New Jersey 119,856 6 6,408
Pennsylvania 432,880 15 10 96,648
Delaware 55,538 1 26,680
Maryland 278,503 9 18,191
Virginia 630,558 21 24,540
Kentucky 68,705 2 10,989
North Carolina 353,521 12 7,225
South Carolina 206,236 7 4,230
Virginia 70,843 2 23,137 105,582
--------- ---- ------- -------
3,636,312 119 202,230 202,230
Whatever may have been the intention, the effect of neglecting the
nearest divisor, (which leaves but one residuary member,) and adopting
a distant one (which leaves eight), is merely to take a member from New
York and Pennsylvania, each, and give them to Vermont and New Hampshire.
But it will be said, this is giving more than one for 30,000. True, but
has it not been just said that the one for 30,000 is prescribed only to
fix the aggregate number, and that we are not to mind it when we come
to apportion them among the States? That for this we must recur to the
former rule which distributes them according to the numbers in each
State? Besides does not the bill itself apportion among seven of the
States by the ratio of 27,770? which is much more than one for 30,000.
Where a phrase is susceptible of two meanings, we ought certainly to
adopt that which will bring upon us the fewest inconveniences. Let us
weigh those resulting from both constructions.
From that giving to each State a member for every 30,000 in that State
results the single inconvenience that there may be large portions
unrepresented, but it being a mere hazard on which State this will
fall, hazard will equalize it in the long run. From the others result
exactly the same inconvenience. A thousand cases may be imagined to
prove it. Take one. Suppose eight of the States had 45,000 inhabitants
each, and the other seven 44,999 each, that is to say each one less than
each of the others. The aggregate would be 674,993, and the number of
representatives at one for 30,000 of the aggregate, would be 22. Then,
after giving one member to each State, distribute the seven residuary
members among the seven highest fractions, and though the difference of
population be only an unit, the representation would be the double.
Fractions.
1st. 45,000 2 15,000
2d. 45,000 2 15,000
3d. 45,000 2 15,000
4th. 45,000 2 15,000
5th. 45,000 2 15,000
6th. 45,000 2 15,000
7th. 45,000 2 15,000
8th. 45,000 1 15,000
9th. 44,999 1 14,999
10th. 44,999 1 14,999
11th. 44,999 1 14,999
12th. 44,999 1 14,999
13th. 44,999 1 14,999
14th. 44,999 1 14,999
15th. 14,999
------- --
674,993 22
Here a single inhabitant the more would count as 30,000. Nor is this case
imaginable, only it will resemble the real one whenever the fractions
happen to be pretty equal through the whole States. The numbers of our
census happen by accident to give the fractions all very small, or very
great, so as to produce the strongest case of inequality that could
possibly have occurred, and which may never occur again. The probability
is that the fractions will generally descend gradually from 29,999 to
1. The inconvenience then of large unrepresented fractions attends both
constructions; and while the most obvious construction is liable to no
other, that of the bill incurs many and grievous ones.
1. If you permit the large fraction in one State to choose a
representative for one of the small fractions in another State, you take
from the latter its election, which constitutes real representation,
and substitute a virtual representation of the disfranchised fractions,
and the tendency of the doctrine of virtual representation has been too
well discussed and appreciated by reasoning and resistance on a former
great occasion to need development now.
2. The bill does not say that it has given the residuary representatives
_to the greatest fraction_; though in fact it has done so. It seems to
have avoided establishing that into a rule, lest it might not suit on
another occasion. Perhaps it may be found the next time more convenient
to distribute them _among the smaller States_; at another time _among
the larger States_; at other times according to any other crotchet which
ingenuity may invent, and the combinations of the day give strength to
carry; or they may do it arbitrarily by open bargains and cabal. In short
this construction introduces into Congress a scramble, or a vendue for
the surplus members. It generates waste of time, hot blood, and may at
some time, when the passions are high, extend a disagreement between
the two Houses, to the perpetual loss of the thing, as happens now in
the Pennsylvania assembly; whereas the other construction reduces the
apportionment always to an arithmetical operation, about which no two
men can ever possibly differ.
3. It leaves in full force the violation of the precept which declares
that representatives shall be _apportioned_ among the States according
to their numbers, _i. e._, by some common ratio.
Viewing this bill either as a _violation of the constitution_, or as
giving an _inconvenient exposition of its words_, is it a case wherein
the President ought to interpose his negative? I think it is.
1. The non-user of his negative begins already to excite a belief that no
President will ever venture to use it; and has, consequently, begotten a
desire to raise up barriers in the State legislatures against Congress,
throwing off the control of the constitution.
2. It can never be used more pleasingly to the public, than in the
protection of the constitution.
3. No invasions of the constitution are fundamentally so dangerous as the
tricks played on their own numbers, apportionment, and other circumstances
respecting themselves, and affecting their legal qualifications to
legislate for the union.
4. The majorities by which this bill has been carried (to wit: of one in
the Senate and two in the Representatives) show how divided the opinions
were there.
5. The whole of both houses admit the constitution will bear the other
exposition, whereas the minorities in both deny it will bear that of
the bill.
6. The application of any one ratio is intelligible to the people, and
will, therefore be approved, whereas the complex operations of this bill
will never be comprehended by them, and though they may acquiesce, they
cannot approve what they do not understand.
XXX.--_Opinion relative to a case of recapture, by citizens of the
United States, of slaves escaped into Florida, and of an American captain
enticing French slaves from St. Domingo._
December 3, 1792.
Complaint has been made by the Representatives of Spain that certain
individuals of Georgia entered the State of Florida, and without any
application to the Government, seized and carried into Georgia, certain
persons, whom they claimed to be their slaves. This aggression was thought
the more of, as there exists a convention between that government and
the United States against receiving fugitive slaves.
The minister of France has complained that the master of an American
vessel, while lying within a harbor of St. Domingo, having enticed some
negroes on board his vessel, under pretext of employment, bought them
off, and sold them in Georgia as slaves.
1. Has the general government cognizance of these offences? 2. If it
has, is any law already provided for trying and punishing them?
1. The Constitution says "Congress shall have power to lay and collect
taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts &c., provide for
the common defence and _general welfare_ of the United States." I do
not consider this clause as reaching the point. I suppose its meaning
to be, that Congress may collect taxes for the purpose of providing for
the _general welfare_, in those cases wherein the Constitution empowers
them to act for the general welfare. To suppose that it was meant to give
them a distinct substantive power, to do _any act_ which might tend to
the _general welfare_, is to render all the enumerations useless, and to
make their powers unlimited. We must seek the power therefore in some
other clause of the Constitution. It says further, that Congress shall
have power to "define and punish piracies and felonies committed on
the high seas, and offences against the law of nations." These offences
were not committed on the high seas, and consequently not within that
branch of the clause. Are they against the law of nations, taken as it
may be in its whole extent, as founded, 1st, in nature; 2d, usage; 3d,
convention? So much may be said in the affirmative, that the legislators
ought to send the case before the judiciary for discussion; and the
rather, when it is considered that unless the offenders can be punished
under this clause, there is no other which goes directly to their case,
and consequently our peace with foreign nations will be constantly at
the discretion of individuals.
2. Have the legislators sent this question before the Courts by any
law already provided? The act of 1789, chapter 20, section 9, says the
district courts shall have cognizance concurrent with the courts of the
several States, or the circuit courts, of all causes, where an _alien
sues for a tort only_, in violation of the law of nations: but what if
there be no alien whose interest is such as to support an action for
the tort?--which is precisely the case of the aggression on Florida. If
the act in describing the jurisdiction of the Courts, had given them
cognizance of proceedings by way of indictment or information against
offenders under the law of nations, for the public wrong, and on the
public behalf, as well as to an individual for the special tort, it
would have been the thing desired.
The same act, section 13, says, the "Supreme Court shall have exclusively
all such jurisdiction of suits or proceedings against ambassadors,
or other public ministers, or their domestics or domestic servants,
as a court of law can have or exercise consistently, with the law of
nations."--Still this is not the case, no ambassador, &c., being concerned
here. I find nothing else in the law applicable to this question, and
therefore presume the case is still to be provided for, and that this
may be done by enlarging the jurisdiction of the courts, so that they may
sustain indictments and informations on the public behalf, for offences
against the law of nations.
[_A note added by Mr. Jefferson at a later period._]
On further examination it does appear that the 11th section of the
judiciary act above cited gives to the circuit courts exclusively,
cognizance of all crimes and offences cognizable under the authority
of the United States, and not otherwise provided for. This removes the
difficulty, however, but one step further;--for questions then arise,
1st. What is the peculiar character of the offence in question; to wit,
treason, felony, misdemeanor, or trespass? 2d. What is its specific
punishment--capital or what? 3d. Whence is the venue to come?
XXXI.--_Report on Assays at the Mint, communicated to the House of
Representatives, January 8, 1793._
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred, by the President of the
United States, the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
29th of November, 1792, on the subject of experiments of France, England,
Spain, and Portugal, reports:
That assays and experiments have been, accordingly, made at the mint,
by the director, and under his care and inspection, of sundry gold and
silver coins of France, England, Spain, and Portugal, and of the quantity
of fine gold and alloy in each of them, and the specific gravities of
those of gold given in by the director, a copy of which, and of the
letter covering it, are contained in the papers marked A and B.
A.
January 7, 1793.
SIR:--I have, herewith, enclosed the result of our assays, &c., of
the coins of France, England, Spain, and Portugal. In the course of the
experiments, a very small source of error was detected, too late for the
present occasion, but which will be carefully guarded against in future.
I am, with the most perfect esteem, your most obedient humble servant,
DAVID RITTENHOUSE, _Director of the Mint_.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, _Secretary of State_.
_B._
_Assay of gold coins._
=======================+==============================+==========
| In 24 grains. |
Date +--------------+---------------+ Specific
| Fine gold. | Alloy. | gravity.
-----------------------+--------------+---------------+----------
| grs. 32 pts.| grs. 32 pts.|
{1726| 21 16 | 2 16 | 17.48
{1734| 21 19 | 2 13 | 17.38
French guineas, {1742| 21 26 | 2 06 | 17.58
{1753| 21 03 | 2 29 | 17.23
{1775| 21 22 | 2 10 | 17.57
{1786| 21 22 | 2 10 | 17.51
Double do. {1789| 21 22 | 2 10 | 17.50
{1790| 21 25 | 2 07 | 17.57
{1776| 21 21 | 2 11 | 17.53
{1780| 21 00 | 3 00 | 17.57
Spanish pistoles, {1786| 21 18 | 2 14 | 17.63
{1788| 21 02 | 2 30 | 17.00
{1755| 21 28 | 2 04 | 17.78
{1777| 21 31 | 2 01 | 17.75
{1785| 21 30 | 2 02 | 17.78
English guineas, {1788| 21 31 | 2 01 | 17.79
{1789| 22 03 | 1 29 | 17.78
{1791| 22 01 | 1 31 | 17.74
-----------------------+--------------+---------------+---------
{1739| 21 31 | 2 01 | 17.63
{1770| 22 05 | 1 27 | 17.78
Half johannes of {1776| 22 05 | 1 27 | 17.87
Portugal, {1785| 21 30 | 2 02 | 17.68
{1788| 21 31 | 2 01 | 17.78
=======================+==============+===============+=========
_Silver coins._
=================================+=================================
| In 12 ounces.
Date. +----------------+----------------
| Fine silver. | Alloy.
---------------------------------+----------------+----------------
| oz. dwts. grs. | oz. dwts. grs.
English half-crown of William | |
III. | 10 19 09½ | 1 00 14½
English shilling, 1787| 11 00 02½ | 0 19 21½
French crown, 1791| 10 16 00 | 1 04 00
Do. half-crown, 1739| 10 17 00 | 1 03 00
Do. 1792| 10 16 19 | 1 03 05
{ 1772| 10 15 05 | 1 04 19
Spanish dollar of { 1782| 10 14 02½ | 1 05 21½
{ 1790| 10 14 00 | 1 06 00
{ 1791| 10 14 21½ | 1 05 02½
=================================+================+================
MINT, January 7, 1793.
Assayed by Mr. David Ott, under my inspection, at the mint, in pursuance
of a resolution of Congress of November 29, 1792. I have added the
specific gravity of each piece of gold coin.
DAVID RITTENHOUSE, _Director of the Mint_.
XXXII.----_Report on the petition of John Rogers, relative to certain
lands on the north-east side of the Tennessee._
February 16, 1793.
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred, by the House of
Representatives of the United States, the petition of John Rogers, setting
forth, that as an officer of the State of Virginia, during the last war,
he became entitled to two thousand acres of lands on the north-east side
of the Tennessee, at its confluence with the Ohio, and to two thousand
four hundred acres in different parcels, between the same river and
the Mississippi, all of them within the former limit of Virginia, which
lands were allotted to him under an act of the Legislature of Virginia,
before its deed of cession to the United States; that by the treaty of
Hopewell, in 1786, the part of the country comprehending these lands
was ceded to the Chickasaw Indians; and praying compensation for the same,
Reports, That the portion of country comprehending the said parcels of
land, has been ever understood to be claimed, and has certainly been
used, by the Chickasaw and Cherokee Indians for their hunting grounds.
