THE WRITINGS OF







THOMAS JEFFERSON















Definitive Edition







CONTAINING HIS







AUTOBIOGRAPHY, NOTES ON VIRGINIA, PARLIA-







MENTARY  MANUAL, OFFICIAL PAPERS,







MESSAGES AND ADDRESSES, AND OTHER







WRITINGS, OFFICIAL AND PRIVATE,







NOW COLLECTED AND







PUBLISHED IN THEIR ENTIRETY FOR THE FIRST TIME







INCLUDING







ALL OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS, DEPOSITED IN THE DEPARTMENT







OF STATE AND PUBLISHED IN 1853 BY ORDER OF THE







JOINT COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS







WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS







AND







A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYTICAL INDEX















ALBERT ELLERY BERGH







EDITOR















VOL. XIV.























ISSUED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF







THE THOMAS JEFFERSON MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION







OF THE UNITED STATES







WASHINGTON, D. C.















THE MEMORY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.1















As one glances around this room, one is prompted to say in the last words of

John Adams, " Thomas Jefferson still survives." The spirit of the Great

Commoner is abroad in the land, and a grateful nation pays its tribute

to-night. That we may have a clear and lucid understanding of the immense

influence exercised by Jefferson, not only in his own day, but upon all

subsequent times, it is necessary to define his environment.







  Neither Washington, Jefferson nor Madison was of Virginia's elect, nor did

they come from the landed aristocracy. Jefferson came upon the stage of active

affairs at a time when Virginia was under the domination of a roystering,

gambling, hoidenish aristocracy. The law of entail, the right of the first-born

to inherit, and the established church confronted him. Charmed with the burning

oratory of Henry, whose contention, that taxation without representation was

tyranny, appealed to younger generation of Virginians, Jefferson cast aside his







  1 Address delivered by Hon. John B. Stanchfield, at the banquet given by the

Democratic Club in celebration of the 156th Birthday of Thomas Jefferson, on

April 13th, 1899, at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City.







   VOL. XIV-A 













ii    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







profession of the law, and with the announced determination that he would never

accept emolument or compensation other than the salary given him, entered upon

a political career.







  In his public life of upwards of forty years, covering the entire range of

preferment from the humblest to the highest, two things stand out with great

prominence ; he never made a speech, he never waged a war. He left the

Presidency at the end of his second term with the admiration and affectionate

regard of seven millions of people. The free school, the free church and our

free government, to his untiring zeal and industry are largely owing. If we

were to speak to Jefferson's own conception of what had been the accomplished

results of his life's work, the inscription found among his belongings as to

what he wished placed upon his tomb concisely tells the tale : " Here was

buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence,of

the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and Father of the University of

Virginia." His residence in France about the time of the oncoming of the French

Revolution, sowed the seed of liberty deep in his heart, and from that human

cataclysm he imbibed principles that remained with him to the hour of his

death. It required civic courage and personal valor of no mean degree to

introduce and force upon the classes of Virginia the abolition of the law of

entail and the right of primogeniture. For. this purpose he declined a 













    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson iii







re-election to the House of Congress, and devoted to it, in accomplishing its

passage, an ability and an industry that earned for him during the remainder of

his career the hatred of the aristocratic classes of Virginia, and the rancor

of these proud patricians followed him in all his future career.







  His clear and perspicuous eye saw that the transmission of vast estates from

one generation to another, with an established church curbing and curtailing

the religious opinions of the people, was at war with the Declaration of

Independence and the theory upon which our government was built.







  "All men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions

in matters of religion, " is the key-note of his draft of the act in behalf of

religious liberty. Before the spark of Revolution had been kindled, in a

memorial address to George the Third, it was Jefferson who wrote the lines :







" Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art, * * * The God who gave

us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but

cannot disjoin them."







So far did Jefferson's belief in self-government carry him, that although a

slave owner in harmony with the spirit of the age in which he lived, we find

him writing in 1821 of the negro, " nothing is more certainly written in the

book of Fate than that these people are to be free."







  While the battle was waging in the House of Burgesses against the right of

the first-born male to 













iv The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







inherit, his opponents, under the leadership' of one Pendleton, pleaded that

the eldest son might at least take a double share : " Not, " was Jefferson's

retort, " until he can eat a double allowance of food and do a double allowance

of work. " " My purpose," said Jefferson afterwards, "was instead of an

aristocracy of wealth to make an opening for an aristocracy of virtue and

talent. "







With Jefferson's induction into national politics commences the battle between

those who favored a strong centralized government, called in. those days the

Federalists, and those who believed in the ultimate rule of the people and the

greatest amount of liberty to the citizen possible, termed Republicans. Of the

latter Jefferson was soon the acknowledged head. Despite the many contradictory

and apparently inconsistent phrases and sentences that his detractors may cull

out from his voluminous correspondence, covering one-half a century, the

enduring fact remains that the never changing ambition of his life was devoted

to securing in largest degree the right of personal liberty. In Hamilton's

determined effort to make a federal power supreme by the maintenance of an

excessively large standing army, the annulment of State rights, the creation of

a United States bank, and the establishment of a federal judiciary with

unlimited powers, Jefferson saw the end of the republic and the aggressive

approach of a monarchy. This controversy so defined and begun, terminated

neither 













    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson v







with the death of Hamilton, nor Jefferson at Monticello. Dressed in different

attire, it is the vital issue of the present day.







  Jefferson favored a separation from England for the ultimate reason of

permitting the people self-government: He favored, passed, fought for and

enforced the right of the free school and the free church, the abolition of a

United States bank, and the creation of an army and navy no larger than was

necessary for purposes of defence, because he believed the people so willed,

and that these principles harmonized with the largest share of personal freedom

in the individual.







  With the election of Jefferson in his controversy with Burr, by the House of

Representatives, the Republicans, or Anti-Federalists, won their first victory.

Then, as now, New York was the central battle-ground, and party spirit ran high

and strong. A poet of the day in amusing doggerel voiced the victory of the

anti-federalists in characteristic speech:







      "The Federalists are down at last,







  The monarchists completely cast;







  The autocrats are stripped of power,







  Storms o'er British factions lower.







       Soon we Republicans shall see







  Columbia's sons from bondage free.







       Lord, how the Federalists will stare







  At Jefferson in Adams' chair."







  Hence came the Democrats, and we who believe in the principles that earned

that victory have







vi The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







never known another name. In striking analogy to the situation with which we

are confronted to-day was Jefferson circumstanced at the time of the Louisiana

Purchase. The Federalists of his time contended with bitter animosity that

sufficient unto the then population of the United States was the Union as it

then existed. Undeterred by the clamor of the minority, Jefferson eonsummated

the purchase of so much landed territory as more than doubled our territorial

extent. When the question of the ratification of the purchase came before

Congress and was up for debate, the Federalists made use of the contention that

the acquirement of additional territory was a violation of the Constitution,

both in its letter and in its spirit. To this we find Jefferson writing to his

Attorney General, in 1803 : " I quote this for your consideration, observing

that the least there is said about any constitutional difficulty, the better;

and that it will be desirable for Congress to do what is necessary in silence.

I find but one opinion as to the necessity of shutting up the Constitution for

some time."







Jefferson was inclined by the arbitrary use of his majority in Congress to

smother any objections that might be raised in theory or in letter, to the

ratification of his purchase. He relied upon the strong underlying sentiment of

the people to uphold his act as being for their good and the ultimate

advancement of the nation. While Congress was in session, we find him writing :

" Whatever Congress shall 













    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson    vii







think it necessary to do should be done with as little debate as possible, and

particularly as respects the constitutional question. "







Jefferson's earlier notions that the States constituted a small league, had

changed, and with increasing wealth, population and power, he favored increased

territorial aggrandizement. As John Quincy Adams wrote our minister at Madrid,

in 1823, in reference to Cuba and Porto Rico: "Those islands, from their local

position, are naturally appendages to the North American continent ; and one of

them, Cuba, which is almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of

considerations, has become an object of transcendent importance to the

commercial and political interests to our Union. * * * It is scarcely possible

to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our republic will be

indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself. "







So, Jefferson, fourteen years earlier, in a letter to Madison, speaking of

Bonaparte, said : " But although with difficulty he will consent to our

receiving Cuba into our Union * * * that would be a price, and I would

immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on

it `ne plus ultra,' as to us in that direction. We should then have only to

include the north in our confederacy, which would be, of course, in the first

war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed

since the creation; and







  VOL. XIV-B 













viii     The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







I am persuaded no Constitution was ever before' so well calculated as ours for

extensive empire and self-government. "







Jefferson not only believed in the destiny of the republic, but he was an

advocate of force, where diplomacy would not accomplish the desired results.

While, as chief magistrate, he conducted no wars for aggrandizement, yet his

correspondence teems with references to the results that would accrue to us in

territorial accessions by means of war. He was never deceived by the diplomatic

assurances of the powers of Europe, nor lulled into false security by the

peaceful attitude of the country at the time of his Presidential incumbency. He

believed in the proposition that the way to secure peace is to be prepared for

war. The autocrat of the Russias since the promulgation of his memorable

proclamation in favor of a general disarmament of the nations; has quietly

purchased in the shipyards of the world strong and many additional battleships.







  The great laureate of the English-speaking peoples, nursed back to health in

the salubrious air of New York, correctly read the signs of the times when he

sang-







      "When he shows as seeking quarter, with paw-like







    hands in prayer-







 That is the time of peril-the time of the truce of the







    bear."







   It has come to be a fad with those who oppose enlarging our boundaries, to

assert that territorial























    The Memory of Thomas Jefferson     ix







acquirement is hostile to the spirit of Washington's Farewell Address and the

,teachings of Jefferson. To this contention a moment will suffice. It may

safely be urged as sound doctrine, that no man, be he ever so eminent, advising

the affairs of a nation of seven millions, can speak with certainty as to what

would be an advantageous line of policy seventy-five years later for a people

of seventy millions. A standing army larger than is proportionate to the

ordinary requirements of the government is always a menace. It is also, for

police purposes and the unexpected emergencies of government, a necessity.

Against this contingent evil and the inexpediency of foreign political

alliances, Washington chiefly inveighs. But if I read aright the political and

governmental teachings of Jefferson, no thought can be traced home to his

maturer years that did not reflect his hope and expectation that the United'

States would become one of the great powers of the world.







We are an aggressive, combative people. We assert the proposition that the

Anglo-Saxon stock are by their industry and indomitable perseverance the chosen

ones to sway the affairs of men. The immortal one hundred that braved the

terrors of the storm-tossed Atlantic in the name of liberty have left their

indelible imprint upon us. While the Pilgrim Fathers adjured high Heaven with

one hand that they came here that they might worship God according to the

dictates of their own conscience,















x      The Memory of Thomas Jefferson







with the other they waged relentless and ruthless war upon the red man.







  When old Massasoit, with his painted and feathered warriors squatted in the

Governor's log house and smoked the pipe of peace, sturdy Standish with his

musketeers stood ready to slay and kill. Having won their: own independence and

established a religious belief conformable to the nations, they purpose to

tolerate no other. The harmless Quaker paid for his temerity with his life.

Sprung from their loins has come a people who know no limitation to the march

of trade. The fittest shall survive. And until the ports of the world shall

recognize our flag as the embodiment and incarnation of liberty and power, the

spirit of dominion will never down. Where there are people to buy, there we

insist shall the American wage-earner have a market to sell. We point with

pride to the fact that not only our shoes compete with those of English make in

Piccadilly, our locomotives propel the peoples of the Soudan, but our navy

yards are building the battleships of the nations of the Old World. To maintain

wages at a rate that will enable our men of toil to outstrip the nations of the

world, is not only Democratic policy, but Jeffersonian doctrine.







  The war of 1812 was fought to protect our vessels upon the high seas against

the right of impressment and of search. In it our little wooden navy won the

proud prestige it has ever since sustained. Decatur and Lawrence and Perry were

as famous in the















The Memory of Thomas Jefferson    xi







days of 1812 as Dewey, Sampson and Schley in the days of I898. Monroe gave us

Florida by purchase in days of peace, and the Mexican war, waged in the

forties, acquired for us our far western territories, including more land than

composed the United States at the close of the Revolution.







  Such to the close of the administration of Polk had been in the policy of

Democratic administrations, with reference to territorial extension. True to

the spirit transmitted to us from the Pilgrim Fathers, we fought the battle of

the slave, and drenched the land in fraternal blood. What American has

forgotten how his pulse thrilled with pride as Bryant, the poet of peace and

flowers, wrote these inspiring words-







           Lay down the axe; fling by the spade;



      Leave in its track the toiling plow ;







     The rifle and the bayonet blade







       For arms like yours were fitter now;







          And let the hands that ply the pen







       Quit the light task and learn to wield







          The horseman's crooked brand, and rein







       The charger on the battlefield."







  Jefferson's prophecy had to be fulfilled and the bondman was made free! The

war with Spain begun in the name of humanity, waged to redress the wrongs of

centuries, inflicted upon a people at the doorway of our southern gulf, has

resulted in the glorious triumph of civilization. To the legitimate fruits of

that victory we are entitled by law both human and divine. There must be

neither 













   The Memory of Thomas Jefferson xiii







 With the never ending roll of years among posterities yet unborn; shining with

constantly increased radiance and brilliancy, the reputation of Jefferson will

enhance as the great exponent of popular government and the honest and sincere

champion of the rights of the common people, until among the nation's honored

dead his name and memory, far above his fellows, will forever be cherished and

revered by lovers of liberty and friends of humanity.























CONTENTS.















                                                                               

                                          page 



THE MEMORY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. By Hon. John



B. Stanchfield. . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826... .. .. . .. . . . . . 1-493







John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 15,1813. . 1



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 3,1813. . 14



To Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, December 6,1813 . 20



To Madame de Tesse, December 8, 1813. . . . . . .  25



To Don Valentin de Foronda Coruna, December14,1813 30



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 25,1813 . 33



To Thomas Leiper, January 1, 1814. . . . . . . . . 41



To Dr. Walter Jones, January 2, 1814 . . . . . . . 46



To John Pintard, January 9, 1514 . . . . . . . . . 53



To Samuel M. Burnside, Secretary of the Ameri-



can Antiquarian. Society, January 9, 1814 . . . . .53



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, January 16, 1814. . . . . . .54



To Oliver Evans, January 16, 1814. . . . . . . . . 63



To Joseph C. Cabell, January 17, 1814 . . . . . . .67



To R. M. Patterson, January 20, 1814.. . . . . . . 70



To John Adams, January 24, 1814 . . . . . . . . . .71



To John Clarke, January 27, 1814. . . . . . . . . .79



To Samuel Greenhow, January 31, 1814. . . . . . . .81



To Joseph C. Cabell, January 31, 1814. . . . . . . 82



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814. . . . . . 85 







xvi,            Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.    

                                                                               

                         page 



To Dr. John Manners, February 22, 1814. . . . . . 97



 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February, 1814  104 



To Gideon Granger, March 9, 1814. . . . . . . .  111 



To Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814. . . . .  118 



To L. H. Girardin, March 18, 1814. . . . . . . . 121 



To Monsieur N. G. Dufief, April 19, 1814. . . . .126 



To Chevalier Luis De Onis, April 28, 1814. . . . 129 



To Joseph Delaplaine, May 3, 1814. . . . . . . . 131



To John F. Watson, May 17, 1814. . . . . . . . . 134



To Abraham Small, May 20, 1814. . . . . . . . . .136



To Thomas Law, June 13, 1814. . . . . . . . . . .138



To John Adams, July 5, 1814. . . . . . . . . .   144



 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 16, 1814. .152 



To Baron de Moll, July 31, 1814 . . . . . . . . .161 



To William Wirt, August 14, 1814. . . . . . . . .162 



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, August 25, 1814. . . . . . 173



 To Joseph Delaplaine, August 28, 1814. . . . . .175 



To Dr. Thomas Cooper, September 10, 1814. . . .  179 



To Samuel H. Smith, September 21, 1814. . . . . .190 



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), September 24, 1814. . . . . . . . . .  194 



To Miles King, September 26, 1814. . . . . . . . 196 



To Joseph C Cabell, September 30, 1814. . . . . .199 



To Thomas Cooper, October 7, 1814. . . . . . . . 199 



To James Madison, October 15, 1814. . . . . . . .202 



To James Monroe, October 16, 1814. . . . . . . . 207 



To Doctor Robert Patterson, November 23, 1814.   209



 To Robert M. Patterson, November 23, 1814. . . .210 



To William Short, November 28, 1814. . . . . . . 211 



To John Melish, December 10, 1814. . . . . . . . 219 



To Monsieur Correa de Serra, December 27, 1814.  221 



To James Monroe, January 1, 1815. . . . . . . . .226



 To L. H. Girardin, January 15, 1815. . . . . . .231 







                Contents           xvii







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued.    

                                                                               

                           page 



To Charles Clay, January 29, 1815. . . . . . . . 232 



To Governor William Plumer, January 31, 1815. . .235 



To John Vaughan, February 5, 1815. . . . . . . . 239 



To William H. Crawford, February 11, 1815. . . . 240 



To the Marquis de Lafayette, February 14, 1815. .245 



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, February 28,1815. 255 



To Jean Batiste Say, March 2, 1815. . . . . . . .258 



To Francis C. Gray, March 4, 1815. . . . . . . . 267 



To L. H. Girardin, March 12, 1815. . . . . . . . 271 



To P. H. Wendover, March 13, 1815. . . . . . . . 279



 To Caesar A. Rodney, March 16, 1815. . . . . . .284 



To General Henry Dearborn, March 17, 1815. . . . 287 



To the President of the United States (James



Madison), March 23, 1815. . . . . . . . . . . .  290 



To L. H. Girardin, March 27, 1815. . . . . . . . 294 



To David Barrow, May 1, 1815. . . . . . . . . . .296 



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, May 15, 1815. . . 297 



To John Adams, June 10, 1815. . . . . . . . . . .299 



To W. H. Torrance, June 11, 1815. . . . . . . . .302 



To Thomas Leiper, June 12, 1815. . . . . . . . . 306 



To James Maury, June 15, 1815. . . . . . . . . . 311 



To James Maury, June 16, 1815. . . . . . . . . . 315 



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815. . 320 



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 22, 1815. . 322 



To Monsieur Correa de Serra, June 28, 1815. . . .330 



To Madame La Baronne De Stael-Holstein, 



July 3, 1815. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .331 



To Andrew C. Mitchell, July 16, 1815. . . . . . .334



To William Wirt, August 5, 1815. . . . . . . . . 335 



To John Adams, August 10, 1815. . . . . . . . . .342 



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815. 346 



To Judge Spencer Roane,October 12, 1815. . . . . 349 











xviii            Contents







LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN TO THE



UNITED STATES, 1789-1826-Continued .           PAGE







To Capt. A. Partridge, October 12,1815 ..........352



To Dr. George Logan, October 15, 1815............354



To Albert Gallatin, October 16, 1815.............355



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, November 13,1815 359



To William Bentley, December  28, 1815...........363



To George Fleming, December 29,1815..............365



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, December 31,1815 .369



To Captain A. Partridge, January 2,1816..........374



To Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816.......379



To Charles Thompson, January 9,1816............. 385



To Benjamin Austin, January 9,1816.............. 387



To John Adams, January 11,1816...................393



To Dabney Carr, January 19,1816..................398



To Dr. Peter Wilson, January 20,1816.............401



Amos J. Cook, January 21,1816................... 403



To Thomas Ritchie, January 21,1816.............. 406



To Nathaniel Macon, January 22,1816............. 408



To Joseph C. Cabell, January 24,1816.............412



To Rev. Noah Worcester, January 29,1816..........414



To Joseph C. Cabell, February 2,1816.............417



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 2,1816..423



To Thomas W. Maury, February 3, 1816.............428



To James Monroe, February 4,1816................ 430



To Benjamin Austin, February 9,1816............. 435



John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, March 2,1816.....437



To -------- March 13,1816........................442



To Governor Wilson C. Nicholas, April 2,1816.....446



To Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816............... 456



To John Adams, April 8, 1816.....................466



To Governor Wilson C. Nicholas, April 19,1816....471



To Monsieur Dupont de Nemours, April 24,1816.....487















 JEFFERSON'S WORKS







 LETTERS WRITTEN AFTER HIS RETURN







  TO THE UNITED STATES.















JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







               QUINCY, November 15, 1813.







DEAR SIR,-I cannot appease my melancholy commiseration for our armies in this

furious snow storm, in any way so well as by studying your letter of October a

8.







We are now explicitly agreed upon one important point, viz., that there is a

natural aristocracy among men, the grounds of which are virtue and talents. You

very justly indulge a little merriment upon this solemn subject of aristocracy.

I often laugh at it too, for there is nothing in this laughable world more

ridiculous than the management of it by all the nations of the earth ; but

while we smile, mankind have reason to say to us, as the frogs said to the

boys, what is sport to you, are wounds and death to us. When I consider the

weakness, the folly, the pride,







vol. xiv-1 













            Jefferson's Works







the vanity, the selfishness, the artifice, the low craft and mean cunning, the

want of principle, the avarice, the unbounded ambition, the unfeeling cruelty

of a majority of those (in all nations) who are allowed an aristocratical

influence, and, on the other hand, the stupidity with which the more numerous

multitude not only become their dupes, but even love to be taken in by their

tricks, I feel a stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, than to laugh

at their folly. But though we have agreed in one point, in words, it is not yet

certain that we are perfectly agreed in sense. Fashion has introduced an

indeterminate use of the word talents. Education, wealth, strength, beauty,

stature, birth, marriage, graceful attitudes and motions, gait, air,

complexion, physiognomy, are talents, as well as genius, science, and learning.

Any one of these talents that in fact commands or influences two votes in

society, gives to the man who possesses it the character of an aristocrat, in

my sense of the word. Pick up the first hundred men you meet, and make a

republic.  Every man will have an equal vote ; but when deliberations and

discussions are opened, it will be found that twenty-five, by their talents,

virtues being equal, will be able to carry fifty votes. Every one of these

twenty-five is an aristocrat in my sense of the word ; whether he obtains his

one vote in addition to his own, by his birth, fortune, figure, eloquence,

science, learning, craft, cunning, or even his character for good fellowship,

and a bon vivant. 













             Correspondence          3







  What gave Sir William Wallace his amazing aristocratical superiority? His

strength. What gave Mrs. Clark her aristocratical influence-to create generals,

admirals, and bishops? Her beauty. What gave Pompadour and Du Barry the power

of making cardinals and popes? And I have lived for years in the Hotel de

Valentinois, with Franklin, who had as many virtues as any of them. In the

investigation of the meaning of the word " talents, " I could write 630 pages

as pertinent as John Taylor's, of Hazlewood ; but I will select a single

example ; for female aristocrats are nearly as formidable as males. A daughter

of a greengrocer walks the streets in London daily, with a basket of cabbage

sprouts, dandelions, and spinach, on her head. She is observed by the painters

to have a beautiful face, an elegant figure, a graceful step, and a debonair.

They hire her to sit. She complies; and is painted by forty artists in a circle

around her. The scientific Dr. William Hamilton outbids the painters, sends her

to school for a genteel education, and marries her. This lady not only causes

the triumphs of the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, but separates Naples from

France, and finally banishes the king and queen from Sicily. Such is the

aristocracy of the natural talent of beauty. Millions of examples might be

quoted from history, sacred and profane, from Eve, Hannah, Deborah, Susanna,

Abigail, Judith, Ruth, down to Helen, Mrs. de Mainbenon, and Mrs. Fitzherbert.

For mercy's sake do not compel me to look to our 













            Jefferson's Works







chaste States and territories to find women, one of whom let go would in the

words of Holopherne's guards, deceive the whole earth.







  The proverbs of Thegns, like those of Solomon, are observations on human

nature, ordinary life, and civil society, with moral reflections on the facts.

I quoted him as a witness of the fact, that there was as much difference in the

races of men as in the breeds of sheep, and as' a sharp reprover and censurer

of the sordid, mercenary practice of disgracing birth by preferring gold to it.

Surely no authority can be more expressly in point to prove the existence of

inequalities, not of rights, but of moral, intellectual, and physical

inequalities in families, descents and generations. If a descent from pious,

virtuous, wealthy, literary, or scientific ancestors, is a letter of

recommendation, or introduction in a man's favor, and enables him to influence

only one vote in addition to his own, he is an aristocrat; for a democrat can

have but one vote. Aaron Burr has 100,000 votes from the single circumstance of

his descent from President Burr and President Edwards.







  Your commentary on the proverbs of Thegns, reminded me of two solemn

characters ; the one resembling John Bunyan, the other Scarron. The one John

Torrey, the other Ben Franklin. Torrey, a poet, an enthusiast, a superstitious

bigot, once very gravely asked my brother, whether it would not be better for

mankind if children were always begotten by religious motives only? Would not

religion in 













            Correspondence







this sad case have as little efficacy in encouraging procreation, as it has now

in discouraging it? I should apprehend a decrease of population, even in our

country where it increases so rapidly.







  In 1775, Franklin made a morning visit at Mrs. Yard's, to Sam Adams and John.

He was unusually loquacious. " Man, a rational creature!" said Franklin. "

Come, let us suppose a rational man. Strip him of all his appetites, especially

his hunger and thirst. He is in his chamber, engaged in making experiments, or

in pursuing some problem. He is highly entertained. At this moment a servant

knocks. `Sir, dinner is on the table.' `Dinner! pox! pough! but what have you

for dinner?' `Ham and chickens.' `Ham! and must I break the chain of my

thoughts to go down and .gnaw a morsel of damned hog's arse ? Put aside your

ham ; I will dine to-morrow.' " Take away appetite, and the present generation

would not live a month, and no future generation would ever exist; and thus the

exalted dignity of human nature would be annihilated and lost, and in my

opinion the whole loss would be of no more importance than putting out a

candle, quenching a torch, or crushing a firefly, If in this world we only have

hope. Your distinction between natural and artificial aristocracy, does not

appear to me founded. Birth and wealth are conferred upon some men as

imperiously by nature as genius, strength, or beauty. The heir to honors, and

riches, and power, has often no more merit in pro













            Jefferson's Works







curing these advantages, than he has in obtaining a handsome face, or an

elegant figure. When aristocracies are established by human laws, and honor,

wealth and power are made hereditary by municipal laws and political

institutions, then I acknowledge artificial aristocracy to commence ; but this

never commences till corruption in elections become dominant and

uncontrollable. But this artificial aristocracy can never last. The everlasting

envies, jealousies, rivalries, and quarrels among them; their cruel rapacity

upon the poor ignorant people, their followers, compel them to set up Caesar, a

demagogue, to be a monarch, a master; pour mettre chacun a sa place. Here you

have the origin of all artificial aristocracy, which is the origin of all

monarchies. And both artificial aristocracy and monarchy, and civil, military,

political, and hierarchical despotism, have all grown out of the natural

aristocracy of virtues and talents. We, to be sure, are far remote from this.

Many hundred years must roll away before we shall be corrupted. Our pure,

virtuous, public-spirited, federative republic will last forever, govern the

globe, and introduce the perfection of man ; his perfectibility being already

proved by Price, Priestley, Condorcet, Rousseau, Diderot, and Godwin. Mischief

has been done by the Senate of the United States. I have known and felt more of

this mischief, than Washington, Jefferson, and Madison; all together. But this

has been all caused by the constitutional power of the Senate, in executive

business, which 













            Correspondence







ought to be immediately, totally, and essentially abolished. Your distinction

between the A-(Greek inserted here)-and-(Greek inserted here)---, will not help

the matter. I would trust one as well as the other with unlimited power. The

law wisely refuses an oath as a witness in his own case, to the saint as well

as the sinner. No romance would be more amusing than the history of your

Virginian and our New England aristocratical families. Yet even in Rhode Island

there has been no clergy, no church, and I had almost said no State, and some

people say no religion. There has been a constant respect for certain old

families. Fifty-seven or fifty-eight years ago, in company with Colonel,

Counsellor, Judge, John Chandler, whom I have quoted before, a newspaper was

brought in. The old sage asked me to look for the news from Rhode Island, and

see how the elections had gone there. I read the list of Wanbous, Watrous,

Greens, Whipples, Malboues, etc. " I expected as much " said the aged

gentleman, "for I have always been of opinion that in the most popular

governments, the elections will generally go in favor of the most ancient

families." To this day, when any of these tribes-and we may add Ellerys,

Channings, Champlins, etc.,-are pleased to fall in with the popular current,

they are sure to carry all before them.







  You suppose a difference of opinion between you and me on the subject of

aristocracy. I can find none. I dislike and detest hereditary honors, offices,

emoluments, established by law. So do you. I am 













            Jefferson's Works







for excluding legal, hereditary distinctions from the United States as long as

possible. So are you. I only say that mankind have not yet discovered any

remedy against irresistible corruption in elections to offices of great power

and profit, but making them hereditary.







  But will you say our elections are pure? Be it so, upon the whole ; but do

you recollect in history a more corrupt election than that of Aaron Burr to be

President, or that of De Witt Clinton last year? By corruption here, I mean a

sacrifice of every national interest and honor to private and party objects. I

see the same spirit in Virginia that you and I see in Rhode Island and the rest

of New England. In New York it is a struggle of family feuds-a feudal

aristocracy. Pennsylvania is a contest between German, Irish and Old England

families. When Germans and Irish unite they give 30,000 majorities. There is

virtually a white rose and a red rose, a Caesar and a Pompey, in every State in

this Union, and contests and dissensions will be as lasting. The rivalry of

Bourbons and Noailleses produced the French Revolution, and a similar

competition for consideration and influence exists and prevails in every

village in the world. Where will terminate the rabies agri? The continent will

be scattered over with manors much larger than Livingston's, Van Rensselaer's

or Philips's ; even our Deacon Strong will have a principality among you

southern folk. What inequality of talents will be produced by these land 













            Correspondence







jobbers. Where tends the mania of banks? At my table in Philadelphia, I once

proposed to you to unite in endeavors to obtain an amendment of the

Constitution prohibiting to the separate States the power of creating banks ;

but giving Congress authority to establish one bank with a branch in each

State, the whole limited to ten millions of dollars. Whether this project was

wise or unwise, I know not, for I had deliberated little on it then, and have

never thought it worth thinking of since. But you spurned the proposition from

you with disdain. This system of banks, begotten, brooded and hatched by Duer,

Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Hamilton and Washington, I have always considered

as a system of national injustice. A sacrifice of public and private interest

to a few aristocratical friends and favorites. My scheme could have had no such

effect. Verres plundered temples, and robbed a few rich men, but he never made

such ravages among private property in general, nor swindled so much out of the

pockets of the poor, and middle class of people, as these banks have done. No

people but this would have borne the imposition so long. The people of Ireland

would not bear Wood's halfpence. What inequalities of talent have been

introduced into this country by these aristocratical banks! Our Winthrops,

Winslows, Bradfords, Saltonstalls, Quinceys, Chandlers, Leonards, Hutchinsons,

Olivers, Sewalls, etc., are precisely in the situation of your Randolphs,

Carters, and Burwells, and Harrisons. Some of them un













             Jefferson's Works







popular for the part they took in the late Revolution, but all respected for

their names and connections; and whenever they fell in with the popular

sentiments are preferred, ceteris paribus, to all others. When I was young the

summum bonum in Massachusetts was to be worth 10,000 pounds sterling, ride in a

chariot, be colonel of a regiment of militia, and hold a seat in his Majesty's

council. No man's imagination aspired to anything higher beneath the skies. But

these plumbs, chariots, colonelships, and counsellorships, are recorded and

will never be forgotten. No great accumulations of land were made by our early

settlers. Mr. Baudoin, a French refugee, made the first great purchases, and

your General Dearborn, born under a fortunate star, is now enjoying a large

portion of the aristocratical sweets of them. As I have no amanuenses but

females, and there is so much about generation in this letter that I dare not

ask any of them to copy it, and I cannot copy it myself, I must beg of you to

return it to me. Your old friend.















       TO A. C. U. C. DESTUTT DE TRACY.







                    November 28, 1813.







  I will not fatigue you, my dear Sir, with long and labored excuses for having

been so tardy in writing to you; but I will briefly mention that the thousand

hostile ships which cover the ocean render attempts to pass it now very

unfrequent, and these concealing 













             Correspondence







their intentions from all, that they may not be known to the enemy, are gone

before heard of in such inland situations as mine. To this, truth must add the

torpidity of age as one of the obstacles to punctual correspondence.







Your letters of October 21 and November 15,1811 ; and August 29, 1813, were

duly received, and with that of November 15 came the MS. copy of your work on

Economy. The extraordinary merit of the former volume had led me to anticipate

great satisfaction and edification from the perusal of this, and I can say with

truth and sincerity that these expectations were completely fulfilled, new

principles developed, former ones corrected, or rendered more perspicuous,

present us an interesting science, heretofore voluminous and embarrassed, now

happily simplified and brought within a very moderate compass. After an

attentive perusal, which enabled me to bear testimony to its worth, I took

measures for getting it translated and printed in Philadelphia; the distance

from which place prepared me to expect great and unavoidable delays. But

notwithstanding my continual urgencies these have gone far beyond my

calculations. In a letter of September 26th from the editor, in answer to one

of mine, after urging in excuse the causes- of the delay, he expresses his

confidence that it would be ready by the last of October, and that period being

now past, I am in daily expectation of hearing from him. As I write the present

letter without knowing by what conveyance it may go, I am not without a 













12        Jefferson's Works







hope of receiving a copy of the work in time to accompany this. I shall then be

anxious to learn that better health and more encouraging circumstances enable

you to pursue your plan through the two remaining branches of morals and

legislation, which executed in the same lucid, logical and condensed style,

will present such a whole as the age we live in will not before have received.

Should the same motives operate for their first publication here, I am now

offered such means, nearer to me, as promise a more encouraging promptitude in

the execution. And certainly no effort should be spared on my part to ensure to

the world such an acquisition. The MS. of the first work has been carefully

recalled and deposited with me. That of the second, when done with, shall be

equally taken care of.







  If unmerited praise could give pleasure to a candid mind, I should have been

highly exalted, in my own opinion, on the occasion of the first work. One of

the best judges and best men of the age has ascribed it to myself ; and has for

some time been employed in translating it into French. It would be a

gratification to which you are highly entitled, could I transcribe the sheets

he has written me in praise, nay in rapture with the work ; and were I to name

the man, you would be sensible there is not another whose suffrage would be

more encouraging. But the casualties which lie between us would render criminal

the naming any one. In a letter which I am now writing him, I shall set him

right as to myself, and acknowl-













             Correspondence           13







edge my humble station far below the qualifications necessary for that work;

and shall discourage his perseverance in retranslating into French a work the

original of which is so correct in its diction that not a word can be altered

but for the worse; and from a translation, too, where the author's meaning has

sometimes been illy understood, sometimes mistaken, and often expressed in

words not the best chosen. Indeed, when the work, through its translation,

becomes more generally known here, the high estimation in which it is held by

all who become acquainted with it, encourages me to hope I may get it printed

in the original. I sent a copy of it to the late President of William and Mary

College of this State, who adopted it at once as the elementary book of that

institution. From these beginnings it will spread and become a political gospel

for a nation open to reason, and in a situation to adopt and profit by its

results, without a fear of their leading to wrong.







  I sincerely wish you all the health, comfort and leisure necessary to dispose

and enable you to persevere in employing yourself so useful for present and

future times, and I pray you to be assured you have not a more grateful votary

for your benefactions to mankind, nor one of higher sentiments of esteem and

affectionate respect. 













14         Jefferson's Works















JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                QUINCY, December 3, 1813.







DEAR SIR,-The proverbs of the old Greek poets are as short and pithy as any of

Solomon or Franklin. Hesiod has several. His --(Greek inserted here

)------------------------------------ .   Honor the gods established by law. I

know not how we can escape martyrdom without a discreet attention to this

precept: You have suffered, and I have suffered more than you, for want of a

strict observance of this rule.







There is another oracle of this Hesiod, which requires a kind of dance upon a

tight rope and a slack rope too, in philosophy and theology :----(Greek

inserted here )-------------------------------------------. If believing too

little or too much is so fatal to mankind, what will become of us. all ?







In studying the perfectibility of human nature and its progress towards

perfection in this world, on this earth, remember that I have met many curious

and interesting characters. .







About three hundred years ago, there appeared a number of men of letters, who

appeared to endeavor to believe neither too little nor too much. They labored

to imitate the Hebrew archers, who could shoot to an hair's breadth. The Pope

and his church believed too much. Luther and his church believed too little.

This little band was headed by three great scholars : Erasmus, Vives and

Budaeus. 













             Correspondence           15







This triumvirate is said to have been at the head of the republic of letters in

that age. Had Condorcet been master of his subject, I fancy he would have taken

more notice, in his History of the Progress of Mind, of these characters. Have

you their writings ? I wish I had. I shall confine myself at present to Vives.

He wrote commentaries on the City of God of St. Augustine, some parts of which

were censured by the Doctors of the Louvain, as too bold and too free. I know

not whether the following passage of the learned Spaniard was among the

sentiments condemned or not :







" I have been much afflicted," says Vives, " when I have seriously considered

how diligently, and with what exact care, the actions of Alexander, Hannibal,

Scipio, Pompey, Caesar and other commanders, and the lives of Socrates, Plato,

Aristotle and other philosophers, have been written and fixed in an everlasting

remembrance, so that there is not the least danger they can ever be lost ; but

then the acts of the Apostles, and martyrs and saints of our religion, and of

the affairs of the rising and established church, being involved in much

darkness, are almost totally unknown, though they are of so much greater

advantage than the lives of the philosophers or great generals, both as to the

improvement of our knowledge and practice. For what is written of these holy

men, except a very few things, is very much corrupted and defaced 













16           Jefferson's Works







with the mixture of many fables, while the writer, indulging his own humor,

doth not tell us what the saint did, but what the historian would have had him

do. And the fancy of the writer dictates the life and not the truth of things."

And again Vives says : " There have been men who have thought it a great piece

of piety, to invent lies for the sake of religion. "







The great Cardinal Barronius, too, confesses: " There is nothing which seems so

much neglected to this day, as a true and certain account of the affairs of the

church, collected with an exact diligence. And that I may speak of the more

ancient, it is very difficult to find any of them who have published

commentaries on this subject, which have hit the truth in all points."







Canus, too, another Spanish prelate of great name, says : " I speak it with

grief and not by way of reproach, Laertius has written the lives of the

philosophers with more ease and industry than the Christians have those of the

saints. Suetonius has represented the lives of the Caesars with much more truth

and sincerity than the Catholics have the affairs (I will not say of the

emperors) but even those of the martyrs, holy virgins and confessors. For they

have not concealed the vice nor the very suspicions of vice, in good and

commendable philosophers or princes, and in the worst of them they discover the

very colors or appearances of virtue. But the greatest part of our writers

either follow 













             Correspondence







the conduct of their affections, or industriously feign many things; so that I,

for my part, am very often both weary and ashamed of them, because I know that

they have thereby brought nothing of advantage to the church of Christ, but

very much inconvenience. " Vives and Canus are moderns , but Arnobius, the

converter of Laetantius, was ancient. He says : " But neither could all that

was done be written, or arrive at the knowledge of all men-many of our great

actions being done by obscure men and those who had no knowledge of letters.

