passive. They would sometimes, indeed, tell me what was going on; but
no man ever heard me take part in such conversations; and none ever
misrepresented Mr. Adams in my presence without my asserting his just
character. With very confidential persons I have doubtless disapproved
of the principles and practices of his administration. This was
unavoidable. But never with those with whom it could do him any injury.
Decency would have required this conduct from me, if disposition had
not: and I am satisfied Mr. Adams’s conduct was equally honorable
towards me. But I think it part of his character to suspect foul play
in those of whom he is jealous, and not easily to relinquish his
suspicions.

I have gone, my dear friend, into these details, that you might know
every thing which had passed between us, might be fully possessed of
the state of facts and dispositions, and judge for yourself whether they
admit a revival of that friendly intercourse for which you are so kindly
solicitous. I shall certainly not be wanting in any thing on my part
which may second your efforts; which will be the easier with me,
inasmuch as I do not entertain a sentiment of Mr. Adams, the expression
of which could give him reasonable offence. And I submit the whole to
yourself, with the assurance, that whatever be the issue, my friendship
and respect for yourself will remain unaltered and unalterable.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XCV.--TO M. DESTUTT TRACY, January 26, 1811

TO M. DESTUTT TRACY.

Monticello, January 26, 1811.

Sir,

The length of time your favor of June the 12th, 1809, was on its way
to me, and my absence from home the greater part of the autumn, delayed
very much the pleasure which awaited me of reading the packet which
accompanied it. I cannot express to you the satisfaction which I
received from its perusal. I had, with the world, deemed Montesquieu’s
a work of much merit; but saw in it, with every thinking man, so much of
paradox, of false principle, and misapplied fact, as to render its value
equivocal on the whole. Williams and others had nibbled only at
its errors. A radical correction of them, therefore, was a great
desideratum. This want is now supplied, and with a depth of thought,
precision; of idea, of language, and of logic, which will force
conviction into every mind. I declare to you, Sir, in the spirit of
truth and sincerity, that I consider it the most precious gift the
present age has received. But what would it have been, had the author,
or would the author, take up the whole scheme of Montesquieu’s work, and
following the correct analysis he has here developed, fill up all its
parts according to his sound views of them. Montesquieu’s celebrity
would be but a small portion of that which would immortalize the author.
And with whom? With the rational and high-minded spirits of the present
and all future ages. With those whose approbation is both incitement
and reward to virtue and ambition. Is then the hope desperate? To what
object can the occupation of his future life be devoted so usefully to
the world, so splendidly to himself? But I must leave to others who have
higher claims on his attention, to press these considerations.

My situation, far in the interior of the country, was not favorable to
the object of getting this work translated and printed. Philadelphia is
the least distant of the great towns of our States, where there exists
any enterprise in this way; and it was not till the spring following
the receipt of your letter, that I obtained an arrangement for its
execution. The translation is just now completed. The sheets came to me
by post, from time to time, for revisal; but not being accompanied by
the original, I could not judge of verbal accuracies. I think, however,
it is substantially correct, without being an adequate representation
of the excellences of the original; as indeed no translation can be. I
found it impossible to give it the appearance of an original composition
in our language. I therefore think it best to divert inquiries after the
author towards a quarter where he will not be found; and with this view,
propose to prefix the prefatory epistle now enclosed. As soon as a copy
of the work can be had, I will send it to you by duplicate. The secret
of the author will be faithfully preserved during his and my joint
lives; and those into whose hands my papers will fall at my death will
be equally worthy of confidence. When the death of the author, or his
living consent shall permit the world to know their benefactor, both
his and my papers will furnish the evidence. In the mean time, the many
important truths the works so solidly establishes, will, I hope, make it
the political rudiment of the young, and manual of our older citizens.

One of its doctrines, indeed, the preference of a plural over a singular
executive, will probably not be assented to here. When our present
government was first established, we had many doubts on this question,
and many leanings towards a supreme executive council. It happened that
at that time the experiment of such an one was commenced in France,
while the single executive was under trial here. We watched the motions
and effects of these two rival plans, with an interest and anxiety
proportioned to the importance of a. choice between them. The experiment
in France failed after a short course, and not from any circumstance
peculiar to the times or nation, but from those internal jealousies and
dissensions in the Directory, which will ever arise among men equal in
power, without a principal to decide and control their differences. We
had tried a similar experiment in 1784, by establishing a committee of
the States, composed of a member from every State, then thirteen, to
exercise the executive functions during the recess of Congress. They
fell immediately into schisms and dissensions, which became at length so
inveterate as to render all co-operation among them impracticable:
they dissolved themselves, abandoning the helm of government, and it
continued without a head, until Congress met the ensuing winter. This
was then imputed to the temper of two or three individuals; but the wise
ascribed it to the nature of man. The failure of the French Directory,
and from the same cause, seems to have authorized a belief that the form
of a plurality, however promising in theory, is impracticable with men
constituted with the ordinary passions. While the tranquil and steady
tenor of our single executive, during a course of twenty-two years of
the most tempestuous times the history of the world has ever presented,
gives a rational hope that this important problem is at length solved.
Aided by the counsels of a cabinet of Heads of departments, originally
four, but now five, with whom the President consults, either singly or
all together, he has the benefit of their wisdom and information, brings
their views to one centre, and produces an unity of action and
direction in all the branches of the government. The excellence of this
construction of the executive power has already manifested itself here
under very opposite circumstances. During the administration of our
first President, his cabinet of four members was equally divided, by as
marked an opposition of principle, as monarchism and republicanism could
bring into conflict. Had that cabinet been a directory, like positive
and negative quantities in Algebra, the opposing wills would have
balanced each other, and produced a state of absolute inaction. But the
President heard with calmness the opinions and reasons of each, decided
the course to be pursued, and kept the government steadily in it,
unaffected by the agitation. The public knew well the dissensions of the
cabinet, but never had an uneasy thought on their account; because they
knew also they had provided a regulating power, which would keep the
machine in steady movement. I speak with an intimate knowledge of these
scenes, _quorum pars fui_; as I may of others of a character entirely
opposite. The third administration, which was of eight years, presented
an example of harmony in a cabinet of six persons, to which perhaps
history has furnished no parallel. There never arose, during the whole
time, an instance of an unpleasant thought or word between the members.
We sometimes met under differences of opinion, but scarcely ever failed,
by conversing and reasoning, so to modify each other’s ideas, as to
produce an unanimous result. Yet, able and amiable as these members
were, I am not certain this would have been the case, had each possessed
equal and independent powers. Ill defined limits of their respective
departments, jealousies, trifling at first, but nourished and
strengthened by repetition of occasions, intrigues without doors of
designing persons to build an importance to themselves on the divisions
of others, might, from small beginnings, have produced persevering
oppositions. But the power of decision in the President left no object
for internal dissension, and external intrigue was stifled in embryo by
the knowledge which incendiaries possessed, that no divisions they
could foment would change the course of the executive power. I am not
conscious that my participations in executive authority have produced
any bias in favor of the single executive; because the parts I have
acted have been in the subordinate, as well as superior stations, and
because, if I know myself, what I have felt, and what I have wished, I
know that I have never been so well pleased, as when I could shift power
from my own, on the shoulders of others; nor have I ever been able to
conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from
the exercise of power over others.

I am still, however, sensible of the solidity of your principle, that,
to insure the safety of the public liberty, its depository should be
subject to be changed with the greatest ease possible, and without
suspending or disturbing for a moment the movements of the machine of
government. You apprehend that a single executive, with, eminence of
talent, and destitution of principle, equal to the object, might, by
usurpation, render his powers hereditary. Yet I think history furnishes
as many examples of a single usurper arising out of a government by a
plurality, as of temporary trusts of power in a single hand rendered
permanent by usurpation. I do not believe, therefore, that this danger
is lessened in the hands of a plural executive. Perhaps it is greatly
increased, by the state of inefficiency to which they are liable from
feuds and divisions among themselves. The conservative body you propose
might be so constituted, as, while it would be an admirable sedative in
a variety of smaller cases, might also be a valuable sentinel and check
on the liberticide views of an ambitious individual. I am friendly to
this idea. But the true barriers of our liberty in this country are our
State governments: and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by
man, is that of which our Revolution and present government found us
possessed. Seventeen distinct States, amalgamated into one as to their
foreign concerns, but single and independent as to their internal
administration, regularly organized with a legislature and governor
resting on the choice of the people, and enlightened by a free press,
can never be so fascinated by the arts of one man, as to submit
voluntarily to his usurpation. Nor can they be constrained to it by any
force he can possess. While that may paralyze the single State in which
it happens to be encamped, sixteen others, spread over a country of
two thousand miles diameter, rise up on every side, ready organized for
deliberation by a constitutional legislature, and for action by their
governor, constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State,
that is to say, of every man in it, able to bear arms; and that militia,
too, regularly formed into regiments and battalions, into infantry,
cavalry, and artillery, trained under officers general and subordinate,
legally appointed, always in readiness, and to whom they are already
in habits of obedience. The republican government of France was lost
without a struggle, because the party of ‘_un et indivisible_’ had
prevailed: no provincial organizations existed to which the people
might rally under authority of the laws, the seats of the directory were
virtually vacant, and a small force sufficed to turn the legislature out
of their chamber and to salute its leader chief of the nation. But
with us, sixteen out of seventeen States rising in mass, under regular
organization and legal commanders, united in object and action by their
Congress, or, if that be in duresse, by a special convention, present
such obstacles to an usurper as for ever to stifle ambition in the first
conception of that object.

Dangers of another kind might more reasonably be apprehended from this
perfect and distinct organization, civil and military, of the States; to
wit, that certain States, from local and occasional discontents, might
attempt to secede from the Union. This is certainly possible; and would
be befriended by this regular organization. But it is not probable that
local discontents can spread to such an extent, as to be able to face
the sound parts of so extensive an union: and if ever they could reach
the majority, they would then become the regular government, acquire the
ascendancy in Congress, and be able to redress their own grievances by
laws peaceably and constitutionally passed. And even the States in which
local discontents might engender a commencement of fermentation, would
be paralyzed and self-checked by that very division into parties into
which we have fallen, into which all States must fall wherein men are at
liberty to think, speak, and act freely, according to the diversities
of their individual conformations, and which are, perhaps, essential
to preserve the purity of the government, by the censorship which these
parties habitually exercise over each other.

You will read, I am sure, with indulgence, the explanations of the
grounds on which I have ventured to form an opinion differing from
yours. They prove my respect for your judgment, and diffidence of my
own, which have forbidden me to retain, without examination, an opinion
questioned by you. Permit me now to render my portion of the general
debt of gratitude, by acknowledgments in advance for the singular
benefaction which is the subject of this letter, to tender my wishes
for the continuance of a life so usefully employed, and to add the
assurances of my perfect esteem and respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XCVI.--TO COLONEL MONROE, May 5, 1811

TO COLONEL MONROE.

Monticello, May 5, 1811.

Dear Sir,

Your favor on your departure from Richmond came to hand in due time.
Although I may not have been among the first, I am certainly with the
sincerest, who congratulate you on your re-entrance into the national
councils. Your value there has never been unduly estimated by those
whom personal feelings did not misguide. The late misunderstandings at
Washington have been a subject of real concern to me. I know that
the dissolutions of personal friendships are among the most painful
occurrences in human life. I have sincere esteem for all who have been
affected by them, having passed with them eight years of great harmony
and affection. These incidents are rendered more distressing in our
country than elsewhere, because our printers ravin on the agonies of
their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb. But the printers
and the public are very different personages. The former may lead the
latter a little out of their track, while the deviation is insensible:
but the moment they usurp their direction and that of their government,
they will be reduced to their true places. The two last Congresses have
been the theme of the most licentious reprobation for printers thirsting
after war, some against France, and some against England. But the people
wish for peace with both. They feel no incumbency on them to become
the reformers of the other hemisphere, and to inculcate, with fire and
sword, a return to moral order. When, indeed, peace shall become more
losing than war, they may owe to their interest, what these Quixottes
are clamoring for on false estimates of honor. The public are unmoved by
these clamors, as the re-election of their legislators shows, and they
are firm to their executive on the subject of the more recent clamors.