The Chickasaws holding exclusively from the Mississippi to the Tennessee,
and extending their claim across that river, eastwardly, into the claims
of the Cherokees, their conterminous neighbors.
That the government of Virginia was so well apprized of the rights of
the Chickasaws to a portion of country within the limit of that State,
that about the year 1780, they instructed their agent, residing with the
southern Indians, to avail himself of the first opportunity which should
offer, to purchase the same from them, and that, therefore, any act of
that Legislature allotting these lands to their officers and soldiers
must probably have been passed on the supposition, that a purchase of
the Indian right could be made, which purchase, however, has never been
made.
That, at the treaty of Hopewell, the true boundary between the United
States on the one part, and the Cherokees and Chickasaws on the other,
was examined into and acknowledged, and by consent of all parties, the
unsettled limits between the Cherokees and Chickasaws were at the same
time ascertained, and in that part particularly, were declared to be the
highlands dividing the waters of the Cumberland and Tennessee, whereby
the whole of the petitioner's locations were found to be in the Chickasaw
country.
That the right of occupation of the Cherokees and Chickasaws in this
portion of the country, having never been obtained by the United States,
or those under whom they claim it, cannot be said to have been ceded by
them at the treaty of Hopewell, but only recognized as belonging to the
Chickasaws, and retained to them.
That the country south of the Ohio was formerly contested between the
Six Nations and the southern Indians for hunting grounds.
That the Six Nations sold for a valuable consideration to the then
government their right to that country, describing it as extending from
the mouth of the Tennessee upwards. That no evidence can at this time
and place be procured, as to the right of the southern Indians, that
is to say, the Cherokees and Chickasaws, to the same country; but it is
believed that they voluntarily withdrew their claims within the Cumberland
river, retaining their right so far, which consequently could not be
conveyed from them, or to us, by the act of the Six Nations, unless it be
proved that the Six Nations had acquired a right to the country between
the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers by conquest over the Cherokees and
Chickasaws, which it is believed cannot be proved.
That, therefore, the locations of the petitioner must be considered as
made within the Indian territory, and insusceptible of being reduced
into his possession, till the Indian right be purchased.
That this places him on the same footing with Charles Russell and others,
officers of the same State, who had located their bounty lands in like
manner, within the Chickasaw lines, whose case was laid before the House
of Representatives of the United States at the last session, and remains
undecided on; and that the same and no other measure should be dealt to
this petitioner which shall be provided for them.
XXXIII.--_Report relative to the Boundaries of the Lands between the
Ohio and the Lakes acquired by treaties from the Indians._
March 10, 1793.
The Secretary of State, according to instructions received from the
President of the United States,
Reports, That, for the information of the commissioners appointed to
treat with the western Indians, he has examined the several treaties
entered into with them subsequent to the declaration of Independence,
and relating to the lands between the Ohio and the lakes, and also the
extent of the grants, reservations, and appropriations of the same lands,
made either by the United States, or by individual States within the
same period, and finds that the lands obtained by the said treaties, and
not so granted, reserved, or appropriated, are bounded by the following
lines, to wit:
Northwardly. By a line running from the fork of the Tuscarora's branch
of the Muskingum, at the crossing-place above Fort Lawrence. Westwardly
(towards the portage of the Big-Miami) to the main branch of that river,
then down the Miami, to the fork of that river next below the old fort,
which was taken by the French in 1752, thence due west to the river De la
Panse, and down that river to the Wabash; which lines were established
with the Wiandots, Delawares, Chippawas, and Ottawas, by the treaty of
Fort McIntosh, and with the Shawanese by that of the Great Miami.
Westwardly. By the bounds of the Wabash Indians.
Eastwardly. By the million of acres appropriated to military claimants,
by the resolution of Congress of October 23, 1787, and lying in the
angle between the seventh range of townships counted westwardly, from
the Pennsylvania boundary, and the tenth range counted from the Ohio
northwardly along the said seventh, which million of acres may perhaps
extend westwardly, so as to comprehend the twelfth range of townships,
counted in that direction from the Pennsylvania boundary, under which
view the said twelfth range may be assumed for the eastern boundary of
the territory now under consideration, from the said tenth range to the
Indian line.
Southwardly. By the northern boundary of the said tenth range of townships
to the Sioto river, and along the said river to what shall be the
northern limits of the appropriations for the Virginia line; (which two
last lines are those of the lands granted to the Sioto company,) thence
along what shall be the _northern_ limits of the said appropriations
of the Virginia line to the little Miami, and along the same to what
shall be the northern limit of one million of acres of land purchased
by John C. Symmes; thence due west along the said northern limit of
the said John C. Symmes, to the Great Miami, and down the same to its
mouth, then along the Ohio to General Clark's lands, and round the said
lands to the Ohio again, and down the same to the Wabash, or the lands
of the Indians inhabiting it. Which several lines are delineated on
the copy of Hutchins' map accompanying this report; the dotted parts of
the delineation denoting that they are conjectural. And it is further
necessary to apprize the commissioners that though the points at which
these several lines touches the Ohio, are taken from actual surveys,
yet the country included by the said lines, not being laid down from
actual survey, their lengths and intersections with each other, and
with the watercourses, as appearing in the maps, are not at all to be
relied on. No notice is here taken of the lands at the mouth of the Ohio
appropriated for military bounties by the same resolution of Congress
of October 22, 1787, nor of the settlement of Cahokea, Kaskaskia, Post
Vincennes, &c., because these can concern no Indians but those of the
Illinois and Wabash, whose interests should be transacted with themselves
separately, and not be permitted to be placed under the patronage of
the western Indians.
XXXIV.--_Report on the proceedings of the Secretary of State to transfer
to Europe the annual fund of $40,000, appropriated to that Department._
April 18, 1793.
The Secretary of State thinking it his duty to communicate to the
President his proceedings of the present year for transferring to Europe
the annual fund of $40,000 appropriated to the Department of State, (a
report whereof, was unnecessary the two former years, as monies already
in the hands of our bankers in Europe were put under his orders,)
Reports, That in consequence of the President's order of March 23d, he
received from the Secretary of the Treasury, March 31st, a warrant on
the Treasurer for $39,500; that it being necessary to purchase private
bills of exchange to transfer the money to Europe, he consulted with
persons acquainted with that business, who advised him not to let it
be known that he was to purchase bills at all, as it would raise the
exchange; and to defer the purchase a few days until the British packet
should be gone, on which event bills generally sunk some few per cent.
He therefore deferred the purchase, or giving any orders for it till
April 10th, when he engaged Mr. Vaughan (whose line of business enabled
him to do it without suspicion,) to make the purchase for him. He then
delivered the warrant to the Treasurer, and received a credit at the
Bank of the United States for $39,500, whereon he had an account opened
between "The Department of State and the Bank of the United States."
That Mr. Vaughan procured for him the next day the following bills:
Willing, Morris, and Swanwich, on John and Francis Baring & Co., London,
£3,000=$13,000.
Walter Stewart on Joseph Birch, March, Liverpool, £400=$1,733 33.
Robert Gilmer & Co., on James Strachan and James Mackenzie, London,
endorsed by Mordecai Lewis.
£200 }
150 } £600 $2,600
250 } --------------------
£4,000 = $17,333 33.
Averaging 4s. 7-38/100d. the dollar, or about 2½ per cent. above par,
which added to the one per cent loss heretofore always sustained on
the government bills (which allowed but 99 florins, instead of 100 do.
for every $40) will render the fund somewhat larger this year than
heretofore; that these bills being drawn on London, (for none could
be got on Amsterdam but to considerable loss, added to the risk of the
present possible situation of that place), he had them made payable to
Mr. Pinckney, and enclosed them to him by Captain Cutting, in the letter
of April 12th, now communicated to the President, and at the same time
wrote the letters of the same date to our bankers at Amsterdam and to
Col. Humphreys, now also communicated to the President, which will place
under his view the footing on which this business is put, and which is
still subject to any change he may think proper to direct, as neither
the letters, nor bills are yet gone.
The Secretary of State proposes, hereafter, to remit in the course of
each quarter $10,000 for the ensuing quarter, as that will enable him
to take advantage of the times when exchange is low. He proposes to
direct, at this time, a further purchase of $12,166 66, (which with the
$500 formerly obtained and $17,333 33 now remitted, will make $30,000
of this year's fund,) at long sight, which circumstance with the present
low rate of exchange, will enable him to remit it to advantage.
He has only further to add that he delivered to Mr. Vaughan orders on
the bank of the United States in favor of the persons themselves from
whom the bills were purchased, for their respective sums.
XXXV.--_Opinion on the question whether the United States have a right
to renounce their treaties with France, or to hold them suspended till
the government of that country shall be established._
April 28, 1793.
I proceed in compliance with the requisition of the President to give an
opinion in writing on the general question, whether the United States
have a right to renounce their treaties with France, or to hold them
suspended till the government of that country shall be established?
In the consultation at the President's on the 19th inst., the Secretary
of the Treasury took the following positions and consequences. France
was a monarchy when we entered into treaties with it; but it has declared
itself a republic, and is preparing a republican form of government. As
it may issue in a republic or a military despotism, or something else
which may possibly render our alliance with it dangerous to ourselves,
we have a right of election to renounce the treaty altogether, or to
declare it suspended till their government shall be settled in the form
it is ultimately to take; and then we may judge whether we will call
the treaties into operation again, or declare them forever null. Having
that right of election, now, if we receive their minister without any
qualifications, it will amount to an act of election to continue the
treaties; and if the change they are undergoing should issue in a form
which should bring danger on us, we shall not be then free to renounce
them. To elect to continue them is equivalent to the making a new
treaty, at this time, in the same form, that is to say, with a clause
of guarantee; but to make a treaty with a clause of guarantee, during
a war, is a departure from neutrality, and would make us associates in
the war. To renounce or suspend the treaties, therefore, is a necessary
act of neutrality.
If I do not subscribe to the soundness of this reasoning, I do most fully
to its ingenuity. I shall now lay down the principles which, according
to my understanding, govern the case.
I consider the people who constitute a society or nation as the source of
all authority in that nation; as free to transact their common concerns
by any agents they think proper; to change these agents individually, or
the organization of them in form or function whenever they please; that
all the acts done by these agents under the authority of the nation,
are the acts of the nation, are obligatory to them and enure to their
use, and can in no wise be annulled or affected by any change in the
form of the government, or of the persons administering it, consequently
the treaties between the United States and France, were not treaties
between the United States and Louis Capet, but between the two nations of
America and France; and the nations remaining in existence, though both
of them have since changed their forms of government, the treaties are
not annulled by these changes. The law of nations, by which this question
is to be determined, is composed of three branches. 1. The moral law of
our nature. 2. The usages of nations. 3. Their special conventions. The
first of these only concerns this question, that is to say the moral
law to which man has been subjected by his creator, and of which his
feelings or conscience, as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with
which his creator has furnished him. The moral duties which exist between
individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a
state of society, and the aggregate of the duties of all the individuals
composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any
other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist
as did between the individuals composing them, while in an unassociated
state, and their maker not having released them from those duties on
their forming themselves into a nation. Compacts then, between nation
and nation, are obligatory on them by the same moral law which obliges
individuals to observe their compacts. There are circumstances, however,
which sometimes excuse the non-performance of contracts between man and
man; so are there also between nation and nation. When performance,
for instance, becomes _impossible_, non-performance is not immoral;
so if performance becomes _self-destructive_ to the party, the law of
self-preservation overrules the laws of obligation in others. For the
reality of these principles I appeal to the true fountains of evidence,
the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature
has written her moral laws, and where every man may read them for
himself. He will never read there the permission to annul his obligations
for a time, or forever, whenever they become dangerous, useless, or
disagreeable; certainly not when merely useless or disagreeable, as seems
to be said in an authority which has been quoted, (Vattel, p. 2, 197) and
though he may, under certain degrees of danger, yet the danger must be
imminent, and the degree great. Of these, it is true, that nations are
to be judges for themselves; since no one nation has a right to sit in
judgment over another, but the tribunal of our consciences remains, and
that also of the opinion of the world. These will revise the sentence
we pass in our own case, and as we respect these, we must see that in
judging ourselves we have honestly done the part of impartial and rigorous
judges.
But reason which gives this right of self-liberation from a contract in
certain cases, has subjected it to certain just limitations.