And if some of them are committed to letters and writings, yet even here, by

the malice of the devils and men like them, whose great design and study is tn

intercept and ruin this truth, by interpolating or adding some things to them,

or by changing or taking out words, syllables or letters, they have put a stop

to the faith of wise men, and corrupted the truth of things. "







Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient

Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all

the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public ? Miracles after

miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding wave in the Catholic

church, from the Council of Nice, and long before, to this day.







Aristotle, no doubt, thought his -----(Greek inserted

here)----------------------------------------, very wise and very profound ;

but what is its worth ? What man, woman







   VOL. XIV-2 







18        Jefferson's Works







or child ever believed everything or nothing? Oh! that Priestley could live

again, and have leisure and means! An inquirer after truth, who had neither

time nor means, might request him to search and re-search for answers to a few

questions :







1. Have we more than two witnesses of the life of Jesus-Matthew and John?







  2. Have we one witness to the existence of Matthew's gospel in the first

century ?















3. Have we one witness of the existence of John's gospel in the first century?







  4. Have we one witness of the existence of Mark's gospel in the first

century?







  5. Have we one witness of the existence of Luke's gospel in the first

century?







  6. Have we any witness of the existence of St. Thomas' gospel, that is the

gospel of the infancy, in the first century ?



  7. Have we any evidence of the existence of the Acts of the Apostles in the

first century?







  8. Have we any evidence of the existence of the supplement to the Acts of the

Apostles, Peter and Paul, or Paul and Tecle, in the first century?







  Here I was interrupted by a new book, Chateaubriand's Travels in Greece,

Palestine and Egypt, and by a lung fever with which the amiable companion of my

life has been violently and dangerously attacked.







December 13th: I have fifty more questions to 







            Correspondence           19







put to Priestley, but must adjourn them to a future opportunity.







  I have read Chateaubriand with as much delight as I ever read Bunyan's

Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe's Travels or Gulliver's, or Whitefield's or

Wesley's Life, or the Life of St. Francis, St. Anthony, or St. Ignatius Loyola.

A work of infinite learning, perfectly well written, a magazine of information,

but enthusiastic, bigoted, superstitious, Roman Catholic throughout. If I were

to indulge in jealous criticism and conjecture, I should suspect that there had

been an Ecumenical council of Popes, Cardinals and Bishops, and that this

traveller has been employed at their expense to make this tour, to lay a

foundation f or the resurrection of the Catholic Hierarchy in Europe.







  Have you read La Harpe's Cours de Literature, in fifteen volumes? Have you

read St. Pierre s Studies of Nature?







  I am now reading the controversy between Voltaire and Monotte.







  Our friend Rush has given us for his last legacy, an analysis of some of the

diseases of the mind.







  Johnson said, " We are all more or less mad "' and who is or has been more

mad than Johnson?







  I know of no philosopher, or theologian, or moralist, ancient or modern, more

profound, more infallible than Whitefield, if the anecdote I heard be true.







  He began: " Father Abraham," with his hands and eyes gracefully directed to

the heavens, as I 













20         Jefferson's Works







have more than once seen him ; " Father Abraham whom have you there with you?

Have you Catholics?" " No." " Have you Protestants?" " No." " Have you

Churchmen ?"" No. " " Have you Dissenters ?" " No. " " Have you Presbyterians

?" " No. " " Quakers ?" " No. " " Anabaptists ?" " No. " " Whom have you there

? Are you alone ?" " No. "







" My brethren, you have the answer to all these questions in the words of my

text : `He who feareth God and worketh righteousness, shall be accepted of

Him.' "







Allegiance to the Creator and Governor of the Milky-Way, and the Nebulae, and

benevolence to all His creatures, is my Religion.







       Si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti.







  I am as ever.























TO BARON ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.







            MONTPELIER, December 6, 1813.







MY DEAR FRIEND AND BARON,-I have to acknowledge your two letters of December 20

and 26, 1811, by Mr. Correa, and am first to thank you for making me acquainted

with that most excellent character. He was so kind as to visit me at

Monticello, and I found him one of the most learned and amiable of men. It was

a subject of deep regret to separate from so much worth in the moment of its

becoming known to us. 







             Correspondence







 The livraison of your astronomical observations, and the 6th and 7th on the

subject of New Spain, with the corresponding atlases, are duly received, as had

been the preceding cahiers. For these treasures of a learning so interesting to

us, accept my sincere thanks. I think it most fortunate that your travels in

those countries were so timed as to make them known to the world in the moment

they were about to become actors on its stage. That they will throw off their

European dependence I have no doubt ; but in what kind of government their

revolution will end I am not so certain. History, I believe, furnishes no

example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This

marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their civil as. well as religious

leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. The vicinity of

New Spain to the United States, and their consequent intercourse, may furnish

schools for the higher, and example for the lower classes of their citizens.

And Mexico, where we learn from you that men of science are not wanting, may

revolutionize itself under better auspices than the Southern provinces. These

last, I fear, must end in military despotisms. The different castes of their

inhabitants, their mutual hatreds and jealousies, their profound ignorance and

bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the instrument

of enslaving the others. But of all this you can best judge, for in truth we

have little knowledge of them to be 













22          Jefferson's Works







depended on, but through you. But in whatever governments they end they will be

American governments, no longer to be involved in the never-ceasing broils of

Europe. The European nations constitute a separate division of the globe; their

localities make them part of a distinct system ; they have a set of interests

of their own in which it is our business never to engage ourselves. America has

a hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests, which

must not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which

nature has placed the American continent, should so far avail it that no spark

of war kindled in the other quarters of the globe should be wafted across the

wide oceans which separate us from them. And it will be so. In fifty years more

the United States alone will contain fifty millions of inhabitants, and fifty

years are soon gone over. The peace of 1763 is within that period. I was then

twenty years old, and of course remember well all the transactions o the war

preceding it. And you will live to see the epoch now equally ahead of us ; and

the numbers which will then be spread over the other parts of the American

hemisphere, catching long before that the principles of our portion of it, and

concurring with us in the maintenance of the same system. You see how readily

we run into ages beyond the grave; and even those of us to whom that grave is

already opening its quiet bosom. I am anticipating events of which you 













             Correspondence           23







will be the bearer to me in the Elysian fields fifty years hence.







  You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the

happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. We spared nothing to

keep them at peace with one another. To teach them agriculture and the

rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to encourage industry by establishing

among them separate property. In this way they would have been enabled to

subsist and multiply on a moderate scale of landed possession. They would have

mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within

no distant period of time. On the commencement of our present war, we pressed

on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and

unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of

these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of ' the tribes

within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel

massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken

by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them

to new seats beyond our reach. Already we have driven their patrons and

seducers into Montreal, and the opening season will force them to their last

refuge, the walls of Quebec. We have cut off all possibility of intercourse and

of mutual aid, and may pursue at our leisure whatever plan we find 













            Jefferson's Works







necessary to secure ourselves against the future effects of their savage and

ruthless warfare. The confirmed brutalization, if not the extermination of this

race in our America, is therefore to form an additional chapter in the English

history of the same colored man in Asia, and of the brethren of their own color

in Ireland, and wherever else Anglo-mercantile cupidity can find a two-penny

interest in deluging the earth with human blood. But let us turn from the

loathsome contemplation of the degrading effects of commercial avarice.







That their Arrowsmith should have stolen your Map of Mexico, was in the

piratical spirit of his country. But I should be sincerely sorry if our Pike

has made an ungenerous use of your candid communications here ; and the more so

as he died in the arms of victory gained over the enemies of his country.

Whatever he did was on a principle of enlarging knowledge, and not for filthy

shillings and pence of which he made none from that work. If what he has

borrowed has any effect it will be to excite an appeal in his readers from his

defective information to the copious volumes of it with which you have enriched

the world. I am sorry he omitted even to acknowledge the source of his

information. It has been an oversight, and not at all in the spirit of his

generous nature. Let me solicit your forgiveness then of a deceased hero, of an

honest and zealous patriot, who lived and died for his country.







You will find it inconceivable that Lewis's journey 













            Correspondence







to the Pacific should not yet have appeared; nor is it in my power to tell you

the reason. The measures taken by his surviving companion, Clarke, for the

publication, have not answered our wishes in poin of despatch. I think,

however, from what I have heard, that the mere journal will be out within a few

weeks in two volumes 8vo. These I will take care to send you with the tobacco

seed you desired, if it be possible for them to escape the thousand ships of

our enemies spread over the ocean. The botanical and zoological discoveries of

Lewis will probably experience greater delay, and become known to the world

through other channels before that volume will. be ready: The Atlas, I believe,

waits on the leisure of the .engraver.







  Although I do not know whether you are now at Paris or ranging the regions of

Asia to acquire more knowledge for the use of men, I cannot deny myself the

gratification of an endeavor to recall myself to your recollection, and of

assuring you of my constant attachment, and of renewing to you the just tribute

of my affectionate esteem and high respect and consideration.















           ?O MADAME DE TESSE.







             MONTICELLO, December 8,1813.







  While at war, my dear Madame and friend, with the leviathan of the ocean,

there is little hope of a letter escaping his thousand ships ; yet I cannot 













            Jefferson's Works







permit myself longer to withhold the acknowledgment of your letter of June a 8

of the last year, with which came the memoirs of the Margrave of Bareuth. I am

much indebted to you for this singular morsel of history which has given us a

certain view of kings, queens and princes, disrobed of their formalities. It is

a peep into the state of the Egyptian god Apis. It would not be easy to find

grosser manners, coarser vices, or more meanness in the poorest huts of our

peasantry: The princess shows herself the legitimate sister of Frederic,

cynical, selfish, and without a heart. Notwithstanding your wars with England,

I presume you get the publications of that country. The memoirs of Mrs. Clarke

and of her darling prince, and the book, emphatically so called, because it is

the Biblia Sacra Deorum et Dearum sub-coelestium, the Prince Regent, his

Princess and the minor deities of his sphere, form a worthy sequel to the

memoirs of Bareuth; instead of the vulgarity and penury of the court of Berlin,

giving us the vulgarity and profusion of that of London, and the gross

stupidity and profligacy of the latter, in lieu of the genius and misanthropism

of the former. The whole might be published as a supplement to M. de Buffon,

under the title of the " Natural History of Kings and Princes, " or as a

separate work and called `` Medicine for Monarchists. " The " Intercepted

Letters, " a later English publication of great wit and humor, has put them to

their proper use by holding them up as butts for 













            Correspondence







the ridicule and contempt of mankind. Yet by such worthless beings is a great

nation to be governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only

a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great

and flourishing empire, added nine hundred millions sterling to their debt, for

which the fee simple of the whole island would not sell, if offered farm by

farm at public auction, and increased their annual taxes from eight to seventy

millions sterling, more than the whole rent-roll of the island. What must be

the dreary prospect from the son when such a father is deplored as a national

loss. But let us drop these odious beings and pass to those of an higher order,

the plants of the field. I am afraid I have given you a great deal more trouble

than I intended by my inquiries for the Maronnier or Castanea Saliva, of which

I wished to possess my own country, without knowing how rare its culture was

even in yours. The two plants which your researches have placed in your own

garden, it will be all but impossible to remove hither. The war renders their

safe passage across the Atlantic extremely precarious, and, if landed anywhere

but in the Chesapeake, the risk of the additional voyage along the coast to

Virginia, is still greater. Under these circumstances it is better they should

retain their present station, and compensate to you the trouble they have cost

you.







  I learn with great pleasure the success of your 













28          Jefferson's Works







new gardens at Auenay. No occupation can be more delightful or useful. They

will have the merit of inducing you to forget those of Chaville. With the

botanical riches which you mention to have been derived to England from New

Holland, we are as yet unacquainted. Lewis's journey across our continent to

the Pacific has added a number of new plants to our former stock. Some of them

are curious, some ornamental, some useful, and some may by culture be made

acceptable on our tables. I have growing, which I destine for you, a very

handsome little shrub of the size of a currant bush. Its beauty consists in a

great produce of berries of the size of currants, and literally as white as

snow, which remain on the bush through the winter, after its leaves have

fallen, and make it an object as singular as it is beautiful. We call it the

snow-berry bush, no botanical name being yet given to it, but I do not know why

we might not call it Chionicoccos, or Kallicoccos. All Lewis's plants are

growing in the garden of Mr. McMahon, a gardener of Philadelphia, to whom I

consigned them, and from whom I shall have great pleasure, when peace is

restored, in ordering for you any of these or of our other indigenous plants. 

The port of Philadelphia has great intercourse with Bordeaux and Nantes, and

some little perhaps with Havre. I was mortified not long since by receiving a

letter from a merchant in Bordeaux, apologizing for having suffered a box of

plants addressed by me to you,























                                         I 













             Correspondence,







to get accidentally covered in his warehouse by other objects, and to remain

three years undiscovered, when every thing in it was found to be rotten. I have

learned occasionally that others rotted in the warehouses of the English

pirates. We are now settling that account with them. We have taken their Upper

Canada and shall add the Lower to it when the season will admit; and hope to

remove them fully and finally from our continent. And what they will feel more,

for they value their colonies only for the bales of cloth they take from them,

we have established manufactures, not only sufficient to supersede our demand

from them, but to rivalize them in foreign markets. But for the course of our

war I will refer you to M. de Lafayette, to whom I state it more particularly.







  Our friend Mr. Short is well. He makes Philadelphia his winter quarters, and

New York, or the country, those of the summer. In his fortune he is perfectly

independent and at ease, and does not trouble himself with the party politics

of our country. Will you permit me to place here for M. de Tesse the testimony

of my high esteem and respect, and accept for yourself an assurance of the warm

recollections I retain of your many civilities and courtesies to me, and the

homage of my constant and affectionate attachment and respect. 













            Jefferson's Works















TO DON VALENTIN DE TORONDA CORUNA.







            MONTICELLO, December 14, 181 3.







  DEAR SIR,-I have had the pleasure of receiving







several letters from you, covering printed propo-







sitions and pamphlets on the state of your affairs,







and all breathing the genuine sentiments of order,







liberty and philanthropy, with which I know you







to be sincerely inspired. We learn little to be







depended on here as to your civil proceedings, or







of the division of sentiments among you; but. in







this absence of information I have made whatever







you propose the polar star of my wishes. What







is to be the issue of your present struggles we here







cannot judge. But we sincerely wish it may be







what is best for the happiness and re-invigoration







of your country. That its divorce from its American







colonies, which is now unavoidable, will be a great







blessing, it is impossible not 'to pronounce on a







review of what Spain was when she acquired them,







and of her gradual descent from that proud eminence







to the condition in which her present war found







her. Nature has formed that peninsula to be the







second, and why not the first nation in Europe ?







Give equal habits of energy to the bodies, and of







science to the minds of her citizens, and where could







her superior be found? The most advantageous







relation in which she can stand with her American



colonies is that of independent friendship, secured







by the ties of consanguinity, sameness of language, 













              Correspondence           31







religion, manners, and habits, and certain from the influence of these, of a

preference in her commerce, if, instead of the eternal irritations, thwartings,

machinations against their new governments, the insults and aggressions which

Great Britain has so unwisely practised towards us, to force us to hate her

against our. natural inclinations, Spain yields, like a genuine parent, to the

forisfamiliation of her colonies, now at maturity, if she extends to them her

affections, her aid, her patronage in every court and country, it will weave a

bond of union indissoluble by time. We are in a state of semi-warfare with your

adjoining colonies, the Floridas. We do not consider this as affecting our

peace with Spain or. any other of her former possessions. We wish her and them

well ; and under her present difficulties at home, and her doubtful future

relations with her colonies, both wisdom and interest will, I presume, induce

her to leave them to settle themselves the quarrels they draw on themselves

from their neighbors. The commanding officers in the Floridas have excited and

armed the neighboring savages to war against us, and to murder and scalp many

of our women and children as well as men, taken by surprise-poor creatures !

They have paid for it with the loss of the flower of their strength, and have

given us the right, as we possess the power, to exterminate or to expatriate,

them beyond the Mississippi. This conduct of the. Spanish officers will

probably oblige us to take possession 













           Jefferson's Works







of the Floridas, and the rather as we believe the English will otherwise seize

them, and use them as stations to distract and annoy us. But should we possess

ourselves of them, and Spain retain her other colonies in this hemisphere, I

presume we shall consider them in our hands as subjects of negotiation.







We are now at the close of our second campaign with England. During the first

we suffered several checks, from the want of capable and tried officers; all

the higher ones of the Revolution having died off during an interval of thirty

years of peace. But this second campaign has been more successful, having given

us all the lakes and country of Upper Canada, except the single post of

Kingston, at its lower extremity. The two immediate causes of the war were the

orders of council, and impressment of our seamen. The first having been removed

after we had declared war, the war is continued for the second; and a third has

been generated by their conduct during the war, in exciting the Indian hordes

to murder and scalp the women and children on our frontier. This renders peace

forever impossible but on the establishment of such a meridian boundary to

their possessions, as that they never more can have such influence with the

savages as to excite again the same barbarities. The thousand ships, too, they

took from us in peace, and the six thousand seamen impressed, call for this

indemnification. On the water we have proved to the 













              Correspondence           33







  world the error of their invincibility, and shown







that with equal force and well-trained officers, they







can be beaten by other nations as brave as them-







selves. Their lying officers and printers will give







to Europe very different views of the state of their







war with us. But you will see now, as in the







Revolutionary war, that they: will lie, and conquer







themselves out of all their possessions on this con-







tinent.







  I pray for the happiness of your nation, and that







it may be blessed with sound views and successful







measures, under the difficulties in which it is in-







volved; and especially that they may know the







value of your counsels, and to yourself I tender







the assurances of my high respect and esteem.























  JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                QUINCY, December 25, 1813,







DEAR SIR,-Answer my letters at your leisure. Give yourself no concern. I write

as for a refuge and protection against ennui.







  The fundamental principle of all philosophy and all Christianity, is "

Rejoice always in all things!" " Be thankful at all times for all good, and all

that we call evil." Will it not follow that I ought to rejoice and be thankful

that Priestley has lived? That Gibbon has lived ? That Hume has lived though a

conceited Scotchman ? That Bolingbroke







vol.XIV-3 













            Jefferson's Works







has lived, though a haughty, arrogant, supercilious dogmatist? That Burke and

Johnson have lived, though superstitious slaves, or self-deceiving hypocrites,

both ? Is it not laughable to hear Burke call Bolingbroke a superficial writer?

To hear him ask: "Who ever read him through?" Had I been







                             " present, I would have answered him, I, I myself,

I have read him through more than fifty years ago, and more than five times in

my life, and once within five years past. And in my opinion, the epithet

`superficial,' belongs to you and your friend Johnson more than to him: "







I might say much more. But I believe Burke and Johnson to have been as

political Christians as Leo Tenth.







  I return to Priestley, though I have great complaints against him for

personal injuries and persecution, at the same time that I forgive it all, and

hope and pray that he may be pardoned for it all above.







  Dr. Brocklesby, an intimate friend and convivial companion of Johnson, told

me that Johnson died in agonies of horror of annihilation ; and all the

accounts we have of his death, corroborate this account of Brocklesby. Dread of

annihilation! Dread of nothing! A dread of nothing, I should think, would be no

dread at all. Can there be any real, substantial, rational fear of nothing?

Were you on your death-bed, and in your last moments informed by demonstration

of revelation, that you 













             Correspondence           35







would cease to think and to feel, at your dissolution, should you be terrified

? You might be ashamed of yourself for having lived so long to bear the proud

man's contumely. You might be ashamed of your Maker, and compare Him to a

little girl, amusing herself, her brothers and sisters, by blowing bubbles in

soap-suds. You might compare Him to boys sporting with crackers and rockets, or

to men employed in making mere artificial fire-works, or to men and women. at

fairs and operas, or Sadlers Wells' exploits, or to politicians in their

intrigues, or to heroes in their butcheries, or to Popes in. their devilisms.

But what should you fear? Nothing. Emori nolo, sed me mortuum esse nihil

estimo.







To return to Priestley. You could make a more luminous book than his, upon the

doctrines of heathen philosophers compared with those of revelation. Why has he

not given us a more satisfactory account of the Pythagorean Philosophy and

Theology ? He barely names Eileus, who lived long before Plato. His treatise of

kings and monarchy has been destroyed, I conjecture, by Platonic Philosophers,

Platonic Jews or Christians, or ' by fraudulent republicans or despots. His

treatise of the universe has been preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of

the world. The Marquis D'Argens translated it, in all its noble simplicity. The

Abbe Batteaux has since given another translation. D'Argens not only explains

the text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His 













36          Jefferson's Works







remarks are so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient

opinions. The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics, and of the

morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their different doctrines

compared with one another and with the modern discoveries. I wish I owned this

book and one hundred thousand more that I want every day, now when I am almost

incapable of making any use of them. No doubt he informs us that Pythagoras was

a great traveller. Priestley barely mentions Timoeus, but it does not appear

that he had read him. Why has he not given us an account of him and his book?

He was before Plato, and gave him the idea of his Timoeus, and much more of his

philosophy.







  After his master, ' he maintained the existence of matter ; that matter was

capable of receiving all sorts of forms; that a moving power agitated all the

parts of it, and that an intelligence produced a regular and harmonious world.

This intelligence had seen a plan, an idea (Logos) in conformity to which it

wrought, and without which it would not have known what it was about, nor what

it wanted to do. This plan was the idea, image or model which had represented

to the Supreme Intelligence the world before it existed, which had directed it

in its action upon the moving power, and which it contemplated in forming the

elements, the bodies and the world. This model was distinguished from the

intelligence which produced the world, as







               Correspondence







  the architect is from his plans. He divided the







productive cause of the world into a spirit which







directed the moving force, and into an image which







determined it in the choice of the directions which







it gave to the moving force, and the forms which it







gave to matter. I wonder that Priestley has over-







looked this, because it is the same philosophy with







Plato's, and would have shown that the Pythagorean as well as the Platonic

philosophers probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity.

Priestley mentions the name of Achylas, but does not appear to have read him,

though he was a successor of Pythagoras, and a great mathematician, a great

statesman and a great general. John Gram, a learned and honorable Dane, has

given a handsome edition of his works, with a Latin translation and an ample

account of his life and writings. Zaleucus, the Legislator of Locris, and

Charondas of Sybaris, were disciples of Pythagoras, and both celebrated to

immortality for the wisdom of their laws, five hundred years before Christ. Why

are those laws lost ? I say the spirit of party has destroyed them; civil,

political and ecclesiastical bigotry.







  Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical and democratical fury have all been

employed in this work of destruction of everything that could give us true

light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of these parties, when

possessed of power, or when they have been undermost, and struggling 







38         Jefferson's Works







to get uppermost, has been equally prone to. every species of fraud and

violence and usurpation.







Why has not Priestley mentioned these Legislators ? The preamble to the laws of

Zaleucus, which is all that remains, is as orthodox Christian theology as

Priestley's, and Christian benevolence and forgiveness of injuries almost as

clearly expressed.







Priestley ought to have done impartial justice to philosophy and philosophers.

Philosophy, which is the result of reason, is the first, the original

revelation of the Creator to his creature, man. When this revelation is clear

and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation

supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it. Philosophy is not only

the love of wisdom, but the science of the universe and its cause.







There is, there was, and there will be but one master of philosophy in the

universe. Portions of it, in different degrees, are revealed to creatures.







Philosophy looks with an impartial eye on all terrestrial religions. I have

examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straitened means and my busy life

would allow me, and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the

world: It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have

seen ; and such parts of it as I cannot reconcile to my little philosophy, I

postpone for future investigation.







Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals of

Zoroaster, of Sanchoniathon, 







              Correspondence           39







  of Confucius, and all the founders of religions before







Christ, whose superiority would, from such a com-







parison, have appeared the more transcendent.







  Priestley ought to have told us that Pythagoras '







passed twenty years in his travels in India, in







Egypt, in Chaldea, perhaps in Sodom and Gomorrah,







Tyre and Sidon. He ought to have told us that







in India he conversed with the Brahmins, and read the Shasta, five thousand

years old, written in the language of the sacred Sansosistes, with the elegance

and sentiments of Plato. Where is to be found theology more orthodox, or

philosophy more profound, than in the introduction to the Shasta ? " God is one

creator of all universal sphere, without beginning, without end. God governs

all the creation by a general providence, resulting from his eternal designs.

Search not the essence and the nature of the eternal, who is one ; your

research will be vain and presumptuous. It is enough that, day by day, and

night by night, you adore his power, his wisdom and his goodness, in his works.

The eternal willed in the fullness of time, to communicate of his essence and

of his splendor, to beings capable of perceiving it. They as yet existed not.

The eternal willed and they were. He created Birma, Vitsnou and Siv." These

doctrines, sublime, if ever there were any sublime, Pythagoras learned in

India, and taught them to Zaleucus and his other disciples. He there learned

also his metempsychosis, but this never was popular, never 













        40         Jefferson's Works







        made much progress in Greece or Italy, or any







   other country besides India and Tartary, the region







   of the grand immortal Lama. And how does this







   differ from the possessions of demons in Greece and







   Rome? from the demon of Socrates? from the







   worship of cows and crocodiles in Egypt and else-







   where ?







          After migrating through various animals, from







   elephants to serpents, according to their behavior,







   souls that at last behaved well, became men and







   women, and then if they were good, they went to







   heaven.







          All ended in heaven, if they became virtuous.







        Who can wonder at the widow of Malabar ? Where







   is the lady, who, if her faith were without doubt







   that she should go to heaven with her husband on '       the one, or migrate

into a toad or a wasp on the







   other, would not lie down on the pile, and set fire







   to the fuel?







          Modifications and disguises of the Metempsycho-







   sis, have crept into Egypt, and Greece, and Rome,







   and other countries. Have you read Farmer on







   the Daemons and possessions of the New Testament?







        According to the Shasta, Moisasor, with his com-







   panions, rebelled against the Eternal, and were







   precipitated down to Ondoro, the region of dark-







   ness.







          Do you know anything of the Prophecy of Enoch ?







        Can you give me a comment on the 6th, the 9th,







   the 14th verses .of the epistle of Jude? 













             Correspondence           41







  If I am not weary of writing, I am sure you must be of reading such

incoherent rattle. I will not persecute you so severely in future, if I can

help it.







  So farewell.























            TO THOMAS LEIPER.







              MONTICELLO, January , 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-I had hoped, when I retired from the business of the world, that I

should have been permitted to pass the evening of life in tranquillity,

undisturbed by the peltings and passions of which the public papers are the

vehicles. I see, however, that I have been dragged into' the newspapers by the

infidelity of one with whom I was formerly intimate, but who has abandoned the

American principles out of which that intimacy grew, and become the bigoted

partisan of England, and malcontent of his own government. In a letter which he

wrote to me, he earnestly besought me to avail our country of the good

understanding which existed between the executive and myself, by recommending

an offer of such terms to our enemy as might produce a peace, towards which he

was confident that enemy was disposed. In my answer, I stated the aggressions,

the insults and injuries, which England had been heaping on us for years, our

long forbearance in the hope she might be led by time and reflection to a.

sounder view of her own interests, and of their 













42          Jefferson's Works







connection with justice to us, the repeated propositions for accommodation made

by us and rejected by her; and at length her Prince Regent's solemn

proclamation to the world that he would never repeal the orders in council as

to us, until France should have revoked her illegal decrees as to all the

world, and her minister's declaration to ours, that no admissible precaution

against the impressment of our seamen, could be proposed : that the unavoidable

declaration of war which followed these was accompanied by advances for peace,

on terms which no American could dispense with, made through various channels,

and unnoticed and unanswered through any; but that if he could suggest any

other conditions which we ought to accept, and which had not been repeatedly

offered and rejected, I was. ready to be the channel of their conveyance to the

government; and, to show him that neither that attachment to Bonaparte nor

French influence, which they allege eternally without believing it themselves,

affected my mind, I threw in the two little sentences of the printed extract

enclosed in your friendly favor of the 9th ultimo, and exactly these two little

sentences, from a letter of two or three pages, he has thought proper to

publish, naked, alone, and with my name, although other parts of the letter

would have shown that I wished such limits only to the successes of Bonaparte,

as should not prevent his completely closing Europe against British

manufactures and commerce; and thereby reducing her to just terms of peace with

us. 













             Correspondence







  Thus am I situated. I receive letters from all quarters, some from known

friends, some from those who write like friends, on various subjects. What am I

to do ? Am I to button myself up in Jesuitical reserve, rudely declining any

answer, or answering in terms so unmeaning as only to prove my distrust ? Must

I withdraw myself from all interchange of sentiment with the world ? I cannot

do this. It is at war with my habits and temper. I cannot act as if all men

were unfaithful because some are so; nor believe that all will betray me,

because some do. I had rather be the victim of occasional infidelities, than

relinquish my general confidence in the honesty of man.







So far as to the breach of confidence which has brought me into the newspapers,

with a view to embroil me with my friends, by a supposed separation in opinion

and principle from them. But it is impossible that there can be any difference

of opinion among us on the two propositions contained in these two little

sentences, when explained, as they were explained in the context from which

they were insulated. That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging

the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human being, not even the

wife of his bosom, who does not see ; nor can there, I think, be a doubt as to

the line we ought to wish drawn between his successes and those of Alexander.

Surely none of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his

feet the whole continent 













            Jefferson's Works







of Europe. This done, England would be but a breakfast; and, although I am free

from the visionary fears which the votaries of England have affected to

entertain, because I believe he cannot effect the conquest of Europe ; yet put

all Europe into his hands, and he might spare such a force, to be sent in

British ships, as I would as leave not have to encounter, when I see how much

trouble a handful of British soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It cannot be

to our interest that all Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy. The

true line of interest for us, is, that Bonaparte should be able to effect the

complete exclusion of England from the whole continent of Europe, in order, as

the same letter said, " by this peaceable engine of constraint







                                  , to make her renounce her views of dominion

over the ocean, of permitting no other nation to navigate it but with her

license, and on tribute to her, and her aggressions on the persons of our

citizens who may choose to exercise their right of passing over that element."

And this would be effected by Bonaparte's succeeding so far as to close the

Baltic against her. This success I wished him the last year, this I wish him

this year; but were he again advanced to Moscow, I should again wish him such

disasters as would prevent his reaching Petersburg. And were the consequences

even to be the longer continuance of our war, I would rather meet them than see

the whole force of Europe wielded by a single hand. 













             Correspondence.          45







  I have gone into this explanation, my friend, because I know you will not

carry my letter to the newspapers, and because I am willing to trust to your

discretion the explaining me to our honest fellow laborers, and the bringing

them to pause and reflect, if any of them have not sufficiently reflected on

the extent of the success we ought to wish to Bonaparte, with a view to our own

interests only; and even were we not men, to whom nothing human should be

indifferent. But is our particular interest to make us insensible to all

sentiments of morality? Is it then become criminal, the moral wish that the

torrents of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the sufferings of so many

human beings, good as ourselves, on whose necks he is trampling, the burnings

of ancient cities, devastations of great countries, the destruction of law and

order, and demoralization of the world, should be arrested, even if it should

place our peace a little further distant? No. You and I cannot differ in

wishing that Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, . and Germany, and Spain, and

Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may retain their independence. And if we

differ in our opinions about Towers and his four beasts and ten  kingdoms, we

differ as friends, indulging mutual errors, and doing justice to mutual

sincerity and honesty. In this spirit of sincere confidence and affection, I

pray God to bless you here and hereafter. 













46         Jefferson's Works















     TO DR. WALTER JONES.







              MONTICELLO, January 2, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of November the 25th reached this place December the

21st, having been near a month on the way. How this could happen I know not, as

we have two mails a week both from Fredericksburg and Richmond. It found me

just returned from a long journey and absence, during which so much business

had accumulated, commanding the first attentions, that another week has been

added to the delay.







  I deplore, with you, the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed,

and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write  for

them; and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge,

as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures

are rapidly depraving the public taste, and lessening its relish for sound

food. As vehicles of information, and a curb on our functionaries, they have

rendered themselves useless, by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has,

in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit,

I agree with you; and I have read with great pleasure the paper you enclosed me

on that subject, which I now return. It is at the same time a perfect model of

the style of discussion which candor and decency should observe, of the tone

which renders difference of opinion even amiable, and a succinct, 













             Correspondence







correct, and dispassionate history of the origin and progress of party among

us. It might be incorporated as it stands, and without changing a word, into

the history of the present epoch, and would give to posterity a fairer view of

the times than they will probably derive from other sources. In reading it with

great satisfaction, there was but a single passage where I wished a little more

development of a very sound and catholic idea; a single intercalation to rest

it solidly on true bottom. It is near the end of the first page, where you make

a statement of genuine republican maxims ; saying, " that the people ought to

possess as much political power as can possibly exist with the order and

security of society. " Instead of this, I would say, " that the people, being

the only .safe depository of power, should exercise in person every function

which their qualifications enable them to exercise, consistently with the order

and security of society ; that we now find them equal to the election of those

who shall be invested with their executive and legislative powers, and to act

themselves in the judiciary, as judges in questions of fact; that the range of

their powers ought to be enlarged, " etc. This gives both the reason and

exemplification of the maxim you express, " that they ought to possess as much

political power, " etc. I see nothing to correct either in your facts or

principles.







  You say that in taking General Washington on your shoulders, to bear him

harmless through the 













 s         Jefferson's Works







federal coalition, you encounter a perilous topic. I do not think so. You have

given the genuine history of the course of his mind through the trying scenes

in which it was engaged, and of the seductions by which it was deceived, but

not depraved. I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and

were I called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these.







  His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order ; his

penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke;

and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation,

being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence

the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of

war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and

certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged

during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by

sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment. The consequence was, that

he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at

Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the

calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence,

never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely

weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through

with his purpose, what













              Correspondence







ever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most

inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of

friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every

sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally

irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and

habitual ascendency over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most

tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact ; liberal

in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on

all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was

not warm in its affections ; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and

gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his

stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble ; the

best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on

horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved

with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were

not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of

words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short

and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct

style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education

was merely reading, writing and common arithmetic,







vol. XIV-4 













            Jefferson's Works







to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action

chiefly, reading little; and that only in agriculture and English history. His

correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing his

agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On

the whole, his character was, in its mass; perfect, in nothing bad, in few

points indifferent; and it may truly 'be said, that never did nature and

fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the

same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting

remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies

of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of

its independence ; of conducting its councils through the birth of a

government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a

quiet and orderly train ; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the

whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world

furnishes no other example.







  How, then, can it be perilous for you to take such a man on your shoulders ?

I am satisfied the great body of republicans think of him as I do. We were,

indeed, dissatisfied with him on his ratification of the British treaty. But

this was short lived. We knew his honesty, the wiles with which he was

encompassed, and that age had already begun to relax the firmness of his

purposes ; and I am con













              Correspondence           51







  vinced he is more deeply seated in the love and gratitude of the republicans,

than in the Pharisaical homage of the federal monarchists. For he was no

monarchist from preference of his judgment. The soundness of that gave him

correct views of the rights of man, and his severe justice devoted him to them.

He has often declared to me that he considered our new Constitution as an

experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose

of liberty man could be trusted for his own good ; that he was determined the

experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood

in support of it. And these declarations he repeated to me the oftener and more

pointedly, because he knew my suspicions of Colonel Hamilton's views, and

probably had heard from him the same declarations which I had, to wit, " that

the British constitution, with its unequal representation, corruption and other

existing abuses, was the most perfect government which had ever been

established on earth, and that a reformation of those abuses would make it an

impracticable government. " I do believe that General Washington had not a firm

confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of

men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions ; and I was ever persuaded that a

belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had

some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous

meetings with Congress, and other forms 













52         Jefferson's Works







of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he

believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to

the public mind.







  These are my opinions of General Washington, which I would vouch at the

judgment seat of God, having been formed on an acquaintance of thirty years. I

served with him in the Virginia legislature from 1769 to the Revolutionary war,

and again, a short time in Congress, until he left us to take command of the

army. During the war and after it we corresponded occasionally, and in the four

years of my continuance in the office of Secretary of State, our intercourse

was daily, confidential and cordial. After I retired from that office, great

and malignant pains were taken by our federal monarchists, and not entirely

without effect, to make him view me as a theorist, holding French principles of

government, which would lead infallibly to licentiousness and anarchy. And to

this he listened the more easily, from my known disapprobation of the British

treaty. I never saw him afterwards, or these malignant insinuations should have

been dissipated before his just judgment, as mists before the sun. I felt on

his death, with my countrymen, that " verily a great man hath fallen this day

in Israel. "







More time and recollection would enable me to add many other traits of his

character; but why add them to you who knew him well? And I cannot justify to

myself a longer detention of your paper.







Vale, proprieque tuum, me esse tibi persuadeas. 













             Correspondence







 TO JOHN PINTARD, RECORDING SECRETARY OF THE







    NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY.







               MONTICELLO, January 9, 1814.







  SIR,-I have duly received your favor of December 22d, informing me that the

New York Historical Society had been pleased to elect me an honorary member of

that institution. I am entirely sensible of the honor done me by this election,

and I pray you to become the channel of my grateful acknowledgments to the

society. At this distance, and at my time of life, I cannot but be conscious

how little it will be in my power to further their establishment, and that I

should be but an unprofitable member, carrying into the institution indeed, my

best wishes for its success, and a readiness to serve it on any occasion which

should occur. With these acknowledgments, be so good as to accept for the

society, as well as for yourself, the assurances of my high respect and

consideration.















TO SAMUEL M. BURNSIDE, SECRETARY OF THE AMERI-







     CAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY.







              MONTICELLO, January 9, 1814.







SIR,-I have duly received your favor of the 13th of December, informing me of

the .institution of the American Antiquarian Society, and expressing its

disposition to honor me with an admission into it, and the request of my

co-operation in the advance













             Jefferson's Works







ment of its objects. No one can be more sensible of the honor and the favor of

these dispositions, and I pray you to have the goodness to testify to them all

the gratitude I feel on receiving assurances of them. There has been a time of

life when I should have entered into their views with zeal, and with a hope of

not being altogether unuseful. But, now more than septuagenary, retired from

the active scenes and business of life, I am sensible how little I can

contribute to the advancement of the objects of their views ; but I shall

certainly, and with great pleasure, embrace any occasion which shall occur, of

rendering them any services in my power. With these assurances, be so good as

to accept for them and for yourself, those of my high respect and

consideration.























           TO DR. THOMAS COOPER.