We are suffering here both in the gathered and the growing crop. The
lowness of the river, and great quantity of produce brought to Milton
this year, render it almost impossible to get our crops to market.
This is the case of mine as well as yours: and the Hessian fly appears
alarmingly in our growing crop. Every thing is in distress for the want
of rain.

Present me respectfully to Mrs. Monroe, and accept yourself assurances
of my constant and affectionate esteem.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XCVII.--TO GENERAL DEARBORN, August 14, 1811

TO GENERAL DEARBORN.

Poplar Forest, August 14, 1811.

Dear General and Friend,

*****

I am happy to learn that your own health is good, and I hope it will
long continue so. The friends we left behind us have fallen out by the
way. I sincerely lament it, because I sincerely esteem them all, and
because it multiplies schisms where harmony is safety. As far as I have
been able to judge, however, it has made no sensible impression against
the government. Those who were murmuring before are a little louder now;
but the mass of our citizens is firm and unshaken. It furnishes, as an
incident, another proof that they are perfectly equal to the purposes of
self-government, and that we have nothing to fear for its stability. The
spirit, indeed, which manifests itself among the tories of your quarter,
although I believe there is a majority there sufficient to keep it down
in peaceable times, leaves me not without some disquietude. Should the
determination of England, now formally expressed, to take possession of
the ocean, and to suffer no commerce on it but through her ports, force
a war upon us, I foresee a possibility of a separate treaty between
her and your Essex men, on the principles of neutrality and commerce.
Pickering here, and his nephew Williams there, can easily negotiate
this. Such a lure to the quietists in our ranks with you, might recruit
theirs to a majority. Yet, excluded as they would be from intercourse
with the rest of the Union and of Europe, I scarcely see the gain they
would propose to themselves, even for the moment. The defection would
certainly disconcert the other States, but it could not ultimately
endanger their safety. They are adequate, in all points, to a defensive
war. However, I hope your majority, with the aid it is entitled to, will
save us from this trial, to which I think it possible we are advancing.
The death of George may come to our relief; but I fear the dominion
of the sea is the insanity of the nation itself also. Perhaps, if some
stroke of fortune were to rid us at the same time from the Mammoth of
the land as well as the Leviathan of the ocean, the people of England
might lose their fears, and recover their sober senses again. Tell my
old friend, Governor Gerry, that I gave him glory for the rasping with
which he rubbed down his herd of traitors. Let them have justice
and protection against personal violence, but no favor. Powers and
pre-eminences conferred on them are daggers put into the hands of
assassins, to be plunged into our own bosoms in the moment the thrust
can go home to the heart. Moderation can never reclaim them. They deem
it timidity, and despise without fearing the tameness from which it
flows. Backed by England, they never lose the hope that their day is to
come, when the terrorism of their earlier power is to be merged in the
more gratifying system,of deportation and the guillotine. Being now
_hors de combat_ myself, I resign to others these cares. A long attack
of rheumatism has greatly enfeebled me, and warns me, that they will not
very long be within my ken. But you may have to meet the trial, and in
the focus of its fury. God send you a safe deliverance, a happy issue
out of all afflictions, personal and public, with long life, long
health, and friends as sincerely attached, as yours affectionately,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XCVIII.--TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH

TO DOCTOR BENJAMIN RUSH.

Poplar Forest, December 5, 1811.

Dear Sir,

While at Monticello I am so much engrossed by business or society, that
I can only write on matters of strong urgency. Here I have leisure, as
I have every where the disposition, to think of my friends. I recur,
therefore, to the subject of your kind letters relating to Mr. Adams
and myself, which a late occurrence has again presented to me. I
communicated to you the correspondence which had parted Mrs. Adams and
myself, in proof that I could not give friendship in exchange for such
sentiments as she had recently taken up towards myself, and avowed and
maintained in her letters to me. Nothing but a total renunciation of
these could admit a reconciliation, and that could be cordial only in
proportion as the return to ancient opinions was believed sincere. In
these jaundiced sentiments of hers I had associated Mr. Adams, knowing
the weight which her opinions had with him, and notwithstanding she
declared in her letters that they were not communicated to him. A late
incident has satisfied me that I wronged him as well as her in not
yielding entire confidence to this assurance on her part. Two of the Mr.
------, my neighbors and friends, took a tour to the northward during
the last summer. In Boston they fell into company with Mr. Adams, and by
his invitation passed a day with him at Braintree. He spoke out to
them every thing which came uppermost, and as it occurred to his mind,
without any reserve, and seemed most disposed to dwell on those things
which happened during his own administration. He spoke of his masters,
as he called his Heads of departments, as acting above his control, and
often against his opinions. Among many other topics, he adverted to
the unprincipled licentiousness of the press against myself, adding, ‘I
always loved Jefferson, and still love him.’

This is enough for me. I only needed this knowledge to revive towards
him all the affections of the most cordial moments of our lives.
Changing a single word only in Dr. Franklin’s character of him, I
knew him to be always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes
incorrect and precipitate in his judgments: and it is known to those who
have ever heard me speak of Mr. Adams, that I have ever done him justice
myself, and defended him when assailed by others, with the single
exception as to his political opinions. But with a man possessing so
many other estimable qualities, why should we be dissocialized by mere
differences of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, or any
thing else. His opinions are as honestly formed as my own. Our different
views of the same subject are the result of a difference in our
organization and experience. I never withdrew from the society of any
man on this account, although many have done it from me; much less
should I do it from one with whom I had gone through, with hand and
heart, so many trying scenes. I wish, therefore, but for an apposite
occasion to express to Mr. Adams my unchanged affections for him. There
is an awkwardness which hangs over the resuming a correspondence so
long discontinued, unless something could arise which should call for a
letter. Time and chance may perhaps generate such an occasion, of which
I shall not be wanting in promptitude to avail myself. From this fusion
of mutual affections, Mrs. Adams is of course separated. It will only be
necessary that I never name her. In your letters to Mr. Adams, you can,
perhaps, suggest my continued cordiality towards him, and knowing this,
should an occasion of writing first present itself to him, he will
perhaps avail himself of it, as I certainly will, should it first occur
to me. No ground for jealousy now existing, he will certainly give fair
play to the natural warmth of his heart. Perhaps I may open the way
in some letter to my old friend Gerry, who I know is in habits of the
greatest intimacy with him.

I have thus, my friend, laid open my heart to you, because you were so
kind as to take an interest in healing again revolutionary affections,
which have ceased in expression only, but not in their existence. God
ever bless you, and preserve you in life and health.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER XCIX.--TO JOHN ADAMS, January 21, 1812

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, January 21, 1812.

Dear Sir,

I thank you beforehand (for they are not yet arrived) for the specimens
of homespun you have been so kind as to forward me by post. I doubt not
their excellence, knowing how far you are advanced in these things
in your quarter. Here we do little in the fine way, but in coarse
and middling goods a great deal. Every family in the country is a
manufactory within itself, and is very generally able to make within
itself all the stouter and middling stuffs for its own clothing and
household use. We consider a sheep for every person in the family as
sufficient to clothe it, in addition to the cotton, hemp, and flax,
which we raise ourselves. For fine stuff we shall depend on your
northern manufactories. Of these, that is to say, of company
establishments, we have none. We use little machinery. The spinning
jenny, and loom with the flying shuttle, can be managed in a family; but
nothing more complicated. The economy and thriftiness resulting from
our household manufactures are such that they will never again be laid
aside; and nothing more salutary for us has ever happened than the
British obstructions to our demands for their manufactures. Restore free
intercourse when they will, their commerce with us will have totally
changed its form, and the articles we shall in future want from them
will not exceed their own consumption of our produce.

A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind. It
carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers,
we were fellow-laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most
valuable to man, his right of self-government. Laboring always at the
same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet
passing harmless under our bark, we knew not how, we rode through the
storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port. Still we did not
expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we have had them. First
the detention of the western posts: then the coalition of Pilnitz,
outlawing our commerce with France, and the British enforcement of the
outlawry. In your day, French depredations: in mine, English, and the
Berlin and Milan decrees: now, the English orders of council, and
the piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it will be the
impressment of our seamen, or something else: and so we have gone on,
and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in
the history of man. And I do believe we shall continue to growl, to
multiply, and prosper, until we exhibit an association, powerful, wise,
and happy, beyond what has yet been seen by men. As for France and
England, with all their pre-eminence in science, the one is a den of
robbers, and the other of pirates. And if science produces no better
fruits than tyranny, murder, rapine, and destitution of national
morality, I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest,
and estimable, as our neighboring savages are. But whither is senile
garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final leave.
I think little of them, and say less. I have given up newspapers in
exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I
find myself much the happier. Sometimes, indeed, I look back to former
occurrences, in remembrance of our old friends and fellow-laborers,
who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side
of the Potomac, and on this side, myself alone. You and I have
been wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a
considerable activity of body and mind. I am on horseback three or four
hours of every day; visit three or four times a year a possession I have
ninety miles distant, performing the winter journey on horseback. I walk
little, however, a single mile being too much for me; and I live in the
midst of my grandchildren, one of whom has lately promoted me to be a
great-grandfather. I have heard with pleasure that you also retain good
health, and a greater power of exercise in walking than I do. But I
would rather have heard this from yourself, and that, writing a letter
like mine, full of egotisms, and of details of your health, your habits,
occupations, and enjoyments, I should have the pleasure of knowing, that
in the race of life, you do not keep, in its physical decline, the
same distance ahead of me, which you have done in political honors and
achievements. No circumstances have lessened the interest I feel in
these particulars respecting yourself; none have suspended for one
moment my sincere esteem for you, and I now salute you with unchanged
affection and respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER C.--TO JOHN ADAMS, April 20, 1812

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, April 20, 1812.

Dear Sir,

I have it now in my power to send you a piece of homespun in return for
that I received from you. Not of the fine texture, or delicate character
of yours, or, to drop our metaphor, not filled as that was with that
display of imagination which constitutes excellence in Belles Lettres,
but a mere sober, dry, and formal piece of logic. _Ornari res ipsa
negat_. Yet you may have enough left of your old taste for law reading,
to cast an eye over some of the questions it discusses. At any rate,
accept it as the offering of esteem and friendship.

You wish to know something of the Richmond and Wabash prophets. Of
Nimrod Hews I never before heard. Christopher Macpherson I have known
for twenty years. He is a man of color, brought up as a book-keeper by a
merchant, his master, and afterwards enfranchised. He had understanding
enough to post up his leger from his journal, but not enough to bear
up against hypochrondriac affections, and the gloomy forebodings they
inspire. He became crazy, foggy, his head always in the clouds, and
rhapsodizing what neither himself nor any one else could understand.
I think he told me he had visited you personally while you were in the
administration, and wrote you letters, which you have probably forgotten
in the mass of the correspondences of that crazy class, of whose
complaints, and terrors, and mysticisms, the several Presidents have
been the regular depositories. Macpherson was too honest to be molested
by any body, and too inoffensive to be a subject for the mad-house;
although, I believe, we are told in the old book, that ‘every man that
is mad, and maketh himself a prophet, thou shouldst put him in prison
and in the stocks.’