I. The danger which absolves us must be great, inevitable and imminent.
Is such the character of that now apprehended from our treaties with
France? What is that danger? 1st. Is it that if their government issues
in a military despotism, an alliance with them may taint us with despotic
principles? But their government when we allied ourselves to it, was
perfect despotism, civil, and military, yet the treaties were made in
that very state of things, and, therefore, that danger can furnish no
just cause.
2d. Is it that their government may issue in a republic, and too much
strengthen our republican principles? But this is the hope of the great
mass of our constituents, and not their dread. They do not look with
longing to the happy mean of a limited monarchy.
3d. But, says the doctrine I am combatting, the change the French are
undergoing, may possibly end in something we know not what, and may bring
on us danger we know not whence. In short, it may end in a Raw-head and
bloody bones in the dark. Very well--let Raw-head and bloody bones come.
We shall be justified in making our peace with him by renouncing our
ancient friends and his enemies; for observe, it is not the _possibility
of danger_ which absolves a party from his contract for that possibility
always exists, and in every case. It existed in the present one, at the
moment of making the contract. If _possibilities_ would void contracts,
there never could be a valid contract, for possibilities hang over
everything. Obligation is not suspended till the danger is become real,
and the moment of it so imminent, that we can no longer avoid decision
without forever losing the opportunity to do it. But can a danger which
has not yet taken its shape, which does not yet exist, and never may
exist which cannot therefore be defined--can such a danger, I ask, be
so imminent that if we fail to pronounce on it in this moment, we can
never have another opportunity of doing it?
4. As to the danger apprehended, Is it that (the treaties remaining
valid) the clause guaranteeing their West Indian lands will engage us
in the war? But does the guarantee engage us to enter into the war on
any event? Are we to enter into it before we are called on by our allies?
Have we been called on by them? Shall we ever be called on?
Is it their interest to call on us?
Can they call on us before their islands are invaded, or immediately
threatened?
If they can save them themselves, have they a right to call on us?
Are we obliged to go to war at once, without trying peaceable negotiations
with their enemy?
If all these questions are against us, there are still others left behind.
Are we in a condition to go to war?
Can we be expected to begin before we are in condition?
Will the islands be lost if we do not save them?
Have we the means of saving them?
If we cannot save them, are we bound to go to war for a desperate object?
Many, if not most of these questions offer grounds of doubt whether the
clause of guarantee will draw us into the war. Consequently, if this
be danger apprehended, it is not yet certain enough to authorize us in
sound morality to declare, at this moment, the treaties null.
5. Is danger apprehended from the 17th article of the treaty of commerce,
which admits French ships of war and privateers to come and go freely,
with prizes made on their enemies, while their enemies are not to have the
same privilege with prizes made on the French? But Holland and Prussia
have approved of this article in our treaty with France, by subscribing
to an express salvo of it in our treaties with them. (Dutch treaty 22,
convention 6. Prussian treaty 19.) And England, in her last treaty with
France, (Art. 40,) has entered into the same stipulation verbatim, and
placed us in her ports on the same footing in which she is in ours, in
case of a war of either of us with France. If we are engaged in such a
war, England must receive prizes made on us by the French, and exclude
those made on the French by us. Nay, further; in this very article of
her treaty with France, is a salvo of any similar article in any anterior
treaty of either party; and ours with France being anterior, this salvo
confirms it expressly. Neither of these three powers, then, have a right
to complain of this article in our treaty.
6. Is the danger apprehended from the 22d article of our treaty of
commerce, which prohibits the enemies of France from fitting out
privateers in our posts, or selling their prizes here; but we are free
to refuse the same thing to France, there being no stipulation to the
contrary; and we ought to refuse it on principles of fair neutrality.
7. But the reception of a minister from the republic of France, without
qualifications, it is thought, will bring us into danger; because this,
it is said, will determine the continuance of the treaty, and take
from us the right of self-liberation, when at any time hereafter our
safety would require us to use it. The reception of the minister at
all, (in favor of which Colonel Hamilton has given his opinion, though
reluctantly, as he confessed,) is an acknowledgment of the legitimacy
of their government; and if the qualifications meditated are to deny
that legitimacy, it will be a curious compound which is to admit and
to deny the same thing. But I deny that the reception of a minister has
any thing to do with the treaties. There is not a word in either of them
about sending ministers. This has been done between us under the common
usage of nations, and can have no effect either to continue or annul
the treaties.
But how can any act of election have the effect to continue a treaty
which is acknowledged to be going on still?--for it was not pretended
the treaty was void, but only voidable if we choose to declare it so.
To make it void, would require an act of election, but to let it go on,
requires only that we should do nothing; and doing nothing can hardly
be an infraction of peace or neutrality.
But I go further and deny that the most explicit declaration made at this
moment that we acknowledge the obligation of the treaties, could take
from us the right of non-compliance at any future time, when compliance
would involve us in great and inevitable danger.
I conclude, then, that few of these sources threaten any danger at all;
and from none of them is it inevitable; and consequently, none of them
give us the right at this moment of releasing ourselves from our treaties.
II. A second limitation on our right of releasing ourselves, is that we
are to do it from so much of the treaties only as is bringing great and
inevitable danger on us, and not from the residue, allowing the other
party a right at the same time, to determine whether on our non-compliance
with that part, they will declare the whole void. This right they would
have, but we should not. Vattel, 2. 202. The only part of the treaty
which can really lead us into danger, is the clause of guarantee. That
clause is all that we could suspend in any case, and the residue will
remain or not at the will of the other party.
III. A third limitation is that when a party from necessity or danger
withholds compliance with part of a treaty, it is bound to make
compensation where the nature of the case admits and does not dispense
with it. 2 Vattel, 324. Wolf, 270. 443. If actual circumstances excuse
us from entering into the war under the clause of guarantee, it will be
a question whether they excuse us from compensation. Our weight in the
war admits of an estimate; and that estimate would form the measure of
compensation.
If, in withholding a compliance with any part of the treaties we do it
without just cause or compensation, we give to France a cause of war,
and so become associated in it on the other side. An injured friend is
the bitterest of foes, and France has not discovered either timidity,
or over-much forbearance on the late occasions. Is this the position
we wish to take for our constituents? It is certainly not the one they
would take for themselves.
I will proceed now to examine the principal authority which has been
relied on for establishing the right of self-liberation; because though
just in part, it would lead us far beyond justice, if taken in all the
latitude of which his expressions would admit. Questions of natural right
are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.
Those who write treatises of natural law, can only declare what their
own moral sense and reason dictate in the several cases they state. Such
of them as happen to have feelings and a reason coincident with those
of the wise and honest part of mankind, are respected and quoted as
witnesses of what is morally right or wrong in particular cases. Grotius,
Puffendorf, Wolf, and Vattel are of this number. Where they agree their
authority is strong; but where they differ, (and they often differ,) we
must appeal to our own feelings and reason to decide between them. The
passages in question shall be traced through all these writers; that we
may see wherein they concur, and where that concurrence is wanting. It
shall be quoted from them in the order in which they wrote, that is to
say, from Grotius first, as being the earliest writer, Puffendorf next,
then Wolf, and lastly Vattel, as latest in time.
GROTIUS 2. 16. 16.
Hither must be referred the common question concerning personal and
real treaties. If indeed it be with a free people, there can be no doubt
but that the engagement is in its nature real, because the subject is a
permanent thing, and even though the government of the State be changed
into a kingdom, the treaty remains; because the same body remains though
the head is changed; and as it was before now, the government which is
exercised by a king does not cease to be the government of the people.
There is an exception when the object seems peculiar to the government,
as if free cities contract a league for the defence of their freedom.
PUFFENDORF 8. 9. 6.
It is certain that every alliance made with a republic is real in its
nature, and continues consequently to the terms agreed on by the treaty,
although the magistrates who concluded it be dead before, so that the
form of government is changed even from a democracy to a monarchy, for
in this case the people do not cease to be the same, and the king, in
the case supposed, being established by the consent of the people who
abolished the republican government, is understood to accept the crown
with all the engagements which the people confessing it had contracted
as being free and governing themselves. There must nevertheless be
an exception of the alliances contracted with a view to preserve the
present government; as if two republics league for mutual defence against
those who would undertake to invade their liberty; for if one of these
two people consent afterwards voluntarily to change the form of the
government, the alliance ends of itself, because the reason on which it
was founded no longer subsists.
WOLF 1146.
The alliance which is made with a free people, or with a popular
government, is a real alliance; and as when the form of government
changes, the people remain the same (for it is the association which
forms the people, and not the manner of administering the government).
This alliance subsists, though the form of government changes, _unless_,
as is evident, the reason of the alliance was particular to the popular
state.
VATTEL 2. 197.
The same question presents itself in real alliances, and in general on
every alliance made with a State, and not in particular with a king for
the defence of his person. We ought, without doubt, to defend our ally
against all invasion, against all foreign violence, and even against
rebel subjects. We ought, in like manner, to defend a republic against
the enterprises of an oppressor of the public liberty. But we ought to
recollect that we are the ally of the state or of the nation, and not
its judge. If the nation has deposed its king in form; if the people of a
republic have driven away its magistrates, and have established themselves
free, or if they have acknowledged the authority of an usurper, whether
expressly or tacitly, to oppose these domestic arrangements--to contest
their justice or validity--would be to meddle with the government of the
nation, and to do it an injury. The ally remains the ally of the state,
notwithstanding the change which has taken place; _but if this change
renders the alliance useless, dangerous, or disagreeable to it, it is
free to renounce it; for it may say with truth, that it would not have
allied itself with this nation, if it had been under the present form
of its government_.
The doctrine then of Grotius, Puffendorf, and Wolf is, that "treaties
remain obligatory, notwithstanding any change in the form of government,
except in the single case, where the preservation of that form was the
object of the treaty;" there the treaty extinguishes, not by the election
or declaration of the party remaining in _statu quo_, but independently
of that, by the evanishment of the object. Vattel lays down in fact the
same doctrine, that treaties continue obligatory, notwithstanding a change
of government by the will of the other party;--that to oppose that will
would be a wrong; and that the ally remains an ally, notwithstanding the
change. So far he concurs with all the previous writers:--but he then
adds what they had not said nor could say; but if this change renders
the alliance _useless_, _dangerous_ or _disagreeable_ to it, it is free to
renounce it. It was unnecessary for him to have specified the exception
of _danger_ in this particular case, because the exception exists in all
cases, and its extent has been considered; but when he adds that, because
a contract is become merely _useless_ or _disagreeable_ we are free to
renounce it,--he is in opposition to Grotius, Puffendorf, and Wolf, who
admit no such license against the obligation of treaties, and he is in
opposition to the morality of every honest man to whom we may safely
appeal to decide whether he feels himself free to renounce a contract
the moment it becomes _merely useless_ or _disagreeable_ to him. We may
appeal to Vattel himself in those parts of his book where he cannot be
misunderstood, and to his known character, as one of the most zealous
and constant advocates for the preservation of good faith in all our
dealings. Let us hear him on other occasions; and first where he shows
what degree of danger or injury will authorize self-liberation from a
treaty: "If simple lesion," (lesion--the loss sustained by selling a
thing for less than half value, which degree of loss renders the sale
void by the Roman law,) "if simple lesion," says he, "or some degree of
disadvantage in a treaty does not suffice to render it invalid, it is
not so as to inconvenience which would go to the _ruin_ of the nation.
As every treaty ought to be made by sufficient power, a treaty pernicious
to the State is null, and not at all obligatory. No governor of a nation
having power to engage things capable of _destroying_ the State, for
the safety of which the empire entrusts to him, the nation itself, bound
necessarily to whatever its preservation and safety require, cannot enter
into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations." Here then
we find that the degree of injury or danger which he deems sufficient to
liberate us from a treaty, is that which would go to the absolute ruin or
destruction of the State;--not simply the lesion of the Roman law, not
merely the being disadvantageous or dangerous; for as he himself says,
Section 158, "lesion cannot render a treaty invalid. It is his duty who
enters into engagements, to weigh well all things before he concludes. He
may do with his property what he pleases. He may relinquish his rights
or renounce his advantages, as he judges proper. The acceptant is not
obliged to inform himself of his motives nor to weigh then just value.
If we could free ourselves from a compact because we find ourselves
injured by it, there would be nothing firm in the contracts of nations.
Civil laws may set limits to lesion, and determine the degree capable
of producing a nullity of the contract; but sovereigns acknowledge no
judge. How establish lesion among them? Who will determine the degree
sufficient to invalidate a treaty? The happiness and peace of nations
require manifestly that their treaties should not depend on a means of
nullity so vague and so dangerous."
Let us hear him again on the general subject of the observation of
treaties, Section 163: "It is demonstrated in natural law that he who
promises another, confers on him a perfect right to require the thing
promised, and that consequently, not to observe a perfect promise is to
violate the right of another; it is as manifest injustice as to plunder
any one of their right. All the tranquillity, the happiness and security
of mankind, rest on justice or the obligation to respect the rights of
others. The respect of others for our right of domain and property is
the security of our actual possessions. The faith of promises is the
security for the things which cannot be delivered or executed on the spot.