             MONTICELLO, January 16, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of November 8th, if it was rightly dated, did not come

to hand till December 13th, and being absent on a long journey, it has remained

unanswered till now. The copy of your introductory lecture was received and

acknowledged in my letter of July 12,1812, with which I sent you Tracy's first

volume on Logic. Your Justinian came safely also, and I have been constantly

meaning to acknowledge it, but I wished, at the same time, to 













              Correspondence           55







  say something more. I possessed Theopilus', Vinnius'







and Harris' editions, but read over your notes and the addenda et corrigenda,

and especially the parallels with the English law, with great satisfaction and

edification. Your edition will be very useful to our lawyers, some of whom will

need the translation as well as the notes. But what I had wanted to say to you

on the subject, was that I much regret that instead of this work, useful as it

may be, you had not bestowed the same time and research rather on a translation

and notes on Bracton, a work which has never been performed for us, and which I

have always considered as one of the greatest desiderata in the law. The laws

of England, in their progress from the earliest to the present times, may be

likened to the road of a traveller, divided into distinct stages or resting

places, at each of which. a review is taken of the road passed over so far. The

first of these was Bracton's De legibus Angliae; the second, Coke's Institutes

; the third, the Abridgment of the law by Matthew Bacon; and the fourth,

Blackstone's Commentaries. Doubtless there were others before Bracton which

have not reached us. Alfred, in the preface to his laws, says they were

compiled from those of Ina, Offa, and Aethelbert, into which, or rather

preceding them, the clergy have interpolated the 20th, 21st,22d, 23d and 24th

chapters of Exodus, so as to place A1úred's preface to what was really his,

awkwardly enough in the body of the work. An interpolation the more glaring, as

containing







56         Jefferson's Works







laws expressly contradicted by those of Alfred. This pious fraud seems to have

been first noted by Howard, in his Contumes Anglo Normandes (188), and the

pious judges of England have had no inclination to question it; [of this

disposition in these judges, I could give you a curious sample from a note in

my common-place book, made while I was a student, but it is too long to be now

copied. Perhaps I may give it to you with some future letter;. This digest of

Alfred of the laws of the Heptarchy into a single code, common to the whole

kingdom, by him first reduced into one, was probably the birth of what is

called the common law. He has been styled, " Magnus Juris       " Anlicani

Conditor, and his code, the Dom-Dec, or doom-book. That which was made

afterwards under Edward the Confessor, was but a restoration of Alfred's, with

some intervening alterations. And this was the code which the English so often,

under the Norman princes, petitioned to have restored to them. But, all records

previous to the Magna Charta having been early lost, Bracton's is the first

digest of the whole body of law which has come down to us entire. What

materials for it existed in his time we know not, except the unauthoritative

collections of Lambard and Wilkins, and the treatise of Glanville, tempore H.

a. Bracton's is the more valuable, because being written a very few years after

the Magna Charta, which commences what is called the statute law, it gives us

the state of the common law in its ultimate form, and exactly at the point of

divi-















              Correspondence          57







sion between the common and statute law. It is a most able work, complete in

its matter and luminous in its method.







  2. The statutes which introduced changes began now to be preserved ;

applications of the law to new cases by the courts, began soon after to be

reported in the year-books, these to be methodized and abridged by Fitzherbert,

Broke, Rolle, and others; individuals continued the business of reporting;

particular treatises were written by able men, and all these, by the time of

Lord Coke, had formed so large a mass of matter as to call for a new digest, to

bring it within reasonable compass. This he undertook in his Institutes,

harmonizing all the decisions and opinions which were reconcilable, and

rejecting those not so. This work is executed with so much learning and

judgment, that I do not recollect that a single position in it has ever been

judicially denied. And although the work loses much of its value by its chaotic

form, it may still be considered as the fundamental code of the English law.







  3. The same processes re-commencing of statutory changes, new divisions,

multiplied reports, and special treatises, a new accumulation had formed,

calling for new reduction, by the time of Matthew Bacon. His work, therefore,

although not pretending to the textual merit of Bracton's, or Coke's, was very

acceptable. His alphabetical arrangement, indeed, although better than Coke's

jumble, was far 'inferior to Bracton's. But it was a sound digest of the 













            Jefferson's Works







materials existing on the several alphabetical heads under which he arranged

them. His work was not admitted as authority in Westminster Hall ; yet it was

the manual of every judge and lawyer, and, what better proves its worth, has

been its daily growth in the general estimation.







  4. A succeeding interval of changes and additions of matter produced

Blackstone's Commentaries, the most lucid in arrangement which had yet been

written, correct in its matter, classical in style, and rightfully taking its

place by the side of the Justinian Institutes. But, like them it was only an

elementary book. It did not present all the subjects of the law in all their

details. It still left it necessary to recur to the original works of which it

was the summary. The great mass of law books from which it was extracted, was

still to be consulted on minute investigations. It wanted, therefore, a species

of merit which entered deeply into the value of those of Bracton, Coke and

Bacon. They had in effect swept the shelves of all the materials preceding

them. To give Blackstone, therefore, a full measure of value, another work is

still wanting, to wit : to incorporate with his principles a compend of the

particular cases subsequent to Bacon, of which they are the essence. This might

be done by printing under his text a digest like Bacon's continued to

Blackstone's time. It would enlarge his work, and increase its value peculiarly

to us, because just there we break off from the parent stem of the English 













             Correspondence







law, unconcerned in any of its subsequent changes or decisions.







  Of the four digests noted, the three last are possessed and understood by

every one. But the first, the fountain of them all, remains in its technical

Latin, abounding in terms antiquated, obsolete, and unintelligible but to the

most learned of the body of lawyers. To give it to us then in English, with a

glossary of its old terms, is a work for which I know nobody but yourself

possessing the necessary learning and industry. The latter part of it would be

furnished to your hand from the glossaries of Wilkins, Lambard, Spelman, Somner

in the X. Scriptores, the index of Coke and the law dictionaries. Could not

such an undertaking be conveniently associated with your new vocation of giving

law lectures? I pray you to think of it.1   A further operation indeed, would

still be desirable. To take up the doctrines of Bracton, separatim et seriatim,

to give their history through the periods of Lord Coke and Bacon, down to

Blackstone, to show when and how some of them have become extinct, the

successive alterations made in others, and their progress to the state in which

Blackstone found them. But this might be a separate work, left for your greater

leisure or for some future pen.2







I have long had under contemplation, and been collecting materials for the plan

of an university in







 1.Bracton has at length been translated in English.







2.This has been done by Reeves, in his History of the Law. 













60         Jefferson's Work







Virginia which should comprehend all the sciences useful to us, and none

others. The general idea is suggested in the Notes on Virginia, Qu. 14. This

would probably absorb the functions of William and Mary College, and transfer.

them to a healthier and more central position : perhaps to the neighborhood of

this place. The long and lingering decline of William and Mary, the death of

its last president, its location and climate, force on us the wish for a new

institution more convenient to our country generally, and better adapted to the

present state of science. I have been told there will be an effort in the

present session of our legislature, to effect such an establishment. I confess,

however, that I have not great confidence that this will be done. Should it

happen, it would offer places worthy of you, and of which you are worthy. It

might produce, too, a bidder for the apparatus and library of Dr. Priestley, to

which they might add mine on their own terms. This consists of about seven or

eight thousand volumes, the best chosen collection of its size probably in

America, and containing a great mass of what is most rare and valuable, and

especially of what relates to America.







You have given us, in your Emporium, Bollman's medley on Political Economy. It

is the work of one who sees a little of everything, and the whole of nothing ;

and were it not f or your own notes on it, a sentence of which throws more just

light on the subject than all his pages, we should regret the place it occupies

of more useful matter. The bringing our coun-













             Correspondence           61







trymen to a sound comparative estimate of the vast value of internal commerce,

and the disproportionate importance of what is foreign, is the most salutary

effort which can be made for the prosperity of these States, which are entirely

misled from their true interests by the infection of English prejudices, and

illicit attachments to English interests and connections. I look to you for

this effort. It would furnish a valuable chapter for every Emporium; but I

would rather see it also in the newspapers, which alone find access to every

one.







  Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming

to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper, as we were

formerly by the old Continental paper. lt is cruel that such revolutions in

private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead

of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and

other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of

property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful

industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard in this game of Robin's

alive, and take care that the spark does not extinguish in their hands. I am an

enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But our

whole country is so fascinated by this Jack-lantern wealth, that they will not

stop short of its total and fatal explosion.l







l This accordingly took place four year's after. 













            Jefferson's Works







  Have you seen the memorial to Congress on the subject of Oliver Evans' patent

rights? The memorialists have published in it a letter of mine containing some

views on this difficult subject. But I have opened it no further than to raise

the questions belonging to it. I wish we could have the benefit of your lights

on these questions. The abuse of the frivolous patents is likely to cause more

inconvenience than is countervailed by those really useful. We know not to what

uses we may apply implements which have been in our hands before the birth of

our government, and even the discovery of America. The memorial is a thin

pamphlet, printed by Robinson of Baltimore, a copy of which has been laid on

the desk of every member of Congress.







  You ask if it is a secret who wrote the commentary on Montesquieu? It must be

a secret during the author's life. I may only say at present that it was

written by a Frenchman, that the original MS. in French is now in my

possession, that it was translated and edited by General Duane, and that I

should rejoice to see it printed in its original tongue, if any one would

undertake it. No book can suffer more by translation, because of the severe

correctness of the original in the choice of its terms. I have taken measures

for securing to the author his justly-earned fame, whenever his death or other

circumstances may render it safe for him. Like you, I do not agree with him in

everything, and have had some correspondence with him on particular points. But

on 













            Correspondence           63







the whole, it is a most valuable work, one which I think will form an epoch in

the science of government, and which I wish to see in the hands of every

American student, as the elementary and fundamental institute of that important

branch of human science.l .







  I have never seen the answer of Governor Strong to the judges of

Massachusetts, to which you allude, nor the Massachusetts reports in which it

is contained. But I am sure you join me in lamenting the general defection of

lawyers and judges, from the free principles of government. I am sure they do

not derive this degenerate spirit from the father of our science, Lord Coke.

But it may be the reason why they cease to read him, and the source of what are

now called " Blackstone lawyers."







Go on in all your good works, without regard to the eye " of suspicion and

distrust with which you may be viewed by some, " and without being weary in

well doing, and be assured that you are justly estimated by the impartial mass

of our fellow citizens, and by none more than myself.















          TO OLIVER EVANS, ESQ.







             MONTICELLO, January 16, 1814:







  SIR,-In August last I received a letter from Mr. Isaac McPherson of

Baltimore, on the controversies







 1 The original has since been published in France, with the name of its

author, M. Destutt de Tracy. 













             Jefferson"s Work's







  subsisting between yourself and some persons in that







quarter interested in mills. These related to your patent rights for the

elevators, conveyers, and hopper- boys; and he requested any information I

could give him on that subject. Having been formerly a member of the patent

board, as long as it existed, and bestowed in the execution of that trust much

consideration on the questions belonging to it, I thought it an act of justice,

and indeed of duty, to communicate such facts and principles as had occurred to

me on the subject. I therefore wrote the letter of August 13, which is the

occasion of your favor to me of the 7th instant, just now received, but without

the report of the case tried in the circuit court of Maryland, or your memorial

to Congress, mentioned in the letter as accompanying it. You request an answer

to your letter, which  my respect and esteem for you would of themselves have

dictated; but I am not certain that I distinguish the particular points to

which you wish a specific answer. You agree in the letter, that the chain of

buckets and Archimedes' screw are old inventions ; that every one had, and

still has, a right to use them and the hopper-boy, if that also existed

previously, in the forms and constructions known before your patent; and that,

therefore, you have neither a grant nor claim, to the exclusive right of using

elevators, conveyers, hopper- boys, or drills, but only of the improved

elevator, the improved hopper-boy, etc. In this, then, we are entirely agreed,

and your right to your own im- . 













              Correspondence           65







  provements in the construction of these machines







is explicitly recognized in my letter. I think,







however, that your letter claims something more,







although it is not so explicitly defined as to convey







to my mind the precise idea which you perhaps







meant to express. Your letter says that your patent







is for your improvement in the manufacture of flour







by the application of certain principles, and of such







machinery as will carry those principles into opera-







tion, whether of the improved elevator, improved hopper-boy, or (without being

confined to them) of any machinery known and free to the public. I can conceive

how a machine may improve the manufacture of flour; but not how a principle

abstracted from any machine can do it. It must then be the machine, and the

principle of that machine, which is secured to you by your patent. Recurring

now to the words of your definition, do they mean that, while all are free to

use the old string of buckets, and Archimedes' screw for the purposes to which

they had been formerly applied, you alone have the exclusive right to apply

them to the manufacture of flour? that no one has a right to apply his old

machines to all the purposes of which they are susceptible ? that every one,

for instance, who can apply the hoe, the spade, or the axe to any purpose to

which they have not been before applied, may have a patent for the exclusive

right to that application ? and may exclude all others under penalties, from so

using their hoe, spade, or axe ? If this be the meaning, my opinion that the







VOL. xiv-5 













66          Jefferson's Works







legislature never meant by the patent law to sweep away so extensively the

rights of their constituents, to environ everything they touch with snares, is

expressed in the letter of August 13, from which I have nothing to retract, nor

aught to add but the observation that if a new application of our old machines

be a ground of monopoly, the patent law will take from us much more good than

it will give. Perhaps it may mean another thing, that while every one has a

right to the distinct and separate use of the buckets, the screw, the

hopper-boy, in their old forms, the patent gives you the exclusive right to

combine their uses on the same object. But if we have a right to use three

things separately, I see nothing in reason, or in the patent law, which forbids

our using them all together. A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane,

separately ; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a

right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take

from him the right to combine their use on the same subject ? Such a law,

instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully

abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have.







  I have no particular interest, however, in these questions, nor any

inclination to be the advocate of either party; and I hope I shall be excused

from it. I shall acquiesce cheerfully in the decisions in your favor by those

to whom the laws have confided them, without blaming the other party for being 













             Correspondence







unwilling, when so new a branch of science has been recently engrafted on our

jurisprudence, one with which its professors have till now had no call to make

themselves acquainted, one bearing little analogy to their professional

educations or pursuits. That they should be unwilling, I say, to admit that one

or two decisions, before inferior and local tribunals, before the questions

shall have been repeatedly and maturely examined in all their bearings, before

the cases shall have presented themselves in all their forms and attitudes,

before a sanction by the greater part of the judges on the most solemn

investigations, and before the industry and intelligence of many defendants may

have excited to efforts for the vindication of the general rights of the

citizen ; that one or other of the precedents should forever foreclose the

whole of a new subject.







To the publication of this answer with your letter, as you request, I have no

objection. I wish right to be done to all parties, and to yourself,

particularly and personally, the just rewards of genius; and I tender you the

assurances of my great esteem and respect.















         TO JOSEPH C. CABELL, ESQ.







             MONTICELLO, January 17, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-In your last letter to me you expressed a desire to look into the

question whether, by the laws of nature, one generation of men can, by any 













            Jefferson's Works







act of theirs, bind those which are to follow them? I say, by the laws of

nature, there being between generation and generation, as between nation and

nation, no other obligatory law; and you requested to see what I had said on

the subject to Mr. Eppes. I enclose, for your own perusal, therefore, three

letters which I wrote to him on the course of our finances, which embrace the

question' before stated. When I wrote the first, I had no thought of following

it by a second. I was led to that by his subsequent request, and after the

second I was induced, in a third, to take up the subject of banks, by the

communication of a proposition to be laid before Congress for the establishment

of a new bank. I mention this to explain the total absence of order in these

letters as a whole. I have said above that they are sent for your own perusal,

not meaning to debar any use of the matter, but only that my name may in nowise

be connected with it. I am too desirous of tranquillity to bring such a nest of

hornets on me as the fraternities of banking companies, and this infatuation of

banks is a torrent which it would be a folly for me to get into the way of. I

see that it must take its course, until actual ruin shall awaken us from its

delusions. Until the gigantic banking propositions of this winter had made

their appearance in the different legislatures, I had hoped that the evil might

still be checked ; but I see now that it is desperate, and that we must fold

our arms and go to the bottom with the ship, I had been in hopes that good old 













             Correspondence         69







Virginia, not yet so far embarked as her northern sisters, would have set the

example this winter, of beginning the process of cure, by passing a law that,

after a certain time, suppose of six months, no bank bill of less than ten

dollars should be permitted. That after some other reasonable term, there

should be none less than twenty dollars, and so on, until those only should be

left in circulation whose size would be above the common transactions of any

but merchants. This would ensure to us an ordinary circulation of metallic

money, and would reduce the quantum of paper within the bounds of moderate

mischief. And it is the only way in which the reduction can be made without a

shock to private fortunes. A sudden stoppage of this trash, either by law or

its own worthlessness, would produce confusion and ruin. Yet this will happen

by its own extinction, if left to itself. Whereas, by a salutary interposition

of the legislature, it may be withdrawn insensibly and safely. Such a mode of

doing it, too, would give less alarm to the bankholders, the discreet part of

whom must wish to see themselves secured by some circumscription. It might be

asked what we should do for change? The banks must provide it, first to pay off

their five-dollar bills, next their ten-dollar bills and so on, and they ought

to provide it to lessen the evils of their institution. But I now give up all

hope. After producing the same revolutions in private fortunes as the old

Continental paper did, it will die like that, adding a total incapacity to

raise resources for the war. 













 70          Jefferson's Works







  Withdrawing myself within the shell of our own







State, I have long contemplated a division of it into







hundreds or wards, as the most fundamental measure







for securing good government, and for instilling the







principles and exercise of self-government into every







fibre of every member of our commonwealth. But







the details are too long for a letter, and must be the







subject of conversation, whenever I shall have the







pleasure of seeing you. It is for some of you young







legislators to immortalize yourselves by laying this







stone as the basis of our political edifice.







  I must ask the favor of an early return of the







enclosed papers, of which I have no copy. Ever







affectionately yours.























TO R. M. PATTERSON, SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN







            PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.







              MONTICELLO, January 20, 1814.







  SIR,-I have duly received your favor of the







7th, informing me that the American Philosophical







Society, at their meeting of that day, had been







pleased unanimously to elect me as President of







the Society. I receive with just sensibility this







proof of their continued good will, and pray you







to assure them of my gratitude for these favors, of







my devotedness to their service, and the pleasure







with which at all times I should in any way be



made useful to them. 













            Correspondence







  For yourself be pleased to accept the assurance of my great esteem and

respect.























        TO JOHN ADAMS.







             MONTICELLO, January 24, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-I have great need of the indulgence so kindly extended to me in your

favor of December 25, of permitting me to answer your friendly letters at my

leisure. My frequent and long absences from home are a first cause of tardiness

in my correspondence, and a second the accumulation of business during my

absence, some of which imperiously commands first attentions. I am now in

arrear to you for your letters of November 12, 14, 16, December 3, 19, 25.







  *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *







You ask me if I have ever seen the work of J. W. Goethe, Schriften ? Never ;

nor did the question ever occur to me before, where get we the ten

commandments? The book indeed gives them to us verbatim, but where did it get

them ? For itself tells us they were written by the finger of God on tables of

stone, which were destroyed by Moses ; it specifies those on the second set of

tables in different form and substance, but still without saying how the others

were recovered. But the whole history of these books is so defective and

doubtful, that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into 













72          Jefferson's Works







it; and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of

other books relating to them, that we have a right from that cause to entertain

much doubt what parts of them are genuine: In the New Testament there is

internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man ;

and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to

separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. The matter of the

first was such as would be preserved in the memory of the hearers, and handed

on by tradition for a long time; the latter such stuff as might be gathered up,

for imbedding it, anywhere, and at any time. I have nothing of Vives, or

Budaeus, and little of Erasmus. If the familiar histories of the Saints, the

want of which they regret, would have given us the histories of those tricks

which these writers acknowledge to have been practised, and of the lies they

agree have been invented for the sake of religion, I join them in their

regrets. These would be the only parts of their histories worth reading. It is

not only the sacred volumes they have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified,

but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land. We

have a curious instance of one of these pious frauds in the laws of Alfred. He

composed, you know, from the laws of the Heptarchy, a digest for the government

of the United Kingdom, and in his preface to that work he tells us expressly

the sources from 













             Correspondence







which he drew it, to wit, the laws of Ina, of Offa and Aethelbert (not naming

the Pentateuch). But his pious interpolator, very awkwardly, premises to his

work four chapters of Exodus (from the 20th to the 23d) as a part of the laws

of the land; so that Alfred's preface is made to stand in the body of the work.

Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been

willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others ; to

extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by

declaring that these make a part of the law of the land. In the Year-Book 34,

H. 6, p. 38, in Quare impedit, where the question was how far the common law

takes notice of the ecclesiastical law, Prisot, Chief Justice, in the course of

his argument, says, " A tiels leis que ils de seint eglise ont, en ancien

scripture, covient a nous a donner credence ; car ces common luy sur quels

touts manners leis sont fondes; et auxy, sin, nous sumus obliges de canustre

lour esy de saint eglise, " etc. Finch begins the business of falsification by

mistranslating and misstating the words of Prisot thus : " to such laws of the

church as have warrant in Holy Scripture our law giveth credence." Citing the

above case and the words of Prisot in the mar in Finch s law, B. I, c. 3, here

then we find ancien scripture, ancient writing, translated " holy scripture. "

This, Wingate, in 1658, erects into a maxim of law in the very words of Finch,

but citing Prisot and not Finch. And. 













           Jefferson's Works







Sheppard, tit. Religion, in 1675 laying it down in the same words of Finch,

quotes the Year-Book, Finch and Wingate. Then comes Sir Matthew Hale, in the

case of the King v. Taylor, I Ventr. 293, 3 Keb. 607, and declares that "

Christianity is part and parcel of the laws of England. " Citing nobody, and

resting it, with his judgment against the witches, on his own authority, which

indeed was sound and good in all cases into which no superstition or bigotry

could enter. Thus strengthened, the court in 1728, in the King v. Woolston,

would not suffer it to be questioned whether to write against Christianity was

punishable at common law, saying it had been so settled by Hale in Taylor's

case, 2 Stra. 834. Wood, therefore, 409, without scruple, lays down as a

principle, that all blaspheming and profaneness are offences at the common law,

and cites Strange. Blackstone, in 1763, repeats, in the words of Sir Matthew

Hale, that " Christianity is part of the laws of England ", citing Ventris and

Strange, ubi supra. And Lord Mansfield, in the case of the Chamberlain of

London v. Evans, in 1767, qualifying somewhat the position, says that " the

essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law. " Thus we

find this string of authorities all hanging by one another on a single hook, a

mistranslation by Finch of the words of Prisot, or on nothing. For all quote

Prisot, or one another, or nobody. Thus Finch misquotes Prisot; Wingate also,

but using Finch's 







             Correspondence







words; Sheppard quotes Prisot, Finch and Wingate; Hale cites nobody ; the court

in Woolston's case cite Hale ; Wood cites Woolston's case ; Blackstone that and

Hale, and Lord Mansfield volunteers his own ipse dixit. And who now can

question but that the whole Bible and Testament are a part of the common law?

And that Connecticut, in her blue laws, laying it down as a principle that the

laws of God should be the laws of their land, except where their own

contradicted them, did anything more than express, with a salvo, what the

English judges had less cautiously declared without any restriction ? And what,

I dare say, our cunning Chief Justice would swear to, and find as many sophisms

to twist it out of the general terms of our declarations of rights, and even

the stricter text of the Virginia " act for the freedom of religion," as he did

to twist Burr's neck out of the halter of treason. May we not say then with Him

who was all candor and benevolence, " woe unto you, ye lawyers, for ye lade men

with burdens grievous to bear."







I think with you, that Priestley, in his comparison of the doctrines of

philosophy and revelation, did not do justice to the undertaking. But he felt

himself pressed by the hand of death. Enfield has given us a more distinct

account of the ethics of the ancient philosophers ; but the great work of which

Enfield's is an abridgment, Brucker's History of Philosophy, is the treasure

which I 













             Jefferson's Works







would wish to possess, as a book of reference or of special research only, for

who could read six volumes quarto, of one thousand pages each, closely printed,

of modern Latin ? Your account of D'Argens' AEileus makes me wish for him also.

AEileus furnishes a fruitful text for a sensible and learned commentator. The

Abbe Batteaux, which I have, is a meagre thing.







  You surprise me with the account you give of the strength of family

distinction still existing in your State. With us it is so totally

extinguished, that not a spark of it is to be found but lurking in the hearts

of some of our old tories ; but all bigotries hang to one another, and this in

the Eastern States hangs, as I suspect, to that of the priesthood. Here youth,

beauty, mind and manners, are more valued than a pedigree.







  I do not remember the conversation between us which you mention in yours of

November 15th, on your proposition to vest in Congress the exclusive power of

establishing banks. My opposition to it must have been grounded, not on taking

the power from the States, but on. leaving any vestige of it in existence, even

in the hands of Congress ; because it would only have been a change of the

organ of abuse. I have ever been the enemy of banks, not of those discounting

for cash, but of those foisting their own paper into circulation, and thus

banishing our cash. My zeal against those institutions was so warm and open at

the establishment of the 













             Correspondence







Bank of the United States, that I was derided as a maniac by the tribe of

bank-mongers, who were seeking to filch from the public their swindling and

barren gains. . But the errors of that day cannot be recalled. The evils they

have engendered are now upon us, and the question is how we are to get out of

them ? Shall we build an altar to the old paper money of the Revolution, which

ruined individuals but saved the republic, and burn on that all the bank

charters, present and future, and their notes with them ? For these are to ruin

both republic and individuals. This cannot be done. The mania is too strong. It

has seized, by its delusions and corruptions, all the members of our

governments, general, special and individual. Our circulating paper of the last

year was estimated at two hundred millions of dollars. The new banks now

petitioned for, to the several legislatures, are for about sixty millions

additional capital, and of course one hundred and eighty millions of additional

circulation, nearly doubling that of the last year, and raising the whole  mass

to near four hundred millions, or forty for one, of the wholesome amount of

circulation for a population of eight millions circumstanced as we are, and you

remember how rapidly our money went down after our forty for one establishment

in the Revolution. I doubt if the present trash can hold as long. I think the

three hundred and eighty millions must blow all up in the course of the present

year, or certainly it will be consummated by the 













 78        Jefferson's Works







re-duplication to take place of course at the legislative meetings of the next

winter. Should not prudent men who possess stock in any moneyed institution,

either draw and hoard the cash now while they can, or exchange it for canal

stock, or such other as being bottomed on immovable property, will remain

unhurt by the crush ? I have been endeavoring to persuade a friend in our

legislature to try and save this State from the general ruin by timely

interference. I propose to him, First, to prohibit instantly, all foreign

paper. Secondly, to give our banks six months to call in all their five-dollar

bills (the lowest we allow) ; another six months to call in their ten-dollar

notes, and six months more to call in all below fifty dollars. This would

produce so gradual a diminution of medium, as not to shock contracts already

made-would leave finally, bills of such size as would be called for only in

transactions between merchant and merchant, and ensure a metallic circulation

for those of the mass of citizens. But it will not be done. You might as well,

with the sailors, whistle to the wind, as suggest precautions against having

too much money. We must bend then before the gale, and try to hold fast

ourselves by some plank of the wreck. God send us all a safe deliverance, and

to yourself every other species and degree of happiness.







  P. S. I return your letter of November 15th, as it requests, and supposing

that the late publication 













            Correspondence







of the life of our good and really great Rittenhouse may not have reached you,

I send a copy for your acceptance. Even its episodes and digressions may add to

the amusement it will furnish you. But if the history of the world were written

on the same scale, the whole world would not hold it. Rittenhouse, as an

astronomer, would stand on a line with any of his time, and as a mechanician,

he certainly has not been equalled. In this view he was truly great ; but,

placed alongside of Newton; every human character must appear diminutive, and

none would have shrunk more feelingly from the painful parallel than the modest

and amiable Rittenhouse, whose genius and merit are not the less for this

exaggerated comparison of his over-zealous biographer.























        TO JOHN CLARKE.







             MONTICELLO, January 27, 1814.







SIR,-Your favor of December 2d came to hand some time ago, and I perceive in it

the proofs of a mind worthily occupied on the best interests of our common

country. To carry on our war with success, we want able officers, and a

sufficient number of soldiers. The former, time and trial can alone give us; to

procure the latter, we need only the tender of sufficient inducements and the

assiduous pressure of them on the proper subjects. The 













80         Jefferson's Works







inducement of interest proposed by you, is undoubtedly the principal one on

which any reliance can be placed, and the assiduous pressure of it on the

proper subjects would probably be better secured by making it the interest and

the duty of a given portion of the militia, rather than that of a mere

recruiting officer. Whether, however, it is the best mode, belongs to the

decision of .others; but, satisfied that it is one of the good ones, I

forwarded, your letter to a member of the government, who will make it a

subject of consideration by those with whom the authority rests. Whether the

late discomfiture of Bonaparte will have the effect of shortening or

lengthening our war, is uncertain. It is cruel that we should have been forced

to wish any success to such a destroyer of the human race. Yet while it was our

interest and that of humanity that he should not subdue Russia, and thus lay

all Europe at his feet, it was desirable to us that he should so far succeed as

to close the Baltic to our enemy, and force him, by the pressure of internal

distress, into a disposition to return to the paths of justice towards us. If

the French nation stand by Bonaparte, he may rally, rise again,. and yet give

Great Britain so much employment as to give time for a just settlement of our

questions with her. We must patiently wait the solution of this doubt by time.

Accept the assurances of my esteem and respect. 







             Correspondence           81















           TO SAMUEL GREENHOW.







             MONTICELLO, January 31, 1814.







  SIR,-Your letter on the subject of the Bible Society arrived here while I was

on a journey to Bedford, which occasioned a long absence. from home. Since my

return, it has lain, with a mass of others accumulated during my absence, till

I could answer them. I presume the views of the society are confined to our own

country, for with the religion of other countries my own forbids intermeddling.

I had not supposed there was a family in this State not possessing a Bible, and

wishing without having the means to procure one. When, in earlier life, I was

intimate with every class, I think I never was in a house where that was the

case. However, circumstances may have changed, and the society, I presume, have

evidence of the fact. I therefore enclose you cheerfully, an order on Messrs.

Gibson & Jefferson for fifty dollars, for the purposes of the society,

sincerely agreeing with you that there never was a more pure and sublime system

of morality delivered to man than is to be found in the four evangelists.

Accept the assurance of my esteem and respect.























  VOL. XIV-6 













82         Jefferson's Works















      TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.







             MONTICELLO, January 31,1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of the 23d is received. Say had come to hand safely. But

I regretted having asked the return of him; for I did not find in him one new

idea upon the subject I had been contemplating; nothing more than a succinct,

judicious digest of the tedious pages of Smith.







  You ask my opinion on the question, whether the States can add any

qualifications to those which the Constitution has prescribed for their members

of Congress? It is a question I had never before reflected on ; yet had taken

up an off-hand opinion, agreeing with your first, that they could not ; that to

add new qualifications to those of the Constitution, would be as much an

alteration as to detract from them. And so I think the House of Representatives

of Congress decided in some case ; I believe that of a member from Baltimore.

But your letter having induced me to look into the Constitution, and to

consider the question a little, I am again in your predicament, of doubting the

correctness of my first opinion. Had the Constitution been silent, nobody can

doubt but that the right to prescribe all the qualifications and

disqualifications of those they would send to represent them, would have

belonged to the State. So also the Constitution might have prescribed the

whole, and excluded all others. It seems to have preferred the middle 













             Correspondence







way. It has exercised the power in part, by declaring some disqualifications,

to wit, those of not being twenty-five years of age, of not having been a

citizen seven years, and of not being an inhabitant of the State at the time of

election. But it does not declare, itself, that the member shall not be a

lunatic, a pauper, a convict of treason, of murder, of felony, or other

infamous crime, or a non-resident of his district; nor does it prohibit to the

State the power of declaring these, or any other disqualifications which its

particular circumstances may call for; and these may be different in different

States. Of course, then, by the tenth amendment, the power is reserved to the

State. If, wherever the Constitution assumes a single power out of many which

belong to the same subject, we should consider it as assuming the whole, it

would vest the General Government with a mass of powers never contemplated. On

the contrary, the assumption of particular powers seems an exclusion of all not

assumed. This reasoning appears to me to be sound ; but, on so recent a change

of view, caution requires us not to be too confident, and that we admit this to

be one of the doubtful questions on which honest men may differ with the purest

motives ; and the more' readily, as we find we have differed from ourselves on

it.







  I have always thought that where the line of demarcation between the powers

of the General and the State governments was doubtfully or indistinctly drawn,

it would be prudent and praise













             Jefferson's Works







worthy in both parties, never to approach it but under the most urgent

necessity. Is the necessity now urgent, to declare that no non-resident of his

district shall be eligible as a member of Congress ? It seems to me that, in

practice, the partialities of the people are a sufficient security against such

an election; and. that if, in any instance, they should ever choose a

non-resident, it must be one of such eminent merit and qualifications, as would

make it a good, rather than an evil ; and that, in any event, the examples will

be so rare, as never to amount to a serious evil. If the case then be neither

clear nor urgent, would it not be better to let it lie undisturbed? Perhaps its

decision may never be called for. But if it be indispensable to establish this

disqualification now, would it not look better to declare such others, at the

same time, as 'may be proper? I frankly confide to yourself these opinions, or

rather no-opinions, of mine ; but would not wish to have them go any farther. I

want to be quiet; and although some circumstances, now and then, excite me to

notice them, I feel safe, and happier in leaving events to those whose turn it

is to take care of them; and, in general, to let it be understood that I meddle

little or not at all with public affairs. There are two subjects, indeed, which

I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe, the public education,

and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of

republican government as absolutely hanging on these two 













             Correspondence           85







hooks. Of the first, you will, I am sure, be an advocate, as having already

reflected on it, and of the last, when you shall have reflected. Ever

affectionately yours.























           TO DR. THOMAS COOPER.







             MONTICELLO, February 10, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-In my letter of January 16, I promised you a sample from my

common-place book, of the pious disposition of the English judges, to connive

at the frauds of the clergy, a disposition which has even rendered them

faithful allies in practice. When I was a student of the law, now half a

century ago, after getting through Coke Littleton, whose matter cannot be

abridged, I was in the habit of abridging and common-placing what I read

meriting it, and of sometimes mixing my own reflections on the subject. I now

enclose you the extract from these entries which I promised. They were written

at a time of life when I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to

follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every

authority which stood in their way. This must be the apology, if you find the

conclusions bolder than historical facts and principles will warrant. Accept

with them the assurances of my great esteem and respect, 













86         Jefferson's Works







Common-place Book.







  873. In Quare imp. in C. B. 34, H. 6, fo. 38, the def. Br. of Lincoln pleads

that the church of the pl. became void by the death of the incumbent, that the

pl. and J. S. each pretending a right, presented two several clerks ; that the

church being thus rendered litigious, he was not obliged, by the Ecclesiastical

law to admit either, until an inquisition de jure patronatus, in the

ecclesiastical court : that, by the same law, this inquisition was to be at the

suit of either claimant, and was not ex-officio to be instituted by the bishop,

and at his proper costs ; that neither party had desired such an inquisition ;

that six months passed whereon it belonged to him of right to present as on a

lapse, which he had done. The pl. demurred. A question was, How far the

Ecclesiastical law was to be respected in this matter by the common law court?

and Prisot C. 3, in the course of his argument uses this expression, " A tiels

leis que ils de seint eglise ont en ancien scripture, covient a nous a donner

credence ; car ces common ley sur quel touts manners leis sont fondes: et auxy,

Sir, nous sumus obliges de conustre nostre ley ; et, Sir, si poit apperer or 'a

nous que lievesque ad fait comme un ordinary fera en tiel cas, adong nous

devons ces adjuger bon autrement nemy," etc. It does not appear that judgment

was given. Y. B. ubi supra. S. C. Fitzh. abr. Qu. imp. 8g. Bro. abr. Qu. imp.

12. Finch mistakes this in the following manner : " To such laws of the church

as have 













             Correspondence







warrant in Holy Scripture, our law giveth credence," and cites the above case,

and the words of Prisot on the margin. Finch's law, B. 1, ch. 3, published

1613. Here we find " ancien scripture" (ancient writing] converted into " Holy

Scripture," whereas it can only mean the ancient written laws of the church. It

cannot mean the Scriptures, I, because the " ancien scripture" must then be

understood to mean the " Old Testament" or Bible, in opposition to the " New

Testament, " and to the exclusion of that, which would be absurd and contrary

to the wish of those who cite this passage to prove that the Scriptures, or

Christianity, is a part of the common law. 2. Because Prisot says, " Ceo [est]

common ley, sur quel touts manners leis sont fondes." Now, it is true that the

Ecclesiastical law, so far as admitted in England, derives its authority from

the common law. But it would not be true that the Scriptures so derive their

authority. 3. The whole case and arguments show that the question was how far

the Ecclesiastical law in general should be respected in a common law court.

And in Bro. abr. of this case, Littleton says, " Les juges del common ley

prendra conusans quid est lax ecclesiae, vel admiralitatis, et trujus modi. "

4. Because the particular part of the Ecclesiastical law then in question, to

wit, the right of the patron to present to his advowson, was not founded on the

law of God, but subject to the modification of the lawgiver, and so could not

introduce any such general position 













88          Jefferson's Works







as Finch pretends. Yet Wingate [in 1658] thinks proper to erect this false

quotation into a maxim of the common law, expressing it in the very words of

Finch, but citing Prisot; Wing. max. 3. Next comes Sheppard [in 1675), who

states it in the same words of Finch, and quotes the Year-Book, Finch and

Wingate. 3 Shepp. abr:, tit. Religion. In the case of the King v. Taylor, Sir

Matthew Hale lays it down in these words, " Christianity is parcel of the laws

of England." I Ventr. 293, 3 Keb. 607. But he quotes no authority, resting it

on his own, which was good in all cases in which his mind received no bias from

his bigotry, his superstitions, his visions about sorceries, demons, etc. The

power of these over him is exemplified in his hanging of the witches. So strong

was this doctrine become in 1728, by additions and repetitions from one

another, that in the case of the King v: Woolston, the court would not suffer

it to be debated, whether to write against Christianity was punishable in the

temporal courts at common law, saying it had been so settled in Taylor's case,

ante, 2 Stra. 834; therefore, Wood, in his Institute, lays it down that all

blasphemy and profaneness are offences by the common law, and cites Strange ubi

supra. Wood 409. And Blackstone [about 1763) repeats, in the words of Sir

Matthew Hale, that " Christianity is part of the laws of England, " citing

Ventris and Strange ubi supra. 4 Blackst. 59. Lord Mansfield qualifies it a

little by saying that " the essential principles of revealed 













             Correspondence           89







religion are part of the common law. " In the case of the Chamberlain of London

v. Evans, 1767. But he cites no authority, and leaves us at our peril to find

out what, in the opinion of the judge, and according to the measure of his foot

or his faith, are those essential principles of revealed religion obligatory on

us as a part of the common law.