The Wabash prophet is a very different character, more rogue than fool,
if to be a rogue is not the greatest of all follies. He arose to notice
while I was in the administration, and became, of course, a proper
subject of inquiry for me. The inquiry was made with diligence. His
declared object was the reformation of his red brethren, and their
return to their pristine manner of living. He pretended to be in
constant communication with the Great Spirit; that he was instructed by
him to make known to the Indians that they were created by him distinct
from the whites, of different natures, for different purposes, and
placed under different circumstances, adapted to their nature and
destinies; that they must return from all the ways of the whites to the
habits and opinions of their forefathers; they must not eat the flesh
of hogs, of bullocks, of sheep, &c. the deer and buffalo having been
created for their food; they must not make bread of wheat, but of Indian
corn; they must not wear linen nor woollen, but dress like their fathers
in the skins and furs of animals; they must not drink ardent spirits:
and I do not remember whether he extended his inhibitions to the gun and
gunpowder, in favor of the bow and arrow. I concluded from all this that
he was a visionary, enveloped in the clouds of their antiquities, and
vainly endeavoring to lead back his brethren to the fancied beatitudes
of their golden age. I thought there was little danger of his making
many proselytes from the habits and comforts they had learned from the
whites, to the hardships and privations of savagism, and no great harm
if he did. We let him go on, therefore, unmolested. But his followers
increased till the English thought him worth corruption, and found him
corruptible. I suppose his views were then changed; but his proceedings
in consequence of them were after I left the administration, and are,
therefore, unknown to me; nor have I ever been informed what were the
particular acts on his part, which produced, an actual commencement
of hostilities on ours. I have no doubt, however, that his subsequent
proceedings are but a chapter apart, like that of Henry and Lord
Liverpool, in the book of the Kings of England.

Of this mission of Henry, your son had got wind in the time of the
embargo, and communicated it to me. But he had learned nothing of the
particular agent, although, of his workings, the information he had
obtained appears now to have been correct. He stated a particular which
Henry has not distinctly brought forward, which was, that the eastern
States were not to be required to make a formal act of separation from
the Union, and to take a part in the war against it; a measure deemed
much too strong for their people: but to declare themselves in a state
of neutrality, in consideration of which they were to have peace and
free commerce, the lure most likely to insure popular acquiescence.
Having no indications of Henry as the intermediate in this negotiation
of the Essex junto, suspicions fell on Pickering, and his nephew
Williams in London. If he was wronged in this, the ground of the
suspicion is to be found in his known practices and avowed opinions,
as that of his accomplices in the sameness of sentiment and of language
with Henry, and subsequently by the fluttering of the wounded pigeons.

This letter, with what it encloses, has given you enough, I presume, of
law and the prophets. I will only add to it, therefore, the homage of my
respects to Mrs. Adams, and to yourself the assurances of affectionate
esteem and respect.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CI.--TO JAMES MAURY, April 25, 1812

TO JAMES MAURY.

Monticello, April 25, 1812.

My Dear and Ancient Friend and Classmate,

Often has my heart smote me for delaying acknowledgments to you,
receiving, as I do, such frequent proofs of your kind recollection in
the transmission of papers to me. But instead of acting on the good old
maxim of not putting off to to-morrow what we can do to-day, we are too
apt to reverse it, and not to do today what we can put off to to-morrow.
But this duty can be no longer put off. To-day we are at peace;
to-morrow war. The curtain of separation is drawing between us, and
probably will not be withdrawn till one, if not both of us, will be at
rest with our fathers. Let me now, then, while I may, renew to you the
declarations of my warm attachment, which in no period of life has ever
been weakened, and seems to become stronger as the remaining objects of
our youthful affections are fewer.

Our two countries are to be at war, but not you and I. And why should
our two countries be at war, when by peace we can be so much more useful
to one another? Surely the world will acquit our government of having
sought it. Never before has there been an instance of a nation’s bearing
so much as we have borne. Two items alone in our catalogue of wrongs
will for ever acquit us of being the aggressors; the impressment of our
seamen, and the excluding us from the ocean. The first foundations of
the social compact would be broken up, were we definitively to refuse to
its members the protection of their persons and property, while in their
lawful pursuits. I think the war will not be short, because the object
of England, long obvious, is to claim the ocean as her domain, and to
exact transit duties from every vessel traversing it. This is the sum of
her orders of council, which were only a step in this bold experiment,
never meant to be retracted if it could be permanently maintained. And
this object must continue her in war with all the world. To this I
see no termination, until her exaggerated efforts, so much beyond her
natural strength and resources, shall have exhausted her to bankruptcy.
The approach of this crisis is, I think, visible in the departure of her
precious metals, and depreciation of her paper medium. We, who have gone
through that operation, know its symptoms, its course, and consequences.
In England they will be more serious than elsewhere, because half the
wealth of her people is now in that medium, the private revenue of her
money-holders, or rather of her paper-holders, being, I believe, greater
than that of her land-holders. Such a proportion of property, imaginary
and baseless as it is, cannot be reduced to vapor, but with great
explosion. She will rise out of its ruins, however, because her lands,
her houses, her arts, will remain, and the greater part of her men. And
these will give her again that place among nations which is proportioned
to her natural means, and which we all wish her to hold. We believe that
the just standing of all nations is the health and security of all. We
consider the overwhelming power of England on the ocean, and of France
on the land, as destructive of the prosperity and happiness of the
world, and wish both to be reduced only to the necessity of observing
moral duties. We believe no more in Bonaparte’s fighting merely for the
liberty of the seas, than in Great Britain’s fighting for the liberties
of mankind. The object of both is the same, to draw to themselves the
power, the wealth, and the resources of other nations. We resist the
enterprises of England first, because they first come vitally home to
us. And our feelings repel the logic of bearing the lash of George the
III. for fear of that of Bonaparte at some future day. When the wrongs
of France shall reach us with equal effect, we shall resist them
also. But one at a time is enough: and having offered a choice to the
champions, England first takes up the gauntlet.

The English newspapers suppose me the personal enemy of their nation. I
am not so. I am an enemy to its injuries, as I am to those of France. If
I could permit myself to have national partialities, and if the conduct
of England would have permitted them to be directed towards her,
they would have been so. I thought that, in the administration of Mr.
Addington, I discovered some dispositions towards justice, and even
friendship and respect for us, and began to pave the way for cherishing
these dispositions, and improving them into ties of mutual good will.
But we had then a federal minister there, whose dispositions to believe
himself, and to inspire others with a belief, in our sincerity, his
subsequent conduct has brought into doubt; and poor Merry, the English
minister here, had learned nothing of diplomacy but its suspicions,
without head enough to distinguish when they were misplaced. Mr.
Addington and Mr. Fox passed away too soon to avail the two countries
of their dispositions. Had I been personally hostile to England,
and biassed in favor of either the character or views of her great
antagonist, the affair of the Chesapeake put war into my hand. I had
only to open it, and let havoc loose. But if ever I was gratified
with the possession of power, and of the confidence of those who had
entrusted me with it, it was on that occasion, when I was enabled to
use both for the prevention of war, towards which the torrent of passion
here was directed almost irresistibly, and when not another person in
the United States, less supported by authority and favor, could have
resisted it. And now that a definitive adherence to her impressments and
orders of council renders war no longer avoidable, my earnest prayer is,
that our government may enter into no compact of common cause with the
other belligerent, but keep us free to make a separate peace, whenever
England will separately give us peace, and future security. But Lord
Liverpool is our witness, that this can never be but by her removal from
our neighborhood.

I have thus, for a moment, taken a range into the field of politics,
to possess you with the view we take of things here. But in the scenes
which are to ensue, I am to be but a spectator. I have withdrawn myself
from all political intermeddlings, to indulge the evening of my life
with what have been the passions of every portion of it, books, science,
my farms, my family, and friends.

To these every hour of the day is now devoted. I retain a good activity
of mind, not quite as much of body, but uninterrupted health. Still the
hand of age is upon me. All my old friends are nearly gone. Of those in
my neighborhood, Mr. Divers and Mr. Lindsay alone remain. If you could
make it a _partie quarrée_, it would be a comfort indeed. We would
beguile our lingering hours with talking over our youthful exploits, our
hunts on Peter’s Mountain, with a long train of _et cetera_ in addition,
and feel, by recollection at least, a momentary flash of youth.
Reviewing the course of a long and sufficiently successful life, I find
in no portion of it happier moments than those were. I think the old
hulk in which you are, is near her wreck, and that like a prudent rat,
you should escape in time. However, here, there, and every where, in
peace or in war, you will have my sincere affections, and prayers for
your life, health, and happiness.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CII.--TO THE PRESIDENT, May 30, 1812

TO THE PRESIDENT.

Monticello, May 30, 1812.

Dear Sir,

Another communication is enclosed, and the letter of the applicant is
the only information I have of his qualifications. I barely remember
such a person as the secretary of Mr. Adams, and messenger to the Senate
while I was of that body. It enlarges the sphere of choice by adding
to it a strong federalist. The triangular war must be the idea of the
Anglomen and malcontents; in other words, the federalists and quids. Yet
it would reconcile neither. It would only change the topic of abuse
with the former, and not cure the mental disease of the latter. It
would prevent our eastern capitalists and seamen from employment in
privateering, take away the only chance of conciliating them, and keep
them at home, idle, to swell the discontents; it would completely disarm
us of the most powerful weapon we can employ against Great Britain, by
shutting every port to our prizes, and yet would not add a single
vessel to their number; it would shut every market to our agricultural
productions, and engender impatience and discontent with that class
which, in fact, composes the nation; it would insulate us in general
negotiations for peace, making all the parties our opposers, and very
indifferent about peace with us, if they have it with the rest of the
world; and would exhibit a solecism worthy of Don Quixotte only, that
of a choice to fight two enemies at a time, rather than to take them
by succession. And the only motive for all this is a sublimated
impartiality, at which the world will laugh, and our own people will
turn upon us in mass as soon as it is explained to them, as it will be
by the very persons who are now laying that snare. These are the hasty
views of one who rarely thinks on these subjects. Your own will
be better, and I pray to them every success, and to yourself every
felicity.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CIII.--TO ELBRIDGE GERRY, June 11, 1812

TO ELBRIDGE GERRY.

Monticello, June 11, 1812.

Dear Sir,

It has given me great pleasure to receive a letter from you. It seems as
if, our ancient friends dying off, the whole mass of the affections
of the heart survives undiminished to the few who remain. I think our
acquaintance commenced in 1764, both then just of age. We happened to
take lodgings in the same house in New York. Our next meeting was in
the Congress of 1775, and at various times afterwards in the exercise of
that and other public functions, until your mission to Europe. Since we
have ceased to meet, we have still thought and acted together, ‘_et idem
velle, atque idem nolle, ea demum amicitia est_.’ Of this harmony of
principle, the papers you enclosed me are proof sufficient. I do not
condole with you on your release from your government. The vote of your
opponents is the most honorable mark by which the soundness of your
conduct could be stamped. I claim the same honorable testimonial. There
was but a single act of my whole administration of which that party
approved. That was the proclamation on the attack of the Chesapeake.
And when I found they approved of it, I confess I began strongly to
apprehend I had done wrong, and to exclaim with the Psalmist, ‘Lord,
what have I done, that the wicked should praise me!’

What, then, does this English faction with you mean? Their newspapers
say rebellion, and that they will not remain united with us unless we
will permit them to govern the majority. If this be their purpose, their
anti-republican spirit, it ought to be met at once. But a government
like ours should be slow in believing this, should put forth its whole
might when necessary to suppress it, and promptly return to the paths of
reconciliation. The extent of our country secures it, I hope, from the
vindictive passions of the petty incorporations of Greece. I rather
suspect that the principal office of the other seventeen States will be
to moderate and restrain the local excitement of our friends with you,
when they (with the aid of their brethren of the other States, if they
need it) shall have brought the rebellious to their feet. They count on
British aid. But what can that avail them by land? They would separate
from their friends, who alone furnish employment for their navigation,
to unite with their only rival for that employment. When interdicted
the harbors of their quondam brethren, they will go, I suppose, to ask
a share in the carrying-trade of their rivals, and a dispensation with
their navigation act. They think they will be happier in an association
under the rulers of Ireland, the East and West Indies, than in an
independent government, where they are obliged to put up with their
proportional share only in the direction of its affairs. But I trust
that such perverseness will not be that of the honest and well meaning
mass of the federalists of Massachusetts; and that when the questions
of separation and rebellion shall be nakedly proposed to them, the Gores
and the Pickerings will find their levees crowded with silk-stocking
gentry, but no yeomanry; an army of officers without soldiers. I hope,
then, all will still end well: the Anglomen will consent to make peace
with their bread and butter, and you and I shall sink to rest, without
having been actors or spectators in another civil war.