No more security, no more commerce among men, if they think themselves
not bound to preserve faith, to keep their word. This obligation, then,
is as necessary as it is natural and indubitable among nations who live
together in a state of nature, and who acknowledge no superior on earth.
To maintain order and peace in their society, nations and their governors
then ought to observe inviolably their promises and their treaties. This
is a great truth, although too often neglected in practice, is generally
acknowledged by all nations, the reproach of perfidy is a bitter affront
among sovereigns. Now he who does not observe a treaty is assuredly
perfidious, since he violates his faith. On the contrary, nothing is
so glorious to a prince and his nation as the reputation of inviolable
fidelity to his word." Again, Section 219, "Who will doubt that treaties
are of the things sacred among nations? They decide matters the most
important; they impose rules on the pretensions of sovereigns, they
cause the rights of nations to be acknowledged; they assume their most
precious interests. Among political bodies, sovereigns, who acknowledge
no superior on earth, treaties are the only means of adjusting their
different pretensions; of establishing a rule, to know on what to
count, on what to depend. But treaties are but vain words, if nations
do not consider them as respectable engagements, as rules inviolable for
sovereigns, and sacred through the whole earth." Section 220: "The faith
of treaties, that firm and sincere will, that invincible constancy in
fulfilling engagements, of which a declaration is made in a treaty, is
then holy and sacred among nations, whose safety and repose it ensures;
and if nations will not be wanting to themselves, they will load with
infamy whoever violates his faith."
After evidence so copious and explicit of the respect of this author
for the sanctity of treaties, we should hardly have expected that his
authority would have been resorted to for a wanton invalidation of them
whenever they should become merely _useless or disagreeable_. We should
hardly have expected that, rejecting all the rest of his book, this
scrap would have been culled and made the hook whereon to hang such a
chain of immoral consequences. Had the passage accidentally met our eye,
we should have imagined it had fallen from the author's pen under some
momentary view, not sufficiently developed to found a conjecture what
he meant, and we may certainly affirm that a fragment like this cannot
weigh against the authority of all other writers; against the uniform
and systematic doctrine of the very work from which it is torn; against
the moral feelings and the reason of all honest men. If the terms of the
fragment are not misunderstood, they are in full contradiction to all the
written and unwritten evidences of morality. If they are misunderstood,
they are no longer a foundation for the doctrines which have been built
on them.
But even had this doctrine been as true as it is manifestly false, it
would have been asked, to whom is it that the treaties with France have
become _disagreeable_? How will it be proved that they are _useless_?
The conclusion of the sentence suggests a reflection too strong to be
suppressed, "for the party may say with truth that it would not have
allied itself with this nation if it had been under the present form of
its government." The republic of the United States allied itself with
France when under a despotic government. She changes her government, and
declares it shall be a republic; prepares a form of republic extremely
free, and in the meantime is governing herself as such. And it is proposed
that America shall declare the treaties void, because it may say with
truth that it would not have allied itself with that nation if it had
been under the present form of its government. Who is the American who
can say with truth that he would not have allied himself to France if
she had been a republic? Or that a republic of any form would be as
_disagreeable_ as her ancient despotism?
Upon the whole I conclude, that the treaties are still binding,
notwithstanding the change of government in France; that no part of them
but the clause of guarantee holds up _danger_, even at a distance, and
consequently that a liberation from no other part would be prepared in
any case; that if that clause may ever bring _danger_, it is neither
extreme nor imminent, nor even probable that the authority for renouncing
a treaty, when _useless or disagreeable_, is either misunderstood or in
opposition to itself, to all other writers, and to every moral feeling;
that were it not so, these treaties are in fact neither useless or
disagreeable; that the receiving a minister from France at this time is
an act of no significance with respect to the treaties, amounting neither
to an admission nor denial of them, forasmuch as he comes not under any
stipulation in them; that were it an explicit admission, or were it an
express declaration of their obligation now to be made, it would not take
from us that right which exists at all times, of liberating ourselves
when an adherence to the treaties would be _ruinous_ or _destructive_ to
the society; and that the not renouncing the treaties now is so far from
being a breach of neutrality, that the doing it would be the breach, by
giving just cause of war to France.
XXXVI.--_Opinion relative to granting of passports to American vessels._
May 3, 1793.
It has been stated in our treaties with the French, Dutch and Prussians,
that when it happens that either party is at war, and the other neutral,
the neutral shall give passports of a certain tenor to the _vessels
belonging to their subjects_, in order to avoid dissension; and it
has been thought that passports of such high import to the persons and
property of our citizens should have the highest sanction; that of the
signature of the President, and seal of the United States. The authority
of Congress also, in the case of sea letters to East India vessels, was
in favor of this sanction. It is now become a question whether these
passports shall be given only to ships _owned and built_ in the United
States, or may be given also to those _owned_ in the United States,
though _built_ in foreign countries.
The persons and property of our citizens are entitled to the protection
of our government in all places where they may lawfully go. No laws
forbid a merchant to buy, own, and use a _foreign-built_ vessel. She is,
then, his lawful property, and entitled to the protection of his nation
whenever he is lawfully using her.
The laws indeed, for the encouragement of ship building, have given to
home-built vessels the exclusive privilege of being registered and paying
lighter duties. To this privilege, therefore, the foreign-built vessel,
though owned at home, does not pretend. But the laws have not said that
they withdraw their protection from the foreign-built vessel. To this
protection, then, she retains her title, notwithstanding the preference
given to the home-built vessel as to duties. It would be hard indeed
because the law has given one valuable right to home-built vessels, to
infer that it had taken away all rights from those foreign-built.
In conformity with the idea that all the vessels of a State are entitled
to its protection, the treaties before mentioned have settled that
passports shall be given, not merely to the vessels _built_ in the United
States, but to the vessels belonging to them; and when one of these
nations shall take a vessel, if she has not such a passport, they are
to conclude she does not _belong_ to the United States, and is therefore
lawful prize; so that to refuse these passports to foreign-built vessels
_belonging_ to our merchants, is to give them up to capture with their
cargoes. The most important interests of the United States hang upon this
question. The produce of the earth is their principle source of wealth.
Our _home-built_ vessels would suffice for the transportation of a very
small part of this produce to market, and even a part of these vessels
will be withdrawn by high premiums to other lines of business. All the
rest of our produce, then, must remain on our hands, or have its price
reduced by a war insurance. Many descriptions of our produce will not
bear this reduction, and would, therefore, remain on hand.
We shall lose also a great proportion of the profits of navigation. The
great harvest for these is when other nations are at war, and our flag
neutral. But if we can augment our stock of shipping only by the slow
process of building, the harvest will be over while we are only preparing
instruments to reap it. The moment of breeding seamen will be lost for
want of bottoms to embark them in.
France and Holland permit our vessels to be neutralized with them; not
even to suffer theirs to be purchased here might give them just cause to
revoke the privilege of naturalization given to ours, and would inflict
on the ship-building States and artizans a severe injury.
_Objection._ To protect foreign-built vessels will lessen the demand
for ship building here.
_Answer._ Not at all; because as long as we can build cheaper than other
nations, we shall be employed in preference to others; besides, shall
we permit the greatest part of the produce of our fields to rot on our
hands, or lose half its value by subjecting it to high insurance, merely
that our ship builders may have brisker employ? Shall the whole mass of
our farmers be sacrificed to the class of ship wrights?
_Objection._ There will be collusive transfers of foreign ships to our
merchants, merely to obtain for them the cover of our passports.
_Answer._ The same objection lies to giving passports to home-built
vessels. They may be owned, and are owned by foreigners, and may be
collusively re-transferred to our merchants to obtain our passports.
To lessen the danger of collusion, however, I should be for delivering
passports in our own ports only, if they were to be sent blank to foreign
ports to be delivered there, the power of checking collusion would be
small, and they might be employed to cover purposes of no benefit to
us (which we ought not to countenance), and to throw our vessels out
of business; but if issued only to vessels in our own ports, we can
generally be certain that the vessel is our property; and always that
the _cargo_ is of our produce. State the case that it shall be found
that all our shipping, home-built and foreign-built, is inadequate to
the transportation of our produce to market; so that after all these
are loaded, there shall yet remain produce on hand. This must be put
into vessels owned by foreigners. Should these obtain collusively the
protection of our passport, it will cover their _vessel_ indeed, but
it will cover also our _cargo_. I repeat it then, that if the issuing
passports be confined to our ports, it will be our own _vessels_ for
the most part, and always our _cargoes_ which will be covered by them.
I am, therefore, of opinion, that passports ought to be issued to all
vessels _belonging_ to citizens of the United States, but only on their
clearing out from our own ports, and for that voyage only.
XXXVII.--_Opinion relative to case of a British vessel captured by a
French vessel, purchased by French citizens, and fitted out as a Privateer
in one of our ports._
May 16, 1793.
The facts suggested, or to be taken for granted, because the contrary
is not known, in the case now to be considered, are, that a vessel was
purchased at Charleston, and fitted out as a privateer by French citizens,
manned with foreigners chiefly, but partly with citizens of the United
States. The command given to a French citizen by a regular commission
from his government; that she has made prize of an English vessel in the
open sea, and sent her into Philadelphia. The British minister demands
restitution, and the question is, whether the Executive of the United
States shall undertake to make it?
This transaction may be considered, 1st, as an offence against the United
States; 2d, as an injury to Great Britain.
In the first view it is not now to be taken up. The opinion being, that it
has been an act of disrespect to the jurisdiction of the United States,
of which proper notice is to be taken at a proper time.
Under the second point of view, it appears to me wrong on the part of the
United States (where not constrained by treaties) to permit one party in
the present war to do what cannot be permitted to the other. We cannot
permit the enemies of France to fit out privateers in our ports, by the
22d article of our treaty. We ought not, therefore, to permit France
to do it; the treaty leaving us free to refuse, and the refusal being
necessary to preserve a fair neutrality. Yet considering that the present
is the first case which has arisen; that it has been in the first moment
of the war, in one of the most distant ports of the United States, and
before measures could be taken by the government to meet all the cases
which may flow from the infant state of our government, and novelty of
our position, it ought to be placed by Great Britain among the accidents
of loss to which a nation is exposed in a state of war, and by no means
as a premeditated wrong on the part of the government. In the last
light it cannot be taken, because the act from which it results placed
the United States with the offended, and not the offending party. Her
minister has seen himself that there could have been on our part neither
permission or connivance. A very moderate apology then from the United
States ought to satisfy Great Britain.
The one we have made already is ample, to wit, a pointed disapprobation
of the transaction, a promise to prosecute and punish according to law
such of our citizens as have been concerned in it, and to take effectual
measures against a repetition. To demand more would be a wrong in Great
Britain; for to demand satisfaction _beyond_ what is adequate, is wrong.
But it is proposed further to take the prize from the captors and restore
her to the English. This is a very serious proposition.
The dilemma proposed in our conferences, appears to me unanswerable.
Either the commission to the commander of the privateer was good, or not
good. If not good, then the tribunals of the country will take cognizance
of the transaction, receive the demand of the former owner, and make
restitution of the capture; and there being, on this supposition, regular
remedy at law, it would be irregular for the government to interpose. If
the commission be good, then the capture having been made on the high
seas, under a valid commission from a power at war with Great Britain,
the British owner has lost all his right, and the prize would be deemed
good, even in his own courts, were the question to be brought before his
own courts. He has now no more claim on the vessel than any stranger
would have who never owned her, his whole right being transferred by
the laws of war to the captor.
The legal right then being in the captors, on what ground can we take
it from him? Not on that of _right_, for the right has been transferred
to him. It can only be by an act of _force_, that is to say, of reprisal
for the offence committed against us in the port of Charleston. But the
making reprisal on a nation is a very serious thing. Remonstrance and
refusal of satisfaction ought to precede; and when reprisal follows, it
is considered as an act of war, and never yet failed to produce it in the
case of a nation able to make war; besides, if the case were important
enough to require reprisal, and ripe for that step, Congress must be
called on to take it; the right of reprisal being expressly lodged with
them by the Constitution, and not with the Executive.
I therefore think that the satisfaction already made to the _government_
of Great Britain is quite equal to what ought to be desired in the
present case; that the property of the British _owner_ is transferred by
the laws of war to the _captor_; that for us to take it from the captor
would be an act of force or reprisal, which the circumstances of the
case do not justify, and to which the powers of the Executive are not
competent by the Constitution.
XXXVIII.-_Opinion on the proposition of the Secretary of the Treasury
to open a new Loan._
June 5, 1793.
Instructions having been given to borrow two millions of florins in
Holland, and the Secretary of the Treasury proposing to open a further
loan of three millions of florins, which he says "a comprehensive view
of the affairs of the United States, in various relations, appears to
him to recommend," the President is pleased to ask whether I see any
objections to the proposition?