Thus we find this string of authorities, when examined to the beginning, all

hanging on the same hook, a perverted expression of Prisot's, or on one

another, or nobody. Thus Finch quotes Prisot ; Wingate also ; Sheppard quotes

Prisot, Finch and Wingate ; Hale cites nobody ; the court in Woolston's case

cite Hale ; Wood cites Woolston's case ; Blackstone that and Hale ; and Lord

Mansfield, like Hale, ventures it on his own authority. In the earlier ages of

the law, as in the year-books, for instance, we do not expect much recurrence

to authorities by the judges, because in those days there were few or none such

made public. But in latter times we take no judge's word for what the law is,

further than he is warranted by the authorities he appeals to. His decision may

bind the unfortunate individual who happens to be the particular subject of it;

but it cannot alter the law. Though the common law may be termed " Lex non

Scripta; " yet the same Hale tells us " when I call those parts of our laws

Leges non Scriptae, I do not mean as if those laws were only oral, or

communicated from the former ages to the latter merely by word. For 













            Jefferson's Works







all those laws have their several monuments in writing, whereby they are

transferred from one age to another, and without which they would soon lose all

kind of certainty. They are for the most part extant in records of pleas,

proceedings, and judgments, in books of reports and judicial decisions, in

tractates of learned men's arguments and opinions preserved from ancient times

and still extant in writing." Hale's H. c. d. 22. Authorities for what is

common law may therefore be as well cited, as for any part of the Lex Scripta,

and there is no better instance of the necessity of holding the judges and

writers to a declaration of their authorities than the present ; where we

detect them endeavoring to make law where they found none, and to submit us at

one stroke to a whole system, no particle of which has its foundation in the

common law. For we know that the common law is that system of law which was

introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time

to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna

Charta, which terminates the period of the common law; or Lex non Scripta, and

commences that of the statute law, or Lex Scripta. This settlement took place

about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till

the seventh century ; the conversion of the first Christian king of the

Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about

686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, 













            Correspondence           g I







during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it.

If it ever was adopted, therefore, into the common law, it must have been

between the introduction of Christianity and the date of the Magna Charta. But

of the laws of this period we have a tolerable collection by Lambard and

Wilkins, probably not perfect, but neither very defective ; and if any one

chooses to build a doctrine on any law of that period, supposed to have been

lost, it is incumbent on him to prove it to have existed, and what were its

contents. These were so far alterations of the common  law, and became

themselves a part of it. But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the

common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the

introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a

part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having

their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to

find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though

contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither

is, nor ever was a part of the common law. Another cogent proof of this truth

is drawn from the silence of certain writers on the common law. Bracton gives

us a very complete and scientific treatise of the whole body of the common law.

He wrote this about the close of the reign of Henry III., a very few years

after the date of the Magna Charta. We consider this book as the 













92         Jefferson's Works







more valuable, as it was written about the time which divides the common and

statute law, and therefore gives us the former in its ultimate state. Bracton,

too, was an ecclesiastic, and would certainly not have failed to inform us of

the adoption of Christianity as a part of the common law, had any such adoption

ever taken place. But no word of his, which intimates anything like it, has

ever been cited. Fleta and Britton, who wrote in the succeeding reign (of

Edward I.), are equally silent. So also is Glanvil, an earlier writer than any

of them, (viz. : temp. H. z,) but his subject perhaps might not have led him to

mention it. Justice Fortescue Aland, who possessed more Saxon learning than all

the judges and writers before mentioned put together, places this subject on

more limited ground. Speaking of the laws of the Saxon kings, he says, " the

ten commandments were made part of their laws, and consequently were once part

of the law of England ; so. that to break any of the ten commandments was then

esteemed a breach of the common law, of England; and why it is not so now,

perhaps it may be difficult to give a good reason. " Preface to Fortescue

Aland's reports, xv€. Had he proposed to state with more minuteness how much of

the Scriptures had been made a part of the common law, he might have added that

in the laws of Alfred, where he found the ten commandments, two or three other

chapters of Exodus are copied almost verbatim. But the adoption of a part

proves rather a rejection of the rest, as municipal 













             Correspondence          93







law. We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of

the common law, as that the Christian religion is. The truth is that

Christianity and Newtonianism being reason and verity itself, in the opinion of

all but infidels and Cartesians, they are protected under the wings of the

common law from the dominion of other sects, but not erected into dominion over

them. An eminent Spanish physician affirmed that the lancet had slain more men

than the sword. Doctor Sangrado, on the contrary, affirmed that with plentiful

bleedings, and draughts of warm water, every disease was to be cured. The

common law protects both opinions, but enacts neither into law. See post, 879.







879. Howard, in his Contumes Anglo-Normandes, I: 87, notices the falsification

of the laws of Alfred, by prefixing to them four chapters of the Jewish law, to

wit : the 20th, 21st, 22d and 23d chapters of Exodus, to which he might have

added the 15th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, v 23, and precepts from

other parts of the Scripture. These he calls a hors d'oeuvre of some pious

copyist. This awkward monkish fabrication makes the preface to Alfred's genuine

laws stand in the body of the work, and the very words of Alfred himself prove

the fraud; for he declares, in that preface, that he has collected these laws

from those of Ina, of Offa, Aethelbert and his ancestors, saying nothing of any

of them being taken from the Scriptures. It is still more certainly proved by

the inconsistencies it occa-













94          Jefferson's  Works







sions. For example, the Jewish legislator, Exodus xxi. 12, 13, 14, (copied by

the Pseudo Alfred º 13,) makes murder,. with the Jews, death. But Alfred

himself, Le. xxvi., punishes it by a fine only, called a Weregild, proportioned

to the condition of the person killed. It is remarkable that Hume (append. I to

his History) examining this article of the laws of Alfred, without perceiving

the fraud, puzzles himself with accounting for the inconsistency it had

introduced. To strike a pregnant woman so that she die, is death by Exodus xxi.

22, 23, and Pseud. Alfr. º 18 ; but by the laws of Alfred ix., pays a Weregild

for both woman and child. To smite out an eye, or a tooth, Exod. xxi. 24-27,

Pseud. Alfr. º 19,20, if of a servant by his master, is freedom to the servant;

in every other case retaliation. But by Alfr. Le. xl. a fixed indemnification

is paid. Theft of an ox, or a sheep, by the Jewish law, Exod. xx€. I, was'

repaid five-fold for the ox and four-fold for the sheep; by the Pseudograph º

24, the ox double, the sheep four-fold; but by Alfred Le. xvi., he who stole a

cow and a calf was to repay the worth of the cow and forty shillings for the

calf. Goring by an ox was the death of the ox, and the flesh not to be eaten.

Exod. xxi. 28, Pseud. Alfr. º 21 ; by Alfred Le. xxiv., the wounded person had

the ox. The Pseudograph makes municipal laws of the ten commandments, º 1-10,

regulates concubinage, º 12, makes it death to strike or to curse father or

mother, º 14, 15, gives an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, 













            Correspondence            95







hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, strife for

strife, º 19; sells the thief to repay his theft, º 24; obliges the fornicator

to marry the woman he has lain with, º 29 ; forbids interest on money, º 35 ;

makes the laws of bailment, º 28, very different from what Lord Holt delivers

in Coggs v. Bernard, ante, 92, and what Sir William Jones tells us they were;

and punishes witchcraft with death, º 30, which Sir Matthew Hale, I H. P. C. B.

I, ch. 33, declares was not a felony before the Stat. I Jac. 12. It was under

that statute, and not this forgery, that he hung Rose Cullendar and Amy Duny,

16 Car. 2 (1662), on whose trial he declared " that there were such creatures

as witches he made no doubt at all; for first the Scripture had affirmed so

much, secondly the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such

persons, and such hath been the judgment of this kingdom, as appears by that

act of Parliament which hath provided punishment proportionable to the quality

of the offence. " And we must certainly allow greater weight to this position

that " it was no felony till James' Statute " laid down deliberately in his H.

P. C., a work which he wrote to be printed, finished, and transcribed for the

press in his lifetime, than to the hasty scripture that " at common law

witchcraft was punished with death as heresy, by writ de Heretico Comburendo"

in his Methodical Summary of the P. C. p. 6, a work " not intended for the

press, not fitted for it, and which he declared himself he had never read over 













             Jefferson's' Works







since it was written;" Pref. Unless we understand his meaning in that to be

that witchcraft could not be punished at common law as witchcraft, but as

heresy. In either sense, however, it is a denial of this pretended law of

Alfred. Now, all men of reading know that these pretended laws of homicide,

concubinage, theft, retaliation, compulsory marriage, usury, bailment, and

others which might have been cited, from the Pseudograph, were never the laws

of England, not even in Alfred's time; and of course that it is a forgery. Yet

palpable as it must be to every lawyer, the English judges have piously avoided

lifting the veil under which it was shrouded. In truth, the alliance between

Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the

frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are. For instead of being

contented with these four surreptitious chapters of Exodus, they have taken the

whole leap, and declared at once that the whole Bible and Testament in a lump,

make a part of the common law; ante, 873: the first judicial declaration of

which was by this same Sir Matthew Hale. And thus they incorporate into the

English code, laws made for the Jews alone, and the precepts of the Gospel,

intended by their benevolent Author as obligatory only in foro conscientiae;

and they arm the whole with the coercions of municipal law. In doing this, too,

they have not even used the Connecticut caution of declaring, as is done in

their blue laws, that the laws of God shall be the laws of 













             Correspondence







their land, except where their own contradict them; but they swallow the yea

and nay together. Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the ten

commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England ? we may say

they are not. because they never were made so by legislative authority, the

document which has imposed that doubt on him being a manifest forgery.























      TO DR. JOHN MANNERS.







             MONTICELLO, February 22, 1814.







SIR,-The opinion which, in your letter of January 24, you are pleased to ask of

me, on the comparative merits of the different methods of classification

adopted by different writers on Natural History, is one which I could not have

given satisfactorily, even at the earlier period at which the subject was more

familiar; still less, after a life of continued occupation in civil concerns

has so much withdrawn me from studies of that kind. I can, therefore, answer

but in a very general way. And the text of this answer will be found in an

observation in your letter, where, speaking of nosological systems, you say

that disease has been found to be an unit. Nature has, in truth, produced units

only through all her works. Classes, orders, genera, species, are not of her

work: Her creation is of individuals. No two animals are exactly alike; no two

plants, nor even two leaves







VOL. XIV-7 













98         Jefferson's Works







or blades of grass; no two crystallizations. And if we may venture from what is

within the cognizance of such organs as ours, to conclude on that beyond their

powers, we must believe that no two particles of matter are of exact

resemblance. This infinitude of units or individuals being far beyond the

capacity of our memory, we are obliged, in aid of that, to distribute them into

masses, throwing into each of these all the individuals which have a certain

degree of resemblance ; to subdivide these again into smaller groups, according

to certain points of dissimilitude observable in them, and so on until we have

formed what we call a system of classes, orders, genera and species. In doing

this, we fix arbitrarily on such characteristic resemblances and differences as

seem to us most prominent and invariable in the several subjects, and most

likely to take a strong hold in our memories.. Thus Ray formed one

classification on such lines of division as struck him most favorably ; Kleig

adopted another ; Brisson a third, and other naturalists other designations,

till Linnaeus appeared. Fortunately for science, he conceived in the three

kingdoms of nature, modes .of classification which obtained the approbation of

the learned of all nations. His system was accordingly adopted by all, and

united all in a general language. It offered the three great desiderata :

First, of aiding the memory to retain a knowledge of the productions of nature.

Secondly, of rallying all to the same names for the same objects, so that they

could com













             Correspondence           99







municate understandingly on them. And thirdly, of enabling them, when a subject

was first presented, to trace it by its character up to the conventional name

by which it was agreed to be called. This classification was indeed liable to

the imperfection of bringing into the same group individuals which, though

resembling in the characteristics adopted by the author for his classification,

yet have strong marks of dissimilitude in other respects. But to this objection

every mode of classification must be liable, because the plan of creation is

inscrutable to our limited faculties. Nature has not arranged her productions

on a single and direct line. They branch at every step, and in every direction,

and he who attempts to reduce them into departments, is left to do it by the

lines of his own fancy. The objection of bringing together what are disparata

in nature, lies against the classifications of Blumenbach and of Cuvier, as

well as that of Linnaeus, and must forever lie against all. Perhaps not in

equal degree ; on this I do not pronounce. But neither is this so important a

consideration as that of uniting all nations under one language in Natural

History. This had been happily effected by Linnaeus, and can scarcely be hoped

for a second time. Nothing indeed is so desperate as to make all mankind agree

in giving up a language they possess, for one which they have to learn. The

attempt leads directly to the confusion of the tongues of Babel. Disciples of

Linnaeus, of Blumenbach, and of Cuvier, exclusively possessing 













100         Jefferson's Works







their own nomenclatures, can no longer communicate intelligibly with one

another. However much, therefore, we are indebted to both these naturalists,

and to Cuvier especially, for the valuable additions they have made to the

sciences of nature, I cannot say they have rendered her a service in this

attempt to innovate in the settled nomenclature of her productions ; on the

contrary, I think it will be a check on the progress of science, greater or

less, in proportion as their schemes shall more or less prevail. They would

have rendered greater service by holding fast to the system on which we had

once all agreed, and by inserting into that such new genera, orders, or even

classes, as new discoveries should call for. Their systems, too, and especially

that of Blumenbach, are liable to the objection of giving too much into the

province of anatomy. It may be said, indeed, that anatomy is a part of natural

history. In the broad sense of the word, it certainly is. In that sense,

however, it would comprehend all the natural sciences, every created thing

being a subject of natural history in extenso. But in the subdivisions of

general science, as has been observed in the particular one of natural history,

it has been necessary to draw arbitrary lines, in order to accommodate our

limited views. According to these, as soon as the structure of any natural

production is destroyed by art, it ceases to be a subject of natural history,

and enters into the domain ascribed to chemistry, to pharmacy, to anatomy, etc,

Linnaeus' 













             Correspondence          101







method was liable to this objection so far as it required the aid of anatomical

dissection, as of the heart, for instance, to ascertain the place of any

animal, or of a chemical process for that of a mineral substance. It would

certainly be better to adopt as much as possible such exterior and visible

characteristics as every traveller is competent to observe, to ascertain and to

relate. But with this objection, lying but in a small degree, Linnaeus' method

was received, understood, and conventionally settled among the learned, and was

even getting into common use. To disturb it then was unfortunate. The new

system attempted in botany, by Jussieu, in mineralogy, by Hauiy, are subjects

of the same. regret, and so also the no-system of Buffon, the great advocate of

individualism in opposition to classification. He would carry us back to the

days and to the confusion of Aristotle and Pliny, give up the improvements of

twenty centuries, and co-operate with the neologists in rendering the science

of one generation useless to the next by perpetual changes of its language. In

botany, Wildenow and Persoon have incorporated into Linnaeus the new discovered

plants. I do not know whether any one has rendered us the same service as to

his natural history. It would be a very acceptable one. The materials furnished

by Humboldt, and those from New Holland particularly, require to be digested

into the catholic ,system. Among these the Ornithorhyncus mentioned by you, is

an amusing example of the anom-













102       Jefferson's  Works







alies by which nature sports with our schemes of classification. Although

without mammae, naturalists are obliged to place it in the class of mammiferae;

and Blumenbach, particularly, arranges it in his order of Palmipeds and

toothless genus, with the walrus and manatie. In Linnaeus' system, it might be

inserted as a new genus between the anteater and manis, in the order of Bruta.

It seems, in truth, to have stronger relations with that class than any other

in the construction of the heart, its red and warm blood, hairy integuments, in

being quadruped and viviparous, and may we not say, in its tout ensemble, which

Buffon makes his sole principle of arrangement ? The mandible, as you observe,

would draw it towards the birds, were not this characteristic overbalanced by

the weightier ones before mentioned. That of the Cloaca is equivocal, because

although a character of birds, yet some mammalia, as the beaver and sloth, have

the rectum and urinary passage terminating at a common opening. Its ribs also,

by their number and structure, are nearer those of the bird than of the

mammalia. It is possible that further opportunities of examination may discover

the mammae. Those of the Opossum are asserted, by the Chevalier d'Aboville,

from his own observations on that animal, made while here with the French army,

to be not discoverable until pregnancy, and to disappear as soon as the young

are weaned. The Duckbill has many additional particularities which liken it to

other genera, and some entirely 













             Correspondence







peculiar. Its description and history need yet further information.







  In what I have said on the method of classing, I have not at all meant to

insinuate that that of Linnaeus is intrinsically preferable to those of

Blumenbach and Cuvier. I adhere to the Linnean because it is sufficient as a

groundwork, admits of supplementary insertions as new productions are

discovered, and mainly because it has got into so general use that it will not

be easy to displace it, and still less to find another which shall have the

same singular fortune of obtaining the general consent. During the attempt we

shall become unintelligible to one another, and science will be really retarded

by efforts to advance it made by its most favorite sons. I am not myself apt to

be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those

whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science. My

reluctance is to give up an universal language of which we are in possession,

without an assurance of general consent to receive another. And the higher the

character of the authors recommending it, and the more excellent what they

offer, the greater the danger of producing schism.







I should seem to need apology for these long remarks to you who are so much

more recent in these studies, but I find it in your particular request and my

own respect for it, and with that be pleased to accept the assurance of my

esteem and consideration. 













104        Jefferson's Works















JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                  QUINCY, February, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-I was nibbing my pen and brushing my faculties, to write a polite

letter of thanks to Mr. Counsellor Barton, for his valuable memoirs of Dr.

Rittenhouse, (though I could not account for his sending it to me,) when I

received your favor of January a 5th. I now most cordially endorse my thanks

over to you. The book is in the modern American style, an able imitation of

Marshall's Washington though far more entertaining and instructive; a

Washington Mausoleum; an Egyptian pyramid. I shall never read it any more than

Taylor's Aristocracy. Mrs. Adams reads it with great delight, and reads to me

what she finds interesting, and that is indeed the whole book. I have not time

to hear it all.







Rittenhouse was a virtuous and amiable man, an exquisite mechanician, master of

the astronomy known in his time ; an expert mathematician, a patient calculator

of numbers. But we have had a Winthrop, an Andrew Oliver, a Willard, a Webber,

his equals, and we have a Bowditch his superior in all these particulars,

except the mechanism. But you know Philadelphia is the heart, the censorium,

the pineal gland of the United States.







In politics, Rittenhouse was a good, simple, ignorant, well-meaning,

Franklinian democrat, totally ignorant of the world. As an anchorite, an honest

dupe of the French Revolution ; a mere instrument 













             Correspondence          105







of Jonathan Dickinson Sargent, Dr. Hutchinson, Genet, and Mifflin, I give him

all the credit of his Planetarium. The improvement of the Orrery to the

Planetarium was an easy, natural thought, and nothing was wanting but

calculations of orbits Distranus, and periods of revolutions ; all of which

were made to his hands long before he existed. Patience, perseverance, and

sleight of hand, is his undoubted merit and praise. I had read Taylor in the

Senate, till his style was so familiar to me that I had not read three pages,

before I suspected the author. I wrote a letter to him, and he candidly

acknowledged that the six hundred and fifty pages were sent me with his

consent. I wait with impatience for the publication, and annunciation of the

work. Arator ought not to have been adulterated with politics, but his precept

" Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost, " is of inestimable value in

agriculture and horticulture. Every weed, cob, husk, stalk, ought to be saved

for manure.







Your researches in the laws of England establishing Christianity as the law of

the land, and part of the common law, are curious and very important. Questions

without number will arise in this country. Religious controversies, and

ecclesiastical contests, are as common, and will be as sharp as any in civil

politics, foreign and domestic. In what sense, and to what extent the Bible is

law, may give rise to as many doubts and quarrels as any of our civil,

political, military, or maritime laws, and will intermix 













106         Jefferson's Works







with them all, to irritate factions of every sort. I dare not look beyond my

nose into futurity. Our money, our commerce, our religion, our National and

State Constitutions, even our arts and sciences, are so many seed plots, of

division, faction, sedition and rebellion. Everything is transmuted into an

instrument of electioneering. Election is the grand Brahma, the immortal Lama,

I had almost said, the Juggernaut; for wives are almost ready to burn upon the

pile, and children to be thrown under the wheel. You will perceive, by these

figures, that I have been looking into Oriental history, and Hindoo religion. I

have read voyages, and travels, and everything I could collect, and the last is

Priestley's " Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the

Hindoos, and other Ancient Nations, " a work of great labor, and not less

haste. I thank him for the labor, and forgive, though I lament the hurry. You

would be fatigued to read, and I, just recruiting from a little longer

confinement and indisposition than I have had for thirty years, have not

strength to write many observations. But I have been disappointed in the

principal points of my curiosity :







1st. I am disappointed by finding that no just comparison can be made, because

the original Shasta, and the original Vedams are not obtained, or if obtained,

not yet translated into any European language.







  2d. In not finding such morsels of the sacred books as have been translated

and published, which are 













             Correspondence:         107







more honorable to the original Hindoo religion than anything he has quoted.







  3d. In not finding a full development of the history of the doctrine of the

Metempsychosis which originated-







4th. In the history of the rebellion of innumerable hosts of angels in Heaven

against the Supreme Being, who after some thousands of years of war, conquered

them, and hurled them down to the regions of total darkness, where they have

suffered a part of the punishment of their crime, and then were mercifully

released from prison, permitted to ascend to earth, and migrate into all sorts

of animals, reptiles, birds, beasts, and men, according to their rank and

character, and even into vegetables, and minerals, there to serve on probation.

If they passed without reproach their several gradations, they were permitted

to become cows and men. If as men they behaved well, I. e., to the satisfaction

of the priests, they were restored to their original rank and bliss in Heaven.







  5th. In not finding the Trinity of Pythagoras and Plato, their contempt of

matter, flesh, and blood, their almost adoration of fire and water, their

metempsychosis, and even the prohibition of beans, so evidently derived from

India.







  6th. In not finding the prophecy of Enoch deduced from India, in which the

fallen angels make such a figure. But you are weary. Priestley has proved the

superiority of the Hebrews to the Hindoos, as 













108         Jefferson's Works







they appear in the Gentoo laws, and institutes of Menu; but the comparison

remains to be made with the Shasta.







  In his remarks on Mr. Dupuis, page 342 Priestley says : " The History of the

fallen angels is another circumstance, on which Mr. Dupuis lays much stress.

According to the Christians, he says, Vol. I, page 336, there was from the

beginning a division among the angels; some remaining faithful to the light,

and others taking the part of darkness, etc. ; but this supposed history is not

found in the Scriptures. It has only been inferred, from a wrong interpretation

of one passage in the ad epistle of Peter, and a corresponding one in that of

Jude, as has been shown by judicious writers. That there is such a person as

the Devil, is not a part of my faith, nor that of many other Christians ; nor

am I sure that it was the belief of any of the Christian writers. Neither do I

believe the doctrine of demoniacal possessions, whether it was believed by the

sacred writers or not ; and yet my unbelief in these articles does not affect

my faith in the great facts of which the Evangelists were eye and ear

witnesses. They might not be competent judges in the one case, though perfectly

so with respect to the other. "







I will ask Priestley, when I see him, do you believe those passages in Peter

and Jude to be interpolations? If so, by whom made ? And when ? And where ? And

for what end? Was it to support, or found, the doctrine of the fall of man,

original sin, the universal 













             Correspondence







corruption, depravation and guilt of human nature and mankind ; and the

subsequent incarnation of God to make atonement and redemption? Or do you think

that Peter and Jude believed the book of Enoch to have been written by the

seventh from Adam, and one of the sacred canonical books of the Hebrew

Prophets? Peter, 2d epistle, c.2d, v. 4th, says, " For if God spared not the

angels that sinned but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains

of darkness to be reserved unto Judgment. " Jude, v. 6th, says,"and the angels

which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitations, he hath

reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great

day. " Verse 14th, " And Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of

these sayings, behold the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to

execute judgment upon all," etc. Priestley says, "a wrong interpretation" has

been given to these texts. I wish he had favored us with his right

interpretation of them. In another place, page 326, Priestley says, " There is

no circumstance of which Mr. Dupuis avails himself so much, or repeats so

often, both with respect to the Jewish and Christian religions, as the history

of the Fall of Man, in the book of Genesis. " I believe with him and have

maintained in my writings, that this history is either an allegory, or founded

on uncertain tradition, that it is an hypothesis to account for the origin of

evil, adopted by Moses, which by no means accounts for the facts. 













110         Jefferson's Works







 March 3d. So far was written almost a month. ago; but sickness has prevented

progress. I had much more to say about this work. I shall never be a disciple

of Priestley. He is as absurd, inconsistent, credulous and incomprehensible, as

Athanasius. Read his letter to the Jews in this volume. Could a rational

creature write it ? Aye ! such rational creatures as Rochefoucauld, and

Condorcet, and John Taylor, in politics, and Towers' Jurieus, and French

Prophets in Theology. Priestley's account of the philosophy and religion of

India, appears to me to be such a work as a man of busy research would

produce-who should undertake to describe Christianity from the sixth to the

twelfth century, when a deluge of wonders overflowed the world ; when miracles

were performed and proclaimed from every convent, and monastery, hospital,

churchyard, mountain, valley, cave and cupola.







  There is a book which I wish I possessed. It has never crossed the Atlantic.

It is entitled Acta Sanctorum, in forty-seven volumes in folio. It contains the

lives of the Saints. It was compiled in the beginning of the sixteenth century

by Bollandus, Henschenius and Papebrock. What would I give to possess in one

immense mass, one stupendous draught, all the legends, true, doubtful and

false!







These Bollandists dared to discuss some of the facts, and hint that some of

them were doubtful. E. g. Papebrock doubted the antiquity of the Carmelites

from Elias; and whether the face of Jesus Christ was 













            Correspondence             111







painted on the handkerchief of St. Veronique ; and whether the prepuce of the

Saviour of the world, which was shown in the church of Antwerp, could be proved

to be genuine ? For these bold scepticisms he was libelled in pamphlets, and

denounced by the Pope, and the Inquisition in Spain. The Inquisition condemned

him ; but the Pope not daring to acquit or condemn him, prohibited all writings

pro and con. But as the physicians cure one disease by exciting another, as a

fever by a salivation, this Bull was produced by a new claim. The brothers of

the Order of Charity asserted a descent from Abraham, nine hundred years

anterior to the Carmelites.







  A philosopher who should write a description of Christianism from the

Bollandistic Saints of the sixth and tenth century would probably produce a

work tolerably parallel to Priestley's upon the Hindoos.























    TO GIDEON GRANGER, ESQ.







               MONTICELLO, March 9, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your letter of February 22d came to hand on the 4th instant.

Nothing is so painful to me as appeals to my memory on the subject of past

transactions. From 1775 to 1809, my life was an unremitting course of public

transactions, so numerous, so multifarious, and so diversified by places and

persons, that, like the figures of a magic lantern, their succession was with a

rapidity that scarcely 













112         Jefferson's Works







gave time for fixed impressions. Add to this the decay of memory consequent on

advancing years, and it will not be deemed wonderful that I should be a

stranger as it were even to my own transactions. Of some indeed I retain

recollections of the particular, as well as general circumstances ; of others a

strong impression of the general fact, with an oblivion of particulars ; but of

a great mass, not a trace either of general or particular remains in my mind. I

have duly pondered the facts stated in your letter, and for the refreshment of

my memory have gone over the letters which passed between us while I was in the

administration of the government, have examined my private notes, and such

other papers as could assist me in the recovery of the facts, and shall now

state them seriatim from your letter, and give the best account of them I am

able to derive from the joint sources of memory and papers.







  " I have been denounced as a Burrite ; but you know that in 1800 I sent

Erving from Boston to inform Virginia of the danger resulting from his

intrigues." I well remember Mr. Erving's visit to this State about that time,

and his suggestions of the designs meditated in the quarter you mention; but as

my duties on the occasion were to be merely passive, he of course, as I

presume, addressed his communications more particularly to those who were free

to use them. I do not recollect his mentioning you; but I find that in your

letter to me of April 26, 1804, you state your agency on 













             Correspondence          113







that occasion, so that I have no reason to doubt the fact.







  " That in 1803-4, on my advice, you procured Erastus Granger to inform De

Witt Clinton of the plan to elevate Burr in New York." Here I do not recollect

the particulars ; but I have a general recollection that Colonel Burr's conduct

had already, at that date rendered his designs suspicious ; that being for that

reason laid aside by his constituents as Vice-president, and aiming to become

the Governor of New York, it was thought advisable that the persons of

influence in that State should be put on their guard ; and Mr. Clinton being

eminent, no one was more likely to receive intimations from us, nor any one

more likely to be confided in for their communication than yourself. I have no

doubt therefore of the fact, and the less because in your letter to me of

October 9, 1806, you remind me of it.







  About the same period, that is, in the winter of 1803-04, another train of

facts took place which, although not specifically stated in your letter, I

think it but justice to yourself that I should state. I mean the intrigues

which were in agitation, and at the bottom of which we believed Colonel Burr to

be; to form a coalition of the five eastern States, with New York and New

Jersey, under the new appellation of the seven eastern States ; either to

overawe the Union by the combination of their power and their will, or by

threats of separating themselves from it. Your intimacy with some of those in

the







   VOL. XIV-8 













114        Jefferson's Works







secret gave you opportunities of searching into their proceedings, of which you

made me daily and confidential reports. This intimacy to which I had such

useful recourse, at the time, rendered you an object of suspicion with many as

being yourself a partisan of Colonel Burr, and engaged in the very combination

which you were faithfully employed in defeating. I never failed to justify you

to all those who brought their suspicions to me, and to assure them of my

knowledge of your fidelity. Many were the individuals, then members of the

legislature, who received these assurances from me, and whose apprehensions

were thereby quieted. This first project of Colonel Burr having vanished in

smoke, he directed to the western country those views which are the subject of

your next article.







" That in 1806, I communicated by the first mail after I had got knowledge of

the fact, the supposed plans of Burr in his western expedition ; upon which

communication your council was first called together to take measures in

relation to that subject." Not exactly on that single communication; on the

15th and 18th of September, I had received letters from Colonel George Morgan,

and from a Mr. Nicholson of New York, suggesting in a general way the

manoeuvres of Colonel Burr. Similar information came to the Secretary of State

from a Mr. Williams of New York. The indications, however, were so vague that I

only desired their increased attention to the subject, and further

communications of what 













              Correspondence          115







  they should discover. Your letter of October 16,



  conveying the communications of General Eaton



  to yourself and to Mr. Ely, gave a specific view of



  the objects of this new conspiracy, and corroborating



  our previous information. I called the Cabinet to-



  gether, on the a ad of October, when specific measures



  were adopted for meeting the dangers threatened in



  the various points in which they might occur. I say



  your letter of October 16 gave this information,



  because its date, with the circumstance of it being



  no longer on my files, induce me to infer it was that



  particular letter, which having been transferred to



  the bundle of the document's of that conspiracy,



  delivered to the Attorney General, is no longer in



  my possession.



     Your mission of Mr. Pease on the route to New



  Orleans, at the time of that conspiracy, with powers



  to see that the mails were expected, and to dismiss



  at once every agent of the Post Office whose fidelity



  could be justly doubted, and to substitute others on



  the spot was a necessary measure, taken with my



  approbation; and he executed the trusts to my



  satisfaction. I do not know, however, that my sub-



  sequent appointment of him to the office of Surveyor



  General was influenced, as you suppose, by those



  services. My motives in that appointment were my



  personal knowledge of his mathematical qualifica-



  tions and satisfactory informations of the other parts



  of his character.



      With respect to the dismission of the prosecutions























116         Jefferson's Works







for sedition in Connecticut, it is well known to have been a tenet of the

republican portion of our fellow citizens, that the sedition law was contrary

to the Constitution and therefore void. On this ground I considered it as a

nullity wherever I met it in the course of my duties ; and on this ground I

directed nolle pyosequis in all the prosecutions which had been instituted

under it, and as far as the public sentiment can be inferred from the

occurrences of the day, we may say that this opinion had the sanction of the

nation. The prosecutions, therefore, which were afterwards instituted in

Connecticut, of which two were against printers, two against preachers, and one

against a judge, were too inconsistent with this principle to be permitted to

go on. We were bound to administer to others the same measure of law, not which

they had meted to us, but we to ourselves, and to extend to all equally the

protection of the same constitutional principles. These prosecutions, too, were

chiefly for charges against myself, and I had from the beginning laid it down

as a rule to notice nothing of the kind. I believed that the long course of

services in which I had acted on the public stage, and under the eye of my

fellow citizens, furnished better evidence to them of my character and

principles, than the angry invectives of adverse partisans in whose eyes the

very acts most approved by the majority were subjects of the greatest demerit

and censure. These prosecutions against them, therefore, were to be dismissed

as a matter of duty. But I wished it 













            Correspondence







to be done with all possible respect to the worthy citizens who had advised

them, and in such way as to spare their feelings which had been justly

irritated by the intemperance of their adversaries. As you were of that State

and intimate with these characters, the business was confided to you, and you

executed it to my perfect satisfaction. 







These I think are all the particular facts on which you have asked my

testimony, and I add with pleasure, and under a sense of duty, the declaration

that the increase of rapidity in the movement of the mails which had been

vainly attempted before, were readily undertaken by you on your entrance into

office, and zealously and effectually carried into execution, and that the

affairs of the office were conducted by you with ability and diligence, so long

as I had opportunities of observing them.







  With respect to the first article mentioned in your letter, in which I am

neither concerned nor consulted, I will yet, as a friend, volunteer my advice.

I never knew anything of it, nor would ever listen to such gossiping trash. Be

assured, my dear Sir, that the dragging such a subject before the public will

excite universal reprobation, and they will drown in their indignation all the

solid justifications which they would otherwise have received and weighed with

candor. Consult your own experience, reflect on the similar cases which have

happened within your own knowledge, and see if ever there was a single one in

which such a mode of recrimination procured







        €. 













118          Jefferson's Works







favor to him who used it. You may give pain where perhaps you wish it, but be

assured it will re-act on yourself with double though delayed effect, and that

it will be one of those incidents of your life on which you will never reflect

with satisfaction. Be advised, then; erase it even from your memory, and stand

erect before the world on the high ground of your own merits, without stooping

to what is unworthy either of your or their notice. Remember that we often

repent of what we have said, but never, never of that which we have not. You

may have time enough hereafter to mend your hold, if ever it can be mended by

such matter as that. Take time then, and do not commit your happiness and

public estimation by too much precipitancy. I am entirely uninformed of the

state of things which you say exists, and which will oblige you to make a

solemn appeal to the nation, in vindication of your character. But whatever

that be, I feel it a duty to bear testimony to the truth, and I have suggested

with frankness other considerations occurring to myself, because I wish you

well, and I add sincere assurances of my great respect and esteem.















          TO HORATIO G. SPAFFORD.







               MONTICELLO, March 17, 1814. DEAR SIR,-I am an unpunctual

correspondent at best. While my affairs permit me to be within doors, I am too

apt to take up a book and to forget the calls 













             Correspondence







of the writing-table. Besides this, I pass a considerable portion of my time at

a possession so distant; and uncertain as to its mails, that my letters always

await my return here. This must apologize for my being so late in acknowledging

your two favors of December 17th and January 28th, as also that of the

Gazetteer, which came safely to hand. I have read it with pleasure, and derived

from it much information which I did not possess before. I wish we had as full

a statement as to all our States. We should know ourselves better, our

circumstances and resources, and the advantageous ground we stand on as a

whole. We are certainly much indebted to you for this fund of valuable

information. I join in your reprobation of our merchants, priests, and lawyers,

for their adherence to England and monarchy, in preference to their own country

and its Constitution. But merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand

on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw

their gains. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to

liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in

return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by

this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have

perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon,

unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their

purposes. With the lawyers it is a new thing. They have, in the Mother country,

been























              . 













120                              Jefferson.'s Works







generally the firmest supporters of the free principles of their constitution.

But there too they have changed. I ascribe much of this to the substitution of

Blackstone for my Lord Coke, as an elementary work. In truth, Blackstone and

Hume have made tories of all England, and are making tories of those young

Americans whose native feelings .of independence do not place them above the

wily sophistries of a Hume or a Blackstone. These two books, but especially the

former, have done more towards the suppression of the liberties of man, than

all the million of men in arms of Bonaparte and the millions of human lives

with the sacrifice of which he will stand loaded before the judgment seat of

his Maker. I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I

have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices,

English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional

crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it

in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated

minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists

of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England. I

see our safety in the extent of our confederacy, and in the probability that in

the proportion of that the sound parts will always be sufficient to crush local

poisons. In this hope I rest, and tender you the assurance of my esteem and

respect. 













                    Correspondence              121















            TO L. H. GIRARDIN.







             MONTICELLO, March 18,1814.







  DEAR SIR,-According to your request of the other day, I send you my formula

and explanation of Lord Napier's theorem, for the solution of right-angled

spherical triangles. With you I think it strange that the French mathematicians

have not used or noticed this method more than they have done. Montucla, in his

account of Lord Napier's inventions, expresses a like surprise at this fact,

and does justice to the ingenuity, the elegance, and convenience of the

theorem, which, by a single rule easily preserved in the memory, supplies the

whole table of cases given in the books of spherical trigonometry. Yet he does

not state the rule, but refers for it to Wolf, " Cours de Mathematiques. " I

have not the larger work of Wolf ; and in the French translation of his

abridgment, (by some member of the Congregation of St. Maur,) the branch of

spherical trigonomtery is entirely omitted. Potter, one of the English authors

of Courses of Mathematics, has given the catholic proposition, as it is called,

but in terms unintelligible, and leading to error, until, by repeated trials,

we have ascertained the meaning of some of his equivocal expressions. In Robert

Simson's Euclid we have the theorem with its demonstrations, but less aptly for

the memory, divided into two rules, and these are extended as the original was,

only to the cases of right-angled triangles. Hutton, in his Course of 













122         Jefferson's Works







Mathematics, declines giving the rules, as " too artificial to be applied by

young computists." But I do not think this. It is true that when we use them,

their demonstration is not always present to the mind ; but neither is this the

case generally in using mathematical theorems, or in the various steps of an

algebraical process. We act on them, however, mechanically, and with

confidence, as truths of which we have heretofore been satisfied by

demonstration, although we do not at the moment retrace the processes which

establish them. Hutton, however, in his Mathematical Dictionary, under the

terms " circular parts, " and " extremes, " has given us the rules and in all

their extensions to oblique spherical, and to plane triangles. I have

endeavored to reduce them to a form best adapted to my own frail memory, by

couching them in the fewest words possible, and such as cannot, I think,

mislead, or be misunderstood. My formula, with the explanation which may be

'necessary for your pupils, is as follows:







Lord Napier noted first the parts, or elements of a triangle, to wit, the sides

and angles ; and expunging from these the right angle, as if it were a

non-existence, he considered the other five parts, to wit, the three sides, and

two oblique angles, as arranged in a circle, and therefore called them the

circular parts; but chose, (for simplifying the result,) instead of the

hypothenuse and two oblique angles, themselves, to substitute their

complements. So that his five circular parts are the two legs themselves, and

the com













             Correspondence          123







plements of the hypothenuse and of the two oblique 



angles. If the three of these, given and required,



were all adjacent, he called it the case of conjunct



parts, the middle element the. MIDDLE PART, and the



two others the EXTREMES disjunct from the middle



Or EXTREMES DISJUNCT.He then laid down his



catholic rule, to wit :



   " The rectangle of the radius, and sine of the mid-



dle part, is equal to the rectangle of the tangents of



the two EXTREMES CONJUNCT, and to that of the



cosines of the two EXTREMES DISJUNCT."