How many children have you? You beat me, I expect, in that count; but I
you in that of our grand-children. We have not timed these things well
together, or we might have begun a re-alliance between Massachusetts
and the Old Dominion, faithful companions in the war of Independence,
peculiarly tallied in interests, by each wanting exactly what the other
has to spare; and estranged to each other, in latter times, only by the
practices of a third nation, the common enemy of both. Let us live only
to see this re-union, and I will say with old Simeon, ‘Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation.’ In that peace may you long remain, my friend, and depart
only in the fulness of years, all passed in health and prosperity. God
bless you.

Th: Jefferson.

P.S. June 13. I did not condole with you on the reprobation of your
opponents, because it proved your orthodoxy. Yesterday’s post brought
me the resolution of the republicans of Congress, to propose you as
Vice-President. On this I sincerely congratulate you. It is a stamp of
double proof. It is a notification to the factionaries that their nay is
the yea of truth, and its best test. We shall be almost within striking
distance of each other. Who knows but you may fill up some short recess
of Congress with a visit to Monticello, where a numerous family will
hail you with a hearty country welcome. T.J.

LETTER CIV.--TO JUDGE TYLER, June 17,1812

TO JUDGE TYLER.

Monticello, June 17,1812.

Dear Sir,

*****

On the other subject of your letter, the application of the common law
to our present situation, I deride with you the ordinary doctrine,
that we brought with us from England the common law rights. This narrow
notion was a favorite in the first moment of rallying to our rights
against Great Britain. But it was that of men who felt their rights
before they had thought of their explanation. The truth is, that we
brought with us the rights of men; of expatriated men. On our arrival
here, the question would at once arise, by what law will we govern
ourselves? The resolution seems to have been, by that system with which
we are familiar, to be altered by ourselves occasionally, and adapted to
our new situation. The proofs of this resolution are to be found in
the form of the oaths of the judges, 1 Hening’s Stat. 169, 187; of the
Governor, ib. 504; in the act for a provisional government, ib. 372; in
the preamble to the laws of 1661-2; the uniform current of opinions and
decisions; and in the general recognition of all our statutes framed
on that basis. But the state of the English law at the date of
our emigration, constituted the system adopted here. We may doubt,
therefore, the propriety of quoting in our courts English authorities
subsequent to that adoption; still more, the admission of authorities
posterior to the Declaration of Independence, or rather to the accession
of that King, whose reign, _ab initio_, was that very tissue of wrongs
which rendered the Declaration at length necessary. The reason for it
had inception at least as far back as the commencement of his reign.
This relation to the beginning of his reign, would add the advantage of
getting us rid of all Mansfield’s innovations, or civilizations of the
common law. For however I admit the superiority of the civil, over the
common law code, as a system of perfect justice, yet an incorporation of
the two would be like Nebuchadnezzar’s image of metals and clay, a thing
without cohesion of parts. The only natural improvement of the common
law, is through its homogeneous ally, the chancery, in which new
principles are to be examined, concocted, and digested. But when,
by repeated decisions and modifications, they are rendered pure and
certain, they should be transferred by statute to the courts of common
law, and placed within the pale of juries. The exclusion from the courts
of the malign influence of all authorities after the _Georgium sidus_
became ascendant, would uncanonize Blackstone, whose book, although the
most elegant and best digested of our law catalogue, has been perverted
more than all others to the degeneracy of legal science. A student finds
there a smattering of every thing, and his indolence easily persuades
him, that if he understands that book, he is master of the whole body
of the law. The distinction between these and those who have drawn their
stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke’s Littleton, seems
well understood even by the unlettered common people, who apply the
appellation of Blackstone-lawyers to these ephemeral insects of the law.

Whether we should undertake to reduce the common law, our own, and
so much of the English statutes as we have adopted, to a text, is a
question of transcendant difficulty. It was discussed at the first
meeting of the committee of the revised code, in 1776, and decided
in the negative, by the opinions of Wythe, Mason, and myself, against
Pendleton and Thomas Lee. Pendleton proposed to take Blackstone for that
text, only purging him of what was inapplicable, or unsuitable to us. In
that case, the meaning of every word of Blackstone would have become
a source of litigation, until it had been settled by repeated legal
decisions. And to come at that meaning, we should have had produced, on
all occasions, that very pile of authorities from which it would be said
he drew his conclusion, and which, of course, would explain it, and
the terms in which it is couched. Thus we should have retained the same
chaos of law-lore from which we wished to be emancipated, added to the
evils of the uncertainty which a new text and new phrases would have
generated. An example of this may be found in the old statutes, and
commentaries on them, in Coke’s second institute; but more remarkably,
in the institute of Justinian, and the vast masses, explanatory or
supplementary of that, which fill the libraries of the civilians. We
were deterred from the attempt by these considerations, added to which,
the bustle of the times did not permit leisure for such an undertaking.

Your request of my opinion on this subject has given you the trouble of
these observations. If your firmer mind in encountering difficulties,
would have added your vote to the minority of the committee, you would
have had on your side one of the greatest men of our age, and, like him,
have detracted nothing from the sentiments of esteem and respect which I
bore to him, and tender with sincerity the assurance of to yourself.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CV.--TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE, October 1, 1812

TO COLONEL WILLIAM DUANE.

Monticello, October 1, 1812.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of September the 20th has been duly received, and I cannot
but be gratified by the assurance it expresses, that my aid in the
councils of our government would increase the public confidence in them;
because it admits an inference that they have approved of the course
pursued, when I heretofore bore a part in those councils. I profess,
too, so much of the Roman principle, as to deem it honorable for the
general of yesterday to act as a corporal to-day, if his services can be
useful to his country; holding that to be false pride, which postpones
the public good to any private or personal considerations. But I am
past service. The hand of age is upon me. The decay of bodily faculties
apprizes me that those of the mind cannot be unimpaired, had I not still
better proofs. Every year counts by increased debility, and departing
faculties keep the score. The last year it was the sight, this it is the
hearing, the next something else will be going, until all is gone.
Of all this I was sensible before I left Washington, and probably my
fellow-laborers saw it before I did. The decay of memory was obvious:
it is now become distressing. But the mind, too, is weakened. When I
was young, mathematics was the passion of my life. The same passion has
returned upon me, but with unequal powers. Processes which I then read
off with the facility of common discourse, now cost me labor, and time,
and slow investigation. When I offered this, therefore, as one of the
reasons deciding my retirement from office, it was offered in sincerity
and a consciousness of its truth. And I think it a great blessing that
I retain understanding enough to be sensible how much of it I have lost,
and to avoid exposing myself as a spectacle for the pity of my friends;
that I have surmounted the difficult point of knowing when to retire. As
a compensation for faculties departed, nature gives me good health, and
a perfect resignation to the laws of decay which she has prescribed to
all the forms and combinations of matter.

The detestable treason of Hull has, indeed, excited a deep anxiety
in all breasts. The depression was in the first moment gloomy and
portentous. But it has been succeeded by a revived animation, and a
determination to meet the occurrence with increased efforts; and I have
so much confidence in the vigorous minds and bodies of our countrymen,
as to be fearless as to the final issue. The treachery of Hull, like
that of Arnold, cannot be matter of blame on our government. His
character, as an officer of skill and bravery, was established on the
trials of the last war, and no previous act of his life had led to doubt
his fidelity. Whether the Head of the war department is equal to his
charge, I am not qualified to decide. I knew him only as a pleasant,
gentlemanly man in society; and the indecision of his character rather
added to the amenity of his conversation. But when translated from
the colloquial circle to the great stage of national concerns, and the
direction of the extensive operations of war, whether he has been able
to seize at one glance the long line of defenceless border presented by
our enemy, the masses of strength which we hold on different points of
it, the facility this gave us of attacking him, on the same day, on
all his points, from the extremity of the lakes to the neighborhood
of Quebec, and the perfect indifference with which this last place,
impregnable as it is, might be left in the hands of the enemy to fall
of itself; whether, I say, he could see and prepare vigorously for
all this, or merely wrapped himself in the cloak of cold defence, I
am uninformed. I clearly think with you on the competence of Monroe
to embrace great views of action. The decision of his character, his
enterprise, firmness, industry, and unceasing vigilance, would, I
believe, secure, as I am sure they would merit, the public confidence,
and give us all the success which our means can accomplish. If our
operations have suffered or languished from any want of energy in the
present head which directs them, I have so much confidence in the wisdom
and conscientious integrity of Mr. Madison, as to be satisfied, that,
however torturing to his feelings, he will fulfil his duty to the public
and to his own reputation, by making the necessary change. Perhaps he
may be preparing it while we are talking about it: for of all these
things I am uninformed. I fear that Hull’s surrender has been more than
the mere loss of a year to us. Besides bringing on us the whole mass of
savage nations, whom fear and not affection had kept in quiet, there is
danger that in giving time to an enemy who can send reinforcements of
regulars faster than we can raise them, they may strengthen Canada and
Halifax beyond the assailment of our lax and divided powers. Perhaps,
however, the patriotic efforts from Kentucky and Ohio, by recalling
the British force to its upper posts, may yet give time to Dearborn to
strike a blow below. Effectual possession of the river from Montreal to
the Chaudiere, which is practicable, would give us the upper country
at our leisure, and close for ever the scenes of the tomahawk and
scalping-knife.

But these things are for others to plan and achieve. The only succor
from the old, must lie in their prayers. These I offer up with sincere
devotion; and in my concern for the great public, I do not overlook my
friends, but supplicate for them, as I do for yourself, a long course of
freedom, happiness, and prosperity.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CVI.--TO MR. MELISH, January 13, 1813

TO MR. MELISH.

Monticello, January 13, 1813.

Dear Sir,

I received duly your favor of December the 15th, and with it the copies
of your map and travels, for which be pleased to accept my thanks. The
book I have read with extreme satisfaction and information. As to the
western States, particularly, it has greatly edified me; for of the
actual condition of that interesting portion of our country, I had not
an adequate idea. I feel myself now as familiar with it as with the
condition of the maritime States. I had no conception that manufactures
had made such progress there, and particularly of the number of carding
and spinning machines dispersed through the whole country. We are
but beginning here to have them in our private families. Small
spinning-jennies of from half a dozen to twenty spindles, will soon,
however, make their way into the humblest cottages, as well as the
richest houses; and nothing is more certain, than that the coarse and
middling clothing for our families, will for ever hereafter continue to
be made within ourselves. I have hitherto myself depended entirely on
foreign manufactures: but I have now thirty-five spindles a going, a
hand carding-machine, and looms with the flying shuttle, for the supply
of my own farms, which will never be relinquished in my time. The
continuance of the war will fix the habit generally, and out of the
evils of impressment and of the orders of council, a great blessing
for us will grow. I have not formerly been an advocate for great
manufactories. I doubted whether our labor, employed in agriculture,
and aided by the spontaneous energies of the earth, would not procure
us more than we could make ourselves of other necessaries. But other
considerations entering into the question, have settled my doubts.

The candor with which you have viewed the manners and condition of our
citizens, is so unlike the narrow prejudices of the French and English
travellers preceding you, who, considering each the manners and habits
of their own people as the only orthodox, have viewed every thing
differing from that test as boorish and barbarous, that your work will
be read here extensively, and operate great good.

Amidst this mass of approbation which is given to every other part of
the work, there is a single sentiment which I cannot help wishing to
bring to what I think the correct one; and, on a point so interesting,
I value your opinion too highly not to ambition its concurrence with
my own. Stating in volume first, page sixty-third, the principle of
difference between the two great political parties here, you conclude
it to be, ‘whether the controlling power shall be vested in this or that
set of men.’ That each party endeavors to get into the administration of
the government, and to exclude the other from power, is true, and may
be stated as a motive of action: but this is only secondary; the primary
motive being a real and radical difference of political principle. I
sincerely wish our differences were but personally who should govern
and that the principles of our constitution were those of both parties.
Unfortunately, it is otherwise; and the question of preference between
monarchy and republicanism, which has so long divided mankind elsewhere,
threatens a permanent division here.