The power to borrow money is confided to the President by the two acts
of the 4th and 12th of August, 1790, and the monies, when borrowed, are
appropriated to two purposes only: to wit, the twelve millions to be
borrowed under the former, are appropriated to discharge the arrears
of interest and instalments of the foreign debt; and the two millions,
under the latter, to the purchase of the public debt, under direction
of the trustees of the sinking fund.
These appropriations render very simple the duties of the President in
the discharge of this trust. He has only to look to the _payment_ of the
foreign debt, and the purchase of the general one. And in order to judge
for himself of the necessity of the loan proposed for effecting these
two purposes, he will need from the treasury the following statements:--
A. A statement of the nett amount of the loans already made under these
acts, adding to that the two millions of florins now in course of being
borrowed. This will form the _debit_ of the trust.
The _credit_ side of the account will consist of the following statements,
to wit:--
B. Amount of the principal and interest of foreign debt, paid and payable,
to the close of 1792.
C. Ditto, payable to the close of 1793.
D. Ditto, payable to the close of 1794 (for I think our preparations
should be a year beforehand).
E. Amount of monies necessary for the sinking fund to the end of 1794.
If the amount of the four last articles exceeds the first, it will prove
a further loan necessary, and to what extent.
The treasury alone can furnish these statements with perfect accuracy.
But to show that there is probable cause to go into the examination, I
will hazard a statement from materials which, though perhaps not perfectly
exact, are not much otherwise.
_Report of January 3, 1793. New Edition._
Dr.
The trust for loans.
A. To nett amount of loans to June 1, 1792, as stated
in the treasury report, to wit, 18,678,000 florins,
at 99 florins to $40, the treasury exchange $7,545,912
To loan now going on for 2,000,000 florins 808,080
----------
$8,353,992
Cr.
Florins.
B. By charges on remittances to France 10,073 1
By reimbursement to Spain 680,000
By interest paid to foreign officers 105,000
----------
795,093 1 = $321,239 46
By principal paid to foreign officers 191,316 90
By amount of French debt, principal and Livres.
interest, payable to end of 1791 26,000,000
By ditto, for 1792 3,450,000
----------
29,450,000 = 5,345,171
C. By ditto, for 1793 3,410,000 = 618,915
D. By ditto, for 1794 3,250,000 = 569,876
E. By necessary for sinking fund at $50,000 a
month, from July 1, 1793, to Dec. 31, 1794 900,000
Balance which will remain in hands of the
trust, at end of 1794 387,474 64
-------------
$8,353,992 60
So that instead of an additional loan being necessary, the monies
already borrowed will suffice for all the purposes to which they can be
legally applied to the end of 1794, and leave a surplus of $387 474 64
to cover charges and errors. And as, on account of the unsettled state
of the French government, it is not proposed to pay in advance, or but
little so, any further sum would be lying at a dead interest and risk.
Perhaps it might be said that new monies must be borrowed for the current
domestic service of the year. To this I should answer, that no law has
authorized the opening of a loan for this purpose.
If it should be said that the monies heretofore borrowed are so far put
out of our power that we cannot command them before an instalment will
be due, I should answer, that certainly I would rather borrow than fail
in a payment; but if borrowing will secure a payment in time, the two
millions of florins now borrowing are sufficient to secure it. If we
cannot get this sum in time, then we cannot get an additional sum in time.
The above account might be stated in another way, which might, perhaps,
be more satisfactory, to wit:
Dr.
The trust for loans.
To nett amount of loans to June 1, 1792. 18,678,000 florins,
at 99 florins to $40 $7,545,912
Cr.
Florins
By charges on remittances to France 10,073 1
By reimbursement to Spain 680,000
By interest paid to foreign officers 105,000
---------
795,073 1 = $321,239 46
By principal paid to foreign officers 191,316 90
By payments to France 10,073,043 8 = 4,069,918 54
Livres.
By ditto to St. Domingo 4,000,000 = 726,000
By ditto to do. 3,000,000 = 544,500
By do. to Mr. Ternant [I state this by
memory] 24,000 = 4,356
Balance in hand to be carried to new debit 1,688,581 10
-------------
$7,545,912 00
Dr.
The trust for loans.
To balance as per contra $1,688,581 10
To two millions of florins, new loan, when effected 808,080
-------------
$2,496,661 10
Cr.
By the following payments when made, to wit:
Balance due to France, to close of year 1792
Livres.
($5,345,171-$5,344,774 54) $396 46
Instalments and interest to close of year
1793 3,410,000 == 618,915
do. do
1794 3,250,000 == 589,875
Necessary for sinking fund from July 1, 1793,
to December 31, 1794 900,000
Balance will then be in hand to be carried to
new debit 387,474 64
-------------
$2,496,661 10
By this statement, it would seem as if all the payments to France,
hitherto made and ordered, would not acquit the year 1792. So that we
have never yet been clear of arrears to her.
The amount of the French debt is stated according to the convention, and
the interest is calculated accordingly. Interest on the ten million loan
is known to have been paid for the years 1784, 1785, and is therefore
deducted. It is not known whether it was paid on the same loan for the
years 1786-7-8-9, previous to the payment of December 3, 1790, or whether
it was included in that payment; therefore this is not deducted. But
if, in fact, it was paid before that day, it will then have lessened
the debt so much, to wit, 400,000 livres a year, for four years, making
1,600,000 florins, equal to $290,400, which sum would put us in advance
near half of the instalments of 1793. Note,--livres are estimated at
18/100 cents, proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury to the French
ministry as the par of the metals, to be the rate of conversion.
This uncertainty with respect to the true state of our account with
France, and the difference of the result from what has been understood,
shows that the gentlemen who are to give opinions on this subject, must
do it in the dark, and suggests to the President the propriety of having
an exact statement of the account with France communicated to them,
as the ground on which they are to give opinions. It will probably be
material in that about to be given on the late application of Mr. Genet,
on which the Secretary of the Treasury is preparing a report.
XXXIX.--_Opinion relative to the policy of a new loan._
June 17, 1793
I cannot see my way clear in the case which the President has been
pleased to ask my opinion, but by recurring to these leading questions:
Of the $7,898,999 88 borrowed, or rather of the $7,545,912, nett proceeds
thereof, how much has been applied to the _payment_ of the _foreign_,
and _purchase_ of the _general_ debt?
To the balance thereof, which should be on hand, and the two millions
of florins now borrowing, is any and what addition necessary, _for the
same objects_, for the years 1793, 1794?
The statement furnished by the Secretary of the Treasury does not answer
these questions. It only shows what has been done with somewhat less
than three millions out of near eight millions of dollars which have been
borrowed, and in so doing it takes credit for two sums which are not to
come out of this sum, and therefore not to be left in the account. They
are the following:
1. A sum of $284,901 89 expended in purchases of the public debt. In the
general report of the trustees of the sinking fund, made to Congress
the 23d of February last, and printed, it appears, page 29, that the
whole amount of monies laid out by them was $1,302,407 64, from which
were to be deducted, as is mentioned in the note there subjoined, the
purchases made out of the interest fund (then about $50,000 as well as I
recollect). Call the sum paid then $1,252,407 64. By the Treasury report,
p. 38, (new edition,) it appears that the surplus of domestic revenue to
the end of 1790, appropriated to this object, was $1,374,656 40, and p.
34, that the monies drawn from Europe on account of the foreign loans,
were not the instrument of these purchases; and in some part, to which
I am not able just now to turn, I recollect pretty certainly that it is
said these purchases were actually carried to account, as was proper,
against the domestic surplus, consequently they are not to be allowed
in the foreign account also. Or if allowed in this, the sum will then be
due from the surplus account, and so must lessen the sum to be borrowed
for the sinking fund, which amounts to the same.
2. The 1st instalment due to the bank $200,000. Though the first payment
of the subscription of the United States to the bank might have been made,
in the first instant, out of the foreign monies to be immediately repaid
to them by the money borrowed of the bank, yet this useless formality
was avoided, and it was a mere operation of the pen on paper, without
the displacement of a single dollar. See reports p. 12. And, in any
event, the final reimbursement was never to be made out of the foreign
fund, which was appropriated solely to the _payment_ of the _foreign_,
and _purchase_ of the _general_ debt.
These two sums, therefore, of $284,901 89 and $200,000 are to be added
to the balance of $575,484 28 subject to future disposition, and will
make $1,050,386 17 actually here, and still to be applied to the proper
appropriation.
However, this account, as before observed, being only of a part of the
monies borrowed, no judgment can be formed from it of the expediency of
borrowing more; nor should I have stopped to make a criticism on it, but
to show why no such sums as the two above mentioned, were inserted in
the general account sketched for the President, June 5. I must add that
the miscellaneous sum of $49,400 in this account, is probably covered
by some other articles of that as far as it is chargeable on this fund;
because that account, under one form or another, takes up all the articles
chargeable on this fund which had appeared in the printed reports.
I must, therefore, proceed to renew my statement of June 5, inserting
therein the 1st instalment of the Dutch loan of $404,040 40 payable this
month, which not having been mentioned in any of the reports heretofore
published, was not inserted in my statement. I will add a like sum for
the year 1794, because I think we should now prepare for the whole of
that year.
As the Secretary of the Treasury does not seem to contemplate the
furnishing any fixed sum for the sinking fund, I shall leave that article
out of the account. The President can easily add to its result any sum
he may decide to have furnished to that fund. The account, so corrected,
will stand thus:
Dr.
The trust for loans.
To nett amount of loans to June 1, 1792 $7,545,912
To loan now going on for 2,000,000 florins 808,080
----------
$8,353,992
Cr.
Florins.
By charges on remittances to France 10,073 1
By reimbursement to Spain 680,000
By interest paid to foreign officers 105,000
-------
795,073 1==$321,239 46
By principal paid to foreign officers 191,316 90
By amount of French debt, principal and interest Livres.
payable to end of 1791 26,000,000
By ditto for 1792 3,450,000
----------
29,450,000 ==5,345,171
By ditto for 1793 3,410,000 == 618,915
By 1st instalment of Dutch debt due June 1793 404,040 40
By instalments and interest to France for
1794 3,250,000 == 569,875
By instalment to Holland for 1794 404,040 40
Balance will then remain in hands of the trust, 499,393 84
------------
$8,353,992 00
So that it appears there would be a balance in the hands of this trust,
at the close of 1794, of $499,393 84, were no monies to be furnished in
the meantime to the sinking fund; but should the President determine to
furnish that with the $900,000 proposed in my statement of June 5, then
a loan would be necessary for about $400,000, say in near round numbers,
1,000,000 of guilders, in addition to the 2,000,000 now borrowing. I am,
_individually_, of opinion that that sum ought to be furnished to the
sinking fund, and consequently that an additional loan, to this extent,
should be made, considering the subject in a _legal point of view_ only.
The reasons in favor of the extension are,
The apprehension of the extension of our war to other Indian nations,
and perhaps to Europe itself.
The disability this might produce to borrow at all, [this is, in my
judgment, a weighty consideration.]
The possibility that the government of France may become so settled
as that we may hazard the anticipation of payment, and so avoid dead
interest.
The reasons against it are,
The possibility that France may continue, for some time yet, so unsettled
as to render an anticipation of payments hazardous.
The risk of losing the capital borrowed by a successful invasion of the
country of deposit, if it be left in Europe; or by an extension of the
bankruptcies now shaking the most solid houses; and when and where they
will end we know not.
The loss of interest on the dead sum, if the sum itself be safe.
The execution of a power for one object, which was given to be executed
but for a very different one.
The commitment of the President, on this account, to events, or to the
criticisms of those who, though the measures should be perfectly wise,
may misjudge it through error or passion.
The apprehension that the head of the department means to provide idle
money to be lodged in the banks ready for the corruption of the next
legislature, as it is believed the late ones were corrupted, by gratifying
particular members with vast discounts for objects of speculation.
I confess that the last reasons have most weight with me.
XL.--_Report on the privileges and restrictions on the commerce of the
United States in foreign countries._
December 16, 1793.
SIR,--According to the pleasure of the House of Representatives, expressed
in their resolution of February 23, 1791, I now lay before them a report
on the privileges and restrictions on the commerce of the United States
in foreign countries. In order to keep the subject within those bounds
which I supposed to be under the contemplation of the House, I have
restrained my statements to those countries only with which we carry on
a commerce of some importance, and to those articles also of our produce
which are of sensible weight in the scale of our exports; and even these
articles are sometimes grouped together, according to the degree of
favor or restriction with which they are received in each country, and
that degree expressed in general terms without detailing the exact duty
levied on each article. To have gone fully into these minutiæ, would have
been to copy the tariffs and books of rates of the different countries,
and to have hidden, under a mass of details, those general and important
truths, the extraction of which, in a simple form, I conceived would best
answer the inquiries of the House, by condensing material information
within those limits of time and attention, which this portion of their
duties may justly claim. The plan, indeed, of minute details which have
been impracticable with some countries, for want of information.