   And to aid our recollection in which case the tan-



gents, and in which the cosines are to be used, pre-



serving the original designations of the inventor, we



may observe that the tangent belongs to the conjunct



case, terms of sufficient affinity to be associated in



the memory; and the sine complement remains of 



course for the disjunct case; and further, if you



please, that the initials of radius and sine, which are



to be used together, are alphabetical consecutives.



  Lord Napier's rule may also be used for the solu-



tion of oblique spherical triangles. For this purpose



a perpendicular must be let fall from an angle of the



given triangle internally on the base, forming it into 



two right-angled triangles, one of, which may contain 



two of the data. Or, if this cannot be done, then 



letting it fall externally on the prolongation of the



base, so as to form a right-angled triangle compre-



hending the oblique one, wherein two of the data



will be common to both. To secure two of the data 













124         Jefferson's Works







from mutilation, this perpendicular must always be let fall from the end of a

given side, and opposite to a given angle.



   But there will remain. yet two cases wherein Lord Napier's rule cannot be

used, to wit, where all the sides, or all the angles alone are given. To meet

these two cases, Lord Buchan and Dr. Minto devised an analogous rule. They

considered the sides themselves, and the supplements of the angles as circular

parts in these cases ; and, dropping a perpendicular from any angle from which

it would fall internally on the opposite side, they assumed that angle, or that

side, as the MIDDLE part, and the other angles, or other sides, as the OPPOSITE

Or EXTREME parts, disjunct in both cases. Then ` `the rectangle under the

tangents of half the sum, and half the difference of the segments of the MIDDLE

part, is equal to the rectangle under the tangents of half the sums, and half

the difference of the opposite parts."



   And, since every plane triangle may be considered as described on the

surface of a sphere of an infinite radius, these two rules may be applied to

plane right-angled triangles, and through them to the oblique. But as Lord

Napier's rule gives a direct solution only in the case of two sides, and an

uncomprised angle, one, two, or three operations, with this combination of

parts, may be necessary to get at that required.







  You likewise requested for the use of your school, an explanation of a method

of platting the courses of a survey, which I mentioned to you as of my own 













             Correspondence         125







practice. This is so obvious and simple, that as it occurred to myself, so I

presume it has to others, although I have not seen it stated in any of the

books. For drawing parallel lines, I use the triangular rule, the hypothenusal

side of which being applied to the side of a common straight rule, the triangle

slides on that, as thus, always parallel to itself. Instead of drawing

meridians on his paper, let the pupil draw a parallel of latitude, or east and

west line, and note in that a point for his first station, then applying to it

his protractor, lay off the first course and distance in the usual way to

ascertain his second station. For the second course, lay the triangular rule to

the east and west line, or first parallel, holding the straight or guide rule

firmly against its hypothenusal side. Then slide up the triangle (for a

northerly course) to the point of his second station, and pressing it firmly

there, lay the protractor to that, and mark off the second course, and distance

as before, for the third station. Then lay the triangle to the first parallel

again, and sliding it as before to the point of the third station, there apply

to it the protractor for the third course and distance, which gives the fourth

station; and so on. Where a course is southwardly, lay the protractor, as

before, to the northern edge of the triangle, but prick its reversed course,

which reversed again in drawing, gives the true course. When the station has

got so far from the first parallel, as to be out of 













126         Jefferson's Works







the reach of the parallel rule sliding on its hypothenuse, another parallel

must be drawn by laying the







   edge, or longer leg of the triangle to the







   first parallel as before, applying the guide-







   rule to the end, or short leg, (instead of







   the hypothenuse,) as in the margin, and sliding the triangle up to the point

for the new parallel. I have found this, in practice, the quickest and most

correct method of platting which I have ever tried, and the neatest also,

because it disfigures the paper with the fewest unnecessary lines.







  If these mathematical trifles can give any facilities to your pupils, they

may in their hands become matters of use, as in mine they have been of

amusement only.







  Ever and respectfully yours.















          TO MONSIEUR N. G. DUFIEF.







               MONTICELLO, APRIL 19, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of the 6th instant is just received, and I shall with

equal willingness and truth, state the degree of agency you had, respecting the

copy of M. de Becourt's book, which came to my hands. That gentleman informed

me, by letter, that he was about to publish a volume in French, "Sur la

Creation du Monde, un Systeme d'Organisation Primitive, " which, its title

promised to be, either a geological or astronomical work. I subscribed ; and,

when published, he sent me a copy ; and as you were







             Correspondence          I27







my correspondent in the book line in Philadelphia, I took the liberty of

desiring him to call on you for the price, which, he afterwards informed me,

you were so kind as to pay him for me, being, I believe, two dollars. But the

sole copy which came to me was from himself directly, and, as far as I know,

was never seen by you.







  I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States o f America, a f

act like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as

an offence against religion ; that a question about the sale of a book can be

carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and

are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and

what we may buy ? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our

citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or

stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as

ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we

must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are

rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot

stand the test of truth and reason. If M. de Becourt's book be false in its

facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's

sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose. I know little of its

contents, having barely glanced over here and there a passage, and over the

table of contents. From this, the Newtonian philosophy 







128       Jefferson's Works







seemed the chief object of attack, the issue of which might be trusted to the

strength of the two combatants ; Newton certainly not needing the auxiliary arm

of the government, and still less the holy Author of our religion, as to what

in it concerns Him. I thought the work would be very innocent, and one which

might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let

alone, but, if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United

States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy,

and to read what he pleases. I have been just reading the new constitution of

Spain. One of its fundamental bases is expressed in these words : " The Roman

Catholic religion, the only true one, is, and always shall be, that of the

Spanish nation. The government protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits

the exercise of any other whatever. " Now I wish this presented to those who

question what you may sell, or we may buy, with a request to strike out the

words, " Roman Catholic, " and to insert the denomination of their own

religion. This would ascertain the code of dogmas which each wishes should

domineer over the opinions of all others, and be taken, like the Spanish

religion, under the " protection of wise and just laws." It would show to what

they wish to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life

and happiness. It would present our boasted freedom of religion as a thing of

theory only, and not of practice, as what would be a poor exchange for the

theoretic 













             Correspondence           129







thraldom, but practical freedom of Europe. But it is impossible that the laws

of Pennsylvania, which set us the first example of the wholesome and happy

effects of religious freedom, can permit the inquisitorial functions to be

proposed to their courts. Under them you are surely safe.







  At the date of yours of the 6th, you had not received mine of the 3d instant,

asking a copy of an edition of Newton's Principia, which I had seen advertised.

When the cost of that shall be known, it shall be added to the balance of

$4.93, and incorporated with a larger remittance I have to make to

Philadelphia. Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.















         TO CHEVALIER LUIS DE ONIS.







                MONTICELLO, April 28, 1814.







I thank you, Sir, for the copy of the new constitution of Spain which you have

been so kind as to send me ; and I sincerely congratulate yourself and the

Spanish nation on this great stride towards political happiness. The invasion

of Spain has been the most unprecedented and unprincipled of the transactions

of modern times. The crimes of its enemies, the licentiousness of its

associates in defence, the exertions and sufferings of its inhabitants under

slaughter and famine, and its consequent depopulation; will mark indelibly the

baneful ascendency of the tyrants of the sea and continent, and characterize

with blood







   VOL. XIV-9 













           Jefferson's Works







and wretchedness the age in which they have lived. Yet these sufferings of

Spain will be remunerated, her population restored and increased, under the

auspices and protection of this new constitution; and the miseries of the

present generation will be the price, and even the cheap price of the

prosperity of endless generations to come.







There are parts of this constitution, however, in which you would expect of

course that we should not concur. One of these is the intolerance of all but

the Catholic religion ; and no security provided against the re-establishment

of an Inquisition, the exclusive judge of Catholic opinions, and authorized to

proscribe and punish those it shall deem anti-, Catholic. Secondly, the

aristocracy, quater sublimata, of her legislators; for the ultimate electors of

these will themselves have been three times sifted from the mass of the people,

and may choose from the nation at large persons never named by any of the

electoral bodies. But there is' one provision which will immortalize its

inventors. It is that which, after a certain epoch, disfranchises every citizen

who cannot read and write. This is new, and is the fruitful germ of the

improvement of everything good, and the correction of everything imperfect in

the present constitution. This will give you an enlightened people, and an

energetic public opinion which will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit

of the government. On the whole I hail your country as now likely to resume and

surpass 



                                    Correspondence                     131







its ancient splendor among nations.  This might perhaps have been better

secured by a just confidence in the self-sufficient strength of the peninsula

itself; everything without its limits being its weakness , not its force.  If

the Mother country has not the magnanimity to part with the colonies in

friendship, thereby making them, what they would certainly be, her natural and

firmest allies, these will emancipate themselves, after exhausting her strength

and resources in ineffectual efforts to hold them in subjection.  They will be

rendered enemies of the Mother country, as England has rendered us by an

unremitting course of insulting injuries and silly provocations.  I do not say

this from the impulse of national interest, for I do not know that the United

States would find an interest in the independence of neighbor nations, whose

produce and commerce would rivalize ours.  It could only be that kind of

interest which every human being has in the happiness and prosperity of every

other.  But putting right and reason out of the question, I have no doubt that

on calculations of interest alone, it is that of Spain to anticipate voluntary,

and as a matter of grace, the independence of her colonies, which otherwise

necessity will enforce.  







TO JOSEPH DELAPLAINE



     MONTICELLO, May 3, 1814.







SIR,--Your favors of April 16 and 19, on the subject of the portraits of

Columbus and Americus











132         Jefferson's Works







Vespucius, were received on the 30th. While I resided at Paris, knowing that

these portraits and those of some other of the early American worthies were in

the gallery of Medicis at Florence, I took measures for engaging a good artist

to take and send me copies of them. I considered it as even of some public

concern that our country should not be without the portraits of its first

discoverers. These copies have already run the risks of transportations from

Florence to Paris, to Philadelphia, to Washington, and lastly to this place,

where they are at length safely deposited. You request me " to forward them to

you at Philadelphia for the purpose of having engravings taken from them for a

work you propose to publish, and you pledge your honor that they shall be

restored to me in perfect safety. " T have no doubt of the sincerity of your

intentions in this pledge; and that it would be complied with as far as it

would be in your power. But the injuries and accidents of their transportation

to Philadelphia and back again are not within your control.     Besides the

rubbing through a land carriage of     six hundred miles, a carriage may

overset in a river or creek, or be crushed with everything in it.    The

frequency of such accidents to the stages renders all insurance against them

impossible. And were they to escape the perils of this journey, I should be

liable to the same calls, and they to the same or greater hazards, from, all

those in other parts of the continent who should 













            Correspondence          133







propose to publish any work in which they might wish to employ engravings of

the same characters. From public, therefore, as well as private considerations,

I think that these portraits ought not to be hazarded from their present

deposit. Like public records, I make them free to be copied, but, being as

originals in this country, they should not be exposed to the accidents or

injuries of travelling post. While I regret, therefore, the necessity of

declining to comply with your request, I freely and with pleasure offer to

receive as a guest any artist whom you shall think proper to engage, and will

make them welcome to take copies at their leisure for your use. I wish them to

be multiplied for safe preservation, and consider them as worthy a place in

every collection. Indeed I do not know how it happened that Mr. Peale did not

think of copying them while they were in Philadelphia ; and I think it not

impossible that either the father or the son might now undertake the journey

for the use of their museum. On the ground of our personal esteem for them,

they would be at home in my family.







  When I received these portraits at Paris, Mr. Daniel Parker of Massachusetts

happened to be there, and determined to procure for himself copies from the

same originals at Florence; and I think he did obtain them, and that I have

heard of their being in the hands of some one in Boston. If so, it might

perhaps be easier to get some artist there 













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to take and send you copies. But be this as it may, you are perfectly welcome

to the benefit of mine in the way I have mentioned.







  The two original portraits of myself taken by Mr. Stuart, after which you

enquire, are both in his possession at Boston. One of them only is my property.

The President has a copy from that which Stuart considered as the best of the

two; but I believe it is at his seat in his State.







  I thank you for the print of Dr. Rush. He was one of my early  and intimate

friends, and among the best of men. , The engraving is .excellent as is

everything from the hand of Mr. Edwin. Accept the assurance of my respect, and

good wishes for the success of your work.















            TO JOHN F. WATSON.







                MONTICELLO, May 17, 1814.







  SIR,-I have long been a subscriber to the edition of the Edinburgh Review

first published by Mr. Sargeant, and latterly by Eastburn, Kirk & Co., and

already possess from No. 30 to 42 inclusive; except that Nos. 31 and 37 never

carne to hand. These two and No. 29, I should be glad to receive, with all

subsequently published, through the channel of Messrs. Fitzwhylson & Potter of

Richmond, with whom I originally subscribed, and to whom it is more convenient

to make payment by a standing order on my correspondent at Richmond. I 













             Correspondence          135







willingly also subscribe for the republication of the first twenty-eight

numbers to be furnished me through the same channel, for the convenience of

payment. This work is certainly unrivalled in merit, and if continued by the

same talents, information and principles which distinguish it in every

department of science which it reviews, it will become a real Encyclopedia,

justly taking its station in our libraries with the most valuable ,

depositories of human knowledge. Of the Quarterly Review I have not seen many

numbers. As the antagonist of the other it appears to me a pigmy against a

giant. The precept " audi alteram partem, " on which it is republished here,

should be sacred with the judge who is to decide between the contending claims

of individual and individual. It is well enough for the young who have yet

opinions to make up in questions of principle in ethics or politics. But to

those who have gone through this process with industry, reflection, and

singleness of heart, who have formed their conclusions and acted on them

through life, to be reading over and over again what they have already read,

considered and condemned, is ari idle waste of time. It is not in the history

of modern England or among the advocates of the principles or practices of her

government, that the friend of freedom, or of political morality, is to seek

instruction. There has indeed been a period, during which both were to be

found, not in her government, but in the band of worthies 













136         Jefferson's Works







who so boldly and ably reclaimed the rights of the people, and wrested from

their government theoretic acknowledgments of them. This period began with the

Stuarts, and continued but one reign after them. Since that, the vital

principle of the English constitution is corruption, its practices the natural

results of that principle, and their consequences a pampered aristocracy,

annihilation of the substantial middle class, a degraded populace, oppressive

taxes, general pauperism, and national bankruptcy. Those who long for these

blessings here will find their generating principles well developed and

advocated by the antagonist of the Edinburgh Review. Still those who doubt

should read them; every man's reason being his own rightful umpire. This

principle, with that of acquiescence in the will of the majority, will preserve

us free and prosperous as long as they are sacredly observed. Accept the

assurances of my respect.















            TO ABRAHAM SMALL.







                MONTICELLO, May 20,1814.







  SIR,-I thank you for the copy of the American Speaker which you have been so

kind as to send me. It is a judicious selection of what has been excellently

spoken on both sides of the Atlantic; and according to your request, I

willingly add some suggestions, should another edition be called for. To the

speeches of Lord Chatham might be added 













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his reply to Horace Walpole, on the Seamen's bill, in the House of Commons, in

1740, one of the severest which history has recorded. Indeed, the subsequent

speeches in order, to which that reply gave rise, being few, short and pithy,

well merit insertion in such a collection as this. They are in the twelfth

volume of Chandler's Debates of the House of Commons. But the finest thing, in

my opinion, which the English language has produced, is the defence of Eugene

Aram, spoken by himself at the bar of the York assizes, in 1759, on a charge of

murder, and to be found in the Annual Register of that date, or a little after.

It had been upwards of fifty years since I had read it, when the receipt of

your letter induced me to look up a MS. copy I had preserved, and on re-perusal

at this age and distance of time, it loses nothing of its high station in my

mind for classical style, close logic, and strong representation. I send you

this copy which was taken for me by a school-boy, replete with errors of

punctuation, of orthography, and sometimes substitutions of one word for

another. It would be better to recur to the Annual Register itself for

correctness, where also I think are stated the circumstances and issue of the

case. To these I would add the short, the nervous, the unanswerable speech of

Carnot, in 1803, on the proposition to declare Bonaparte consul for life. This

creed of republicanism should be well translated, and placed in the hands and

heart of every friend to the rights of self-govern













138          Jefferson's Works







ment. I consider these speeches of Aram and Carnot, and that of Logan, inserted

in your collection, as worthily standing in a line with those of Scipio and

Hannibal in Livy, and of Cato and Caesar in Sallust. On examining the Indian

speeches in my possession, I find none which are not already in your

collection, except that my copy of Cornplanter's has much in it which yours has

not. But observing that the omissions relate to special subjects only, I

presume they are made purposely and indeed properly.







  I must add more particular thanks for the kind expressions of your letter

towards myself. These testimonies of approbation from my fellow citizens,

offered too when the lapse of time may have cooled and matured their opinions,

are an ample reward for such services as I have been able to render them, and

are peculiarly gratifying in a state of retirement and reflection. I pray you

to accept the assurance of my respect.















            TO THOMAS LAW, ESQ.







             POPLAR FOREST, June 13, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-The copy of your Second Thoughts on Instinctive Impulses, with the

letter accompanying it, was received just as I was setting out on a journey to

this place, two or three days distant from Monticello. I brought it with me and

read it With great satisfaction, and With the more as it 













             Correspondence          139







contained exactly my own creed on the foundation of morality in man. It is

really curious that on a question so fundamental, such a variety of opinions

should have prevailed among men, and those, too, of the most exemplary virtue

and first order of understanding. It shows how necessary was the care of the

Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as

that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its

observance in practice. Of all the theories on this question, the most

whimsical seems to have been that of Wollaston, who considers truth as the

foundation of morality. The thief who steals your guinea does wrong only

inasmuch as he acts a lie in using your guinea as if it were his own. Truth is

certainly a branch of morality, and a very important one to society. But

presented as its foundation, it is as if a tree taken up by the roots, had its

stem reversed in the air, and one of its branches planted in the ground: Some

have made the love o f God the foundation of morality. This, too, is but a

branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and

duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief

that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is

idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence

of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit : their own affirmations, and

their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, 













140           Jefferson's  Works







indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the

Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they   

                  ,         , are to Atheism. Diderot, D Alembert, D Holbach,

Condorcet, are known to have been. among the most virtuous of men. Their

virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.







  The To --(Greek inserted here)---- of others is founded in a different

faculty, that of taste, which is not even a branch of morality. We have indeed

an innate sense of what we call beautiful, but that is exercised chiefly on

subjects addressed to the fancy, whether through the eye in visible forms, as

landscape, animal figure, dress, drapery, architecture, the composition of

colors, etc., or to the imagination directly, as imagery, style, or measure in

prose or poetry, or whatever else constitutes the domain of criticism or taste,

a faculty entirely distinct from the moral one. Self-interest,. or rather

self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of

morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the

boundaries of morality. With ourselves we stand on the ground of identity, not

of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes selflove confined to

a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties,

obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of

morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of

virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self













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gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is

against this enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists and

religionists, as the only obstacle to ' the practice of morality. Take from man

his selfish propensities, and he can have nothing to seduce him from the

practice of virtue. Or subdue those propensities by education, instruction or

restraint, and virtue remains without a competitor. Egoism, in a broader sense,

has been thus presented as the source of moral action: It has been said that we

feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man beaten by

thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set him on our own beast and bring him to

the inn, because we receive ourselves pleasure from these acts. So Helvetius,

one of the best men on earth, and the most ingenious advocate of this

principle, after defining " interest" to mean not merely that which is

pecuniary, but whatever may procure us pleasure or withdraw us from pain, [de

l'esprit 2, I,) says, [ib. 2, 2,) " the humane man is he to whom the sight of

misfortune is insupportable, and who to rescue himself from this spectacle, is

forced to succor the unfortunate object." This indeed is true. But it is one

step short of the ultimate question. These good acts give us pleasure, but how

happens it that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our

breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short,

which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses; 













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and protests against the language of Helvetius, [ib. 2, 5,) " what other motive

than self-interest could determine a man to generous actions? It is as

impossible for him to love what is good for the sake of good, as to love evil

for the sake of evil." The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist,

had he intended man for a social animal, without planting in him social

dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because there is no

rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions

into the general rule. Some men are born without the organs of sight, or of

hearing, or without hands. Yet it would be wrong to say that man is born

without these faculties, and sight, hearing, and hands may with truth enter

into the general definition of man.







  The want or imperfection of the moral sense in some men, like the want or

imperfection of the senses of sight and hearing in others, is no proof that it

is a general characteristic of the species. When it is wanting, we endeavor to

supply the defect by education; by appeals to reason and calculation, by

presenting to the being so unhappily conformed, other motives to do good and to

eschew evil, such as the love, or the hatred, or rejection of those among whom

he lives, and whose society is necessary to his happiness and even existence;

demonstrations by sound calculation that honesty promotes interest in the long

run ; the rewards and penalties established by the laws; and ultimately 













             Correspondence         143







the prospects of a future state of retribution for the evil as well as the good

done while here. These are the correctives which are supplied by education, and

which exercise the functions of the moralist, the preacher, and legislator; and

they lead into a course of correct action all those whose disparity is not too

profound to be eradicated. Some have argued against the existence of a moral

sense, by saying that if nature had given. us such a sense, impelling us to

virtuous actions, and warning us against those' which are vicious, then nature

would also have designated, by some particular ear-marks, the two sets of

actions which are, in themselves, the one virtuous and the other vicious.

Whereas, we find, in fact, that the same actions are deemed virtuous in one

country and vicious in another. The answer is, that. nature has constituted

utility to man, the standard and test of virtue. Men living in different

countries, under different circumstances, different habits and regimens, may

have different. utilities; the same act, therefore, may be useful, and

consequently virtuous in. one country which is injurious and vicious in another

differently circumstanced. I sincerely, then, believe with you in the general

existence of a moral instinct. I think it the brightest gem with which the

human character is studded, and the  want of it as .more degrading than the

most hideous of the bodily deformities. I am happy in reviewing the roll of

associates in this principle which you present in 













144        Jefferson's Works







your second letter, some of which I had not before met with. To these might be

added Lord Kaims, one of the ablest of our advocates, who goes so far as to

say, in his Principles of Natural Religion, that a man owes no duty to which he

is not urged by some impulsive feeling. This is correct, if referred to the

standard of general feeling in the given rase, and not to the feeling of a

single individual. Perhaps I may misquote him, it being fifty years since I

read his book.







The leisure and solitude of my situation here has led me to the indiscretion of

taxing you with a long letter on a subject whereon nothing new can be offered

you. I will indulge myself no farther than to repeat the assurances of my

continued esteem and respect.















             TO JOHN ADAMS.







                MONTICELLO, July 5, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-Since mine of January the 24th, yours of March the 14th has been

received. It was not acknowledged in the short  one of May the I 8th, by Mr.

Rives, the only object of that having been to enable one of our most promising

young men to have the advantage of making his bow to you. I learned with great

regret the serious illness, mentioned in your letter ; and I hope Mr. Rives

will be able to tell me you are entirely restored. But our machines have now

been running seventy or eighty 













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years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there a wheel,

now a pinion, next a spring, will be giving way; and however we may tinker them

up for a while, all will at length surcease motion. Our watches, with works of

brass and steel, wear out within that period. Shall you and I last to see the

course the seven-fold wonders of the times will take ? The Attila of the age

dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race, whose

thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights and

liberties of the world, shut up within the circle of a little island of the

Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition of an humble and degraded

pensioner on the bounty of those he had most injured. How miserably, how

meanly, has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his

history present !. He should have perished on the swords of his enemies, under

the walls of Paris.















      "Leon piagato a morte







      Sente mancar la vita,







      Guarda la sua ferita,







       Ne s'avilisce ancor.







            Cosi fra 1'ire estrema







       Rugge, minaccia, e freme,







       Che. fa tremar morendo







       Tal volts il cacciator."-Metast. Adriano.







  But Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded,

calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue ; no statesman, knowing

nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil







   VOL. XIV-1O 













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government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. I had supposed him a

great man until his entrance into the Assembly des cinq cens, eighteen Brumaire

(an 8). From that date, however, I set him down as a great scoundrel only. To

the wonders of his rise and fall, we may add that of a Czar of Muscovy,

dictating, in Paris, laws and limits to all the successors of the Caesars, and

holding even the balance in which the fortunes of this new world are suspended.

I own, that while I rejoice, for the good of mankind, in the deliverance of

Europe from the havoc which would never have ceased while Bonaparte should have

lived in power, I see with anxiety the tyrant of the ocean remaining in vigor,

and even participating in the merit of crushing his brother tyrant. While the

world is thus turned up side down, on which of its sides are we ? All the

strong reasons, indeed, place us on the side of peace ; the interests of the

continent, their friendly dispositions, and even the interests of England. Her

passions alone are opposed to it. Peace would seem now to be an easy work, the

causes of the war being removed. Her orders of council will no doubt be taken

care of by the allied powers, and, war ceasing, her impressment of our seamen

ceases of course. But I fear there is foundation for the design intimated in

the public papers, of demanding a cession of our right in the fisheries. What

will Massachusetts say to this ? I mean her majority, which must be considered

as speaking 













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through the organs it has appointed itself, as the index of its will. She chose

to sacrifice the liberties of our seafaring citizens, in which we were all

interested, and with them her obligations to the co-States, rather than war

with England. Will she now sacrifice the fisheries to the same partialities ?

This question is interesting to her alone; for to the Middle, the Southern and

Western States, they are of no direct concern ; of no more than the culture of

tobacco, rice and cotton; to Massachusetts. I am really at a loss to conjecture

what our refractory sister will say on this occasion: I know what, as a citizen

of the Union, I would say to her. " Take this question ad referendum. It

concerns you alone. If you would rather give up the fisheries than war with

England, we give them up. If you had rather fight for them, we will defend your

interests to the last drop of our blood, choosing rather to set a good example

than follow a bad one." And I hope she will determine to fight for them. With

this, however, you and I shall have nothing to do ; ours being truly the case

wherein " non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis tempus eget." Quitting this

subject, therefore, I will turn over another leaf.







  I am just returned from one of my long absences, having been at my other home

for five weeks past. Having more leisure there than here for reading, I amused

myself with reading seriously Plato's Republic. I am wrong, however, in calling

it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I 







148        Jefferson's Works -







ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some of his other works,

but scarcely ever had patience to go through a whole dialogue. While wading

through the whimsies, the puerilities and unintelligible jargon of this work, I

laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been, that the world should

have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this? How the

soi-disant Christian world, indeed, should have done it, is a piece of

historical curiosity. But how could the Roman good sense do it ? And

particularly, how could Cicero bestow such eulogies on Plato ? Although Cicero

did not wield the dense logic of Demosthenes, yet he was able, learned,

laborious, practised in the business of the world, and honest. He could not be

the dupe of mere style, of which he was himself the first master in the world.

With the moderns, I think, it is rather a matter of fashion and authority.

Education is chiefly in the hands of persons who, from their profession, have

an interest in the reputation and the dreams of Plato. They give the tone while

at school, and few in their after years have occasion to revise their college

opinions. But fashion and authority apart, and bringing Plato to the test of

reason, take from him his sophisms, futilities and incomprehensibilities, and

what remains ? In truth, he is one of the race of genuine sophists, who has

escaped the oblivion of his brethren, first, by the elegance of his diction,

but chiefly, by the adoption and 













            Correspondence          149







incorporation of his whimsies into the body of artificial Christianity. His

foggy mind is forever presenting the semblances of objects which, half seen

through a mist, can be defined neither in form nor dimensions. Yet this, which

should have consigned him to early oblivion, really procured him immortality of

fame and reverence. The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ

levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the

mysticism of Plato materials with which they might build up an artificial

system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy,

give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and

preeminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are

within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes have not yet

explained the Platonisms engrafted on them ; and f or this obvious reason, that

nonsense can never be explained. Their purposes, however, are answered. Plato

is canonized ; and it is now deemed as impious to question his merits as those

of an Apostle of Jesus. He is peculiarly appealed to as an advocate of the

immortality of the soul ; and yet I will venture to say, that were there no

better arguments than his in proof of it, not a man in the world would believe

it. It is fortunate for us, that Platonic republicanism has not obtained the

same favor as Platonic Christianity; or we should now have been all living,

men, women and 













150         Jefferson's Works







children, pell mell together, like beasts of the field or forest. Yet " Plato

is a great philosopher," said La Fontaine. But, says Fontenelle, " do you find

his ideas very clear?" " Oh no! he is of an obscurity impenetrable." " Do you

not find him full of contradictions?" "Certainly," replied La Fontaine







                                  , " he is but a sophist. " Yet immediately

after, he exclaims again, " Oh, Plato was a great philosopher. " Socrates had

reason, indeed, to complain of the misrepresentations of Plato; for in truth,

his dialogues are libels on Socrates.







But why am I dosing you with these antediluvian topics ? Because I am glad to

have some one to whom they are familiar, and who will not receive them as if

dropped from the moon. Our post-revolutionary youth are born under happier

stars than you and I were. They acquire all learning in their mother's womb,

and bring it into the world ready made. The information of books is no longer

necessary; and all knowledge which is not innate, is in contempt, or neglect at

least. Every folly must run its round ; and so, I suppose, must that of

self-learning and self-sufficiency; of rejecting the knowledge acquired in past

ages, and starting on the new ground of intuition. When sobered by experience,

I hope our successors will turn their attention to the advantages of education.

I mean of education on the broad scale, and not that of the petty academies, as

they call themselves, which are starting up in every neighborhood, and where 













            Correspondence          151







one or two men, possessing Latin and sometimes Greek, a knowledge of the

globes, and the first six books of Euclid, imagine and communicate this as the

sum of science. They commit their pupils to the theatre of the world, with just

taste enough of learning to be alienated from industrious pursuits, and not

enough to do service in the ranks of science. We have some exceptions, indeed.

I presented one to you lately, and we have some others. But the terms I use are

general truths. I hope the necessity will, at length, be seen of establishing

institutions here, as in Europe, where every branch of science; useful at this

day, may be taught in its highest degree. Have you ever turned your thoughts to

the plan of such an institution ? I mean to a specification of the particular

sciences of real use in human affairs, and how they might be so grouped as to

require so many professors only as might bring them within the views of a just

but enlightened economy ? I should be happy in a communication of your ideas on

this problem, either loose or digested. But to avoid my being run away with by

another subject, and adding to the length and .ennui of the present letter, I

will here present to Mrs. Adams and yourself, the assurance of my constant and

sincere friendship and respect. 













152             Jefferson's Works















 JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                    QUINCY, July 16, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-I received this morning your favor of the Th, and as I can never let

a sheet of yours rest, I sit down immediately to acknowledge it.







  Whenever Mr. Rives, of whom I have heard nothing, shall arrive, he shall

receive all the cordial civilities in my power.







  I am sometimes afraid that my " machine" will not "surcease motion" soon

enough; for I dread nothing so much as " dying at top, " and expiring like Dean

Swift, " a driveler and a show;" or like Sam Adams, a grief and distress to his

family, a weeping helpless object of compassion for years.







  I am bold to say, that neither you nor I will live to see the course which

the " wonders of the times" will take. Many years, and perhaps centuries must

pass, before the current will acquire a settled direction. If the Christian

religion, as I understand it, or as you understand it, should maintain its

ground, as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagonic, Hindoo, Cabalistical

Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500

years, has received a mortal wound of which the monster must finally die ; yet

so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he

expires.







  Government has never been much studied by mankind, but their attention has

been drawn to it in the latter part of the last century, and the 













            Correspondence          153







beginning of this, more than at any former period ; and the vast variety of

experiments that have been made of constitutions in America, in France, in

Holland, in Geneva, in Switzerland, and even in Spain and South America, can

never be forgotten. They will be catastrophes noted. The result, in time, will

be improvements ; and I have no doubt that the horrors we have experienced for

the last forty years, will ultimately terminate in the advancement of civil and

religious liberty, and ameliorations in the condition of mankind; for I am a

believer in the probable improvability and improvement, the ameliorability and

amelioration in human affairs ; though I never could understand the doctrine of

the perfectibility of the human mind. This has always appeared to me like the

philosophy, or theology of the Gentoos, viz., that a Brahman, by certain

studies, for a certain time pursued, and by certain ceremonies, a certain

number of times repeated, becomes omniscient and almighty.







  Our hopes, however, of sudden tranquillity, ought not to be too sanguine.

Fanaticism and superstition will still be selfish, subtle, intriguing, and at

times furious. Despotism will still struggle for domination ; monarchy will

still study to rival nobility in popularity ; aristocracy will continue to envy

all above it, and despise and oppress all below it ; democracy will envy all,

contend with all, endeavor to pull down all ; and when by chance it happens to

get the upper hand for a short time, it 













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will be revengeful, bloody, and cruel. These and other elements of fanaticism

and anarchy, will yet, for a long time, continue a fermentation, which will

excite alarms and require vigilance.







  Napoleon is a military fanatic like Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, Mahomet,

Zingis, Kouli, Charles XII., etc. The maxim and principle of all of them was

the same : " Jura negat sibi lata, nihil non arrogat armis. "







But is it strict to call him an usurper? Was not his elevation to the empire of

France as legitimate and authentic a national act as that of William the III.,

or the House of Hanover to the throne of the three kingdoms? or as the election

of Washington to the command of our army, or to the chair of the States?







  Human nature, in no form of it, ever could bear prosperity. That peculiar

tribe of men called conquerors, more remarkably than any other, have been

swelled with vanity by any series of victories.







  Napoleon won so many mighty battles in such quick succession, and for so long

a time, that it was no wonder his brain became completely intoxicated, and his

enterprises rash, extravagant, and mad.







  Though France is humbled, Britain is not. Though Bonaparte is banished, a

greater. tyrant and miser usurper still domineers. John Bull is quite as

unfeeling, as unprincipled, more powerful, has shed more blood, than Bonaparte.

John, by his money, his intrigues, and arms, by exciting coalition after 













             Correspondence          155







coalition against him, made him what he was, and, at last, what he is. How

shall the tyrant of tyrants be brought low ? Aye ! there's the rub ! I still

think Bonaparte great, at least as any of the conquerors. The wonders " of his

rise and fall, " may be seen in the life of King Theodore, or Pascal Paoli, or

Mazionetti, or Jack Cade, or Wat Tyler, or Rienzi, or Dionicus. The only

difference is that between miniatures and full-length pictures. The

schoolmaster at Corinth was a greater man than the tyrant of Syracuse, upon the

principle that he who conquers himself is greater than he who takes a city.

Though the ferocious roar of the wounded lion may terrify the hunter with the

possibility of another dangerous leap, Bonaparte was shot dead at once by

France. He could no longer roar or struggle, growl or paw; he could only gasp

the death. I wish that France may not still regret him. But these are

speculations in the clouds. I agree with you that the milk of human kindness in

the Bourbons, is safer for mankind than the fierce ambition of Napoleon.







  The Autocrator appears in an imposing light. Fifty years ago, English writers

held up terrible consequences from " thawing out the monstrous northern snake.

" If Cossacks, and Tartars, and Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, and Riparians,

should get a taste of European sweets, what may happen? Could Wellingtons or

Bonapartes resist them ? 













  156.         Jefferson's Works







     The greatest trait of sagacity that Alexander has







yet exhibited to the world, is his courtship of the







United States. But whether this is a mature,







well-digested policy, or only a transient gleam of







thought, still remains to be explained and proved







by time.







    The refractory sister will not give up the fisheries.







  Not a man here dares to hint at so base a thought.







    I am very glad you have seriously read Plato ;







and still more rejoiced to find that your reflections







upon him so perfectly harmonize with mine. Some







thirty years ago I took upon me the severe task of







going through all his works. With the help of two







Latin translations, and one English and one French







translation, and comparing some of the most remark-







able passages with the Greek; I labored through







the tedious toil. My disappointment was very







great, my astonishment was greater, and my disgust







shocking. Two things only did I learn from him.







  1. That Franklin's ideas of exempting husbandmen







and mariners, etc., from the depredations of war,







was borrowed from him. 2. That sneezing is a







cure for the hickups. Accordingly, I have cured







myself, and all my friends, of that provoking disorder,







for thirty years, with a pinch of snuff.







    Some parts of some of his dialogues are entertain-







ing like the writings of Rousseau, but his Laws and







his Republic, from which I expected most, disap-



pointed me most.







    I could scarcely exclude the suspicion that he























             Correspondence          157







intended the latter as a bitter satire upon all republican government, as

Xenophon undoubtedly designed, by his essay on democracy, to ridicule that

species of republic. In a letter to the learned and ingenious Mr. Taylor, of

Hazlewood, I suggested to him the project of writing a novel, in which the hero

should be sent upon his travels through Plato's republic and all his

adventures, with his observations on the principles and opinions, the arts and

sciences, the manners, customs, and habits of the citizens, should be recorded.

Nothing can be conceived more destructive of human happiness ; more infallibly

contrived to transform men and women into brutes, Yahoos, or demons, than a

community of wives and property. Yet in what are the writings of Rousseau and

Helvetius, wiser than those of Plato? The man who first fenced a tobacco yard,

and said this is mine, ought instantly to have been put to death, says

Rousseau. ' The man who first pronounced the barbarous word Dieu, ought to have

been immediately destroyed, says Diderot. In short, philosophers, ancient and

modern, appear to me as mad as Hindoos, Mahometans, and Christians. No doubt

they would all think me mad, and, for anything I know, this globe may be the

Bedlam, Le Bicatre of the universe. After all, as long as property exists, it

will accumulate in individuals and families. As long as marriage exists,

knowledge, ' property, and influence will accumulate in families. Your and our

equal .par













158        Jeffersons Works







tition of intestate estates, instead of preventing, will, in time, augment the

evil, if it is one.







  The French revolutionists saw this, and were so far consistent. When they

burned pedigrees and genealogical trees, they annihilated, as far as they

could, marriages, knowing that marriage, among a thousand other things, was an

infallible source of aristocracy. I repeat it, so sure as the idea and

existence of property is admitted and established in society, accumulations of

it will be made ; the snow-ball will grow as it rolls.







  Cicero was educated in the Groves of Academus, where the name and memory of

Plato were idolized to such a degree, that if he had wholly renounced the

prejudices of his education, his reputation would have been lessened, if not

injured and ruined. In his two volumes of Discourses on Government, we may

presume that he fully examined Plato's laws and republic, as well as

Aristotle's writings on government. But these have been carefully destroyed,

not improbably with the general consent of philosophers, politicians and

priests. The loss is as much to be regretted as that of any production of

antiquity.