Among that section of our citizens called federalists, there are three
shades of opinion. Distinguishing between the leaders and people who
compose it, the leaders consider the English constitution as a model of
perfection, some, with a correction of its vices, others, with all its
corruptions and abuses. This last was Alexander Hamilton’s opinion,
which others, as well as myself, have often heard him declare, and that
a correction of what are called its vices, would render the English
an impracticable government.. This government they wished to have
established here, and only accepted and held fast, at first, to the
present constitution, as a stepping-stone to the final establishment of
their favorite model. This party has therefore always clung to England,
as their prototype, and great auxiliary in promoting and effecting this
change. A weighty minority, however, of these leaders, considering the
voluntary conversion of our government into a monarchy as too distant,
if not desperate, wish to break off from our Union its eastern fragment,
as being, in truth, the hot-bed of American monarchism, with a view to a
commencement of their favorite government, from whence the other States
may gangrene by degrees, and the whole be thus brought finally to the
desired point. For Massachusetts, the prime mover in this enterprise, is
the last State in the Union to mean a final separation, as being of all
the most dependant on the others. Not raising bread for the sustenance
her own inhabitants, not having a stick of timber for the construction
of vessels, her principal occupation, nor an article to export in them,
where would she be, excluded from the ports of the other States, and
thrown into dependance on England, her direct and natural, but now
insidious, rival? At the head of this minority is what is called the
Essex Junto of Massachusetts. But the majority of these leaders do not
aim at separation. In this they adhere to the known principle of
General Hamilton, never, under any views, to break the Union. Anglomany,
monarchy, and separation, then, are the principles of the Essex
federalists; Anglomany and monarchy, those of the Hamiltonians,
and Anglomany alone, that of the portion among the people who call
themselves federalists. These last are as good republicans as the
brethren whom they oppose, and differ from them only in the devotion
to England and hatred of France, which they have imbibed from their
leaders. The moment that these leaders should avowedly propose a
separation of the Union, or the establishment of regal government, their
popular adherents would quit them to a man, and join the republican
standard; and the partisans of this change, even in Massachusetts, would
thus find themselves an army of officers without a soldier.

The party called republican is steadily for the support of the present
constitution. They obtained, at its commencement, all the amendments to
it they desired. These reconciled them to it perfectly, and if they have
any ulterior view, it is only, perhaps, to popularize it further,
by shortening the Senatorial term, and devising a process for the
responsibility of judges, more practicable than that of impeachment.
They esteem the people of England and France equally, and equally detest
the governing powers of both.

This I verily believe, after an intimacy of forty years with the public
councils and characters, is a true statement of the grounds on which
they are at present divided, and that it is not merely an ambition for
power. An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over
his fellow-citizens. And considering as the only offices of power those
conferred by the people directly, that is to say, the executive and
legislative functions of the General and State governments, the common
refusal of these, and multiplied resignations, are proofs sufficient
that power is not alluring to pure minds, and is not, with them, the
primary principle of contest. This is my belief of it; it is that
on which I have acted; and had it been a mere contest who should
be permitted to administer the government according to its genuine
republican principles, there has never been a moment of my life, in
which I should not have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family,
my farm, my friends, and books.

You expected to discover the difference of our party principles in
General Washington’s Valedictory, and my Inaugural Address. Not at all.
General Washington did not harbor one principle of federalism. He was
neither an Angloman, a monarchist, nor a separatist. He sincerely wished
the people to have as much self-government as they were competent to
exercise themselves. The only point in which he and I ever differed
in opinion, was, that I had more confidence than he had in the natural
integrity and discretion of the people, and in the safety and extent to
which they might trust themselves with a control over their government.
He has asseverated to me a thousand times his determination that the
existing government should have a fair trial, and that in support of
it he would spend the last drop of his blood. He did this the more
repeatedly, because he knew General Hamilton’s political bias, and
my apprehensions from it. It is a mere calumny, therefore, in the
monarchists, to associate General Washington with their principles.
But that may have happened in this case which has been often seen in
ordinary cases, that, by often repeating an untruth, men come to
believe it themselves. It is a mere artifice in this party, to bolster
themselves up on the revered name of that first of our worthies. If
I have dwelt longer on this subject than was necessary, it proves the
estimation in which I hold your ultimate opinions, and my desire of
placing the subject truly before them. In so doing, I am certain I risk
no use of the communication which may draw me into contention before the
public. Tranquillity is the _summum bonum_ of a _Septagénaire_.

To return to the merits of your work; I consider it as so lively a
picture of the real state of our country, that if I can possibly obtain
opportunities of conveyance, I propose to send a copy to a friend in
France, and another to one in Italy, who, I know, will translate
and circulate it as an antidote to the misrepresentations of former
travellers. But whatever effect my profession of political faith may
have on your general opinion, a part of my object will be obtained, if
it satisfies you as to the principles of my own action, and of the high
respect and consideration with which I tender you my salutations.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CVII.--TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN, May 24, 1818

TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN.

United States of America,

May 24, 1818.

I received with great pleasure, my dear Madam and friend, your letter
of November the 10th, from Stockholm, and am sincerely gratified by the
occasion it gives me of expressing to you the sentiments of high respect
and esteem which I entertain for you. It recalls to my remembrance a
happy portion of my life, passed in your native city; then the seat
of the most amiable and polished society of the world, and of which
yourself and your venerable father were such distinguished members. But
of what scenes has it since been the theatre, and with what havoc has
it overspread the earth! Robespierre met the fate, and his memory
the execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and
perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys
the poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the sycophants--even of
science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will
be consigned; and the day will come when a just posterity will give to
their hero the only pre-eminence he has earned, that of having been the
greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of his military
life has not consigned a million of human beings to death, to poverty,
and wretchedness? What field in Europe may not raise a monument of the
murders, the burnings, the desolations, the famines, and miseries, it
has witnessed from him! And all this to acquire a reputation, which
Cartouche attained with less injury to mankind, of being fearless of God
or man.

To complete and universalize the desolation of the globe, it has been
the will of Providence to raise up, at the same time, a tyrant as
unprincipled and as overwhelming, for the ocean. Not in the poor maniac
George, but in his government and nation. Bonaparte will die, and his
tyrannies with him. But a nation never dies. The English government and
its piratical principles and practices, have no fixed term of duration.
Europe feels, and is writhing under the scorpion whips of Bonaparte. We
are assailed by those of England. The one continent thus placed under
the gripe of England, and the other of Bonaparte, each has to grapple
with the enemy immediately pressing on itself. We must extinguish the
fire kindled in our own house, and leave to our friends beyond the water
that which is consuming theirs. It was not till England had taken one
thousand of our ships, and impressed into her service more than six
thousand of our citizens; till she had declared, by the proclamation of
her Prince Regent, that she would not repeal her aggressive orders as to
us, until Bonaparte should have repealed his as to all nations; till her
minister, in formal conference with ours, declared, that no proposition
for protecting our seamen from being impressed, under color of taking
their own, was practicable or admissible; that, the door to justice and
to all amicable arrangement being closed, and negotiation become both
desperate and dishonorable, we concluded that the war she had been for
years waging against us, might as well become a war on both sides. She
takes fewer vessels from us since the declaration of war than before,
because they venture more cautiously; and we now make full reprisals
where before we made none. England is, in principle, the enemy of all
maritime nations, as Bonaparte is of the continental; and I place in
the same line of insult to the human understanding, the pretension
of conquering the ocean, to establish continental rights, as that of
conquering the continent, to restore maritime rights. No, my dear Madam;
the object of England is the permanent dominion of the ocean, and the
monopoly of the trade of the world. To secure this, she must keep a
larger fleet than her own resources will maintain. The resources of
other nations, then, must be impressed to supply the deficiency of her
own. This is sufficiently developed and evidenced by her successive
strides towards the usurpation of the sea. Mark them, from her first war
after William Pitt, the little, came into her administration. She first
forbade to neutrals all trade with her enemies in time of war, which
they had not in time of peace. This deprived them of their trade from
port to port of the same nation. Then she forbade them to trade from
the port of one nation to that of any other at war with her, although a
right fully exercised in time of peace. Next, instead of taking vessels
only entering a blockaded port, she took them over the whole ocean, if
destined to that port, although ignorant of the blockade, and without
intention to violate it. Then she took them returning from that port,
as if infected by previous infraction of blockade. Then came her paper
blockades, by which she might shut up the whole world without sending
a ship to sea, except to take all those sailing on it, as they must, of
course, be bound to some port. And these were followed by her orders of
council, forbidding every nation to go to the port of any other, without
coming first to some port of Great Britain, there paying a tribute to
her, regulated by the cargo, and taking from her a license to proceed to
the port of destination; which operation the vessel was to repeat with
the return cargo on its way home. According to these orders, we could
not send a vessel from St. Mary’s to St. Augustine, distant six hour’s
sail, on our own coast, without crossing the Atlantic four times, twice
with the outward cargo, and twice with the inward. She found this
too daring and outrageous for a single step, retracted as to certain
articles of commerce, but left it in force as to others which constitute
important branches of our exports. And finally, that her views may no
longer rest on inference, in a recent debate, her minister declared in
open parliament, that the object of the present war is a monopoly of
commerce.

In some of these atrocities, France kept pace with her fully in
speculative wrong, which her impotence only shortened in practical
execution. This was called retaliation by both; each charging the other
with the initiation of the outrage. As if two combatants might retaliate
on an innocent bystander, the blows they received from each other. To
make war on both would have been ridiculous. In order, therefore, to
single out an enemy, we offered to both, that if either would revoke
its hostile decrees, and the other should refuse, we would interdict all
intercourse whatever with that other; which would be war of course, as
being an avowed departure from neutrality. France accepted the offer,
and revoked her decrees as to us. England not only refused, but declared
by a solemn proclamation of her Prince Regent, that she would not revoke
her orders even as to us, until those of France should be annulled as to
the whole world. We thereon declared war, and with abundant additional
cause.

In the mean time, an examination before parliament of the ruinous
effects of these orders on her own manufacturers, exposing them to the
nation and to the world, their Prince issued a palinodial proclamation,
suspending the orders on certain conditions, but claiming to renew them
at pleasure, as a matter of right. Even this might have prevented the
war, if done and known here before its declaration. But the sword being
once drawn, the expense of arming incurred, and hostilities in full
course, it would have been unwise to discontinue them, until effectual
provision should be agreed to by England, for protecting our citizens on
the high seas from impressment by her naval commanders, through, error,
voluntary or involuntary; the fact being notorious, that these officers,
entering our ships at sea under pretext of searching for their seamen,
(which they have no right to do by the law or usage of nations, which
they neither do, nor ever did, as to any other nation but ours, and
which no nation ever before pretended to do in any case), entering
our ships, I say, under pretext of searching for and taking out their
seamen, they took ours, native as well as naturalized, knowing them to
be ours, merely because they wanted them; insomuch, that no American
could safely cross the ocean, or venture to pass by sea from one to
another of our own ports. It is not long since they impressed at sea two
nephews of General Washington, returning from Europe, and put them,
as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of their ships of war.
There are certainly other wrongs to be settled between England and us;
but of a minor character, and such as a proper spirit of conciliation on
both sides would not permit to continue them at war. The sword, however,
can never again be sheathed, until the personal safety of an American
on the ocean, among the most important and most vital of the rights we
possess, is completely provided for.

As soon as we heard of her partial repeal of her orders of council, we
offered instantly to suspend hostilities by an armistice, if she would
suspend her impressments, and meet us in arrangements for securing our
citizens against them. She refused to do it, because impracticable by
any arrangement, as she pretends; but, in truth, because a body of sixty
to eighty thousand of the finest seamen in the world, which we possess,
is too great a resource for manning her exaggerated navy, to be
relinquished, as long as she can keep it open. Peace is in her hand,
whenever she will renounce the practice of aggression on the persons of
our citizens. If she thinks it worth eternal war, eternal war we
must have. She alleges that the sameness of language, of manners, of
appearance, renders it impossible to distinguish us from her subjects.
But because we speak English, and look like them, are we to be punished?
Are free and independent men to be submitted to their bondage?