Since preparing this report, which was put into its present form in
time to have been given in to the last session of Congress, alterations
of the conditions of our commerce with some foreign nations have taken
place--some of them independent of war; some arising out of it.
France has proposed to enter into a new treaty of commerce with us,
on liberal principles; and has, in the meantime, relaxed some of the
restraints mentioned in the report. Spain has, by an ordinance of June
last, established New Orleans, Pensacola, and St. Augustine into free
ports, for the vessels of friendly nations _having treaties of commerce_
with her, provided they touch for a permit at Corcubion in Gallicia,
or at Alicant; and our rice is, by the same ordinance, excluded from
that country. The circumstances of war have necessarily given us freer
access to the West Indian islands, whilst they have also drawn on our
navigation vexations and depredations of the most serious nature.
To have endeavored to describe all these, would have been as impracticable
as useless, since the scenes would have been shifting while under
description. I therefore think it best to leave the report as it was
formed, being adapted to a particular point of time, when things were
in their settled order, that is to say, to the summer of 1792. I have
the honor to be, &c.
_To the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of
America._
The Secretary of State, to whom was referred, by the House of
Representatives, the report of a committee on the written message of
the President of the United States, of the 14th of February, 1791, with
instruction to report to Congress the nature and extent of the privileges
and restrictions of the commercial intercourse of the United States with
foreign nations, and the measures which he should think proper to be
adopted for the improvement of the commerce and navigation of the same,
has had the same under consideration, and thereupon makes the following
Report:
The countries with which the United States have their chief commercial
intercourse are Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, the United
Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, and their American possessions; and
the articles of export, which constitute the basis of that commerce,
with their respective amounts, are,
Bread-stuff, that is to say, bread grains, meals,
and bread, to the annual amount of $7,649,887
Tobacco 4,349,567
Rice 1,753,796
Wood 1,263,534
Salted fish 941,696
Pot and pearl ash 839,093
Salted meats 599,130
Indigo 537,379
Horses and mules 339,753
Whale oil 252,591
Flax seed 236,072
Tar, pitch and turpentine 217,177
Live provisions 137,743
Ships
Foreign goods 620,274
To descend to articles of smaller value than these, would lead into a
minuteness of detail neither necessary nor useful to the present object.
The proportions of our exports, which go to the nations before mentioned,
and to their dominions, respectively, are as follows:
To Spain and its dominions $2,005,907
Portugal and its dominions 1,283,462
France and its dominions 4,698,735
Great Britain and its dominions 9,363,416
The United Netherlands and their dominions 1,963,880
Denmark and its dominions 224,415
Sweden and its dominions 47,240
Our imports from the same countries, are,
Spain and its dominions 335,110
Portugal and its dominions 595,763
France and its dominions 2,068,348
Great Britain and its dominions 15,285,428
United Netherlands and their dominions 1,172,692
Denmark and its dominions 351,364
Sweden and its dominions 14,325
These imports consist mostly of articles on which industry has been
exhausted.
Our _navigation_, depending on the same commerce, will appear by the
following statement of the tonnage of our own vessels, entering in our
ports, from those several nations and their possessions, in one year;
that is to say; from October, 1789, to September, 1790, inclusive, as
follows:
Tons.
Spain 19,695
Portugal 23,576
France 116,410
Great Britain 43,580
United Netherlands 58,858
Denmark 14,655
Sweden 750
Of our commercial objects, Spain receives favorably our bread-stuff,
salted fish, wood, ships, tar, pitch, and turpentine. On our meals,
however, as well as on those of other foreign countries, when re-exported
to their colonies, they have lately imposed duties of from half-a-dollar
to two dollars the barrel, the duties being so proportioned to the
current price of their own flour, as that both together are to make the
constant sum of nine dollars per barrel.
They do not discourage our rice, pot and pearl ash, salted provisions, or
whale oil; but these articles, being in small demand at their markets, are
carried thither but in a small degree. Their demand for rice, however, is
increasing. Neither tobacco nor indigo are received there. Our commerce
is permitted with their Canary islands under the same conditions.
Themselves, and their colonies, are the actual consumers of what they
receive from us.
Our navigation is free with the kingdom of Spain; foreign goods being
received there in our ships on the same conditions as if carried in
their own, or in the vessels of the country of which such goods are the
manufacture or produce.
_Portugal_ receives favorably our grain and bread, salted fish, and
other salted provisions, wood, tar, pitch, and turpentine.
For flax-seed, pot and pearl ash, though not discouraged, there is little
demand.
Our ships pay 20 per cent. on being sold to their subjects, and are then
free-bottoms.
Foreign goods (except those of the East Indies) are received on the
same footing in our vessels as in their own, or any others; that is to
say, on general duties of from 20 to 28 per cent., and, consequently,
our navigation is unobstructed by them. Tobacco, rice, and meals, are
prohibited.
Themselves and their colonies consume what they receive from us.
These regulations extend to the Azores, Madeira, and the Cape de Verd
islands, except that in these, meals and rice are received freely.
_France_ receives favorably our bread-stuffs, rice, wood, pot and pearl
ashes.
A duty of 5 sous the quintal, or nearly 4½ cents, is paid on our tar,
pitch, and turpentine. Our whale oils pay 6 livres the quintal, and
are the only foreign whale oils admitted. Our indigo pays 5 livres the
quintal, their own 2½; but a difference of quality, still more than a
difference of duty, prevents its seeking that market.
Salted beef is received freely for re-exportation; but if for home
consumption, it pays five livres the quintal. Other salted provisions
pay that duty in all cases, and salted fish is made lately to pay the
prohibitory one of twenty livres the quintal.
Our ships are free to carry thither all foreign goods which may be
carried in their own or any other vessels, except tobaccoes not of our
own growth; and they participate with theirs, the exclusive carriage of
our whale oils and tobaccoes.
During their former government, our tobacco was under a monopoly, but paid
no duties; and our ships were freely sold in their ports, and converted
into national bottoms. The first national assembly took from our ships
this privilege. They emancipated tobacco from its monopoly, but subjected
it to duties of eighteen livres, fifteen sous the quintal, carried in
their own vessels, and five livres carried in ours--a difference more
than equal to the freight of the article.
They and their colonies consume what they receive from us.
_Great Britain_ receives our pot and pearl ashes free, whilst those of
other nations pay a duty of two shillings and three pence the quintal.
There is an equal distinction in favor of our bar iron; of which article,
however, we do not produce enough for our own use. Woods are free from
us, whilst they pay some small duty from other countries. Indigo and flax
seed are free from all countries. Our tar and pitch pay eleven pence,
sterling, the barrel. From other alien countries they pay about a penny
and a third more.
Our tobacco, for their own consumption, pays one shilling and three
pence, sterling, the pound, custom and excise, besides heavy expenses
of collection; and rice, in the same case, pays seven shillings and
fourpence, sterling, the hundred weight; which, rendering it too dear, as
an article of common food, it is consequently used in very small quantity.
Our salted fish and other salted provisions, except bacon, are prohibited.
Bacon and whale oils are under prohibitory duties; so are our grains,
meals, and bread, as to internal consumption, unless in times of such
scarcity as may raise the price of wheat to fifty shillings, sterling,
the quarter, and other grains and meals in proportion.
Our ships, though purchased and navigated by their own subjects, are
not permitted to be used, even in their trade with us.
While the vessels of other nations are secured by standing laws, which
cannot be altered but by the concurrent will of the three branches of
the British legislature, in carrying thither any produce or manufacture
of the country to which they belong, which may be lawfully carried
in any vessels, ours, with the same prohibition of what is foreign,
are further prohibited by a standing law, (12 Car. 2, 18, sect. 3,)
from carrying thither all and any of our own domestic productions and
manufactures. A subsequent act, indeed, has authorized their executive
to permit the carriage of our own productions in our own bottoms, at
its sole discretion; and the permission has been given from year to
year by proclamation, but subject every moment to be withdrawn on that
single will; in which event, our vessels having anything on board, stand
interdicted from the entry of all British ports. The disadvantage of a
tenure which may be so suddenly discontinued, was experienced by our
merchants on a late occasion,[33] when an official notification that
this law would be strictly enforced, gave them just apprehensions for
the fate of their vessels and cargoes despatched or destined for the
ports of Great Britain. The minister of that court, indeed, frankly
expressed his personal conviction, that the words of the order went
farther than was intended, and so he afterwards officially informed
us; but the embarrassments of the moment were real and great, and the
possibility of their renewal lays our commerce to that country under
the same species of discouragement as to other countries, where it is
regulated by a single legislator; and the distinction is too remarkable
not to be noticed, that our navigation is excluded from the security of
fixed laws, while that security is given to the navigation of others.
Our vessels pay in their ports one shilling and nine pence, sterling,
per ton, light and trinity dues, more than is paid by British ships,
except in the port of London, where they pay the same as British.
The greater part of what they receive from us, is re-exported to other
countries, under the useless charges of an intermediate deposit, and
double voyage. From tables published in England, and composed, as is
said, from the books of their customhouses, it appears, that of the indigo
imported there in the years 1773, '4, '5, one-third was re-exported; and
from a document of authority, we learn, that of the rice and tobacco
imported there before the war, four-fifths were re-exported. We are
assured, indeed, that the quantities sent thither for re-exportation
since the war, are considerably diminished, yet less so than reason and
national interest would dictate. The whole of our grain is re-exported
when wheat is below fifty shillings the quarter, and other grains in
proportion.
The _United Netherlands_ prohibit our pickled beef and pork, meals and
bread of all sorts, and lay a prohibitory duty on spirits distilled from
grain.
All other of our productions are received on varied duties, which may
be reckoned, on a medium, at about three per cent.
They consume but a small proportion of what they receive. The residue
is partly forwarded for consumption in the inland parts of Europe, and
partly re-shipped to other maritime countries. On the latter portion
they intercept between us and the consumer, so much of the value as is
absorbed in the charges attending an intermediate deposit.
Foreign goods, except some East India articles, are received in vessels
of any nation.
Our ships may be sold and neutralized there, with exceptions of one or
two privileges, which somewhat lessen their value.
_Denmark_ lays considerable duties on our tobacco and rice, carried in
their own vessels, and half as much more, if carried in ours; but the
exact amount of these duties is not perfectly known here. They lay such
as amount to prohibitions on our indigo and corn.
_Sweden_ receives favorably our grains and meals, salted provisions,
indigo, and whale oil.
They subject our rice to duties of sixteen mills the pound weight, carried
in their own vessels, and of forty per cent. additional on that, or
twenty-two and four-tenths mills, carried in ours or any others. Being
thus rendered too dear as an article of common food, little of it is
consumed with them. They consume some of our tobaccoes, which they take
circuitously through Great Britain, levying heavy duties on them also;
their duties of entry, town duties, and excise, being 4.34 dollars the
hundred weight, if carried in their own vessels, and of forty per cent.
on that additional, if carried in our own or any other vessels.
They prohibit altogether our bread, fish, pot and pearl ashes, flax-seed,
tar, pitch, and turpentine, wood, (except oak timber and masts,) and
all foreign manufactures.
Under so many restrictions and prohibitions, our navigation with them
is reduced to almost nothing.
With our neighbors, an order of things much harder presents itself.
_Spain_ and _Portugal_ refuse, to all those parts of America which
they govern, all direct intercourse with any people but themselves. The
commodities in mutual demand between them and their neighbors, must be
carried to be exchanged in some port of the dominant country, and the
transportation between that and the subject state, must be in a domestic
bottom.
_France_, by a standing law, permits her West India possessions to
receive directly our vegetables, live provisions, horses, wood, tar,
pitch, turpentine, rice, and maize, and prohibits our other bread
stuff; but a suspension of this prohibition having been left to the
colonial legislatures, in times of scarcity, it was formerly suspended
occasionally, but latterly without interruption.
Our fish and salted provisions (except pork) are received in their islands
under a duty of three colonial livres the quintal, and our vessels are
as free as their own to carry our commodities thither, and to bring away
rum and molasses.
_Great Britain_ admits in her islands our vegetables, live provisions,
horses, wood, tar, pitch, and turpentine, rice and bread stuff, by a
proclamation of her executive, limited always to the term of a year, but
hitherto renewed from year to year. She prohibits our salted fish and
other salted provisions. She does not permit our vessels to carry thither
our own produce. Her vessels alone may take it from us, and bring in
exchange rum, molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa-nuts, ginger, and pimento.
There are, indeed, some freedoms in the island of Dominica, but, under
such circumstances, as to be little used by us. In the British continental
colonies, and in Newfoundland, all our productions are prohibited, and
our vessels forbidden to enter their ports. Their governors, however,
in times of distress, have power to permit a temporary importation of
certain articles in their own bottoms, but not in ours.