  Nothing seizes the attention of the staring animal so surely as paradox,

riddle, mystery, invention, discovery, wonder; temerity. Plato and his

disciples, from the fourth-century Christians to Rousseau and Tom Paine, have

been fully sensible of this weakness in mankind, and have too successfully

grounded upon it their pretensions to fame.  













            Correspondence        159







 I might, indeed, have mentioned Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Turgot,

Helvetius, Diderot, Condorcet, Buffon, and fifty others, all a little cracked.

Be to their faults a little blind, to their virtues ever kind.







Education ! Oh Education ! The greatest grief of my heart, and the greatest

affliction of my life! To my mortification I must confess that I have never

closely thought, or very deliberately reflected upon the subject which never

occurs to me now without producing a deep sigh, a heavy groan, and sometimes

tears.







My cruel destiny separated me from my children, almost continually from their

birth to their manhood. I was compelled to leave them to the ordinary routine

of reading, writing and Latin school, academy and college. John, alone, was

much with me, and he but occasionally. If I venture to give you any thoughts at

all, they must be very crude. I have turned over Locke, Milton, Condillac,

Rousseau, and even Miss Edgeworth, as a bird flies through the air. The

Preceptor I have thought a. good book.







Grammar, rhetoric, logic, ethics, mathematics, cannot be neglected. Classics,

in spite of our friend Rush, I must think indispensable. Natural history,

mechanics and experimental philosophy, chemistry, etc., at least their

rudiments, cannot be forgotten. Geography, astronomy, and even history and

chronology, (although I am myself afflicted with a kind 













160        Jefferson's Works







of Pyrrhonism in the two latter,) I presume cannot be omitted. Theology I would

leave to Ray, Derham, Nicuentent, and Paley, rather than to Luther, Zinzindorf,

Swedenborg, Wesley or Whitefield, or Thomas Aquinas or Wollebius. Metaphysics I

would leave in the clouds with the materialists and spiritualists, with

Leibnitz, Berkley, Priestley and Edwards, and I might add Hume and Reed, or if

permitted to be read, it should be with romances and novels. What shall I say

of music, drawing, fencing, dancing and gymnastic exercises? What of languages,

oriental and occidental? Of French, Italian, German or Russian? of Sanscrit or

Chinese ?







  The task you have prescribed to me of grouping these sciences or arts under

professors, within the views of an enlightened economy, is far beyond my

forces. Loose indeed, and indigested, must be all the hints I can note. Might

grammar, rhetoric, logic, and ethics, be under one professor? Might

mathematics, mechanics, natural philosophy, be under another? Geography and

astronomy under a third ? Laws and government, history and chronology, under a

fourth? Classics might require a fifth.







  Condillac's Course of Study has excellent parts. Among many systems of

mathematics, English, French and American, there is none preferable to Besout's

Course. La Harpe's Course of Literature is very valuable.























             Correspondence







  But I am ashamed to add any more to the broken innuendos, except assurances

of my continued friendship.















TO THE BARON DE MOLL, PRIVY COUNSELLOR OF HIS







MAJESTY THE KING OF BAVARIA, SECRETARY OF







THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES FOR THE CLASS OF







MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES, AND OF







THE AGRONOMIC SOCIETY OF BAVARIA, AT MUNICH.







                MONTICELLO, July 31, 1814.







   SIR,-Within a few days only, I have received the letter which you did me the

honor to write on the 22d of July, 1812 ; a delay which I presume must be

ascribed to the interruption of the intercourse of the world by the wars which

have lately desolated it by sea and land. Still involved ourselves with a

nation possessing almost exclusively the ocean which separates us, I fear the

one I have now the honor of addressing you may experience equal delay. I

receive with much gratification the diploma of the Agronomic Society of

Bavaria, conferring on me the distinction of being honorary member of their

society. For this mark of their good will, I pray you to be the channel of

communicating to them my respectful thanks. Age and distance will add their

obstacles to the services I shall ardently wish to render the society. Yet

sincerely devoted to this art, the basis of the subsistence, the comforts and

the happiness of man,







   VOL. XIV-11 













162         Jefferson's Works







and sensible of the general interest which all nations have in communicating

freely to each other discoveries of new and useful processes and implements in

it, I shall with zeal at all times meet the wishes of the society, and

especially rejoice in every opportunity which their commands may present of

being useful to them. With the homage of my respects to them, be pleased to

accept for yourself the assurances of my particular and high consideration.















            TO WILLIAM WIRT.







              MONTICELLO, August 14, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-I have been laying under contribution my memory, my private papers,

the printed records, gazettes and pamphlets in my possession, to answer the

inquiries of your letter of July 27, and I will give you the result as

correctly as I can. I kept no copy of the paper I sent you on a former occasion

on the same subject, nor do I retain an exact recollection of its contents. But

if in that I stated the question on the loan office to have been in 1762, I did

it with too slight attention to the date, although not to the fact. I have

examined the journals of the House of Burgesses, of 1760-1-2, in my possession,

and find no trace of the proceeding in them. By those of 1764, I find that the

famous address to the king, and memorials to the Houses of Lords and Commons,

on the proposal of the Stamp Act, were of that date; and I know























            Correspondence







that Mr. Henry was not a member of the legislature when they were passed. I

know also, because I was present, that Robinson, (who died in May, 1766,) was

in the chair on the question of the loan office. Mr. Henry, then, must have

come in between these two epochs, and consequently. in 1765. Of this year I

have no journals to refresh my memory. The first session was in May, and his

first remarkable exhibition there was on the motion f or the establishment of

an office for lending money on mortgages of real property. I find in Royle's

Virginia Gazette of the 17th of that month, this proposition for the loan

office brought forward, its advantages detailed, and the plan explained ; and

it seems to have been done by a borrowing member, from the feeling with which

the motives are expressed; and to have been preparatory to the intended motion.

This was probably made immediately after that date, : and certainly before the

30th, which was the date of Mr. Henry's famous resolutions. I had been intimate

with Mr. Henry since the winter of 1759-60, and felt an interest in what

concerned him, and I can never forget a particular exclamation of his in the

debate in which he electrified his hearers. It had been urged that from certain

unhappy circumstances of the colony, men of substantial property had contracted

debts, which, if exacted suddenly, must ruin them and their families, but, with

a little indulgence of time, might be paid with ease. " What, Sir!" exclaimed

Mr. Henry, in animadverting on this, 













164           Jefferson's Works







" is it proposed then to reclaim the spendthrift from his dissipation and

extravagance, by filling his pockets with money!" These expressions are

indelibly impressed on my memory. He laid open with so much energy the spirit

of favoritism on which the proposition was founded, and the abuses to which it

would lead, that it was crushed in its birth. Abortive motions are not always

entered on the journals, or rather, they are rarely entered. It is the modern

introduction of yeas and nays which has given the means of placing a rejected

motion on the journals; and it is likely that the speaker, who, as treasurer,

was to be the loan officer, and had the direction of the journals, would choose

to omit an entry of the motion in this case. This accounts sufficiently for the

absence of any trace of the motion in the journals. There was no suspicion

then, (as far, at least, as I know,) that Robinson had used the public money in

private loans to his friends, and that the secret object of this scheme was to

transfer those debtors to the public, and thus clear his accounts. I have

diligently examined the names of the members on the journals of 1764, to see if

any were still living to whose memory we might recur on this subject, but I

find not a single one now remaining in life.







  Of the parson's cause I remember nothing remarkable. I was at school with Mr.

Maury during the years 1758 and 1759, and often heard them inveigh against the

iniquity of the act of 1758, called the 













            Correspondence         165







two-penny act. In 1763, when that cause was decided in Hanover, I was a

law-student in Williamsburg, and remember only that it was a subject of much

conversation, and of great paper-controversy, in which Camm, and Colonel Bland,

were the principal champions.







  The disputed election in which Mr. Henry made himself remarkable, must have

been that of Dandridge and Littlepage, in 1764, of which, however, I recollect

no particulars, although I was still a student in Williamsburg, and paid

attention to what was passing in the legislature.







  I proceed now to the resolution of 1765. The copies you enclose me, and that

inserted by Judge Marshall in his history, and copied verbatim by Burke, are

really embarrassing by their differences. I. That of the four resolutions taken

from the records of the House, is the genuine copy of what they passed, as

amended by themselves, cannot be doubted. 2. That the copy which Mr. Henry left

sealed up, is a true copy of these four resolutions, as responded by the

committee, there is no reason to doubt.3 . That Judge Marshall's version of

three of these resolutions, (for he has omitted one altogether,) is from an

unauthentic source is sufficiently proved by their great variation from the

record in diction, although equivalent in sentiment. But what are we to say of

Mr. Henry's fifth, and Mr. Marshall's two last, which we may call the sixth and

seventh resolutions? The fifth has clearly nothing to justify the 













 166        Jefferson's Works







debate and proceedings which one of them produced. But the sixth is of that

character, and perfectly tallies with the idea impressed on my mind, of that

which was expunged: Judge Marshall tells us that two were disagreed to by the

House, which may be true. I do not indeed recollect it, but I have no

recollection to the contrary. My hypothesis, then, is this, that the two

disagreed to were the fifth and seventh. The fifth, because merely tautologous

of the third and fourth, and the seventh, because leading to individual

persecution, for which no mind was then prepared. And that the sixth was the

one passed by the House, by a majority of a single vote, and expunged from the

journals the next day. I was standing at the door of communication between the

House and lobby during the debates and vote, and well remember, that after the

numbers on the division were told, and declared from the chair, Peyton Randolph

(then Attorney General) came out at the door where I was standing, and

exclaimed, " By God, I would have given one hundred guineas for a single vote!"

For one vote would have divided the House, and Robinson was in the chair, who

he knew would have negatived the resolution. Mr. Henry left town that evening,

or the next morning; and Colonel Peter Randolph, then a member of the Council,

came to the House of Burgesses about ten o'clock of the forenoon, and sat at

the clerk's table till the House-bell rang, thumbing over the volumes of

journals to find a precedent of expunging a vote























             Correspondence







of the House, which he said had taken place while he was a member or clerk of

the House. I do not recollect which. I stood by him at the end of the table a

considerable part of the time, looking on as he turned over the leaves, but I

do not recollect whether he found the erasure. In the meantime, some of the

timid members, who had voted for the strongest resolution, had become alarmed,

and as soon as the House met, a motion was made, and carried, to expunge it

from the journals. And here I will observe, that Burke's statement with his

opponents, is entirely erroneous. I suppose the original journal was among

those destroyed by the British, or its obliterated face might be appealed to.

It is a pity this investigation was not made a few years sooner, when some of

the members of the day were still living. I think inquiry should be made of

Judge Marshall for the source from which he derived his copy of the

resolutions. This might throw light on the sixth and seventh, which I verily

believe,. and especially the sixth, to be genuine in substance. On the whole, I

suppose the four resolutions which are on the record, were passed and retained

by the House ; that the sixth is that which was passed by a single vote and

expunged, and the fifth and seventh, the two which Judge Marshall says were

disagreed to. That Mr. Henry's copy, then, should not have stated all this, is

the remaining difficulty. This copy he probably sealed up long after the

transaction, for it was long afterwards that these resolutions, instead 













168        Jefferson's Works







of the address and memorials of the preceding year, were looked back to as the

commencement of legislative opposition. His own judgment may, at a later date,

have approved of the rejection of the sixth and seventh, although not of the

fifth, and he may have left and sealed up a copy, in his own handwriting, as

approved by his ultimate judgment. This, to be sure, is conjecture, and may

rightfully be rejected by any one to whom a more plausible solution may occur ;

and there I must leave it. The address of 1764. was drawn by Peyton Randolph.

Who drew the memorial to the Lords I do not recollect, but Mr. Wythe drew that

to the Commons. It was done with so much freedom, that, as he has told me

himself, his colleagues of the committee shrank from it as bearing the aspect

of treason, and smoothed its features to its present form. He was, indeed, one

of the very few, (for I can barely speak of them in the plural number,) of

either character, who, from the commencement of the contest, hung our

connection with Great Britain on its true hook, that of a common king. His

unassuming character, however, made him appear as a follower, while his sound

judgment kept him in a line with the freest spirit. By these resolutions, Mr.

Henry took the lead out of the hands of those who had heretofore guided the

proceedings of the House, that is to say,' of Pendleton, Wythe, Bland,

Randolph, Nicholas. These were honest and able men, had begun the opposition on

the same grounds, but with a moder-













             Correspondence          169







ation more adapted to their age and experience. Subsequent events favored the

bolder spirits of Henry, the Lees, Pages, Mason, etc., with whom I went in all

points. Sensible, however, of the importance of unanimity among our

constituents, although we often wished to have gone faster, we slackened our

pace, that our less ardent colleagues might keep up with us; and they, on their

part, differing nothing from us in principle, quickened their gait somewhat

beyond that which their prudence might of itself have advised, and thus

consolidated the phalanx which breasted the power of Britain.. By this harmony

of the bold with the cautious, we advanced with our constituents in undivided

mass, and with fewer examples of separation than, perhaps, existed in any other

part of the Union.







  I do not remember the topics of Mr. Henry's argument, but those of his

opposers were that the same sentiments had been expressed in the address and

memorials of the preceding session, to which an answer was expected and not yet

received. I well remember the cry of treason, the pause of Mr. Henry at the

name of George the III., and the presence of mind with which he closed his

sentence, and baffled the charge vociferated. I do not think he took the

position in the middle of the floor which you mention. On the contrary, I think

I recollect him standing in the very place which he continued afterwards

habitually to occupy in the House. ,







The censure of Mr. E. Randolph on Mr. Henry in 













                        Jefferson's Works







           the case of Philips, was without foundation. I







      remember the case, and took my part in it. Philips







      was a mere robber, who availing himself of the







      troubles of the times, collected a banditti, retired to







      the Dismal Swamp, and from thence sallied forth,







      plundering and maltreating the neighboring inhabi-







      tants, and covering himself, without authority, under







      the name of a British subject. Mr. Henry, then







      Governor, communicated the case to me. We both







      thought the best proceeding would be by bill of







      attainder, unless he delivered himself up for trial







      within a given time. Philips was afterwards taken;







      and Mr. Randolph being Attorney General, and







      apprehending he would plead that he was a British







      subject, taken in arms, in support of his lawful







      sovereign, and as a prisoner of war entitled to the







      protection of the law of nations, he thought the







      safest proceeding would be to indict him at common







      law as a felon and robber. Against this I believe







      Philips urged the same plea : he was overruled and







      found guilty.







             I recollect nothing of a doubt on the re-eligibility







      of Mr. Henry to the government when his term







      expired in 1779, nor can I conceive on what ground







      such a doubt could have been entertained, unless







      perhaps that his first election in June, 1776, having







      been before we were nationally declared independent,







      some might suppose it should not be reckoned as one



      of the three constitutional elections.







             Of the projects for appointing a Dictator there are























             Correspondence







said to have been two. I know nothing of either but by hearsay. The first was

in Williamsburg in December, 1776. The Assembly had the month before appointed

Mr. Wythe, Mr. Pendleton, George Mason, Thomas L. Lee, and myself, to revise

the whole body of laws, and adapt them to our new form of government. I left

the House early in December to prepare to join the Committee at Fredericksburg,

the place of our first meeting. What passed, therefore, in the House in

December, I know not, and have not the journals of that session to look into.

The second proposition was in June, 1781, at the Staunton session of the

legislature. No trace of this last motion is entered on the journals of that

date, which I have examined. This is a further proof that the silence of the

journals is no evidence against the fact of an abortive motion. Among the names

of the members found on the journal of the Staunton session, are John Taylor of

Caroline, General Andrew Moore, and General Edward Stevens of Culpeper, now

living. It would be well to ask information from each of them, that their

errors of memory, or of feeling, may be corrected by collation.







  You ask if I would have any objection to be quoted as to the fact of

rescinding the last of Mr: Henry's resolutions. None at all as to that fact, or

its having been passed by a majority of one vote only ; the scene being as

present to my mind as that in which I am now writing. But I do not affirm,

although I believe it was the sixth resolution. 













           Jefferson's Works







 It is truly unfortunate that those engaged in public affairs so rarely make

notes of transactions passing within their knowledge. Hence history becomes

fable instead of fact. The great outlines may be true, but the incidents and

coloring are according to the faith or fancy of the writer. Had Judge Marshall

taken half your pains in sifting and scrutinizing facts, he would not have

given to the world, as true history, a false copy of a record under his eye.

Burke again has copied him, and being a second writer on the spot, doubles the

credit of the copy. When writers are so indifferent as to the correctness of

facts, the verification of which lies at their elbow, by what measure shall we

estimate their relation of things distant, or of those given to us through the

obliquities of their own vision? Our records, it is true, in the case under

contemplation, were destroyed by the malice and vandalism of the British

military, perhaps of their government, under whose orders they committed so

much useless mischief. But printed copies remained, as your examination has

proved. Those which were apocryphal, then, ought not to have been hazarded

without examination. Should you be able to ascertain the genuineness of the

sixth and seventh resolutions, I would ask a line of information, to rectify or

to confirm my own impressions respecting them. Ever affectionately yours. 













             Correspondence          173















           TO DR. THOMAS COOPER.







              MONTICELLO, August 25, 1814







DEAR SIR,-In my letter of January 16th, I mentioned to you that it had long

been in contemplation to get an university established in this State, in which

all the branches of science useful to us, and at this day, should be taught in

their highest degree, and that this institution should be incorporated with the

College and funds of William and Mary. But what are the sciences useful to us,

and at this day thought useful to anybody? A glance over Bacon's arbor

scientiae will show the foundation for this question and how many of his

ramifications of science are now lopped off as nugatory. To be prepared for

this new establishment, I have taken some pains to ascertain those branches

which men of sense, as well as of science, deem worthy of cultivation. To the

statements which I have obtained from other sources, I should highly value an

addition of one from yourself. You know our country, its pursuits, its

faculties, its relations with others, its means of establishing and maintaining

an institution of general science, and the spirit 'of economy with which it

requires that these should- be administered. Will you then so far contribute to

our views as to consider this subject, to make a statement of the branches of

science which you think worthy of being taught, as I have before said, at this

day, and in this country? But to accommodate them to our economy, it will 













           Jefferson's Works







be necessary further to distribute them into groups, each group comprehending

as many branches as one industrious professor may competently teach, and, as

much as may be, a duly associated family, or class, of kindred sciences. The

object of this is to bring the whole circle of useful science under the

direction of the smallest number of professors possible, and that our means may

be so frugally employed as to effect the greatest possible good. We are about

to make an effort for the introduction of this institution.







On the subject of patent rights, on which something has passed between us

before, you may have noted that the patent board, while it existed, had

proposed to reduce their decisions to a system of rules as fast as the cases

presented should furnish materials. They had done but little when the business

was turned over to the courts of justice, on whom the same duty has now

devolved. A rule has occurred to me, which I think would reach many of our

cases, and go far towards securing the citizen against the vexation of

frivolous patents. It is to consider the invention of any new mechanical power,

or of any new combination of the mechanical powers already known, as entitled

to an exclusive grant ; but that the purchaser of the right to use the

invention should be free to apply it to every purpose of which it is

susceptible. For instance, the combination of machinery for threshing wheat,

should be applicable to the threshing of rye, oats, beans, etc. The spinning

machine to everything of which it may be 













             Correspondence







found capable; the chain of buckets, of which we have been possessed thousands

of years, we should be free to use for raising water, ore, grains, meals, or

anything else we can make it raise. These rights appear sufficiently distinct,

and the distinction sound enough, to be adopted by the judges, to whom it could

not be better suggested than through the medium of the Emporium, should any

future paper of that furnish place for the hint.







  Since the change of government in France, I am in hopes the author of the

Review of Montesquieu will consent to be named, and perhaps may publish there

his original work; not that their press is free, but that the present

government will be restrained by public opinion, whereas the late military

despotism respected that of the army only. I salute you with friendship and

respect.















           TO JOSEPH DELAPLAINE.







              MONTICELLO, August 28, 1814.







  SIR,-Your letter of the 17th is received. I have not the book of Munoz

containing the print of Columbus. That work came out after I left Europe, and

we have not the same facility of acquiring new continental publications here as

there. I have no doubt that entire credit is to be given to the account of the

print rendered by him in the extract from his work which you have sent me ; and

as you say that several have attempted translations of it, each differ













176         Jefferson's Works







ing from the other, and none satisfactory to yourself, I will add to your stock

my understanding of it, that by a collation of the several translations, the

author's meaning may be the better elicited.







  Translation : " This first volume presents at the beginning the portrait of

the discoverer, designed and engraved with care. Among many paintings and

prints which are falsely sold as his likenesses, I have seen one only which can

be such, and it is that which is preserved in the house of the most excellent

Duke of Berwick and Lina, a descendant of our hero; a figure of the natural

size, painted, as would seem, in the last century, by an indifferent copyist,

in which, nevertheless, appear some catches from the hand of Antonio del

Rincon, a celebrated painter of the Catholic kings. The description given by

Fernando Colon, of the countenance of his father, has served to render the

likeness more resembling, and to correct the faults which are observable in

some of the features either imperfectly seized by the artist, or disfigured by

the injuries of time. "







Paraphrase explanatory of the above. Columbus was employed by Ferdinand and

Isabella, on his voyage of discovery in I492. Debry tells us that " before his

departure, his portrait was taken by order of the king and queen, " and most

probably by Rincon, their first painter. Rincon died in 1500, and Columbus in

1506 Fernando, his son, an ecclesiastic, wrote the life of his father in 1530,

and describes in that his father's countenance. An 













            Correspondence







indifferent hand in the 17th century, copied Rincon's painting, which copy is

preserved in the house of the Duke of Berwick. In 17th, when a print of

Columbus was wanting for the history of Munoz, the artist from this copy,

injured as it was by time, but still exhibiting some catches of Rincon's style

and from the verbal description of the countenance of Columbus in the history

by his son, has been enabled to correct the faults of the copy, whether those

of the copyist or proceeding from the injuries of time, and thus to furnish the

best likeness.







The Spanish text admits this construction, and well-known dates and historical

facts verify it.







  I have taken from the second volume of Debry a rough model of the leaf on

which is the print he has given of Columbus and his preface. It gives the exact

size and outline of the print which, with a part of the preface, is on the

first page of the leaf, and the rest on the second. I have extracted from it

what related to the print, which you will perceive could not be cut out without

a great mutilation of the book. This would not be regarded as to its cost,

which was twelve guineas for the three volumes in Amsterdam, but that it seems

to be the only copy of the work in the United States, and I know from

experience the difficulty, if not impossibility, of getting another. I had

orders lodged with several eminent booksellers in the principal book-marts of

Europe, to wit : London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid, several years

before this copy was







  VOL. XIV-12 













178        Jefferson's Works







obtained at the accidental sale of an old library in Amsterdam, on the death of

its proprietor.







  We have, then, three likenesses of Columbus, from which a choice is to be

made.







1. The print in Munoz's work, from a copy of Rincon's original, taken in the

17th century by an indifferent hand, with conjectural alterations suggested by

the verbal description of the younger Columbus of the countenance of his

father.







  2. The miniature of Debry, from a copy taken in the sixteenth century from

the portrait made by order of the king and queen, probably that of Rincon.







  3. The copy in my possession of the size of life, taken for me from the

original, which is in the gallery of Florence. I say from an original, because

it is well known that in collections of any note, and that of Florence is the

first in the world, no copy is ever admitted; and an original existing in Genoa

would readily be obtained for a royal collection in Florence. Vasari, in his

lives of the painters, names this portrait in his catalogue of the paintings in

that gallery, but does not say by whom it was made. It has the aspect of a man

of thirty-five, still smooth-faced and in the vigor of life, which would place

its date about 1477, fifteen years earlier than that of Rincon. Accordingly, in

the miniature of Debry, the face appears more furrowed by time. On the whole, I

should have no hesitation at giving this the preference over the conjectural

one of Munoz, and the miniature of Debry. 













             Correspondence







  The book from which I cut the print of Vespucius which I sent you, has the

following title and date: " Elogio d'Amerigo Vespucci che ha riportato il

premio dalla nobile accademia Etrusca de Cortona nel de I5 d'Ottobre dell' Anno

1788, del P. Stanislao Canovai della scuole prie publico professore di fisica.

Matematica in Firenze 1788, nella stamp di Pietro Allegrini. " This print is

unquestionably from the same original in the gallery of Florence from which my

copy was also taken. The portrait is named in the catalogue of Vasari, and

mentioned also by Bandini, in his life of Americus Vespucius; but neither gives

its history. Both tell us there was a portrait of Vespucius taken by Domenico,

and a fine head of him by Da Vinci, which, however, are lost, so that it would

seem that this of Florence is the only one existing.







  With this offering of what occurs to me on the subject of these prints,

accept the assurance of my respect.















           TO DR. THOMAS COOPER.







            MONTICELLO, September 10, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-I regret much that I was so late in consulting you on the subject

of the academy we wish to establish here. The progress of that business has

obliged me to prepare an address to the President of the Board of Trustees;-a

plan for its organization. I send you a copy of it with a broad margin, 













             Jefferson's Works







that, if your answer to mine of August 25th be not on the way, you may be so

good as to write your suggestions either in the margin or on a separate paper.

We shall still be able to avail ourselves of them by way of amendments.







  Your letter of August 17th is received. Mr. Ogilvie left us four days ago, on

a tour of health, which is to terminate at New York, from whence he will take

his passage to Britain to receive livery and seisin of his new dignities and

fortunes. I am in the daily hope of seeing M. Corrica, and the more anxious as

I must in two or three weeks commence a journey of long absence from home.







  A comparison of the conditions of Great Britain and the United States, which

is the subject of your letter of August 17th, would be an interesting theme

indeed. To discuss it minutely and demonstratively would be far beyond the

limits of a letter. I will give you, therefore, in brief only, the result of my

reflections on the subject. I agree with you in your facts, and in many of your

reflections. My conclusion is without doubt, as I am sure yours will be, when

the appeal to your sound judgment is seriously made. The population of England

is composed of three descriptions of persons (for those of minor note are too

inconsiderable to affect a general estimate). These are, 1. The aristocracy,

comprehending the nobility, the wealthy commoners, the high grades of

priesthood, and the officers of government. 2. The laboring class. 3. The 













             Correspondence          181







eleemosynary class, or paupers, who are about one-fifth of the whole. The

aristocracy, which have the laws and government in their hands, have so managed

them as to reduce the third description below the means of supporting life,

even by labor; and to force the second, whether employed in agriculture or the

arts, to the maximum of labor which the construction of the human body can

endure, and to the minimum of food, and of the meanest kind, which will

preserve it in life, and in strength sufficient to perform its functions. To

obtain food enough, and clothing, not only their whole strength must be

unremittingly exerted, but the utmost dexterity also which they can acquire ;

and those of great dexterity only can keep their ground, while those of less

must sink into the class of paupers. Nor is it manual dexterity alone, but the

acutest resources of the mind also which are impressed into this struggle for

life; and such as have means a little above the rest, as the master-workmen,

for instance, must strengthen themselves by acquiring as much of the philosophy

of their trade as will enable them to compete with their rivals, ' and keep

themselves above ground. Hence the industry and manual dexterity of their

journeymen and day-laborers, and the science of their master-workmen, keep them

in the foremost ranks of competition with those of other nations ; and the less

dexterous individuals, falling into the eleemosynary ranks, furnish materials

for armies and navies to def end their 













182          Jefferson's Works







country, exercise piracy on the ocean, and carry conflagration, plunder and

devastation, on the shores of all those who endeavor to withstand their

aggressions. A society thus constituted possesses certainly the means of

defence. But what does it defend? The pauperism of the lowest class, the abject

oppression of the laboring, and the luxury, the riot, the domination and the

vicious happiness of the aristocracy. In their hands, the paupers are used as

tools to maintain their own wretchedness, and to keep down the laboring portion

by shooting them whenever the desperation produced by the cravings of their

stomachs drives them into riots. Such is the happiness of scientific England;

now let us see the American side of the medal.







  And, first, we have no paupers, the old and crippled among us, who possess

nothing and have no families to take care of them, being too few to merit

notice as a separate section of society, or to affect a general estimate. The

great mass of our population is of laborers ; our rich, who can live without

labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most

of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have

families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the

rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed

above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. They are not

driven to the ultimate resources of dexterity and skill, because their wares 













            Correspondence          183







will sell although not quite so nice as those of England. The wealthy, on the

other hand, and those at their ease, know nothing of what the Europeans call

luxury. They have only somewhat more of the comforts and decencies of life than

those who furnish them. Can any condition of society be more desirable than

this? Nor in the class of laborers do I mean to withhold from the comparison

that portion whose color has condemned them, in certain parts of our Union, to

a subjection to the will of others. Even these are better fed in these States,

warmer clothed, and labor less than the journeymen or day-laborers of England.

They have the comfort, too, of numerous families, in the midst of whom they

live without want, or fear of it; a solace which few of the laborers of England

possess. They are subject, it is true, to bodily coercion; but are not the

hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and seamen subject to the same,

without seeing, at the end of their career, when age and accident shall have

rendered them unequal to labor, the certainty, which the other has, that he

will never want? And has not the British seaman, as much as the African, been

reduced to this bondage by force, in flagrant violation of his own consent, and

of his natural right in his own person ? and with the laborers of England

generally, does not the moral coercion of want subject their will as

despotically to that of their employer, as the physical constraint does the

soldier, the seaman, or the slave ? 













184         Jefferson's Works







But do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not justifying the

wrongs we have committed on a foreign people, by the example of another nation

committing equal wrongs on their own subjects. On the contrary, there is

nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige

of this moral and political depravity. But I am at present comparing the

condition and degree of suffering to which oppression has reduced the man of

one color, with the condition and degree of suffering to which oppression has

reduced the man of another color; equally condemning both. Now let us compute

by numbers the sum of happiness of the two countries. In England, happiness is

the lot of the aristocracy only ; and the proportion they bear to the laborers

and paupers, you know better than I do. Were I to guess that they are four in

every hundred, then the happiness of the nation would be to its misery as one

in twenty-five. In the United States it is as eight millions to zero, or as all

to none. But it is said they possess the means of defence, and that we do not.

How so? Are we not men ? Yes ; but our men are so happy at home that they will

not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no

standing armies for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish the

materials. The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended

themselves. The Greeks by. their laws, and the, Romans by the spirit of their

people, took care to 













             Correspondence







put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing

army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to

the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them

invincible; and the same remedy will make us so. In the beginning of our

government we were willing to introduce the least coercion possible on the will

of the citizen. Hence a system of military duty was established too indulgent

to his indolence. This is the first opportunity we have had of trying it, and

it has completely failed; an issue foreseen by many, and for which remedies

have been proposed. That of classing the militia according to age, and

allotting each age to the particular kind of service to which it was competent,

was proposed to Congress in 1805, and subsequently; and, on the last trial was

lost, I believe, by a single vote only. Had it prevailed, what has now happened

would not have happened. Instead of burning our Capitol, we should have

possessed theirs in Montreal and Quebec. We must now adopt it, and all will be

safe. We had in the United States in 1805, in round numbers of free,

able-bodied men,







         120,000 of the ages of 18 to 21 inclusive.







         200,000    "    "             22 " 26      "







         200,000    "                   27   35







         200,000    "    "             35 " 45      "







 In all, 720,000    "    "             18 " 45      " 









186         Jefferson's Works







 With this force properly classed, organized, trained, armed and subject to

tours of a year of military duty, we have no more to fear for the defence of

our country than those who have the resources of despotism and pauperism.







  But, you will say, we have been devastated in the meantime. True, some of our

public buildings have been burnt, and some scores of individuals on the

tide-water have lost their movable property and their houses. I pity them, and

execrate the barbarians who delight in unavailing mischief. But these

individuals have their lands and their hands left. They are not paupers, they

have still better means of subsistence than 24/25 of the people of England.

Again, . the English have burnt our Capitol and President's house by means of

their force. We can burn their St. James' and St. Paul's by means of our money,

offered to their own incendiaries, of whom there are thousands in London who

would do it rather than starve. But it is against the laws of civilized warfare

to employ secret incendiaries. Is it not equally so to destroy the works of art

by armed incendiaries? Bonaparte, possessed at times of almost every capital of

Europe, with all his despotism and power, injured no monument of art. If a

nation, breaking through all the restraints of civilized character, uses its

means of destruction (power, for example) without distinction of objects, may

we not use our means (our money and their pauperism) to retaliate their

barbarous ravages? 













             Correspondence







Are we obliged to use for resistance exactly the weapons chosen by them for

aggression? When they destroyed Copenhagen by superior force, against all the

laws of God and man, would it have been unjustifiable for the Danes to have

destroyed their ships by torpedoes ? Clearly not ; and they and we should now

be justifiable in the conflagration of St. James' and St. Paul's. And if we do

not carry it into execution, it is because we think it more moral and more

honorable to set a good example, than follow a bad one.







  So much for the happiness of the people of England, and the morality of their

government, in comparison with the happiness and the morality of America. Let

us pass to another subject.







  The crisis, then, of the abuses of banking is arrived. The banks have

pronounced their own sentence of death. Between two and three hundred millions

of dollars of their promissory notes are in the hands of the people, for solid

produce and property sold, and they formally declare they will not pay them.

This is an act of bankruptcy of course, and will be so pronounced by any court

before which it shall be brought. But cui bono? The law can only uncover their

insolvency, by opening to its suitors their empty vaults. Thus by the dupery of

our citizens, and tame acquiescence of our legislators, the nation is plundered

of two or three hundred millions of dollars, treble the amount of debt

contracted in the Revolutionary war, and which, instead 













188        Jefferson's Works







of redeeming our liberty, has been expended on sumptuous houses, carriages, and

dinners. A fearful tax ! if equalized on all ; but overwhelming and convulsive

by its partial fall. The crush will be tremendous ; .very, different from that

brought on by our paper money. That rose and fell so gradually that it kept all

on their guard, and affected severely only early or long-winded contracts. Here

the contract of yesterday crushes in an instant the one or the other party. The

banks stopping payment suddenly, all their mercantile and city debtors do the

same ; and all, in short, except those in the country, who, possessing

property, will be good in the end. But this resource will not enable them to

pay a cent on the dollar. From the establishment. of the United States Bank, to

this day, I have preached against this system, but have been sensible no cure

could be hoped but in the catastrophe now happening. The remedy was to let

banks drop gradation at the expiration of their charters, and for the State

governments to relinquish the power of establishing others. This would not, as

it should not, have given the power of establishing them to Congress. But

Congress could then have issued treasury notes payable within a fixed period,

and founded on a specific tax, the proceeds of which, as they came in, should

be exchangeable for the notes of that particular emission only. This depended,

it is true, on the will of the State legislatures, and would have brought on us

the phalanx of paper. 













             Correspondence          189







interest. But that interest is now defunct. Their gossamer castles are

dissolved, and they can no longer impede and overawe the salutary measures of

the government. Their paper was received on a belief that it was cash on

demand. Themselves have declared it was nothing, and such scenes are now to

take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the

dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of

swindlers. It is impossible not to deplore our past follies, and their present

consequences, but let them at least be warnings against like follies in future.

The banks have discontinued themselves. We are now without any medium; and

necessity, as well as patriotism and confidence, will make us all eager to

receive treasury notes, if founded on specific taxes. Congress may now borrow

of the public, and without interest, all the money they may want, to the amount

of a competent circulation, by merely issuing their own promissory notes, of

proper denominations for the larger purposes of circulation, but not for the

small. Leave that door open for the entrance of metallic money. And, to give

readier credit to their bills, without obliging themselves to give cash for

them on demand, let their collectors be instructed to do so, when they have

cash ; thus, in some measure, performing the functions of a bank, as to their

own notes. Providence seems, indeed, by a special dispensation, to have put

down for us, without a struggle, that very 













            Jefferson's Works







paper enemy which the interest of our citizens long since required ourselves to

put down, at whatever risk. The work is done. The moment is pregnant with

futurity, and if not seized at once by Congress, I know not on what shoal our

bark is next to be stranded. The State legislatures should be immediately urged

to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will

comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment ; and the

non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by legitimate devices. Vale, et

me, ut amaris, ama.















         TO SAMUEL H. SMITH, ESQ.







           MONTICELLO, September 21,1814.







  DEAR SIR,-I learn from the newspapers that the vandalism of our enemy has

triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts, by the destruction of

the public library with the noble edifice in which it was deposited. Of this

transaction, as of that of Copenhagen, the world will entertain but one

sentiment. They will see a nation suddenly withdrawn from a great war, full

armed and full handed, taking advantage of another whom they had recently

forced into it, unarmed, and unprepared, to indulge themselves in acts of

barbarism which do not belong to a civilized age. When Van Ghent destroyed

their shipping at Chatham, and De Ruyter rode triumphantly up 













            Correspondence          191







the Thames, he might in like manner, by the acknowledgment of their own

historians, have forced all their ships up to London bridge, and there have

burnt them, the Tower, and city, had these examples been then set. London, when

thus menaced, was near a thousand years old; Washington is but in its teens.







  I presume it will be among the early objects of Congress to re-commence their

collection. This will be difficult while the war continues, and intercourse

with Europe is attended with so much risk. You know my collection, its

condition and extent. I have been fifty years making it, and have spared no

pains, opportunity or expense, to make it what it is. While residing in Paris,

I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two, in examining

all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hand, and

putting by everything which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare

and valuable in every science. Besides this, I had standing orders during the

whole time I was in Europe, on its principal book-marts, particularly

Amsterdam, Frankfort, Madrid and London, for such works relating to America as

could not be found in Paris. So that in that department particularly, such a

collection was made as probably can never again be effected, because it is

hardly probable that the same opportunities, the same time, industry,

perseverance and expense, with some knowledge of the bibliography of the

subject, would again happen to be in concurrence. 













192         Jefferson's Works







During the same period, and after my return to America, I was led to procure,

also, whatever related to the duties of those in the high concerns of the

nation. So that the. collection, which I suppose is of between nine and ten

thousand volumes, while it includes what is chiefly valuable in science and

literature generally, extends more particularly to whatever belongs to the

American statesman. In the diplomatic and parliamentary branches, it is

particularly full. It is long since I have been sensible it ought not to

continue private property, and had provided that at my death, Congress should

have the refusal of it at their own price. But the loss they have now incurred,

makes the present the proper moment for their accommodation, without regard to

the small remnant of time and the barren. use of my enjoying it. I ask of your

friendship, therefore, to make for me the tender of it to the library committee

of Congress, not knowing myself of whom the committee consists. I enclose you

the catalogue, which will enable them to judge of its contents. Nearly the

whole are well bound, abundance of them elegantly, and of the choicest editions

existing. They may be valued by persons named by themselves, and the payment

made convenient to the public. It may be, for instance, in such annual

instalments as the law of Congress has left at their disposal, or in stock of

any of their late loans, or of any loan they may institute at this session, so

as to spare the present calls of our country, 













           Jefferson's Works      193







and await its days of peace and prosperity. They may enter, nevertheless, into

immediate use of it, as eighteen or twenty wagons would place it in Washington

in a single trip of a fortnight. I should be willing indeed, to retain a few of

the books, to amuse the time I have yet to pass, which might be valued with the

rest, but not included in the sum of valuation until they should be restored at

my death, which I would carefully provide for, so that the whole library as it

stands in the catalogue at this moment should be theirs without any garbling.