England has misrepresented to all Europe this ground of the war. She
has called it a new pretension, set up since the repeal of her orders
of council. She knows there has never been a moment of suspension of our
reclamations against it, from General Washington’s time inclusive, to
the present day: and that it is distinctly stated in our declaration of
war, as one of its principal causes. She has pretended we have entered
into the war, to establish the principle of ‘free bottoms, free goods,’
or to protect her seamen against her own right over them. We contend for
neither of these. She pretends we are partial to France; that we have
observed a fraudulent and unfaithful neutrality between her and her
enemy. She knows this to be false, and that if there has been any
inequality in our proceedings towards the belligerents, it has been in
her favor. Her ministers are in possession of full proofs of this.
Our accepting at once, and sincerely, the mediation of the virtuous
Alexander, their greatest friend, and the most aggravated enemy of
Bonaparte, sufficiently proves whether we have partialities on the side
of her enemy. I sincerely pray that this mediation may produce a just
peace. It will prove that the immortal character, which has first
stopped by war the career of the destroyer of mankind, is the friend of
peace, of justice, of human happiness, and the patron of unoffending
and injured nations. He is too honest and impartial to countenance
propositions of peace derogatory to the freedom of the seas.

Shall I apologize to you, my dear Madam, for this long political letter?
But yours justifies the subject, and my feelings must plead for the
unreserved expression of them; and they have been the less reserved,
as being from a private citizen, retired from all connection with
the government of his country, and whose ideas, expressed without
communication with any one, are neither known, nor imputable to them.

The dangers of the sea are now so great, and the possibilities of
interception by sea and land such, that I shall subscribe no name to
this letter. You will know from whom it comes, by its reference to the
date of time and place of yours, as well as by its subject in answer to
that. This omission must not lessen in your view the assurances of my
great esteem, of my sincere sympathies for the share which you bear in
the afflictions of your country, and the deprivations to which a lawless
will has subjected you. In return, you enjoy the dignified satisfaction
of having met them, rather than be yoked, with the abject, to his car;
and that, in withdrawing from oppression, you have followed the virtuous
example of a father, whose name will ever be dear to your country and
to mankind. With my prayers that you may be restored to it, that you may
see it re-established in that temperate portion of liberty which does
not infer either anarchy or licentiousness, in that high degree of
prosperity which would be the consequence of such a government, in
that, in short, which the constitution of 1789 would have insured it, if
wisdom could have stayed at that point the fervid but imprudent zeal of
men, who did not know the character of their own countrymen, and that
you may long live in health and happiness under it, and leave to the
world a well educated and virtuous representative and descendant of
your honored father, is the ardent prayer of the sincere and respectful
friend who writes this letter.

LETTER CVIII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, May 27, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, May 27, 1813.

Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone, my Dear Sir, another of
the co-signers of the Independence of our country. And a better man than
Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer
genius, or more honest. We too must go; and that ere long. I believe
we are under half a dozen at present; I mean the signers of the
Declaration. Yourself, Gerry, Carroll, and myself, are all I know to be
living. I am the only one south of the Potomac. Is Robert Treat Paine,
or Floyd living? It is long since I heard of them, and yet I do not
recollect to have heard of their deaths.

Moreton’s deduction of the origin of our Indians from the fugitive
Trojans, stated in your letter of January the 26th, and his manner
of accounting for the sprinkling of their Latin with Greeks is really
amusing. Adair makes them talk Hebrew. Reinold Foster derives them from
the soldiers sent by Kouli Khan to conquer Japan. Brerewood, from the
Tartars, as well as our bears, wolves, foxes, &c. which, he says, ‘must
of necessity fetch their beginning from Noah’s ark, which rested after
the deluge, in Asia, seeing they could not proceed by the course
of nature, as the imperfect sort of living creatures do, from
putrefaction.’ Bernard Romans is of opinion that God created an original
man and woman in this part of the globe. Doctor Barton thinks they are
not specifically different from the Persians; but, taking afterwards a
broader range, he thinks, ‘that in all the vast countries of America,
there is but one language, nay, that it may be proven, or rendered
highly probable, that all the languages of the earth bear some affinity
together.’ This reduces it to a question of definition, in which every
one is free to use his own: to wit, What constitutes identity, or
difference in two things, in the common acceptation of sameness? All
languages may be called the same, as being all made up of the same
primitive sounds, expressed by the letters of the different alphabets.
But, in this sense, all things on earth are the same, as consisting of
matter. This gives up the useful distribution into genera and species,
which we form, arbitrarily indeed, for the relief of our imperfect
memories. To aid the question, from whence our Indian tribes descended,
some have gone into their religion, their morals, their manners,
customs, habits, and physical forms. By such helps it may be learnedly
proved, that our trees and plants of every kind are descended from
those of Europe; because, like them, they have no locomotion, they
draw nourishment from the earth, they clothe themselves with leaves
in spring, of which they divest themselves in autumn for the sleep of
winter, he. Our animals too must be descended from those of Europe,
because our wolves eat lambs, our deer are gregarious, our ants hoard,
&c. But when, for convenience, we distribute languages, according to
common understanding, into classes originally different, as we choose
to consider them, as the Hebrew, the Greek, the Celtic, the Gothic; and
these again into genera, or families, as the Icelandic, German, Swedish,
Danish, English; and these last into species, or dialects, as English,
Scotch, Irish, we then ascribe other meanings to the terms, ‘same’ and
‘different.’ In some one of these senses, Barton, and Adair, and Foster,
and Brerewood, and Moreton, may be right, every one according to his
own definition of what constitutes ‘identity.’ Romans, indeed, takes a
higher stand, and supposes a separate creation. On the same unscriptural
ground, he had but to mount one step higher, to suppose no creation at
all, but that all things have existed without beginning in time, as
they now exist, and may for ever exist, producing and reproducing in a
circle, without end. This would very summarily dispose of Mr. Moreton’s
learning, and show that the question of Indian origin, like many others,
pushed to a certain height, must receive the same answer, ‘Ignoro.’ You
ask if the usage of hunting in circles has ever been known among any of
our tribes of Indians? It has been practised by them all; and is to this
day, by those still remote from the settlements of the whites. But their
numbers not enabling them, like Genghis Khan’s seven hundred thousand,
to form themselves into circles of one hundred miles diameter, they make
their circle by firing the leaves fallen on the ground, which gradually
forcing the animals to a centre, they there slaughter them with arrows,
darts, and other missiles. This is called fire-hunting, and has been
practised in this State within my time, by the white inhabitants. This
is the most probable cause of the origin and extension of the vast
prairies in the western country, where the grass having been of
extraordinary luxuriance, has made a conflagration sufficient to kill
even the old as well as the young timber.

I sincerely congratulate you on the successes of our little navy; which
must be more gratifying to you than to most men, as having been the
early and constant advocate of wooden walls. If I have differed with
you on this ground, it was not on the principle, but the time; supposing
that we cannot build or maintain a navy, which will not immediately fall
into the same gulph which has swallowed not only the minor navies, but
even those of the great second-rate powers of the sea. Whenever these
can be resuscitated, and brought so near to a balance with England that
we can turn the scale, then is my epoch for aiming at a navy. In
the mean time, one competent to keep the Barbary States in order is
necessary; these being the only smaller powers disposed to quarrel
with us. But I respect too much the weighty opinions of others to be
unyielding on this point, and acquiesce with the prayer, ‘_quod
felix faustumque sit_’; adding ever a sincere one for your health and
happiness.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CIX.--TO JOHN ADAMS, June 15, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, June 15, 1813.

Dear Sir,

I wrote you a letter on the 27th of May, which probably would reach you
about the 3rd instant, and on the 9th I received yours of the 29th of
May. Of Lindsay’s Memoirs I had never before heard, and scarcely indeed
of himself. It could not, therefore, but be unexpected, that two letters
of mine should have any thing to do with his life. The name of his
editor was new to me, and certainly presents itself for the first time
under unfavorable circumstances. Religion, I suppose, is the scope of
his book; and that a writer on that subject should usher himself to the
world in the very act of the grossest abuse of confidence, by publishing
private letters which passed between two friends, with no views to their
ever being made public, is an instance of inconsistency as well as of
infidelity, of which I would rather be the victim than the author.

By your kind quotation of the dates of my two letters, I have been
enabled to turn to them. They had completely vanished from my memory.
The last is on the subject of religion, and by its publication will
gratify the priesthood with new occasion of repeating their comminations
against me. They wish it to be believed, that he can have no religion
who advocates its freedom. This was not the doctrine of Priestley; and I
honored him for the example of liberality he set to his order. The
first letter is political. It recalls to our recollection the gloomy
transactions of the times, the doctrines they witnessed, and the
sensibilities they excited. It was a confidential communication of
reflections on these from one friend to another, deposited in his bosom,
and never meant to trouble the public mind. Whether the character of
the times is justly portrayed or not, posterity will decide. But on one
feature of them, they can never decide, the sensations excited in free
yet firm minds by the terrorism of the day. None can conceive who did
not witness them, and they were felt by one party only. This letter
exhibits their side of the medal. The federalists, no doubt, have
presented the other, in their private correspondences, as well as open
action. If these correspondences should ever be laid open to the public
eye, they will probably be found not models of comity towards their
adversaries. The readers of my letter should be cautioned not to confine
its view to this country alone. England and its alarmists were equally
under consideration. Still less must they consider it as looking
personally towards you. You happen, indeed, to be quoted, because you
happened to express more pithily than had been done by themselves, one
of the mottos of the party. This was in your answer to the address of
the young men of Philadelphia. [See Selection of Patriotic Addresses,
page 198.] One of the questions, you know, on which our parties took
different sides, was on the improvability of the human mind, in science,
in ethics, in government, &c. Those who advocated reformation of
institutions, _pari passu_ with the progress of science, maintained that
no definite limits could be assigned to that progress. The enemies of
reform, on the other hand, denied improvement, and advocated steady
adherence to the principles, practices, and institutions of our fathers,
which they represented as the consummation of wisdom, and acme of
excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance. Although in
the passage of your answer alluded to, you expressly disclaim the wish
to influence the freedom of inquiry, you predict that that will produce
nothing more worthy of transmission to posterity than the principles,
institutions, and systems of education received from their ancestors.
I do not consider this as your deliberate opinion. You possess yourself
too much science, not to see how much is still ahead of you, unexplained
and unexplored. Your own consciousness must place you as far before
our ancestors, as in the rear of our posterity. I consider it as an
expression lent to the prejudices of your friends; and although I
happened to cite it from you, the whole letter shows I had them only
in view. In truth, my dear Sir, we were far from considering you as
the author of all the measures we blamed. They were placed under the
protection of your name, but we were satisfied they wanted much of your
approbation. We ascribed them to their real authors, the Pickerings, the
Wolcotts, the Tracys, the Sedgwicks, _et id genus omne_, with whom we
supposed you in a state of _duresse_. I well remember a conversation
with you in the morning of the day on which you nominated to the Senate
a substitute for Pickering, in which you expressed a just impatience
under ‘the legacy of Secretaries which General Washington had left you,’
and whom you seemed, therefore, to consider as under public protection.
Many other incidents showed how differently you would have acted with
less impassioned advisers; and subsequent events have proved that your
minds were not together. You would do me great injustice, therefore, by
taking to yourself what was intended for men who were then your secret,
as they are now your open enemies. Should you write on the subject, as
you propose, I am sure we shall see you place yourself farther from them
than from us.