Our citizens cannot reside as merchants or factors within any of the
British plantations, this being expressly prohibited by the same statute
of 12 Car. 2, c. 18, commonly called the navigation act.
In the _Danish American_ possessions a duty of 5 per cent. is levied on
our corn, corn meal, rice, tobacco, wood, salted fish, indigo, horses,
mules and live stock, and of 10 per cent. on our flour, salted pork and
beef, tar, pitch and turpentine.
In the American islands of the _United Netherlands_ and Sweden, our
vessels and produce are received, subject to duties, not so heavy as to
have been complained of; but they are heavier in the Dutch possessions
on the continent.
To sum up these restrictions, so far as they are important:
FIRST. In Europe--
Our bread stuff is at most times under prohibitory duties in England,
and considerably dutied on re-exportation from Spain to her colonies.
Our tobaccoes are heavily dutied in England, Sweden and France, and
prohibited in Spain and Portugal.
Our rice is heavily dutied in England and Sweden, and prohibited in
Portugal.
Our fish and salted provisions are prohibited in England, and under
prohibitory duties in France.
Our whale oils are prohibited in England and Portugal.
And our vessels are denied naturalization in England, and of late in
France.
SECOND. In the West Indies--
All intercourse is prohibited with the possessions of Spain and Portugal.
Our salted provisions and fish are prohibited by England.
Our salted pork and bread stuff (except maize) are received under
temporary laws only, in the dominions of France, and our salted fish
pays there a weighty duty.
THIRD. In the article of navigation--
Our own carriage of our own tobacco is heavily dutied in Sweden, and
lately in France.
We can carry no article, not of our own production, to the British ports
in Europe. Nor even our own produce to her American possessions.
Such being the restrictions on the commerce and navigation of the United
States; the question is, in what way they may best be removed, modified
or counteracted?
As to commerce, two methods occur. 1. By friendly arrangements with
the several nations with whom these restrictions exist: Or, 2. By the
separate act of our own legislatures for countervailing their effects.
There can be no doubt but that of these two, friendly arrangement is
the most eligible. Instead of embarrassing commerce under piles of
regulating laws, duties and prohibitions, could it be relieved from all
its shackles in all parts of the world, could every country be employed
in producing that which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each
be free to exchange with others mutual surplusses for mutual wants, the
greatest mass possible would then be produced of those things which
contribute to human life and human happiness; the numbers of mankind
would be increased, and their condition bettered.
Would even a single nation begin with the United States this system
of free commerce, it would be advisable to begin it with that nation;
since it is one by one only that it can be extended to all. Where the
circumstances of either party render it expedient to levy a revenue,
by way of impost, on commerce, its freedom might be modified, in that
particular, by mutual and equivalent measures, preserving it entire in
all others.
Some nations, not yet ripe for free commerce in all its extent, might
still be willing to mollify its restrictions and regulations for us, in
proportion to the advantages which an intercourse with us might offer.
Particularly they may concur with us in reciprocating the duties to be
levied on each side, or in compensating any excess of duty by equivalent
advantages of another nature. Our commerce is certainly of a character
to entitle it to favor in most countries. The commodities we offer are
either necessaries of life, or materials for manufacture, or convenient
subjects of revenue; and we take in exchange, either manufactures, when
they have received the last finish of art and industry, or mere luxuries.
Such customers may reasonably expect welcome and friendly treatment
at every market. Customers, too, whose demands, increasing with their
wealth and population, must very shortly give full employment to the
whole industry of any nation whatever, in any line of supply they may
get into the habit of calling for from it.
But should any nation, contrary to our wishes, suppose it may better
find its advantage by continuing its system of prohibitions, duties and
regulations, it behooves us to protect our citizens, their commerce and
navigation, by counter prohibitions, duties and regulations, also. Free
commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for restrictions
and vexations; nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of them.
Our navigation involves still higher considerations. As a branch of
industry, it is valuable, but as a resource of defence, essential.
Its value, as a branch of industry, is enhanced by the dependence of
so many other branches on it. In times of general peace it multiplies
competitors for employment in transportation, and so keeps that at its
proper level; and in times of war, that is to say, when those nations
who may be our principal carriers, shall be at war with each other, if
we have not within ourselves the means of transportation, our produce
must be exported in belligerent vessels, at the increased expense of
war-freight and insurance, and the articles which will not bear that,
must perish on our hands.
But it is as a resource of defence that our navigation will admit neither
neglect nor forbearance. The position and circumstances of the United
States leave them nothing to fear on their land-board, and nothing to
desire beyond their present rights. But on their seaboard, they are open
to injury, and they have there, too, a commerce which must be protected.
This can only be done by possessing a respectable body of citizen-seamen,
and of artists and establishments in readiness for ship-building.
Were the ocean, which is the common property of all, open to the industry
of all, so that every person and vessel should be free to take employment
wherever it could be found, the United States would certainly not set
the example of appropriating to themselves, exclusively, any portion of
the common stock of occupation. They would rely on the enterprise and
activity of their citizens for a due participation of the benefits of
the seafaring business, and for keeping the marine class of citizens
equal to their object. But if particular nations grasp at undue shares,
and, more especially, if they seize on the means of the United States,
to convert them into aliment for their own strength, and withdraw them
entirely from the support of those to whom they belong, defensive and
protecting measures become necessary on the part of the nation whose
marine resources are thus invaded; or it will be disarmed of its defence;
its productions will lie at the mercy of the nation which has possessed
itself exclusively of the means of carrying them, and its politics may
be influenced by those who command its commerce. The carriage of our own
commodities, if once established in another channel, cannot be resumed in
the moment we may desire. If we lose the seamen and artists whom it now
occupies, we lose the present means of marine defence, and time will be
requisite to raise up others, when disgrace or losses shall bring home
to our feelings the error of having abandoned them. The materials for
maintaining our due share of navigation, are ours in abundance. And, as
to the mode of using them, we have only to adopt the principles of those
who put us on the defensive, or others equivalent and better fitted to
our circumstances.
The following principles, being founded in reciprocity, appear perfectly
just, and to offer no cause of complaint to any nation:
1. Where a nation imposes high duties on our productions, or prohibits
them altogether, it may be proper for us to do the same by theirs;
first burdening or excluding those productions which they bring here,
in competition with our own of the same kind; selecting next, such
manufactures as we take from them in greatest quantity, and which, at
the same time, we could the soonest furnish to ourselves, or obtain from
other countries; imposing on them duties lighter at first, but heavier
and heavier afterwards, as other channels of supply open. Such duties
having the effect of indirect encouragement to domestic manufactures of
the same kind, may induce the manufacturer to come himself into these
States, where cheaper subsistence, equal laws, and a vent of his wares,
free of duty, may ensure him the highest profits from his skill and
industry. And here, it would be in the power of the State governments
to co-operate essentially, by opening the resources of encouragement
which are under their control, extending them liberally to artists in
those particular branches of manufacture for which their soil, climate,
population and other circumstances have matured them, and fostering
the precious efforts and progress of _household_ manufacture, by some
patronage suited to the nature of its objects, guided by the local
informations they possess, and guarded against abuse by their presence
and attentions. The oppressions on our agriculture, in foreign ports,
would thus be made the occasion of relieving it from a dependence on the
councils and conduct of others, and of promoting arts, manufactures and
population at home.
2. Where a nation refuses permission to our merchants and factors to
reside within certain parts of their dominions, we may, if it should be
thought expedient, refuse residence to theirs in any and every part of
ours, or modify their transactions.
3. Where a nation refuses to receive in our vessels any productions
but our own, we may refuse to receive, in theirs, any but their own
productions. The first and second clauses of the bill reported by the
committee, are well formed to effect this object.
4. Where a nation refuses to consider any vessel as ours which has
not been built within our territories, we should refuse to consider as
theirs, any vessel not built within their territories.
5. Where a nation refuses to our vessels the carriage even of our own
productions, to certain countries under their domination, we might refuse
to theirs of every description, the carriage of the same productions to
the same countries. But as justice and good neighborhood would dictate
that those who have no part in imposing the restriction on us, should
not be the victims of measures adopted to defeat its effect, it may be
proper to confine the restriction to vessels owned or navigated by any
subjects of the same dominant power, other than the inhabitants of the
country to which the said productions are to be carried. And to prevent
all inconvenience to the said inhabitants, and to our own, by too sudden
a check on the means of transportation, we may continue to admit the
vessels marked for future exclusion, on an advanced tonnage, and for
such length of time only, as may be supposed necessary to provide against
that inconvenience.
The establishment of some of these principles by Great Britain, alone, has
already lost us in our commerce with that country and its possessions,
between eight and nine hundred vessels of near 40,000 tons burden,
according to statements from official materials, in which they have
confidence. This involves a proportional loss of seamen, shipwrights,
and ship-building, and is too serious a loss to admit forbearance of
some effectual remedy.
It is true we must expect some inconvenience in practice from the
establishment of discriminating duties. But in this, as in so many other
cases, we are left to choose between two evils. These inconveniences are
nothing when weighed against the loss of wealth and loss of force, which
will follow our perseverance in the plan of indiscrimination. When once
it shall be perceived that we are either in the system or in the habit
of giving equal advantages to those who extinguish our commerce and
navigation by duties and prohibitions, as to those who treat both with
liberality and justice, liberality and justice will be converted by all
into duties and prohibitions. It is not to the moderation and justice
of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with our
productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but
to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them. Nor do
the inconveniences of discrimination merit consideration. Not one of the
nations before mentioned, perhaps not a commercial nation on earth, is
without them. In our case one distinction alone will suffice: that is
to say, between nations who favor our productions and navigation, and
those who do not favor them. One set of moderate duties, say the present
duties, for the first, and a fixed advance on these as to some articles,
and prohibitions as to others, for the last.
Still, it must be repeated that friendly arrangements are preferable
with all who will come into them; and that we should carry into such
arrangements all the liberality and spirit of accommodation which the
nature of the case will admit.
France has, of her own accord, proposed negotiations for improving, by
a new treaty on fair and equal principles, the commercial relations of
the two countries. But her internal disturbances have hitherto prevented
the prosecution of them to effect, though we have had repeated assurances
of a continuance of the disposition.
Proposals of friendly arrangement have been made on our part, by the
present government, to that of Great Britain, as the message states;
but, being already on as good a footing in law, and a better in fact,
than the most favored nation, they have not, as yet, discovered any
disposition to have it meddled with.
We have no reason to conclude that friendly arrangements would be declined
by the other nations, with whom we have such commercial intercourse
as may render them important. In the meanwhile, it would rest with the
wisdom of Congress to determine whether, as to those nations, they will
not surcease _ex parte_ regulations, on the reasonable presumption that
they will concur in doing whatever justice and moderation dictate should
be done.
FOOTNOTE:
[33] April 12, 1792.
XLI.--_Report on the Mint. Communicated to the Senate, December 31, 1793._
PHILADELPHIA, December 30, 1793.
SIR,--I am informed, by the Director of the Mint, that an impediment
has arisen to the coinage of the precious metals, which it is my duty
to lay before you.
It will be recollected, that, in pursuance of the authority vested in the
President, by Congress, to procure artists from abroad, if necessary, Mr.
Drost, at Paris, so well known by the superior style of his coinage, was
engaged for our mint; but that, after occasioning to us a considerable
delay, he declined coming. That thereupon, our minister at London,
according to the instructions he had received, endeavored to procure,
there, a chief coiner and assayer; that, as to the latter, he succeeded
in sending over a Mr. Albion Coxe, for that office, but that he could
procure no person there more qualified to discharge the duties of chief
coiner, than might be had here; and, therefore, did not engage one. The
duties of this last office have consequently been, hitherto, performed,
and well performed, by Henry Voight, an artist of the United States,
but the law requiring these officers to give a security, in the sum
of ten thousand dollars each, neither is able to do it. The coinage of
the precious metals has, therefore, been prevented for some time past,
though, in order that the mint might not be entirely idle, the coinage
of copper has been going on; the trust in that, at any one point of
time, being of but small amount.
It now remains to determine how this difficulty is to be got over. If by
discharging these officers, and seeking others, it may well be doubted
if any can be found in the United States, equally capable of fulfilling
their duties; and to seek them from abroad, would still add to the
delay; and if found either at home or abroad, they must still be of the
description of artists whose circumstances and connections rarely enable
them to give security in so large a sum. The other alternative would
be to lessen the securityship in money, and to confide that it will be
supplied by the vigilance of the director, who, leaving as small masses
of metal in the hands of the officers, at any one time, as the course
of their process will admit, may reduce the risk to what would not be
considerable.