Those I should like to retain would be chiefly classical and mathematical. Some

few in other branches, and particularly one of the five encyclopedias in the

catalogue. But this, if not acceptable, would not be urged. I must add, that I

have not revised the library since I came home to live, so that it is probable

some of the books may be missing, except in the chapters of Law and Divinity,

which have been revised and stand exactly as in the catalogue. The return of

the catalogue will of course be needed, whether the tender be accepted or not.

I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish

to exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a

member of. Congress may not have occasion to refer. But such a wish would not

correspond with my views of preventing its dismemberment. My desire is either

to place it in their hands entire, or to preserve it so here. I am engaged in

making an alphabetical







  VOL. XIV-12 













194        Jefferson's Works







index of the authors' names, to be annexed to the catalogue, which I will

forward to you as soon as completed. Any agreement you shall be so good as to

take the trouble of entering into with the committee, I hereby confirm. Accept

the assurance of my great esteem and respect.















    TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES







              (JAMES MADISON).







            MONTICELLO, September 24, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-It is very long since I troubled you with a letter, which has

proceeded from discretion and not want of inclination, because I have really

had nothing to write which ought to have occupied your time. But in the late

events at Washington I have felt so much for you that I cannot withhold the

expression of my sympathies. For although every reasonable man must be sensible

that all you can do is to order, that execution must depend on others, and

failures be imputed to them alone, yet I know that when such failures happen,

they afflict even those who have done everything they could to prevent them.

Had General Washington himself been now at the head of our affairs, the same

event would probably have happened. We all remember the disgraces which befell

us in his time in a trifling war with one or two petty tribes of Indians, in

which two armies were cut off by not half their numbers. Every one knew, and I

person













                Correspondence           195







      ally knew, because I was then of his council, that no







 blame was imputable to him, and that his officers







 alone were the cause of the disasters. They must







 now do the same justice. I am happy to turn to a







 countervailing event, and to congratulate you on







 the destruction of a second hostile fleet on the lakes







 by McDonough ; of which, however, we have not the







 details. While our enemies cannot but feel shame







 for their barbarous achievements at Washington,







 they will be stung to the soul by these repeated vic-







 tories over them on that element on which they wish







 the world to think them invincible. We have dis-







 sipated that error. They must now feel a conviction







 themselves that we can beat them gun to gun, ship







 to ship and fleet to fleet, and that their early suc-







  cesses on the land have been either purchased from







  traitors, or obtained from raw men entrusted of







  necessity with commands for which no experience







  had qualified them, and that every day is adding







  that experience to unquestioned bravery.







        I am afraid the failure of our banks will occasion







  embarrassment for awhile, although it restores to us







  a fund which ought never to have been surrendered







  by the nation, and which now, prudently used,







  will carry us through all the fiscal difficulties of the







  war. At the request of Mr. Eppes, who was chair-







  man of the committee of finance at the preceding







  session, I had written him some long letters on this



  subject. Colonel Monroe asked the reading of them







  some time ago, and I now send him another, written 













           Jefferson's Works







to a member of our legislature, who requested my ideas on the recent bank

events. They are too long for your reading, but Colonel .Monroe can, in a few

sentences, state to you their outline.







Learning by the papers the loss of the library of Congress, I have sent my

catalogue to S. H. Smith, to make to their library committee the offer of my

collection, now of about nine or ten thousand volumes, which may be delivered

to them instantly, on a valuation by persons of their own naming, and be paid

for in any way, and at any term they please; in stock, for example, of any loan

they have unissued, or of any one they may institute at this session; or in

such annual instalments as are at the disposal of the committee. I believe you

are acquainted with the condition of the books, should they wish to be

ascertained of this. I have long been sensible that my library would be an

interesting possession for the public, and the loss Congress has recently

sustained, and the difficulty of replacing it, while our intercourse with

Europe is so obstructed, renders this the proper moment for placing it at their

service. Accept assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship and

respect.















            TO MR. MILES KING.







           MONTICELLO, September 26, 1814.







SIR,-I duly received your letter of August 20th, and thank you for it, because

I believe it was writ













             Correspondence







ten with kind intentions, and a personal concern for my future happiness.

Whether the particular revelation which you suppose to have been made to

yourself were real or imaginary, your reason alone is the competent judge. For

dispute as long as we will on religious tenets, our reason at last must

ultimately decide, as it is the only oracle which God has given us to determine

between what really comes from Him and the phantasms of a disordered or deluded

imagination. When He means to make a personal revelation, He carries conviction

of its authenticity to the reason He has bestowed as the umpire of truth. You

believe you have been favored with such a special communication. Your reason,

not mine, is to judge of this; and if it shall be His pleasure to favor me with

a like admonition, I shall obey it with the same fidelity with which I would

obey His known will in all cases. Hitherto I have been under the guidance of

that portion of reason which He has thought proper to deal out to me. I have

followed it faithfully in all important cases, to such a degree at least as

leaves me without uneasiness ; and if on minor occasions I have erred from its

dictates, I have trust in Him who made us what we are, and know it was not His

plan. to make us always unerring. He has formed us moral agents. Not that, in

the perfection of His state, He can feel pain or pleasure in anything we may do

; He is far above our power ; but that we may promote the happiness of those

with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly 













198        Jefferson's Works







towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly

their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of

conscience, as we value our own. I must ever believe that religion

substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized

by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. Our

particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our God

alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine'







                                  , nor is it given to us in this life to know

whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are exactly the right. Nay, we

have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or a Baptist, a Presbyterian or

an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a Protestant in heaven ; that, on entering that

gate, we leave those badges of schism behind, and find ourselves united in

those principles only in which God has united us all. Let us not be uneasy then

about the different roads we may pursue, as believing them the shortest, to

that our last abode; but, following the guidance of a good conscience, let us

be happy in the hope that by these different paths we shall all meet in the

end. And that you and I may there meet and embrace, is my earnest prayer. And

with this assurance I salute you with brotherly esteem and respect. 













             Correspondence















    TO JOSEPH C. CABELL, ESQ.







           MONTICELLO, September 30, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-In my letter of the 23d, an important fact escaped me which, lest

it should not occur to you, I will mention. The moneys arising from the sales

of the glebe lands in the several counties, have generally, I believe, and

under the sanction of the legislature, been deposited in some of the banks. So

also the funds of the literary society. These debts, although parceled among

the counties, yet the counties constitute the State, and their representatives

the legislature, united into one whole. It is right then that owing $300,000 to

the banks, they should stay so much of that sum in their own hands as will

secure what the banks owe to their constituents as divided into counties.

Perhaps the loss of these funds would be the most lasting of the evils

proceeding from the insolvency of the banks. Ever yours with great esteem and

respect.















           TO DR. THOMAS COOPER.







               MONTICELLO, October 7, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,-Your several favors of September 15th, 21 t, 22d, came all together

by our last mail. I have given to that of the 15th a single reading only,

because the handwriting (not your own) is microscopic and difficult, and

because I shall have an opportunity of studying it in the Portfolio in print. 













200          Jefferson's Works







According to your request I return it for that publication, where it will do a

great deal of good. It will give our young men some idea of what constitutes a

well-educated man ; that Caesar and Virgil, and a few books of Euclid, do not

really contain the sum of all human knowledge, nor give to a man figure in the

ranks of science. Your letter will be a valuable source of consultation for us

in our collegiate courses, when, and if ever, we advance to that stage of our

establishment.







I agree with yours of the 22d, that a professorship of Theology should have no

place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best.

Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the

right of carrying them into practice. Truth advances, and error recedes step by

step only; and to do to our fellow men the most good in our power, we must lead

where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always

the favorable moment for helping them to another step. Perhaps I should concur

with you also in excluding the theory (not the practice) of medicine. This is

the charlatanerie of the body, as the other is of the mind. For classical

learning I have ever been a zealous advocate; and in this, as in his theory of

bleeding and mercury, I was ever opposed to my friend Rush, whom I greatly

loved; but who has done much harm, in the sincerest persuasion that he was

preserving life and happiness to all around him. I have not, however, carried

so far







                 Correspondence.             201







as you do my ideas of the importance of a hypercritical knowledge of the Latin

and Greek languages. I have believed it sufficient to possess a substantial

understanding of their authors.







  In the exclusion of Anatomy and Botany from the eleventh grade of education,

which is that of the man of independent fortune, we separate in opinion. In my

view, no knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own

frame, its parts, their functions and actions. And Botany I rank with the most

valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal

subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables,

refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and

perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our

bodies. To the gentleman it is certainly more interesting than Mineralogy

(which I by no means, however, undervalue), and is more at hand for his

amusement ; and to a country family it constitutes a great portion of their

social entertainment. No country gentleman should be without what amuses every

step he takes into his fields.







  I am sorry to learn the fate of your Emporium. It was adding fast to our

useful knowledge. Our artists particularly, and our statesmen, will have cause

to regret it. But my hope is that its suspension will be temporary only; and

that as soon as we get over the crisis of our disordered circulation, your

publishers will resume it among their first enter













202            Jefferson's Works







prises. Accept my thanks for the benefit of your ideas to our scheme of

education, and the assurance of my constant esteem and respect.















            TO JAMES MADISON.







             MONTICELLO, October 15, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-I thank you for the information of your letter of the 10th. It gives,

at length, a fixed character to our prospects. The war, undertaken on both

sides, to settle the questions of impressment, and the orders of council, now

that these are done away by events, is declared by Great Britain to have

changed its object, . and to have become a war of conquest, to be waged until

she conquers from us our fisheries, the province of Maine, the lakes, States

and territories north of the Ohio, and the navigation of the Mississippi ; in

other words; till she reduces us to unconditional submission. On our part,

then, we ought to propose, as a counterchange of object, the establishment of

the meridian of the mouth of the Sorel northwardly, as the western boundary of

all her possessions. Two measures will enable us to effect it, and without

these, we cannot even defend ourselves. I. To organize the militia into

classes, assigning to each class the duties for which it is fitted, (which, had

it been done when proposed, years ago, would have prevented all our

misfortunes, ) abolishing by a declaratory law the doubts which abstract

scruples in some, and cowardice and 













               Correspondence                 203







treachery in others, have conjured up about passing imaginary lines, and

limiting, at the same time, their services to the contiguous provinces of the

enemy. The a d is the ways and means. You have seen my ideas on this subject,

and I shall add nothing but a rectification of what either I have ill

expressed, or you have misapprehended. If I have used any expression

restraining the emissions of treasury notes to a sufficient medium, as your

letter seems to imply, I have done it inadvertently, and under the impression

then possessing me, that the war would be very short. A sufficient medium would

not, on the principles of any writer, exceed thirty millions of dollars ; and

on those of some, not ten millions. Our experience has proved it may be run up

to two or three hundred millions, without more than doubling what would be the

prices of things under a sufficient medium, or say a metallic one, which would

always keep itself at the sufficient point ; and, if they rise to this term,

and the descent from it be gradual, it would not produce sensible revolutions

in private fortunes. I shall be able to explain my views more definitely by the

use of numbers. Suppose we require, to carry on the war, an annual loan of

twenty millions, then I propose that, in the first year, you shall lay a tax of

two millions, arid emit twenty millions of treasury notes, of a size proper for

circulation, and bearing no interest, to the redemption of which the proceeds

of that tax shall be inviolably pledged and applied, by recalling annually

their amount of 













204              Jefferson's Works







the identical bills funded on them. The second year lay another tax of two

millions, and emit twenty millions more. The third year the same, and so on,

until you have reached the maximum of taxes which ought to be ' imposed. Let me

suppose this maximum to be one dollar a head, or ten millions of dollars,

merely as an exemplification more familiar than would be the algebraical

symbols z or y. You would reach this in five years. The sixth year, then, still

emit twenty millions of treasury notes, and continue all the taxes two years

longer. The seventh year twenty millions more, and continue the whole taxes

another two years ; and so on. Observe, that although you emit ten millions of

dollars a year, you call in ten millions, and, consequently, add but ten

millions annually to the circulation. It would be in thirty years, then, prima

facie, that you would reach the present circulation of three hundred millions,

or the ultimate term to which we might adventure. But observe, also, that in

that time we shall have become thirty millions of people, to whom three hundred

millions of dollars would be no more than one hundred millions to us now ;

which sum would probably not have raised prices more than fifty per cent. on

what may be deemed the standard, or metallic prices: This increased population

and consumption, while it would be increasing the proceeds of the redemption

tax, and lessening the balance annually thrown into circulation, would also

absorb, without saturation, more of the surplus medium, and 













                    Correspondence            205







enable us to push the same process to a much higher term, to one which we might

safely call indefinite, because extending so far beyond the limits, either in

time or expense, of any supportable war. All we should have to do would be,

when the war should be ended, to leave the gradual extinction of these notes to

the operation of the taxes pledged for their redemption ; not to suffer a

dollar of paper to be emitted either by public or private authority, but let

the metallic medium flow back into the channels of circulation, and occupy them

until another war should oblige us to recur, for its support, to the same

resource, and the same process, on the circulating medium.







  The citizens of a country like ours will never have unemployed capital. Too

many enterprises are open, offering high profits, to permit them to lend their

capitals on a regular and moderate interest. They are too enterprising and

sanguine themselves not to believe they can do better with it. I never did

believe you could have gone beyond a first or a second loan, not from a want of

confidence in the public faith, which is perfectly sound, but from a want of

disposable funds in individuals. The circulating fund is the only one we can

ever command with certainty. It is sufficient for all our wants; and the

impossibility of even defending the country without its aid as a borrowing

fund, renders it indispensable that the nation should take and keep it in their

own hands, as their exclusive resource. 













   206           Jefferson's Works







  I have trespassed on your time so far: for explanation only. I will do it no

further than by adding the assurances of my affectionate and respectful

attachment.







Years                Emissions                  Taxes and        Balance in

circula-



                                                         Redemptions.     tion

at end of year.



 1815          20 millions                      2 millions         18 millions



 1816          20    "                              4   "              34    " 



 1817          20    "                              6   "              48    " 



 1818          20    "                              8   "              60    "



 1819          20    "                            10   "              70    " 



 1820          20    "                            10   "              80    " 



 1821          20    "                            10   "              90    "







                 ____







                140







  Suppose the war to terminate here, to wit, at the end of seven years, the

reduction will proceed as follows :







     Years                Taxes and          Balance in circula-



                             Redemptions.      tion at end of year. 







     1822          10 millions          80 millions 



     1823          10   "               70   " 



     1824          10   "               60   " 



     1825          10   "               50   " 



     1826          10   "               40   " 



     1827          10   "               30   " 



     1828          10   "               20   " 



     1829          10   "               10   " 



     1830          10   "                0   "







                    ____







                    140 













                 Correspondence            207







   This is a tabular statement of the amount of emis-







sion, taxes, redemptions, and balances left in circula-







tion every year, on the plan above sketched.















              TO JAMES MONROE.







              MONTICELLO, October 16, 1814.







  DEAR SIR.-Your letter of the 10th has been duly







received. The objects of our contest being thus







entirely changed by England, we must prepare for







interminable war. To this end we should put our







house in order, by providing men and money to







indefinite extent. The former may be done by class-







ing our militia, and assigning each class to the de-







scription of duties for which it is fit. It is nonsense







to talk of regulars. They are not to be had among







a people so easy and happy at home as. ours. We







might as well rely on calling down an army of angels







from heaven. I trust it is now seen that the refusal







to class the militia, when proposed years ago, is the







real source of all our misfortunes in this war. The







other great and indispensable object is to enter on







such a system of finance, as can be permanently







pursued to any length of time whatever. Let us be







allured by no projects of banks, public or private, or







ephemeral expedients, which, enabling us to gasp and  flounder a little longer,

only increase, by protracting







 the agonies of death.







   Perceiving, in a letter from the President, that







either I had ill expressed my ideas on a particular 













208              Jefferson's Works







part of this subject, in the letters 'I sent you, or he had misapprehended

them, I wrote him yesterday an explanation ; and as you have thought the other

letters worth a perusal, and a communication to the Secretary of the Treasury,

I enclose you a copy of this, lest I should be misunderstood by others also.

Only be so good as to return me the whole when done with, as I have no other

copies.







  Since writing the letter now enclosed, I have seen the report of the

committee of finance, proposing taxes to the amount of twenty millions. This is

a dashing proposition. But, if Congress pass it, I shall consider it sufficient

evidence that their constituents generally can pay the tax. No man has greater

confidence than I have, in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent.

Whatever they can, they will. But, without either market or medium, I know not

how it is to be done. All markets abroad, and all at home, are shut to us; so

that we have been feeding our horses on wheat. Before the day of collection,

bank-notes will be but as oak leaves ; and of specie, there is not within all

the United States, one-half of the proposed amount of the taxes. I had thought

myself as bold as was safe in contemplating, as possible, an annual taxation of

ten millions, as a fund for emissions of treasury notes; and, when further

emissions should be necessary, that it would be better  to enlarge the time,

than the tax for redemption. Our position, with respect to our enemy, and our

markets, distinguishes us from all other nations; 













                 Correspondence               209







inasmuch, as a state of war, with us, annihilates in an instant all our surplus

produce, that on which we depended for many comforts of life. This renders

peculiarly expedient the throwing a part of the burdens of war on times of

peace and commerce. Still, however, my hope is that others see resources,

which, in my abstraction from the world, are unseen by me; that there will be

both market and medium to meet these taxes, and that there are circumstances

which render it wiser to levy twenty millions at once on the people, than to

obtain the same sum on a tenth of the tax.







I enclose you a letter from Colonel James Lewis, now of Tennessee, who wishes

to be appointed Indian agent, and I do it lest he should have relied solely on

this channel of communication. You know him better than I do, as he was long

your agent. I have always believed him an honest man, and very good-humored and

accommodating. Of his other qualifications for the office, you are the best

judge. Believe me to be ever affectionately yours.















      TO DOCTOR ROBERT M. PATTERSON.







           MONTICELLO, November 23, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-I have heretofore confided to you my wishes to retire from the chair

of the Philosophical Society, which, however, under the influence of your

recommendations, I have hitherto deferred. I have never, however, ceased from

the purpose, and from







VOL. XIV-14 













210            Jefferson's Works







everything I can observe or learn at this distance, I suppose that a new choice

can now be made with as much harmony as may be expected at any future time. I

send therefore, by this mail, my resignation, with such entreaties to be

omitted at the ensuing election as I must hope will be yielded to, for in truth

I cannot be easy in holding, as a sinecure, an honor so justly due to the

talents and services of others. I pray your friendly assistance in assuring the

society of the sentiments of affectionate respect and gratitude with which I

retire from the high and honorable relation in which I have stood with them,

and that you will believe me to be ever and affectionately yours.















TO ROBERT. M. PATTERSON, SECRETARY OF THE AMERI-







    CAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.







           MONTICELLO, NOVEMBER 23, 1814.







  SIR,-I solicited, on a former occasion, permission from the American

Philosophical Society, to retire from the honor of their chair, under a

consciousness that distance as well as other circumstances, denied me the power

of executing the duties of the station







                                 , and that those on whom they devolved were

best entitled to the honors they confer. It was the pleasure of the society at

that time, that I should remain in their service, and they have continued since

to renew the same marks of their partiality. Of these I have been ever duly

sensible, and now beg 













                 Correspondence            211







leave to return my thanks for them with humble gratitude. Still, I have never

ceased, nor can I cease to feel that I am holding honors without yielding

requital, and justly belonging to others. As the period of election is now

therefore approaching, I take the occasion of begging to be withdrawn from the

attention of the society at their ensuing choice, and to be permitted now to

resign the office of president into their hands, which I hereby do. I shall

consider myself sufficiently honored in remaining a private member of their

body, and shall ever avail myself with zeal of every occasion which may occur,

of being useful to them, retaining indelibly a profound sense of their past

favors.







  I avail myself of the channel through which the last notification of the

pleasure of the society was conveyed to me, to make this communication, and

with the greater satisfaction, as it gratifies me with the occasion of assuring

you personally of my high respect for yourself, and of the interest I shall

ever take in learning that your worth and talents secure to you the successes

they merit.















          TO WILLIAM SHORT, ESQ.







           MONTICELLO, November 28, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-Yours of October 28th came to hand on the 15th instant only. The

settlement of your boundary with Colonel Monroe, is protracted by circumstances

which seem foreign to it. One would 













212               Jefferson's Works







hardly have expected that the hostile expedition to Washington could have had

any connection with an operation one hundred miles distant. Yet preventing his

attendance, nothing could be done. I am satisfied there is no unwillingness on

his part, but on the contrary a desire to have it settled ; and therefore, if

he should think it indispensable to be present at the investigation, as is

possible, the very first time he comes here I will press him to give a day to

the decision, without regarding Mr. Carter's absence. Such an occasion must

certainly offer soon after the fourth of March, when Congress rises of

necessity, and be assured I will not lose one possible moment in effecting it.







  Although withdrawn from all anxious attention to political concerns, yet I

will state my impressions as to the present war, because your letter leads to

the subject. The essential grounds of the war were, 1st, the orders of council

; and 2d, the impressment of our citizens; (for I put out of sight from the

love of peace the multiplied insults on our government and aggressions on our

commerce, with which our pouch, like the Indian's, had long been filled to the

mouth.) What immediately produced the declaration was, 1st, the proclamation of

the Prince Regent that he would never repeal the orders of council as to us,

until Bonaparte should have revoked his decrees as to all other nations as well

as ours ; and 2d, the declaration of his minister to ours that no arrangement

whatever could be devised, admissible 













                   Correspondence             213







in lieu of impressment. It was certainly a misfortune that they did not know

themselves at the date of this silly and insolent proclamation, that within one

month they would repeal the orders, and that we, at the date of our

declaration, could not know of the repeal which was then going on one thousand

leagues distant. Their determinations, as declared by themselves, could alone

guide us, and they shut the door on all further negotiation, throwing down to

us the gauntlet of war or submission as the only alternatives. We cannot blame

the government for choosing that of war, because certainly the great majority

of the nation thought it ought to be chosen, not that they were to gain by it

in dollars and cents ; all men know that war is a losing game to both parties.

But they know also that if they do not resist encroachment at some point, all

will be taken from them, and that more would then be lost even in dollars and

cents by submission than resistance. It is the case of giving a part to save

the whole, a limb to save life. It is the melancholy law of human societies to

be compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater ;

to deter their neighbors from rapine by making it cost them more than honest

gains. The enemy are accordingly now disgorging what they had so ravenously

swallowed. The orders of council had taken from us near one thousand vessels.

Our list of captures from them is now one thousand three hundred, and, just

become sensible that it is small and not large ships which gall 













214              Jefferson's Works







them most, we shall probably add one thousand prizes a year to their past

losses. Again, supposing that, according to the confession of their own

minister in Parliament, the Americans they had impressed were something short

of two thousand, the war against us alone cannot cost them less than twenty

millions of dollars a year, so that each American impressed has already cost

them ten thousand dollars, and every year will add five thousand dollars more

to his price. We, I suppose, expend more; but had we adopted the other

alternative of submission, no mortal can tell what the cost would have been. I

consider the war then as entirely justifiable on our part, although I am still

sensible it is a deplorable misfortune to us. It has arrested the course of the

most remarkable tide of prosperity any nation ever experienced, and has closed

such prospects of future improvement as were never before in the view of any

people. Farewell all hopes of extinguishing public debt ! farewell all visions

of applying surpluses of revenue to the improvements of peace rather than the

ravages of war. Our enemy has indeed the consolation of Satan on removing our

first parents from Paradise : from a peaceable and agricultural nation, he

makes us a military and manufacturing one. We shall indeed survive the

conflict. Breeders enough will remain to carry on population. We shall retain

our country, and rapid advances in the art of war will soon enable us to beat

our enemy, and probably drive him from the continent. We have men enough, 













                Correspondence                215







and I am in hopes the present session of Congress will provide the means of

commanding their services. But I wish I could see them get into a better train

of finance. Their banking projects are like dosing dropsy with more water. If

anything could revolt our citizens against the war, it would be the

extravagance with which they are about to be taxed. It is strange indeed that

at this day, and in a country where English proceedings are so familiar, the

principles and advantages of funding should be neglected, and expedients

resorted to. Their new bank, if not abortive at its birth, will not last

through one campaign ; and the taxes proposed cannot be paid. How can a people

who cannot get fifty cents a bushel for their wheat, while they pay twelve

dollars a bushel for their salt, pay five times the amount of taxes they ever

paid before? Yet that will be the case in all the States south of the Potomac.

Our resources are competent to the maintenance of the war if duly economized

and skilfully employed in the way of anticipation. However, we must suffer, I

suppose, from our ignorance in funding, as we did from that of fighting, until

necessity teaches us both; and, fortunately, our stamina are so vigorous as to

rise superior to great mismanagement. This year I think we shall have learnt

how to call forth our force, and by







                , the next I hope our funds, and even if the state of Europe

should not by that time give the enemy employment enough nearer home, we shall

leave him nothing to fight for here. These are my views of the 













            Jefferson's Works







war. They embrace a great deal of sufferance, trying privations, and no benefit

but that of teaching our enemy that he is never to gain by wanton injuries on

us. To me this state of things brings a sacrifice of all tranquillity and

comfort through the residue of life. For although the debility of age disables

me from the services and sufferings of the field, yet, by the total

annihilation in value of the produce which was to give me subsistence and

independence, I shall be like Tantalus, up to the shoulders in water, yet dying

with thirst. We can make indeed enough to eat, drink and clothe ourselves; but

nothing for our salt, iron, groceries and taxes, which must be paid in money.

For what can we raise for the market? Wheat? we can only give it to our horses,

as we have been doing ever since harvest. Tobacco ? it is not worth the pipe it

is smoked in. Some say whiskey ; but all mankind must become drunkards to

consume it. But although we feel, we shall not flinch. We must consider now, as

in the Revolutionary war, that although the evils' of resistance are great,

those of submission would be greater. We must meet, therefore, the former as

the casualties of tempests and earthquakes, and like them necessarily resulting

from the constitution of the world. Your situation, my dear friend, is much

better. For, although I do not know with certainty the nature of your

investments, yet I presume they are not in banks, insurance companies, or any

other of those gossamer castles. If in ground-rents, they are solid; if in

stock of the







                  Correspondence              217







United States, they are equally so. I once thought that in the event of a war

we should be obliged to suspend paying the interest of the public debt. But a

dozen years more of experience and observation on our people and government,

have satisfied me it will never be done. The sense of the necessity of public

credit is so universal and so deeply rooted, that no other necessity will

prevail against it ; and I am glad to see that while the former eight millions

are steadfastly applied to the sinking of the old debt, the Senate have lately

insisted on a sinking fund for the new. This is the dawn of that improvement in

the management of our finances which I look to for salvation; and I trust that

the light will continue to advance, and point out their way to our legislators.

They will soon see that instead of taxes for the whole year's expenses, which

the people cannot pay, a tax to the amount of the interest and a reasonable

portion of the principal will command the whole sum, and throw a part of the

burdens of war on times of peace and prosperity. A sacred payment of interest

is the only way to make the most of their resources, and a sense of that

renders your income from our funds more certain than mine from lands. Some

apprehend danger from the defection of Massachusetts. It is a disagreeable

circumstance, but not a dangerous one. If they become neutral, we are

sufficient for one enemy without them, and in fact we get no aid from them now.

If their administration determines to join the enemy, their force will be

annihilated by 













218              Jefferson's Works







equality of division among themselves. Their federalists will then call in the

English army, the republicans ours, and it will only be a transfer of the scene

of war from Canada to Massachusetts; and we can get ten men to go to

Massachusetts for one who will go to Canada. Every one, too, must know that we

can at any moment make peace with England at the expense of the navigation and

fisheries of Massachusetts. But it will not come to this. Their own people will

put down these f actionists as soon as they see the real object of their

opposition; and of this Vermont, New Hampshire, and even Connecticut itself,

furnish proofs.







  You intimate a possibility of your return to France, now that Bonaparte is

put down. I do not wonder at it; France, freed from that monster, must again

become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of

all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one, and

the first of all not under those ties. Yet I doubt if the tranquillity of

France is entirely settled. If her Pretorian bands are not furnished with

employment on her external enemies, I fear they will recall the old, or set up

some new cause.







  God bless you and preserve you in bodily health. Tranquillity of mind depends

much on ourselves, and greatly on due reflection " how much pain have cost us

the evils which have never happened. " Affectionately adieu. 













                Correspondence          219















               TO JOHN MELISH.







             MONTICELLO, December 10, 1814.







  DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your favor of the map







of the sine qua non, enclosed in your letter of Novem-







ber 12th. It was an excellent idea; and if, with the documents distributed by

Congress, copies of these had been sent to be posted up in every street, on

every town-house and court-house, it would have painted to the eyes of those

who cannot read without reflecting, that reconquest is the ultimate object of

Britain. The first step towards this is to set a limit to their expansion by

taking from them that noble country which the foresight of their fathers

provided f or their multiplying and needy offspring ; to be followed up by the

compression, land-board and seaboard, of that omnipotence which the English

fancy themselves now to possess. A vain and foolish imagination! Instead of

fearing and endeavoring to crush our prosperity, had they cultivated it in

friendship, it might have become a bulwark instead of a breaker to them. There

has never been an administration in this country which would not gladly have

met them more than half way on the road to an equal, a just and solid

connection of friendship and intercourse. And as to repressing our growth, they

might as well attempt to repress the waves of the ocean.







Your American Atlas is a useful undertaking for those who will live to see and

to use it. To me every 













220             Jefferson's Works







mail, in the departure of some contemporary, brings warning to be in readiness

myself also, and to cease from new engagements. It is a warning of no alarm.

When faculty after faculty is retiring from us, and all the avenues to cheerful

sensation closing, sight failing now, hearing next, then memory, debility of

body, trepitude of mind, nothing remaining but a sickly vegetation, with

scarcely the relief of a little locomotion, the last cannot be but a coup de

grace.







You propose to me the preparation of a new edition of the Notes on Virginia. I

formerly entertained the idea, and from time to time noted some new matter,

which I thought I would arrange at leisure for a posthumous edition. But I now

begin to see that it is impracticable for me. Nearly forty years of additional

experience in the affairs of mankind would lead me into dilatations ending I

know not where. That experience indeed has not altered a single principle. But

it has furnished -matter of abundant development. Every moment, too, which I

have to spare from my daily exercise and affairs is engrossed by a

correspondence, the result of the extensive relations which my course of life

has necessarily occasioned. And now the act of writing itself is becoming slow,

laborious and irksome. I consider, therefore, the idea of preparing a new copy

of that work as no more to be entertained. The work itself indeed is nothing

more than the measure of a shadow, never stationary, but lengthening as the sun

advances, and to be taken anew from hour to hour. It 













             Correspondence          221



must remain, therefore, for some other hand to sketch its appearance at another

epoch, to furnish another element for calculating the course and motion of this

member of our federal system. For this, every day is adding new matter and

strange matter. That of reducing, by impulse instead of attraction, a sister

planet into its orbit, will be as new in our political as in the planetary

system. The operation, however, will be painful rather than difficult. The

sound part of our wandering star will probably, by its own internal energies,

keep the unsound within its course; or if a foreign power is called in, we

shall have to meet it but so much the nearer, and with a more overwhelming

force. It will probably shorten the war. For I think it probable that the sine

qua non was designedly put into an impossible form to give time for the

development of their plots and concerts with the factionists of Boston, and

that they are holding off to see the issue, not of the Congress of Vienna, but

that of Hartford. This will begin a new chapter in our history, and with a wish

that you may live in health to see its easy close, I tender you the assurance

of my great esteem and respect.















       TO MONSIEUR CORREA DE SERRA.







            MONTICELLO, December 27, 1814.







DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 9th has been duly received, and I thank you for the

recipe for imitating 













222             Jefferson's Works







purrolani, which I shall certainly try on my cisterns the ensuing summer. The

making them impermeable to water is of great consequence to me. That one

chemical subject may follow another, I enclose you two morsels of ore found in

this neighborhood, and supposed to be of antimony. I am not certain, but I

believe both are from the same piece, and although the very spot where that was

found is not known, yet it is known to be within a certain space not too large

to be minutely examined, if the material be worth it. This you can have

ascertained in Philadelphia, where it is best known to the artists how great a

desideratum antimony is with them.







  You will have seen that I resigned the chair of the American Philosophical

Society, not awaiting your further information as to the settlement of the

general opinion on a successor without schism. I did it because the term of

election was too near to admit further delay.







  On the subject which entered incidentally into our conversation while you

were here, when I came to reflect maturely, I concluded to be silent. To do

wrong is a melancholy resource, even where retaliation renders it indispensably

necessary. It is better to suffer much from the scalpings, the conflagrations,

the rapes and rapine of savages, than to countenance and strengthen such

barbarisms by retortion. I have ever deemed it more honorable and more

profitable too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one. The good

opinion of mankind, like the lever of 













                Correspondence           223







Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world. I therefore have never

proposed or mentioned the subject to any one.







  I have received a letter from Mr. Say, in which he expresses a thought of

removing to this country, having discontinued the manufactory in which he was

engaged; and he asks information from me of the prices of land, labor, produce,

etc., in the neighborhood of Charlottesville, on which he has cast his eye. Its

neighborhood has certainly the advantages of good soil, fine climate,

navigation. to market, and rational and republican society. It would be a good

enough position too for the re-establishment of his cotton works, on a moderate

scale, and combined with the small plan of agriculture to which he seems solely

to look. But when called on to name prices, what is to be said? We have no

fixed prices now. Our dropsical medium is long since divested of the quality of

a medium of value; nor can I find any other. In most countries a fixed quantity

of wheat is perhaps the best permanent standard. But here the blockade of our

whole coast, preventing all access to a market, has depressed the price of

that, and exalted that of other things, in opposite directions, and, combined

with the effects of the paper deluge, leaves really no common measure of values

to be resorted to. This paper, too, received now without confidence, and for

momentary purposes only, may, in a moment, be worth nothing. I shall think

further on the subject, and give to Mr. Say the best informa-























224            Jefferson's Works







tion in my power. To myself such an addition to our rural society would be

inestimable ; and I can readily conceive that it may be for the benefit of his

children and their descendants to remove to a country where, for enterprise and

talents, so many avenues are open to fortune and fame. But whether, at his time

of life, and with habits formed f or the state of society in France, a change

for one so entirely different will be for his personal happiness, you can

better judge than myself.







  Mr. Say will be surprised to find, that forty years after the development of

sound financial principles by Adam Smith and the Economists, and a dozen years

after he has given them to us in a corrected, dense and lucid form, there

should be so much ignorance of them in our country; that instead of funding

issues of paper on the hypothecation of specific redeeming taxes, (the only

method of anticipating, in a time of war, the resources of times of peace,

tested by the experience of nations,) we are trusting to tricks of jugglers on

the cards, to the illusions of banking schemes for the resources of the war,

and for the cure of colic to inflations of more wind. The wise proposition of

the Secretary of War, too, for filling our ranks with regulars, and putting our

militia into an effective form, seems to be laid aside. I fear, therefore,

that, if the war continues, it will require another year of sufferance for men

and money to lead our legislators into such a military and financial regimen as

may carry us through a war of any 













                  Correspondence            225







length. But my hope is in peace. The negotiators at Ghent are agreed now on

every point save one, the demand and cession of a portion of Maine. This, it is

well known, cannot be yielded by us, nor deemed by them an object for

continuing a war so expensive, so injurious to their commerce and manufactures,

and so odious in the eyes of the world. But it is a thread to hold by until

they can hear the result, not of the Congress of Vienna, but of Hartford. When

they shall know, as they will know, that nothing will be done there, they will

let go their hold, and complete the peace of the world, by agreeing to the

status ante bellum. Indemnity for the past, and security for the future, which

was our motto at the beginning of this war, must be adjourned to another, when,

disarmed and bankrupt, our enemy shall be less able to insult and plunder the

world with impunity. This will be after my time. One war, such as that of our

Revolution, is enough for one life. Mine has been too much prolonged to make me

the witness of a second, and I hope for a coup de grace before a third shall

come upon us. If, indeed, Europe has matters to settle which may reduce this

hostis humani generis to a state of peace and moral order, I shall see that

with pleasure, and then sing, with old Simeon, nunc dimittis Domine. For

yourself, cura ut valeas, et me,







ut amaris, ama.























   VOL. XIV---I5 













226           Jefferson's Works















     TO COLONEL JAMES MONROE.







              MONTICELLO, January 1, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-Your letters of November the 30th and December the 21st have been,

received with great pleasure. A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of

newspaper lies, serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my

scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper, makes. me indifferent whether

I ever see one. The embarrassments at Washington, in August last, I expected

would be great in any state of things ; but they proved greater than expected.

I never doubted that the plans of the President were wise and sufficient. Their

failure we all impute, 1, to the insubordinate temper of Armstrong; and 2, to

the indecision of Winder. However, it ends well. It mortifies ourselves, and so

may check, perhaps, the silly boasting spirit of our newspapers, and it enlists

the feelings of the world on our side ; and the advantage of public opinion is

like that of the weather-gauge in a naval action. In Europe, the transient

possession of our capital can be no disgrace. Nearly every capital there was in

posses$ion of its enemy; some often and long. But diabolical as they paint that

enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor private dwellings. It was reserved

for England to show that Bonaparte, in atrocity, was an infant to their

ministers and their generals. They are taking his place in the eyes of Europe,

and have turned into our channel all its good will. This will 













                  Correspondence              227







be worth the million of dollars the repairs of their conflagration will cost

us. I hope that to preserve this weather-gauge of public opinion, and to

counteract the slanders and falsehoods disseminated by the English papers, the

government will make it a standing instruction to their ministers at foreign

courts, to keep Europe truly informed of occurrences here, by publishing in

their papers the naked truth always, whether favorable or unfavorable. For

.they will believe the good, if we candidly tell them the bad also. .







  But you have two more serious causes of uneasiness; the want of men and

money. For the former, nothing more wise or efficient could have been imagined

than what you proposed. It would have filled our ranks with regulars, and that,

too, by throwing a just share of the burden on the purses of those whose

persons are exempt either by age or office; and it would have rendered our

militia, like those of the Greeks and Romans, a nation of warriors. But the

go-by seems to have been given to your proposition, and longer sufferance is

necessary to force us to what is best. We seem equally incorrigible to our

financial course. Although a century of British experience has proved to what a

wonderful extent the funding on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to

anticipate in war the resources of peace, and although the other nations of

Europe have tried and trodden every path of force or folly in fruitless quest

of the same object, yet we still 













228         Jefferson's Works







expect to find in juggling tricks and banking dreams, that money can be made

out of nothing, and in sufficient quantity to meet the expenses of a heavy war

by sea and land. It is said, indeed, that money cannot be borrowed from our

merchants as from those of England. But it can be borrowed from our people.