As to myself, I shall take no part in any discussions. I leave others to
judge of what I have done, and to give me exactly that place which they
shall think I have occupied. Marshall has written libels on one side;
others, I suppose, will be written on the other side; and the world will
sift both, and separate the truth as well as they can. I should see with
reluctance the passions of that day rekindled in this, while so many of
the actors are living, and all are too near the scene not to participate
in sympathies with them. About facts you and I cannot differ; because
truth is our mutual guide. And if any opinions you may express should
be different from mine, I shall receive them with the liberality and
indulgence which I ask for my own, and still cherish with warmth the
sentiments of affectionate respect of which I can with so much truth
tender you the assurance.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CX.--TO JOHN W. EPPES, June 24, 1813

TO JOHN W. EPPES.

Monticello, June 24, 1813.

Dear Sir,

This letter will be on politics only. For although I do not often permit
myself to think on that subject, it sometimes obtrudes itself, and
suggests ideas which I am tempted to pursue. Some of these, relating to
the business of finance, I will hazard to you, as being at the head of
that committee, but intended for yourself individually, or such as you
trust, but certainly not for a mixed committee.

It is a wise rule, and should be fundamental in a government disposed
to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it
within the limits of its faculties, ‘never to borrow a dollar without
laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and
the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged
to the creditors on the public faith.’ On such a pledge as this,
sacredly observed, a government may always command, on a reasonable
interest, all the lendable money of their citizens, while the
necessity of an equivalent tax is a salutary warning to them and
their constituents against oppressions, bankruptcy, and its inevitable
consequence, revolution. But the term of redemption must be moderate,
and, at any rate, within the limits of their rightful powers. But what
limits, it will be asked, does this prescribe to their powers? What is
to hinder them from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I
answer. The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. The will and
the power of man expire with his life, by nature’s law. Some societies
give it an artificial continuance, for the encouragement of industry;
some refuse it, as our aboriginal neighbors, whom we call barbarians.
The generations of men may be considered as bodies or corporations.
Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its
continuance. When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the
succeeding generation, free and unincumbered, and so on, successively,
from one generation to another for ever. We may consider each generation
as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind
themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than
the inhabitants of another country. Or the case may be likened to the
ordinary one of a tenant for life, who may hypothecate the land for his
debts, during the continuance of his usufruct; but at his death, the
reversioner (who is also for life only) receives it exonerated from
all burthen. The period of a generation, or the term of its life, is
determined by the laws of mortality, which, varying a little only in
different climates, offer a general average, to be found by observation.
I turn, for instance, to Buffon’s tables, of twenty-three thousand nine
hundred and ninety-four deaths, and the ages at which they happened, and
I find that of the numbers of all ages living at one moment, half will
be dead in twenty-four years and eight months. Bat (leaving out minors,
who have not the power of self-government) of the adults (of twenty-one
years of age) living at one moment, a majority of whom act for the
society, one half will be dead in eighteen years and eight months. At
nineteen years then from the date of a contract, the majority of the
contractors are dead, and their contract with them. Let this general
theory be applied to a particular case. Suppose the annual births of
the State of New York to be twenty-three thousand nine hundred and
ninety-four: the whole number of its inhabitants, according to Buffon,
will be six hundred and seventeen thousand seven hundred and three, of
all ages. Of these there would constantly be two hundred and sixty-nine
thousand two hundred and eighty-six minors, and three hundred and
forty-eight thousand four hundred and seventeen adults, of which last,
one hundred and seventy-four thousand two hundred and nine will be a
majority. Suppose that majority, on the first day of the year 1794, had
borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee simple value of the State, and
to have consumed it in eating, drinking, and making merry in their day;
or, if you please, in quarrelling and fighting with their unoffending
neighbors. Within eighteen years and eight months, one half of the adult
citizens were dead. Till then, being the majority, they might rightfully
levy the interest of their debt annually on themselves and their
fellow-revellers, or fellow-champions. But at that period, say at this
moment, a new majority have come into place, in their own right, and
not under the rights, the conditions, or laws of their predecessors. Are
they bound to acknowledge the debt, to consider the preceding generation
as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country in
the course of a life, to alienate it from them (for it would be an
alienation to the creditors), and would they think themselves either
legally or morally bound to give up their country, and emigrate to
another for subsistence? Every one will say no: that the soil is the
gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased
generation; and that the laws of nature impose no obligation on them to
pay this debt. And although, like some other natural rights, this has
not yet entered into any declaration of rights, it is no less a law, and
ought to be acted on by honest governments. It is, at the same time,
a salutary curb on the spirit of war and indebtment, which, since the
modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the earth with
blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burthens ever accumulating.
Had this principle been declared in the British bill of rights, England
would have been placed under the happy disability of waging eternal war,
and of contracting her thousand millions of public debt. In seeking,
then, for an ultimate term for the redemption of our debts, let us rally
to this principle, and provide for their payment within the term of
nineteen years, at the farthest. Our government has not, as yet, begun
to act on the rule, of loans and taxation going hand in hand. Had any
loan taken place in my time, I should have strongly urged a redeeming
tax. For the loan which has been made since the last session of
Congress, we should now set the example of appropriating some particular
tax, sufficient to pay the interest annually, and the principal within
a fixed term, less than nineteen years. And I hope yourself and your
committee will render the immortal service of introducing this practice.
Not that it is expected that Congress should formally declare such a
principle. They wisely enough avoid deciding on abstract questions. But
they may be induced to keep themselves within its limits.

I am sorry to see our loans begin at so exorbitant an interest. And yet,
even at that, you will soon be at the bottom of the loan-bag. We are an
agricultural nation. Such an one employs its sparings in the purchase or
improvement of land or stocks. The lendable money among them is chiefly
that of orphans and wards in the hands of executors and guardians, and
that which the farmer lays by till he has enough for the purchase in
view. In such a nation there is one and one only resource for loans,
sufficient to carry them through the expense of a war; and that will
always be sufficient, and in the power of an honest government, punctual
in the preservation of its faith. The fund I mean, is the mass of
circulating coin. Every one knows, that, although not literally, it is
nearly true, that every paper dollar emitted banishes a silver one from
the circulation. A nation, therefore, making its purchases and payments
with bills fitted for circulation, thrusts an equal sum of coin out
of circulation. This is equivalent to borrowing that sum, and yet the
vendor, receiving payment in a medium as effectual as coin for his
purchases or payments, has no claim to interest. And so the nation may
continue to issue its bills as far as its wants require, and the limits
of the circulation will admit. Those limits are understood to extend
with us, at present, to two hundred millions of dollars, a greater sum
than would be necessary for any war. But this, the only resource
which the government could command with certainty, the States have
unfortunately fooled away, nay corruptly alienated to swindlers and
shavers, under the cover of private banks. Say, too, as an additional
evil, that the disposable funds of individuals, to this great amount,
have thus been withdrawn from improvement and useful enterprise, and
employed in the useless, usurious, and demoralizing practices of bank
directors and their accomplices. In the war of 1755, our State availed
itself of this fund by issuing a paper money, bottomed on a specific tax
for its redemption, and, to insure its credit, bearing an interest of
five per cent. Within a very short time, not a bill of this emission was
to be found in circulation. It was locked up in the chests of executors,
guardians, widows, farmers, &tc. We then issued bills, bottomed on a
redeeming tax, but bearing no interest. These were readily received, and
never depreciated a single farthing. In the revolutionary war, the old
Congress and the States issued bills without interest, and without
tax. They occupied the channels of circulation very freely, till
those channels were overflowed by an excess beyond all the calls of
circulation. But although we have so improvidently suffered the field of
circulating medium to be filched from us by private individuals, yet I
think we may recover it in part, and even in the whole, if the States
will co-operate with us. If treasury bills are emitted on a tax
appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure
preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of
six per cent., there is no one who would not take them in preference
to the bank-paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as
interest: and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private
hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others
might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest: and
if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills
alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund,
would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an
equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which,
in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their
possession of the circulation: but a steady and judicious alternation of
emissions and loans, would reduce them in time. But while this is going
on, another measure should be pressed, to recover ultimately our right
to the circulation. The States should be applied to, to transfer
the right of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively, _in
perpetuum_, if possible, but during the war at least, with a saving of
charter rights. I believe that every State west and south of Connecticut
river, except Delaware, would immediately do it; and the others would
follow in time.

Congress would, of course, begin by obliging unchartered banks to wind
up their affairs within a short time, and the others as their charters
expired, forbidding the subsequent circulation of their paper. This they
would supply with their own, bottomed, every emission, on an adequate
tax, and bearing or not bearing interest, as the state of the public
pulse should indicate. Even in the non-complying States, these bills
would make their way, and supplant the unfunded paper of their banks,
by their solidity, by the universality of their currency, and by their
receivability for customs and taxes. It would be in their power, too, to
curtail those banks to the amount of their actual specie, by gathering
up their paper, and running it constantly on them. The national paper
might thus take place even in the non-complying States. In this way, I
am not without a hope, that this great, this sole resource for loans
in an agricultural country, might yet be recovered for the use of the
nation during war: and, if obtained in perpetuum, it would always be
sufficient to carry us through any war; provided, that, in the interval
between war and war, all the outstanding paper should be called in,
coin be permitted to flow in again, and to hold the field of circulation
until another war should require its yielding place again to the
national medium.

But it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants and
others to be deprived of the resource of short accommodations, found
so convenient? I answer, let us have banks: but let them be such as are
alone to be found in any country on earth, except Great Britain. There
is not a bank of discount on the continent of Europe (at least there was
not one when I was there), which offers any thing but cash in exchange
for discounted bills. No one has a natural right to the trade of a
money-lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us,
who have a monied capital, and who prefer employing it in loans rather
than otherwise, set up banks, and give cash or national bills for the
notes they discount. Perhaps, to encourage them, a larger interest than
is legal in the other cases might be allowed them, on the condition of
their lending for short periods only. It is from Great Britain we copy
the idea of giving paper in exchange for discounted bills: and while we
have derived from that country some good principles of government and
legislation, we unfortunately run into the most servile imitation of all
her practices, ruinous as they prove to her, and with the gulph yawning
before us into which those very practices are precipitating her. The
unlimited emission of bank-paper has banished all her specie, and is
now, by a depreciation acknowledged by her own statesmen, carrying her
rapidly to bankruptcy, as it did France, as it did us, and will do us
again, and every country permitting paper to be circulated, other than
that by public authority, rigorously limited to the just measure for
circulation. Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation,
are at the mercy of those self-created money-lenders, and are prostrated
by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.
He who lent his money to the public or to an individual, before the
institution of the United States bank, twenty years ago, when wheat was
well sold at a dollar the bushel, and receives now his nominal sum when
it sells at two dollars, is cheated of half his fortune: and by whom? By
the banks, which, since that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars
of their nominal money where there was one at that time.

Reflect, if you please, on these ideas, and use them or not as they
appear to merit. They comfort me in the belief, that they point out a
resource ample enough, without overwhelming war-taxes, for the expense
of the war, and possibly still recoverable; and that they hold up to
all future time a resource within ourselves, ever at the command of
government, and competent to any wars into which we may be forced. Nor
is it a slight object to equalize taxes through peace and war.

*****

Ever affectionately yours.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXI.--TO JOHN ADAMS, June 21, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, June 21, 1813.