To give an idea of the extent of the trust to the several officers, both
as to sum and time, it may be proper to state the course of the business,
according to what the director is of opinion it should be. The treasurer,
he observes, should receive the bullion; the assayer, by an operation on
a few grains of it, is to ascertain its fineness. The treasurer is then
to deliver it to the refiner, to be melted and mixed to the standard
fineness; the assayer here, again, examining a few grains of the melted
mass, and certifying when it is of due fineness; the refiner then delivers
it to the chief coiner, to be rolled and coined, and returns it, when
coined, to the treasurer. By this it appears, that a few grains only,
at a time, are in the hands of the assayer, the mass being confided,
for operation, to the refiner and chief coiner. It is to be observed
that the law has not taken notice of the office of refiner, though so
important an officer ought, it should seem, to be of the President's
nomination, and ought to give a security nearly equal to that required
from the chief coiner.
I have thought it my duty to give this information under an impression
that it is proper to be communicated to the Legislature, who will decide,
in their wisdom, whether it will be expedient to make it the duty of
the treasurer to receive and keep the bullion before coinage;
To lessen the pecuniary security required from the chief coiner and
assayer; and
To place the office of the refiner under the same nomination with that
of the other chief officers; to fix his salary, and require due security.
I have the honor to be, with the most perfect respect and attachment,
sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.
END OF VOL. VII.
INDEX TO VOL. VII.
ADAMS, JOHN--His estimate of life, 30.
His reading, 59, 69.
His religious opinions, 59, 68, 219, 280.
Calumnies of Pickering against, 58, 62.
His views of metaphysics, 71.
His views of Bonaparte, 71.
Letter of condolence to, from Mr. Jefferson, 107.
Oldest signer of the Declaration of Independence, 218, 219.
ADAMS, J. Q.--Made Secretary of State, 85.
ALEXANDER, EMPEROR--His character and views, 20.
ADVICE--Letter of, 401.
ANATOMY--Experiments in, 388.
ANGLO SAXON--The language, 416.
APOCALYPSE, THE--View of, 394.
ASTRONOMY--New method of finding longitude, 223, 226.
BANKS--Evils of the Banking system, 64, 111, 115.
Suspension of, 142.
Distress resulting therefrom, 151.
Jefferson's plan for reducing circulating medium, 146.
BARBARY STATES--Their piracies, 250.
Efforts to redeem Algerine prisoners, 532.
BOLINGBROKE, LORD--His writings, 197.
BONAPARTE--His character, 275.
BOOKS--Should be imported free of duty, 220.
CAMPBELL, COL.--Hero of King's Mountain, 268.
CAPITOL--Whether there should be any inscription on new one, 41.
CHEMISTRY--Progress of, 259.
CINCINNATI SOCIETY--History of, 368.
CLASSICS--The study of, 131.
CLIMATE--Of western country, 375.
COINAGE--Report on copper coinage, 462.
Report on coins, weights and measures, 472.
COLONIZATION OF NEGROES--Views on, 332.
COMMERCE--Treaties with European powers, 436.
Our Mediterranean trade, 519.
Restriction and privileges of our foreign commerce, 636.
Free Trade, how far practicable, 646.
COMMITTEES OF CORRESPONDENCE--Origin of, 120.
COMPENSATION LAW--Unpopularity of, 78.
CONGRESS--Whether it has a right to adjourn to a new place of
meeting without consent of President, 495.
CONSOLIDATION--Dangers of, 223, 293, 430.
Rapid strides towards, 426, 430.
CONSTITUTION--Rules for interpreting, 296, 336, 342, 358.
Distribution of powers between State and Federal governments, 297,
358.
Who the final arbiter between State and Federal governments, 298,
358.
Should be easily amendable, 323, 336.
Similarity of Constitutions of different States, 323.
COURTS, COUNTY--Magistrates of, should be elected by the people, 12,
18.
CUBA--Should not be allowed to pass to England, 288, 299.
People of, how affected, 299.
Should belong to the U. States, 316.
DAVID, KING--His description of a good man, 337.
DEBT, FOREIGN--How it should be managed, 506.
DRAWBACKS--Should be repealed, 6.
EDUCATION--General plan of, 98, 187, 322, 398.
Female education, 101.
Northern teachers and professors, 187.
Common school system of Virginia a failure, 256.
ELOQUENCE--Models of, 231.
EMBARGO--Circumstances under which, resorted to, 373.
Circumstances which led to its repeal, 425, 431.
Treasonable conduct of Massachusetts in relation to, 425, 431.
ENGLAND--Feeling of towards U. States, 42, 519.
Debt of, 43.
Condition and prospects of, 45, 48, 232.
Constitution of, 48.
Parties in, 50.
Discontents in, 196.
Origin of her constitution, 355.
Effects of Norman conquest, 413.
Indemnity for slaves carried off by, during Revolutionary war, 518.
Commercial relations of, with United States, 518.
EUROPE--Condition of, 182, 193, 217, 244, 288.
Revolutions in, 307.
EXPATRIATION--Exists as a natural right, 72.
FRANCE--Condition of, 66, 76.
Return to, of Louis XVIII., 82.
Constitution of, 86.
Allied powers depart, 109.
Her revolution, 302.
Her progress in science, 323.
Whether our treaties with, remain Obligatory after her revolution,
611.
Not allowed to equip privateers in our ports, 226.
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN--Calumnies against, 108.
FISHERIES--Report on Cod fisheries, 588.
History of Cod fisheries, 538.
History of whale fisheries, 544.
GENERATIONS--One has no right to bind another, 16, 19, 311, 359.
GOVERNMENT--Views on, 3, 263, 307, 318, 357.
Should reflect will of people in all its departments, 9, 319.
Is progressive, 15.
Should be remodelled from time to time, 14, 19.
Principle of representation, 32.
Must be adapted to each particular people, 56.
Majority must govern, 75.
Europe cannot bear republican government, 325.
GREEK--Pronunciation of, 112, 137.
The ablative case in, 272, 340.
GRIEF--Its uses and abuses, 33, 37.
HAMILTON, A.--His monarchical principles, 389.
HISTORY--Course of, indicated for University of Virginia, 412.
IMPROVEMENT, INTERNAL--Progress of, 75, 422.
Power of, does not belong to federal government, 79.
INDEPENDENCE, DECLARATION OF--Its history, 122, 304.
Jefferson's opinion of Mecklenburg Declaration, 128.
Authorship of, 407.
Original rough draft of, 409.
The house in which written, 410.
Celebration of 50th anniversary of, 450.
INDIANS--Their language, 96, 400.
Plan for civilizing, 233.
The right to extinguish Indian titles belongs to federal and
not State governments, 467.
JAY, JOHN--Why he did not sign Declaration of Independence, 308.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS--His estimate of life, 25, 421.
Decay of his faculties, 52, 179, 327.
Resigned to death, 52, 243.
Oppressed by correspondence, 54, 254.
His occupations in his old age, 111, 116.
His habits of life, 116.
Materials for his biography, 117.
Application for his portrait, 203.
Complains of publication of his letters, 222.
Settlements of his accounts on his return from France, 239, 246.
His relations with J. Adams, 314.
Calumnies of Pickering, 362.
His relations with Washington unaffected by the Mazzei letter,
364.
Their friendship uninterrupted to the last, 370.
His losses by security debt, 433.
JUDICIARY, FEDERAL--Decisions of, do not bind other departments
of the government, 134, 177.
Each department decides for itself, 134, 177.
Danger to our system from encroachments of, 192, 199, 216,
256, 278, 293, 321, 403.
KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS--Drawn by Jefferson, 229.
KOSCIUSKO--His will, 98.
His services to United States, 106.
LA FAYETTE--His visit to United States, 378, 379.
LANDS, PUBLIC--Settlements on, 83.
LANGDON, GOVERNOR--His relations with Jefferson, 154.
LANGUAGE--Is progressive, 174, 418.
LAW--Course of reading in, 207.
Common law no part of law of United States, 251.
Christianity no part of common law, 359.
Origin of common law, 381.
LAW, INTERNATIONAL--Principle of free ships make free goods &c.,
not law of nations, 270.
LEE, R. H.--Biography of, 422.
LEWIS AND CLARKE--Journal of their expedition, 91.
LIVINGSTON, E.--His code, 383, 483.
LOAN--Proposition for new loan, 629.
LOTTERIES--Jefferson applies for leave to sell his property by
lottery, 434.
LOUISIANA--Boundaries of, 51.
MANUFACTURES--Whether a mark should be secured to each by law, 563.
MATERIALISM--Views on, 153, 175.
MAZZEI LETTER--History and explanation of, 364.
METAPHYSICS--Views on, 153, 175.
MINISTERS--Senate has no right to negative the _grade_ of a
minister, it can only negative the _person_ appointed by
the Executive, 465.
MISSIONS, RELIGIOUS--To foreign States objectionable, 287.
MINT--The coiner at the mint unable to give security, 651.
MISSISSIPPI RIVER--Our right to navigate, 568.
MISSOURI QUESTION--150, 151, 194, 200.
Evil of a geographical line, 151, 158, 159, 180, 182, 194.
MONROE, JAMES--His election to Presidency, 80.
NAVY--Origin of navy of United States, 261, 264.
NEUTRALITY--A neutral nation may refuse belligerents right to
pass through its territory, 509.
NOVELS--Evil of, 102.
OFFICES--Rotation in, 190.
OPTICS--Views on, suggested, 258.
ORATORY--Defects of modern, 347.
PAINE, THOMAS--His writings, 197.
PARTIES--History of, in U. S., 277, 290.
Original views of federal and republican, 290.
Republican party becomes federalized, 325, 342.
Necessity of, 376.
A strong monarchical party at the beginning of our government,
390.
POSTS, NORTH-WESTERN--England refuses to surrender, 518.
QUAKERS--Character of, 66.
RANDOLPH, PEYTON--Character of, 20.
RELIGION--Jefferson's views on, 28, 61, 127, 164, 170, 185, 210,
245, 252, 257, 266, 269, 281.
System of Jesus compared with ancient philosophers, 138, 156,
164, 185.
Jesus as a reformer, 164.
Modern fanaticism, 170.
Religious intolerance, 396.
REPRESENTATION--Bill apportioning, 594.
REVOLUTION, THE--Who begun it, 99, 103, 121.
Circumstances attending Declaration of Independence, 122.
REVOLUTIONARY DEBT--Those due soldiers of North Carolina and
Virginia should be paid to themselves and not their assignees,
469.
ROMAN PEOPLE AND CONSTITUTION--148, 150.
SCIENCES--Distribution of, 339.
Progress of France in, 327.
SLAVES--Not entitled to be represented, 36.
Emancipation of, 58, 310.
Amelioration of condition of, 403, 437.
Re-capture of slaves escaped to Florida, 601.
SOCIETY--Its progress, 377.
SOUTH AMERICAN PROVINCES--Incapable of self-government, 67, 75,
104, 210.
SPAIN--Treaty with, rejected, 160.
TAYLOR, JOHN--Jefferson's opinion of his "constitution
construed," 213, 216.
TRACY, DESTUTT--His works, 38, 55.
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA--Organization of, 81, 161, 173, 196,
329, 392, 441.
Religious objections to appointment of Dr. Cooper in, 156,
162, 171.
Difficulties surrounding, 201, 204, 237, 392.
Necessity for a southern University, 205.
Arrangement for religious worship, 267.
Students allowed to select tickets, 300.
Difficulties of discipline, 301.
Progress of, 309.
Selection of professors for, 348.
Inculcation of federal doctrines in, should be guarded
against, 397.
Necessity for an Anatomical Hall, 393, 398.
Appointment of foreign professors, 415.
Library of, 432.
Establishment of school of Botany, 438, 441.
UNITED STATES--True policy of, 6.
Animosity to England growing out of last war, 22.
Relations of, with European powers, 288.
Relations of, with England, 22.
Danger of dissolution of Union, 182.
Should disconnect their policy from that of Europe, 183, 315.
Dangers which threaten them, 211, 214.
VANDER KEMP--History of, 29.
VIRGINIA--Programme of new constitution for, 9.
Arnold's invasion of, 144, 444.
Historical documents of, 312.
Her first constitution, 344.
Defects in, 315.
Authorship of bill of rights, constitution of, 405, 407.
WAR--Benefits of the last war, 66.
WARDS--Counties should be divided into, 35.
WASHINGTON, GEN.--Authorship of Farewell Address, 291.
No unkind feeling between him and Jefferson on account of
Mazzei letter, 364.
Forms and ceremonies adopted during his administration, 367.
He was a true republican, 371.
WASHINGTON CITY--Locating of, 512, 561.
WATER--Report on methods of obtaining fresh water from salt, 455.
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES--A standard of, 87.
Report on, 472.
WHISKEY--Evils of its cheapness, 285.
WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE--Its foundation, 328.
Proposition to consolidate it with University, 350, 384.
Its charter is under the power of the legislature, 350, 384.
WINES--Use of beneficial, 110.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. VII. (of 9) - Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, - Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.