[Illustration: page201]

And I too, my dear Sir, like the wood-cutter of Ida, should doubt where
to begin, were I to enter the forest of opinions, discussions,
and contentions which have occurred in our day. I should say with
Theocritus,

[Illustration: page201a]

But I shall not do it. The _summum bonum_ with me is now truly
epicurean, ease of body and tranquillity of mind; and to these I wish
to consign my remaining days. Men have differed in opinion, and been
divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of
societies; and in all governments, where they have been permitted freely
to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the
United States, have existed through all time. Whether the power of the
people, or that of the

[Illustration: page202]

should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome
in eternal convulsions; as they now schismatize every people whose minds
and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the
terms of whig and tory belong to natural, as well as to civil
history. They denote the temper and constitution of mind of different
individuals. To come to our own country, and to the times when you and
I became first acquainted: we well remember the violent parties which
agitated the old Congress, and their bitter contests. There you and
I were together, and the Jays, and the Dickinsons, and other
anti-independents were arrayed against us. They cherished the monarchy
of England, and we the rights of our countrymen. When our present
government was in the mew, passing from Confederation to Union, how
bitter was the schism between the Feds and Antis. Here you and I were
together again. For although, for a moment, separated by the Atlantic
from the scene of action, I favored the opinion that nine States should
confirm the constitution, in order to secure it, and the others hold
off, until certain amendments, deemed favorable to freedom, should
be made. I rallied in the first instant to the wiser proposition of
Massachusetts, that all should confirm, and then all instruct their
delegates to urge those amendments. The amendments were made, and
all were reconciled to the government. But as soon as it was put into
motion, the line of division was again drawn. We broke into two parties,
each wishing to give the government a different direction; the one
to strengthen the most popular branch, the other the more permanent
branches, and to extend their permanence. Here you and I separated for
the first time: and as we had been longer than most others on the public
theatre, and our names therefore were more familiar to our countrymen,
the party which considered you as thinking with them, placed your
name at their head; the other, for the same reason, selected mine. But
neither decency nor inclination permitted us to become the advocates
of ourselves, or to take part personally in the violent contests which
followed. We suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be
passive subjects of public discussion. And these discussions, whether
relating to men, measures, or opinions, were conducted by the parties
with an animosity, a bitterness, and an indecency, which had never been
exceeded. All the resources of reason and of wrath were exhausted
by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary
opinions; one was upbraided with receiving the anti-federalists, the
other the old tories and refugees, into their bosom. Of this acrimony,
the public papers of the day exhibit ample testimony, in the debates
of Congress, of State legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses,
answers, and newspaper essays; and to these, without question, may be
added the private correspondences of individuals; and the less guarded
in these, because not meant for the public eye, not restrained by the
respect due to that, but poured forth from the overflowings of the heart
into the bosom of a friend, as a momentary easement of our feelings.
In this way and in answers to addresses, you and I could indulge
ourselves. We have probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with
prejudice, but always, as we believed, adhering to truth. I have not
examined my letters of that day. I have no stomach to revive the memory
of its feelings. But one of these letters, it seems, has got before the
public, by accident and infidelity, by the death of one friend to whom
it was written, and of his friend to whom it had been communicated,
and by the malice and treachery of a third person, of whom I had never
before heard, merely to make mischief, and in the same Satanic spirit,
in which the same enemy had intercepted and published, in 1776, your
letter animadverting on Dickinson’s character. How it happened that I
quoted you in my letter to Doctor Priestley, and for whom, and not for
yourself, the strictures were meant, has been explained to you in my
letter of the 15th, which had been committed to the post eight days
before I received yours of the 10th, 11th, and 14th. That gave you the
reference which these asked to the particular answer alluded to in the
one to Priestley. The renewal of these old discussions, my friend, would
be equally useless and irksome. To the volumes then written on these
subjects, human ingenuity can add nothing new, and the rather, as lapse
of time has obliterated many of the facts. And shall you and I, my Dear
Sir, at our age, like Priam of old, gird on the

[Illustration: page203]

Shall we, at our age, become the athletes of party, and exhibit
ourselves, as gladiators, in the arena of the newspapers? Nothing in the
universe could induce me to it. My mind has been long fixed to bow to
the judgment of the world, who will judge by my acts, and will never
take counsel from me as to what that judgment shall be. If your objects
and opinions have been misunderstood, if the measures and principles of
others have been wrongfully imputed to you, as I believe they have been,
that you should leave an explanation of them, would be an set of justice
to yourself. I will add, that it has been hoped that you would leave such
explanations as would place every saddle on its right horse, and replace
on the shoulders of others the burdens they shifted to yours.

But all this, my friend, is offered merely for your consideration and
judgment, without presuming to anticipate what you alone are qualified
to decide for yourself. I mean to express my own purpose only, and the
reflections which have led to it. To me, then, it appears, that there
have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the
first establishment of governments to the present day, and on the same
question which now divides our own country: that these will continue
through all future time: that every one takes his side in favor of
the many, or of the few, according to his constitution, and the
circumstances in which he is placed: that opinions, which are equally
honest on both sides, should not affect personal esteem or social
intercourse: that as we judge between the Claudii and the Gracchi, the
Wentworths and the Hampdens of past ages, so, of those among us whose
names may happen to be remembered for a while, the next generations
will judge, favorably or unfavorably, according to the complexion of
individual minds, and the side they shall themselves have taken: that
nothing new can be added by you or me to what has been said by others,
and will be said in every age in support of the conflicting opinions on
government: and that wisdom and duty dictate an humble resignation to
the verdict of our future peers. I doing this myself, I shall certainly
not suffer moot questions to affect the sentiments of sincere friendship
and respect, consecrated to you by so long a course of time, and of
which I now repeat sincere assurances,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, August 22, 1813

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Monticello, August 22, 1813.

Dear Sir,

Since my letter of June the 27th, I am in your debt for many; all of
which I have read with infinite delight. They open a wide field for
reflection, and offer subjects enough to occupy the mind and the pen
indefinitely. I must follow the good example you have set; and when
I have not time to take up every subject, take up a single one. Your
approbation of my outline to Dr. Priestley is a great gratification to
me; and I very much suspect that if thinking men would have the courage
to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found
they do not differ in religious opinions, as much as is supposed. I
remember to have heard Dr. Priestley say, that if all England would
candidly examine themselves, and confess, they would find that
Unitarianism was really the religion of all: and I observe a bill is now
depending in parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians. It is too
late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the
Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that
the one is not three, and the three are not one: to divide mankind by a
single letter into

[Illustration: page205]

But this constitutes the craft, the power, and the profit of the
priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and
they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the Quakers,
live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the
oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand,
nor therefore believe; for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind
to an intelligible proposition.

It is with great pleasure I can inform you, that Priestley finished the
comparative view of the doctrines of the philosophers of antiquity, and
of Jesus, before his death; and that it was printed soon after. And with
still greater pleasure, that I can have a copy of his work forwarded
from Philadelphia, by a correspondent there, and presented for your
acceptance, by the same mail which carries you this, or very soon after.
The branch of the work which the title announces, is executed with
learning and candor, as was every thing Priestley wrote: but perhaps a
little hastily; for he felt himself pressed by the hand of death. The
Abbe Batteux had, in fact, laid the foundation of this part in his
‘Causes Premieres’; with which he has given us the originals of Ocellus
and Timzeus, who first committed the doctrines of Pythagoras to writing:
and Enfield, to whom the Doctor refers, had done it more copiously. But
he has omitted the important branch, which, in your letter of August the
9th, you say you have never seen executed, a comparison of the morality
of the Old Testament with that of the New. And yet, no two things were
ever more unlike. I ought not to have asked him to give it. He dared
not. He would have been eaten alive by his intolerant brethren, the
Cannibal priests. And yet, this was really the most interesting branch
of the work.

Very soon after my letter to Doctor Priestley, the subject being still
in my mind, I had leisure, during an abstraction from business for a day
or two, while on the road, to think a little more on it, and to sketch
more fully than I had done to him, a syllabus of the matter which I
thought should enter into the work. I wrote it to Doctor Rush; and there
ended all my labor on the subject; himself and Doctor Priestley being
the only depositories of my secret. The fate of my letter to Priestley,
after his death, was a warning to me on that of Doctor Rush; and at my
request, his family were so kind as to quiet me by returning my original
letter and syllabus. By this you will be sensible how much interest I
take in keeping myself clear of religious disputes before the public;
and especially of seeing my syllabus disembowelled by the Aruspices of
the modern Paganism. Yet I enclose it to you with entire confidence,
free to be perused by yourself and Mrs. Adams, but by no one else; and
to be returned to me.

You are right in supposing, in one of yours, that I had not read much of
Priestley’s Predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy with
Horsley. But I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early
Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them, and
on Middleton’s writings, especially his letters from Rome, and to
Waterland, as the basis of my own faith. These writings have never been
answered, nor can be answered by quoting historical proofs, as they have
done. For these facts, therefore, I cling to their learning, so much
superior to my own.

I now fly off in a tangent to another subject. Marshall, in the first
volume of his history, chapter 3, p. 180, ascribes the petition to the
King, of 1774, (1 Journ. Cong. 67) to the pen of Richard Henry Lee. I
think myself certain, it was not written by him, as well from what I
recollect to have heard, as from the internal evidence of style. He
was loose, vague, frothy, rhetorical. He was a poorer writer than his
brother Arthur; and Arthur’s standing may be seen in his Monitor’s
Letters, to insure the sale of which, they took the precaution of
tacking to them a new edition of the Farmer’s Letters; like Mezentius,
who ‘_mortua jungebat corpora vivis_.’ You were of the committee, and
can tell me who wrote this petition; and who wrote the Address to the
Inhabitants of the Colonies, ib. 45. Of the papers of July 1775, I
recollect well that Mr. Dickinson drew the petition to the King, ib.
149; I think Robert R. Livingston drew the Address to the Inhabitants of
Great Britain, ib. 152. Am I right in this? And who drew the Address to
the People of Ireland, ib. 180? On these questions, I ask of your memory
to help mine. Ever and affectionately yours,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXIII.--TO JOHN W. EPPES, November 6, 1813

TO JOHN W. EPPES.

Monticello, November 6, 1813.

Dear Sir,

I had not expected to have troubled you again on the subject of finance;
but since the date of my last, I have received from Mr. Law a letter
covering a memorial on that subject, which, from its tenor, I conjecture
must have been before Congress at their two last sessions. This paper
contains two propositions; the one for issuing treasury notes, bearing
interest, and to be circulated as money; the other for the establishment
of a national bank. The first was considered in my former letter; and
the second shall be the subject of the present.

The scheme is for Congress to establish a national bank, suppose of
thirty millions capital, of which they shall contribute ten millions in
new six per cent, stock, the States ten millions, and individuals ten
millions, one half of the two last contributions to be of similar stock,
for which the parties are to give cash to Congress: the whole, however,
to be under the exclusive management of the individual subscribers, who
are to name all the directors; neither Congress nor the States having
any power of interference in its administration. Discounts are to be
at five per cent., but the profits are expected to be seven per cent.
Congress then will be paying six per cent, on twenty millions, and
receiving seven per cent, on ten millions, being its third of the
institution: so that on the ten millions cash which they receive from
the States and individuals, they will, in fact, have to pay but five
per cent, interest. This is the bait. The charter is proposed to be for
forty or fifty years, and if any future augmentations should take place,
the individual proprietors are to have the privilege of being the sole
subscribers for that. Congress are further allowed to issue to the
amount of three millions of notes, bearing interest, which they are to
receive back in payment for lands at a premium of five or ten per
cent., or as subscriptions for canals, roads, and bridges, in which
undertakings they are, of course, to be engaged. This is a summary
of the scheme, as I understand it: but it is very possible I may
not understand it in all its parts, these schemes being always made
Unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them. The advantages
and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur; leaving
out the speculation of canals, &c. which, being an episode only in the
scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it as much as we can.

1. Congress are to receive five millions from the States (if they will
enter into this partnership, which few probably will), and five millions
from the individual subscribers, in exchange for ten millions of six per
cent, stock, one per cent, of which, however, they will make on their
ten millions of stock remaining in bank, and so reduce it, in effect, to
a loan of ten millions at five per cent, interest. This is good: but

2. They authorize this bank to throw into circulation ninety millions
of dollars, (three times the capital), which increases our circulating
medium fifty per cent., depreciates proportionably the present value
of the dollar, and raises the price of all future purchases in the same
proportion.

3. This loan of ten millions at five per cent., is to be once for all,
only. Neither the terms of the scheme, nor their own prudence could ever
permit them to add to the circulation in the same, or any other way, for
the supplies of the succeeding years of the war. These succeeding years
then are to be left unprovided for, and the means of doing it in a great
measure precluded.

4. The individual subscribers, on paying their own five millions of cash
to Congress, become the depositories of ten millions of stock belonging
to Congress, five millions belonging to the States, and five millions to
themselves, say twenty millions, with which, as no one has a right ever
to see their books, or to ask a question, they may choose their time