They will give you all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the

bankrupt trash they now are obliged to receive for want of any other, you will

give them a paper promise funded on a specific pledge, and of a size for common

circulation. But you say the merchants will not take this paper. What the

people take, the merchants must take, or sell nothing. All these doubts and

fears prove only the extent of the dominion which the banking institutions have

obtained over the minds of our citizens, and especially of those inhabiting

cities or other banking places ; and this dominion must be broken, or it will

break us. But here, as in the other case, we must make up our minds to suffer

yet longer before we can get right. The misfortune is, that in the meantime we

shall plunge ourselves in unextinguishable debt, and entail on our posterity an

inheritance of eternal taxes, which will bring our government and people into

the condition of those of England, a nation of pikes and gudgeons, the latter

bred merely as food for the former. But, however these difficulties of men and

money may be disposed of, it is fortunate that neither of them will affect our

war by sea. Privateers will find their own men and money, Let nothing be 













                       Correspondence             229







      spared to encourage them. They are the dagger







 which strikes at the heart of the enemy, their com-







 merce. Frigates and seventy-fours are a sacrifice







 we must make, heavy as it is, to the prejudices of a







 part of our citizens. They have, indeed, rendered







 a great moral service, which has delighted me as







 much as any one in the United States. But they







 have had no physical effect sensible to the enemy;







 and now, while we must fortify them in our harbors







 and keep armies to defend them, our privateers are







 bearding and blockading the enemy in their own sea-







 ports. Encourage them to burn all their prizes, and







 let the public pay for them. They will cheat us







 enormously. No matter; they will make the mer-







 chants of England feel, and squeal, and cry out for







 peace.







        I much regretted your acceptance of the War De-







  partment. Not that I know a person who I think







  would better conduct it. But, conduct it ever so







  wisely, it will be a sacrifice of yourself. Were an







  angel from heaven to undertake that office, all our







  miscarriages would be ascribed to him. Raw troops,







  no troops, insubordinate militia, want of arms, want







  of money, want of provisions, all will be charged to







  want of management in you. I speak from experi-







  ence, when I was Governor of Virginia. Without a







  regular in the State, and scarcely a musket to put







  into the hands of the militia, invaded by two armies,



  Arnold's from the sea-board and Cornwallis' from







  the southward, when we were driven from Richmond























230             Jefferson's Works







and Charlottesville, and every member of my council fled from their homes, it

was not the total destitution of means, but the mismanagement of them, which,

in the querulous voice of the public, caused all our misfortunes. It ended,

indeed, in the capture of the whole hostile force, but not till means were

brought us by General Washington's army, and the French fleet and army. And

although the legislature, who were personally intimate with both the means and

measures, acquitted me with justice and thanks, yet General Lee has put all

those imputations among the romances of his historical novel, for the amusement

of credulous and uninquisitive readers. Not that I have seen the least

disposition to censure you. On the contrary, your conduct on the attack of

Washington has met the praises of every one, and your plan for regulars and

militia, their approbation. But no campaign is as yet opened. No Generals have

yet an interest in shifting their own incompetence on you, no army agents their

rogueries. I sincerely pray you may never meet censure where you will deserve

most praise, and that your own happiness and prosperity may be the result of

your patriotic services.







  Ever and affectionately yours. 













              Correspondence               231















            TO L. H. GIRARDIN.







             MONTICELLO, January 15, 1815.







  I have no document respecting Clarke's expedition except the letters of which

you are in possession, one of which, I believe, gives some account of it; nor

do I possess Imlay's history of Kentucky.







  Of Mr. Wythe's early history I scarcely know anything, except that he was

self-taught;. and perhaps this might not have been as to the Latin language.

Dr. Small was his bosom friend, and to me as a father. To his enlightened and

affectionate guidance of my studies while at college, I am indebted for

everything.







  He was Professor of Mathematics at William and Mary, and, f or some time, was

in the philosophical chair. He first introduced into both schools rational and

elevated courses of study, and, f rom an extraordinary conjunction of eloquence

and logic, was enabled to communicate them to the students with great effect.

He procured for me the patronage of Mr. Wythe, and both of them, the attentions

of Governor Fauquier, the ablest man who ever filled the chair of government

here. They were inseparable friends, and at their frequent dinners with the

Governor, (after his family had returned to England,) he admitted me always, to

make it a partie quarroe. At these dinners I have heard more good sense, more

rational and philosophical conversations, than in all my life besides. They

were truly Attic societies. 













232              Jefferson's Works







The Governor was musical also, and a good performer, and associated me with two

or three other amateurs in his weekly concerts. He merits honorable mention in

your history, if any proper occasion offers. So also does Dabney Carr, father

of Peter Carr, mover of the proposition of March, 1773, for committees of

correspondence, the first fruit of which was the call of an American Congress.

I return your two pamphlets with my thanks. and salute you with esteem and

respect.















          TO CHARLES CLAY, ESQ.







            MONTICELLO, January 29, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-Your letter of December 20th was four weeks on its way to me. I thank

you for it; for although founded on a misconception, it is evidence of that

friendly concern for my peace and welfare, which I have ever believed you to

feel. Of publishing a book on religion, my dear Sir, I never had an idea. I

should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world

of religious sects.  Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every

individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own. To undertake

to bring them all right, would be like undertaking, single-handed, to fell the

forests of America. Probably you have heard me say I had taken the four

Evangelists, had cut out from them every text they had recorded of the moral

precepts of Jesus, and 













               Correspondence               233







arranged them in a certain order, and although they appeared but as fragments,

yet fragments of the most sublime edifice of morality which had ever been

exhibited to man. This I have probably mentioned to you, because it is true;

and the idea of its publication may have suggested itself as an inference of

your own mind. I not only write nothing on religion, but rarely permit myself

to speak on it, and never but in a reasonable society. I have probably said

more to you than to any other person, because we have had more hours of

conversation in duetto in our meetings at the Forest. I abuse the priests,

indeed, who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of their Master,

and who have laid me under no obligations of reticence as to the tricks of

their trade. The genuine system of Jesus, and the artificial structures they

have erected, to make them the instruments of wealth, power, and preeminence to

themselves, are as distinct things in my view as light and darkness ; and while

I have classed them with soothsayers and necromancers, I place Him among the

greatest reformers of morals, and scourges of priest-craft that have ever

existed. They felt Him as such, and never rested until they had silenced Him by

death. But His heresies against Judaism prevailing in the long run, the priests

have tacked about, and rebuilt upon them the temple which He destroyed, as

splendid, as profitable, and as imposing as that.







Government, as well as religion, has furnished its 













234                Jefferson's Works







schisms, its persecutions, and its devices for fattening idleness on the

earnings of the people. It has its hierarchy of emperors, kings, princes, and

nobles, as that has of popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests. In

short, cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only, but are

reveling on the blood of every living people. Turning, then, from this

loathsome combination of Church and State, and weeping over the follies of our

fellow men who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these

mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them

to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.







  I have received from Philadelphia, by mail, the spectacles you had desired,

and now forward them by the same conveyance, as equally safe and more in time,

than were they to await my own going. In a separate case is a complete set of

glasses, from early use to old age. I think the pair now in the frames will

suit your eyes, but should they not, you will easily change them by the screws.

I believe the largest numbers are the smallest magnifiers, but am not certain.

Trial will readily ascertain it. You must do me the favor to accept them as a

token of my friendship, and with them the assurance of my great esteem and

respect. 













             Correspondence          235















      TO GOVERNOR WILLIAM PLUMER.







             MONTICELLO, January 31, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of December 30th has been received. In answer to your

question whether in the course of my reading I have ever found that any country

or even considerable island was without inhabitants when first discovered ? I

must answer, with Mr. Adams, in the negative. Although the fact is curious, it

had never before struck my attention. Some small islands have been found, and

are at this day, without inhabitants, but this is easily accounted for. Man

being a gregarious animal, will not remain but where there can be a sufficient

herd of his own kind to satisfy his social propensities. Add to this that

insulated settlements, if small, would be liable to extirpations by occasional

epidemics.







  I thank you or the pamphlet you have been so kind as to send me, and have

read it with much satisfaction. But with those to whom it is addressed Moses

and the prophets have no authority but when administering to their worldly

gain. The paradox with me is how any friend to the union of our country can, in

conscience, contribute a cent to the maintenance of any one who perverts the

sanctity of his desk to the open inculcation of rebellion, civil war,

dissolution of government, and the miseries of anarchy. When England took alarm

lest France, become republican, should recover energies dangerous to her, she

employed emissaries with means to engage incen-













236               Jefferson's Works







diaries and anarchists in the disorganization of all government there. These,

assuming exaggerated zeal f or republican government and the rights of the

people, crowded their inscriptions into the Jacobin societies, and overwhelming

by their majorities the honest and enlightened patriots of the original

institution, distorted its objects, pursued its genuine founders under the name

of Brissotines and Girondists unto death, intrigued themselves into the

municipality of Paris, controlled by terrorism the proceedings of the

legislature, in which they were faithfully aided by their co-stipendiaries

there, the Dantons and Marats the Mountain, murdered their king, septembrized

the nation, and thus accomplished their stipulated task of demolishing liberty

and government with it. England now fears the rising force of this republican

nation, and by the same means is endeavoring to effect the same course of

miseries and destruction here; it is impossible where one sees like courses of

events commence, not to ascribe them to like causes. We know that the

government of England, maintaining itself by corruption at home, uses the same

means in other countries of which she has any jealousy, by subsidizing

agitators and traitors among themselves to distract and paralyze them. She

sufficiently manifests that she has no disposition to spare ours. We see in the

proceedings of Massachusetts, symptoms which plainly indicate such a course,

and we know as far as such practices can ever be dragged into light,







                Correspondence           237







that she has practiced, and with success, on leading individuals of that State.

Nay further, we see those individuals acting on the very plan which our

information had warned us was settled between the parties. These elements of

explanation, history cannot f ail of putting together in recording the crime of

combining with the oppressors of the earth to extinguish the last spark of

human hope, that here, at length, will be preserved a model of government,

securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor, by an organization

constantly subject to his own will. The crime indeed, if accomplished, would

immortalize its perpetrators, and their names would descend in history with.

those of Robespierre and his associates, as the guardian gen€ of despotism, and

demons of human liberty. I do not mean to say that all who are acting with

these men are under the same motives. I know some of them personally to be

incapable of it. Nor was that the case with the disorganizers and assassins of

Paris. Delusions there, and party perversions here, furnish unconscious

assistants to the hired actors in these atrocious scenes. But I have never

entertained one moment's fear on this subject. The people of this country enjoy

too much happiness to risk it for nothing; and I have never doubted that

whenever the incendiaries of Massachusetts should venture openly to raise the

standard of separation, its citizens would rise in mass and do justice

themselves to their own parricides. 













 238              Jefferson's Works







  I am glad to learn that you persevere in your historical work. I am sure it

will be executed on sound principles of Americanism, and I hope your

opportunities will enable you to make the abortive crimes of the present,

useful as a lesson for future times.







  In aid of your general work I possess no materials whatever, or they should

be entirely at your service; and I am sorry that I have not a single copy of

the pamphlet you ask, entitled "A Summary View of the Rights of British

America. " It was the draught of an instruction which I had meant to propose

for our delegates to the first Congress. Being prevented by sickness from

attending our convention, I sent it to them, and they printed without adopting

it, in the hope that conciliation was not yet desperate. Its only merit was in

being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole

length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us

and England but that of being under the same king. Haring's collection of our

statutes is published, I know, as far as the third volume, bringing them down

to 1710 ; and I rather believe a fourth has appeared. One more will probably

complete the work of the Revolution, and will be to us an inestimable treasure,

as being the only collection of all the acts of our legislatures now extant in

print or manuscript.







  Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect. 













                Correspondence             239















          TO JOHN VAUGHAN, ESQ.







             MONTICELLO, February 5, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-Your very friendly letter of January 4th is but just received, and

I am much gratified by the interest taken by yourself, and others of my

colleagues of the Philosophical Society, in what concerned myself on

withdrawing from the presidency of the Society. My desire to do so had been so

long known to every member, and the continuance of it to some, that I did not

suppose it can be misunderstood by the public. Setting aside the consideration

of distance, which must be obvious to all, nothing is more incumbent on the

old, than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to

younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can

no longer perform. I rejoice in the election of Dr. Wistar, and trust that his

senior standing in the society will have been considered as a f air motive of

preference of those whose merits, standing alone, would have justly entitled

them to the honor, and who, as juniors, according to the course of nature, may

still expect their turn.







  I have received, with very great pleasure, the visit of Mr. Ticknor, and find

him highly distinguished by science and good sense. He was accompanied by Mr.

Gray, son of the late Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, of great

information and promise also. It gives me ineffable comfort to see such

subjects coming forward to take charge of the political 













240              Jefferson's Works







and civil rights, the establishment of which has cost us such sacrifices. Mr.

Ticknor will be fortunate if he can get under the wing of Mr. Correa ; and, if

the happiness of Mr. Correa requires (as I suppose it does) his return to

Europe, we must sacrifice it to that which his residence here would have given

us, and acquiesce under the regrets which our transient acquaintance with his

worth cannot fail to embody with our future recollections of him. Of Michaux's

work I possess three volumes, or rather cahiers, one on Oaks, another on

Beeches and Birches, and a third on Pines.







  I salute you with great friendship and respect















   TO HIS EXCELLENCY WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD.







            MONTICELLO, February 11, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-I have to thank you for your letter of June 16th. It presents those

special views of the state of things in Europe, for which we look in vain into

newspapers. They tell us only of the downfall of Bonaparte, but nothing of the

temper, the views, the secret workings of the high agents in these

transactions. Although we neither expected, nor wished any act of friendship

from Bonaparte, and always detested him as a tyrant, yet he gave employment to

much of the force of the nation who was our common enemy. So far, his downfall

was illy timed for us; it gave to England an opportunity to turn full-handed on

us, when we were unprepared. No mat













                   Correspondence                241







ter, we can beat her on our own soil, leaving the laws of the ocean to be

settled by the maritime powers of Europe, who are equally oppressed and

insulted by the usurpations of England on that element. Our particular and

separate grievance is only the impressment of our citizens. We must sacrifice

the last dollar and drop of blood to rid us of that badge of slavery ; and it

must rest with England alone to say whether it is worth eternal war, for

eternal it must be if she holds to the wrong. She will probably find that the

six thousand citizens she took from us by impressment have already cost her ten

thousand guineas a man, and will cost her, in addition, the half of that

annually, during the continuance of the war, besides the captures on the ocean,

and the loss of our commerce. She might certainly find cheaper means of manning

her fleet, or, if to be manned at this expense, her fleet will break her down.

The first year of our warfare by land was disastrous. Detroit, Queenstown,

Frenchtown, and Beaver Dam, witness that. But the second was generally

successful, and the third entirely so, both by sea and land. For I set down the

coup de main at Washington as more disgraceful to England than to us. The

victories of the last year at Chippewa, Niagara, Fort Erie, Plattsburg, and New

Orleans, the capture of their two fleets on Lakes Erie and Champlain, and

repeated triumphs of our frigates over hers, whenever engaging with equal

force, show that we have officers now becoming prominent, and capable of making

them feel the supe-







VOL. XIV-I6 













242              Jefferson's Works







riority of our means, in a war on our own soil. Our means are abundant both as

to men and money, wanting only skilful arrangement ; and experience alone

brings skill. As to men, nothing wiser can be devised than what the Secretary

of War (Monroe) proposed in his report at the commencement of Congress. It

would have kept our regular army always of necessity full, and by classing our

militia according to ages, would have put them into a form ready for whatever

service, distant or at home, should require them. Congress have not adopted it,

but their next experiment will lead to it. Our financial system is, at least,

arranged. The fatal possession of the whole circulating medium by our banks,

the excess of those institutions, and their present discredit, cause all our

difficulties. Treasury notes of small as well as high denomination, bottomed on

a tax which would redeem them in ten years, would place at our disposal the

whole circulating medium of the United States; a fund of credit sufficient to

carry us through any probable length of war. A small issue of such paper is now

commencing. It will immediately supersede the bank paper; nobody receiving that

now but for the purposes of the day, and never in payments which are to lie by

for any time. In fact, all the banks having declared they will not give cash in

exchange for their own notes, these circulate merely because there is no other

medium of exchange. As soon as the treasury notes get into circulation, the

others will cease to hold any 













                Correspondence             243







competition with them. I trust that another year will confirm this experiment,

and restore this fund to the public, who ought never more to permit its being

filched from them by private speculators and disorganizers of the circulation.







  Do they send you from Washington the Historical Register of the United States

? It is published there annually, and gives a succinct and judicious history of

the events of the war, not too long to be inserted in the European newspapers,

and would keep the European public truly informed, by correcting the lying

statements of the British papers. It gives, too, all the public documents of

any value. Niles' Weekly Register is also an excellent repository of facts and

documents, and has the advantage of coming out weekly, whereas the other is

yearly.







  This will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman of Boston, of high

education and great promise. After going through his studies here, he goes to

Europe to finish them, and to see what is to be seen there. He brought me high

recommendations from Mr. Adams and others, and from a stay of some days with

me, I was persuaded he merited them, as he will whatever attentions you will be

so good as to show him. I pray you to accept the assurance of my great esteem

and respect.







  P.S. February 26th. On the day of the date of this letter the news of peace

reached Washington, and this place two days after. I am glad of it, 













244                Jefferson's Works







although no provision being made against the impressment of our seamen, it is

in fact but an armistice, to be terminated by the first act of impressment

committed on an American citizen. It may be thought that useless blood was

spilt at New Orleans, after the treaty of peace had been actually signed and

ratified. I think it had many valuable uses. It proved the fidelity of the

Orleanese to the United States. It proved that New Orleans can be defended both

by land and water; that the western country will fly to its relief (of which

ourselves had doubted before) ; that our militia are heroes when they have

heroes to lead them on ; and that, when unembarrassed by field evolutions,

which they do not understand, their skill in the fire-arm, and deadly aim, give

them great advantages over regulars. What nonsense for the mannikin Prince

Regent to talk of their conquest of the country east of the Penobscot river I

Then, as in the Revolutionary war, their conquests were never more than of the

spot on which their army stood, never extending beyond the range of their

cannon shot. If England is now wise or just enough to settle peaceably the

question of impressment, the late treaty may become one of peace, and of long

peace. We owe to their past follies and wrongs the incalculable advantage of

being made independent of them for every material manufacture. These have taken

such root, in our private families especially, that nothing now can ever

extirpate them. 













                 Correspondence              245















       TO THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE.







            MONTICELLO, February 14, 1815.







  MY DEAR FRIEND,-Your letter of August the 14th has been received, and read

again and again, with extraordinary pleasure. It is the first glimpse which has

been furnished me of the interior workings of the late unexpected but fortunate

revolution of your country. The newspapers told us only that the great beast

was fallen ; but what part in this the patriots acted, and what the egotists,

whether the former slept while the latter were awake to their own interests

only, the hireling scribblers of the English press said little and knew less. I

see now the mortifying alternative under which the patriot there is placed, of

being either silent, or disgraced by an association in opposition with the

remains of Bonapartism. A full measure of liberty is not now perhaps to be

expected by your nation, nor am I confident they are prepared to preserve it.

More than a generation will be requisite, under the administration of

reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge in the general mass of the

people, and their habituation to an independent security of person and

property, before they will be capable of estimating the value of freedom, and

the necessity of a sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests for

preservation. Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the

progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes, with an

unpre-













246             Jefferson's Works







pared people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one. Possibly you

may remember, at the date of the jeu de paume, how earnestly I urged yourself

and the patriots of my acquaintance, to enter then into a compact with the

king, securing freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas

corpus, and a national legislature, all of which it was known he would then

yield, to go home, and let these work on the amelioration of the condition of

the people, until they should have rendered them capable of more, when

occasions would not fail to arise for communicating to them more. This was as

much as I then thought them able to bear, soberly and usefully for themselves.

You thought otherwise, and that the dose might still be larger. And I found you

were right; for subsequent events proved they were equal to the Constitution of

1791. Unfortunately, some of the most honest and enlightened of our patriotic

friends, (but closet politicians merely, unpractised in the knowledge of man, )

thought more could still be obtained and borne. They did not weigh the hazards

of a transition from one form of government to another, the value of what they

had already rescued from those hazards, and might hold in security if they

pleased, nor the imprudence of giving up the certainty of such a degree of

liberty, under a limited monarch, for the uncertainty of a little more under

the form of a republic. You differed from them. You were for stopping there,

and for securing the Constitution which the National 













                  Correspondence            247







Assembly had obtained. Here, too, you were right; and from this fatal error of

the republicans, from their separation from yourself and the

constitutionalists, in their councils, flowed all the subsequent sufferings and

crimes of the French nation. The hazards of a second change fell upon them by

the way. The foreigner gained time to anarchise by gold the government he could

not overthrow by arms, to crush in their own councils the genuine republicans,

by the fraternal embraces of exaggerated and hired pretenders, and to turn the

machine of Jacobinism from the change to the destruction of order ; and, in the

end, the limited monarchy they had secured was exchanged for the unprincipled

and bloody tyranny of Robespierre, and the equally unprincipled and maniac

tyranny of Bonaparte. You are now rid of him, and I sincerely wish you may

continue so. But this may depend on the wisdom and moderation of the restored

dynasty. It is for them now to read a lesson in the fatal errors of the

republicans ; to be contented with a certain portion of power, secured by

formal compact with the nation, rather than, grasping at more, hazard all upon

uncertainty, and risk meeting the f ate of their predecessor, or a renewal of

their own exile. We are just informed, too, of an example which merits, if

true, their most profound contemplation. The gazettes say that Ferdinand of

Spain is dethroned, and his father re-established on the basis of their new

Constitution. This order of magistrates must, therefore, see, that although 













248             Jefferson's Works







the attempts at reformation have not succeeded in their whole length, and some

secession from the ultimate point has taken place, yet that men have by no

means fallen back to their former passiveness, but on the contrary, that a

sense of their rights, and a restlessness to obtain them, remain deeply

impressed on every mind, and, if not quieted by reasonable relaxations of

power, will break out like a volcano on the first occasion, and overwhelm

everything again in its way. I always thought the present king an honest and

moderate man; and having no issue, he is under a motive the less for yielding

to personal considerations. I cannot, therefore, but hope, that the patriots in

and out of your legislature, acting in phalanx, but temperately and wisely,

pressing unremittingly the principles omitted in the late capitulation of the

king, and watching the occasions which the course of events will create, may

get those principles engrafted into it, and sanctioned by the solemnity of a

national act.







With us the affairs of war have taken the most favorable turn which was to be

expected. Our thirty years of peace had taken off, or superannuated, all our

Revolutionary officers of experience and grade ; and our first draught in the

lottery of untried characters had been most unfortunate. The delivery of the

fort and army pf Detroit by the traitor Hull ; the disgrace at Queenstown,

under Van Rensellaer; the massacre at Frenchtown under Winchester  and

surrender of Boerstler in an open field 













                  Correspondence            249







to one-third of his own numbers, were the inauspicious beginnings of the first

year of our warfare. The second witnessed but the single miscarriage occasioned

by the disagreement of Wilkinson and Hampton, mentioned in my letter to you of

November the 30th, 1813, while it gave us the capture of York by Dearborn and

Pike ; the capture of Fort George by Dearborn .also; the capture of Proctor's

army on the Thames by Harrison, Shelby and Johnson, and that of the whole

British fleet on Lake Erie by Perry. The third year has been a continued series

of victories, to wit : of Brown and Scott at Chippewa; of the same at Niagara;

of Gaines over Drummond at Fort Erie; that of Brown over Drummond at the same

place; the capture of another fleet on Lake Champlain by M'Donough; the entire

defeat of their army under Prevost, on the same day, by M'Comb, and recently

their defeats at New Orleans by Jackson, Coffee and Carroll, with the loss of

four thousand men out of nine thousand and six hundred, with their two

Generals, Pakenham and Gibbs, killed, and a third, Keane, wounded mortally, as

is said.







  This series of successes has been tarnished only by the conflagrations at

Washington, a coup de main differing from that at Richmond, which you remember,

in the Revolutionary war, in the circumstance only, that we had, in that case,

but forty-eight hours' notice that an enemy had arrived within our capes;

whereas, at Washington, there was abundant pre













250               Jefferson's Works







vious notice. The force designated by the President was double of what was

necessary; but failed, as is the general opinion, through the insubordination

of Armstrong, who would never believe the attack intended until it was actually

made, and the sluggishness of Winder before the occasion, and his indecision

during it. Still, in the end, the transaction has helped rather than hurt us,

by arousing the general indignation of our country, and by marking to the world

of Europe the vandalism and brutal character of the English government. It has

merely served to immortalize their infamy. And add further, that through the

whole period of the war, we have beaten them single-handed at sea, and so

thoroughly established our superiority over them with equal force, that they

retire from that kind of contest, and never suffer their frigates to cruise

singly. The Endymion would never have engaged the frigate President, but

knowing herself backed by three frigates and a razee, who, though somewhat

slower sailers, would get up before she could be taken. The disclosure to the

world of the fatal secret that they can be beaten at sea with an equal force,

the evidence furnished by the military operations of the last year that

experience is rearing us officers who, when our means shall be fully under way,

will plant our standard on the walls of Quebec and Halifax, their recent and

signal disaster at New Orleans, and the evaporation of their hopes from the

Hartford convention, will probably raise a clamor in the British nation, which

will 













                  Correspondence              251







force their ministry into peace. I say force them, because, willingly, they

would never be at peace. The British ministers find in a state of war rather

than of peace, by riding the various contractors, and receiving douceurs on the

vast expenditures of the war supplies, that they recruit their broken fortunes,

or make new ones, and therefore will not make peace as long as by any delusions

they can keep the temper of the nation. up to the war point. They found some

hopes on the state of our finances. It is true that the excess of our banking

institutions, and their present discredit, have shut us out from the best

source of credit we could ever command with certainty. But the foundations of

credit still remain to us, and need but skill which experience will soon

produce, to marshal them into an order which may carry us through any length of

war. But they have hoped more in their Hartford convention. Their fears of

republican France being now done away, they are directed to republican America,

and they are playing the same game for disorganization here, which they played

in your country. The Marats, the Dantons and Robespierres of Massachusetts are

in the same pay, under the same orders, and making the same efforts to

anarchise us, that their prototypes in France did there.







  I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same motives of

money, nor were those of France. Some of them are Outs, and wish to be Ins ;

some the mere dupes of the agitators, or of 













252       Jefferson's Works







their own party passions, while the Maratists alone are in the real secret; but

they have very different materials to work on. The yeomanry of the United

States are not the canaille of Paris. We might safely give them leave to go

through the United States recruiting their ranks, and I am satisfied they could

not raise one single regiment (gambling merchants and silk-stocking clerks

excepted) who would support them in any effort to separate from the Union. The

cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every American. I do not believe

there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis. Let them,

in any State, even in Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation,

and its citizens will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own

incendiaries. If they could have induced the government to some effort of

suppression; or even to enter into discussion with them, it would have given

them some importance, have brought them into some notice. But they have not

been able to make themselves even a subject of conversation, either of public

or private societies. A silent contempt has been the sole notice they excite ;

consoled, indeed, some of them, by the palpable favors of Philip. Have then no

fears for us, my friend The grounds of these exist only in English newspapers,

edited or endowed by the Castlereaghs or the Cannings, or some other such

models of pure and uncorrupted virtue. Their military heroes, by land and sea,

may sink our oyster boats, rob our hen 













                  Correspondence            253







roosts, burn our negro huts, and run off. But a campaign or two more will

relieve them from further trouble or expense in defending their American

possessions.







  You once gave me a copy of the journal of your campaign in Virginia, in 1781,

which I must have lent to some one of the undertakers to write ,the history of

the Revolutionary war, and forgot to reclaim. I conclude this, because it is no

longer among my papers, which I have very diligently searched for it, but in

vain. An author of real ability is now writing that part of the history of

Virginia. He does it in my neighborhood, and I lay open to him all my papers.

But I possess none, nor has he any, which can enable him to do justice to your

faithful and able services in that campaign. If you could be so good as to send

me another copy, by the very first vessel bound to any port in the United

States, it might be here in time; for although he expects to begin to print

within a month or two, yet you know the delays of these undertakings. At any

rate it might be got in as a supplement. The old Count Rochambeau gave me also

his memoire of the operations at York, which is gone in the same way, and I

have no means of applying to his family for it. Perhaps you could render them

as well as us, the service of procuring another copy.







  I learn; with real sorrow, the deaths of Monsieur and Madame de Tesse. They

made an interesting part in the idle reveries in which I have sometimes 













254               Jefferson's Works







indulged myself, of seeing all my friends of Paris once more, for a month or

two; a thing impossible, which, however, I never permitted myself to despair

of. The regrets, however, of seventy-three at the loss of friends, may be the

less, as the time is shorter within which we are to meet again, according to

the creed of our education.







  This letter will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman of Boston,

of great erudition, indefatigable industry, and preparation for a life of

distinction in his own country. He passed a few days with me here, brought high

recommendations from Mr. Adams and others, and appeared in every respect to

merit them. He is well worthy of those attentions which you so kindly bestow on

our countrymen, and for those he may receive I shall join him in acknowledging

personal obligations.







  I salute you with assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship and

respect.







  P. S. February 26th. My letter had not yet been sealed, when I received news

of our peace. I am glad of it, and especially that we closed our war with the

eclat of the action at New Orleans. But I consider it as an armistice only,

because no security is provided against the impressment of our seamen. While

this is unsettled we are in hostility of mind with England, although actual

deeds of arms may be suspended by a truce. If she thinks the exercise of' this

outrage is worth eternal war, eternal war it 













            Correspondence           255







must be, or extermination of the one or the other party. The first act of

impressment she commits on an American, will be answered by reprisal, or by a

declaration of war here ; and the interval must be merely a state of

preparation for it. In this we have much to do, in further fortifying our

seaport towns, providing military stores, classing and disciplining our

militia, arranging our financial system, and above all, pushing our domestic

manufactures, which have taken such root as never again can be shaken. Once

more, God bless you.















      TO MONSIEUR DUPONT DE NEMOURS.







            MONTICELLO, February 28, 1815.







  MY DEAR AND RESPECTED FRIEND,-My last to you was of November 29th and

December 13th, 14th, since which I have received yours of July 14th. I have to

congratulate you, which I do sincerely on having got back from Robespierre and

Bonaparte, to your ante-revolutionary condition. You are now nearly where you

were at the jeu de paume on the 20th of June, 1789. The king would then have

yielded, by convention, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by

jury, habeas corpus, and a representative legislature. These I consider as the

essentials constituting free government, and that the organization of the

Executive is interesting, as ' it may ensure wisdom and integrity in the first

place, but next as it may favor or endanger the preserva-













256               Jefferson's Works







tion of these fundamentals. Although I do not think the late capitulation of

the king quite equal to all this, yet believing his dispositions to be moderate

and friendly to the happiness of the people, and seeing that he is without the

bias of issue, I am in hopes your patriots may, by constant and prudent

pressure, obtain from him what is still wanting to give you a temperate degree

of freedom and security. Should this not be done, I should really apprehend a

relapse into discontents, which might again let in Bonaparte.







  Here, at length, we have peace. But I view it as an armistice only, because

no provision is made against the practice of impressment. As this, then, will

revive in the first moment of a war in Europe, its revival will be a

declaration of war here. Our whole business, in the meantime, ought to be a

sedulous preparation for it, fortifying our seaports, filling our magazines,

classing and disciplining our militia, forming officers, and above all,

establishing a sound system of finance. You will see by the want of system in

this last department, and even the want of principles, how much we are in

arrears in that science. With sufficient means in the hands of our citizens,

and sufficient will to bestow them on the government, we are floundering in

expedients equally unproductive and ruinous; and proving how little are

understood here those sound principles of political economy first developed by

the economists, since commented and dilated by Smith, Say, yourself, and the

luminous reviewer of Montesquieu. I have been 













                   Correspondence            257







endeavoring to get the able paper on this subject, which you addressed to me in

July, 1810, and enlarged in a copy received the last year, translated and

printed here, in order to draw the attention of our citizens to this subject;

but have not as yet succeeded. Our printers are enterprising only in novels and

light reading. The readers of works of science, although in considerable

number, are so sparse in their situations, that such works are of slow

circulation. But I shall persevere.







This letter will be delivered to you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman from

Massachusetts, of much erudition and great merit. He has completed his course

of law and reading, and, before entering on the practice, proposes to pass two

or three years in seeing Europe, and adding to his stores of knowledge which he

can acquire there. Should he enter the career of politics in his own country,

he will go far in obtaining its honors and powers. He is worthy of any friendly

offices you may be so good as to render him, and to his acknowledgments of them

will be added my own. By him I send you a copy of the Review of Montesquieu,

from my own shelf, the impression being, I believe, exhausted by the late

President of the College of Williamsburg having adopted it as the elementary

book there. I am persuading the author to permit me to give his name to the

public, and to permit the original to be printed in Paris. Although your

presses, I observe, are put under the leading strings of your government, yet







VOL., XIV-17 













258            Jefferson's Works







this is such a work as would have been licensed at any period, early or late,

of the reign of Louis XVI Surely the present government will not expect to

repress the progress of the public mind further back than that. I salute you

with all veneration and affection.















           TO JEAN BATISTE SAY.







               MONTICELLO, March 2, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-Your letter of June 15th came to hand in December, and it is not till

the ratification of our peace, that a safe conveyance for an answer could be

obtained. I thank you for the copy of the new edition of your work which

accompanied your letter. I had considered it in its first form as superseding

all other works on that subject; and shall set proportional value on any

improvement of it. I should have been happy to have received your son here, as

expected from your letter; on his passage through this State; and to have given

proofs through him of my respect for you. But I live far from the great stage

road which forms the communication of our States from north to south, and such

a deviation was probably not admitted by his business. The question proposed in

my letter of February 1st, 1804, has since become quite a " question viseuse. "

I had then persuaded myself that a nation, distant as we are from the

contentions of Europe, avoiding all offences to other powers, and not

over-hasty in resenting offence; 













                    Correspondence                 259







from them, doing justice to all, faithfully fulfilling the duties of

neutrality, performing all offices of amity, and administering to their

interests by the benefits of our commerce, that such a nation, I say, might

expect to live in peace, and consider itself merely as a member of the great

family of mankind; that in such case it might devote itself to whatever it

could best produce, secure of a peaceable exchange of surplus for what could be

more advantageously furnished by others, as takes place between one county and

another of France. But experience has shown that continued peace depends not

merely on our own justice and prudence, but on that of others also, that when

forced into war, the interception of exchanges which must be made across a wide

ocean, becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of an enemy domineering over that

element, and to the other distresses of war adds the want of all those

necessaries for which we have permitted ourselves to be dependent on others,

even arms and clothing. This fact, therefore, solves the question by reducing

it to its ultimate form, whether profit or preservation is the first interest

of a State? We are consequently become manufacturers to a degree incredible to

those who do not see it, and who only consider the short period of time during

which we have been driven to them by the suicidal policy of England. The

prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence

requires us to establish at home, with the patriotic determination of every

good 













260              Jefferson's Works







citizen to use no foreign article which can be made within ourselves, without

regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse into foreign

dependency. And ' this circumstance may be worthy of your consideration, should

you continue in the disposition to emigrate to this country. Your manufactory

of cotton, on a moderate scale combined with a f arm, might be preferable to

either singly, and the one or the other might become principal, as experience

should recommend. Cotton ready spun is in ready demand, and if woven, still

more so.







  I will proceed now to answer the inquiries which respect your views of

removal; and I am glad that, in looking over our map, your eye has been

attracted by the village of Charlottesville, because I am better acquainted

with that than any other portion of the United States, being within three or

four miles of the place of my birth and residence. It is a portion of country

which certainly possesses great advantages. Its soil is equal in natural

fertility to any high lands I have ever seen ; it is red and hilly, very like

much of the country of Champagne and Burgundy, on the route of Sens, Vermanton,

Vitteaux, Dijon, and along the Cote to Chagny, excellently adapted to wheat,

maize, and clover ; like all mountainous countries it is perfectly healthy,

liable to no agues and fevers, or to any particular epidemic, as is evidenced

by the robust constitution of its inhabitants, and their numerous families. As

many instances of nonagenaires exist habitually in this neighborhood as in the

same







             Correspondence          261







degree of population anywhere. Its temperature may be considered as a medium of

that of the United French. States. The extreme of cold in ordinary win



=16o      ters being about 7degrees of Reaumur below zero, and







--5o           in the severest 12 degrees, while the ordinary morn-







                  ings are above zero. The maximum of heat



 =96o         in summer is about 28o, of which we have one







                 or two instances in a summer for a few hours.







                 About ten or twelve days in July and August,







                 the thermometer rises for two or three hours 



=84o         to about 23o, while the ordinary mid-day heat



=80o         of those months is about 21o, the mercury con-







                 tinuing at that two or three hours, and falling 



=70o          in the evening to about 17o. White frosts 



                   commence about the middle of October, tender vegetables are

in danger from them till nearly the middle of April. The mercury begins, about

the middle of November, to be occasionally at the freezing point, and ceases to

be so about the middle of March. We have of freezing nights about fifty in the

course of the winter, but not more than ten days in which the mercury does not

rise above the freezing point.. Fire is desirable even in close apartments

whenever the outward air is below 10o, (=55o Fahrenheit,) and that is the case

with us through the day, one hundred and thirty-two days in the year, and on

mornings and evenings sixty-eight days more. So that we have constant fires

five months, and a little over two months more on mornings and evenings.

Observations made at Yorktown in the lower country, show 













262            Jefferson's Works







that they need seven days less of constant fires, and thirty-eight less of

mornings and evenings. On an average of seven years I have found our snows

amount in the whole to fifteen inches depth, and to cover the ground fifteen

days ; these, with the rains, give us four feet of water in the year. The

garden pea, which we are now sowing, comes to table about the 12th of May;

strawberries and cherries about the same time; asparagus the 1st of April. The

artichoke stands the winter without cover; lettuce and endive with a slight one

of bushes, and often without any; and the fig, protected by a little straw,

begins to ripen in July ; if unprotected, not till the 1st of September.  There

is navigation for boats of six tons from Charlottesville to Richmond, the

nearest tidewater, and principal market for our produce. The country is what we

call well inhabited, there being in our county, Albemarle, of about seven

hundred and fifty square miles, about twenty thousand inhabitants, or

twenty-seven to a square mile, of whom, however, one-half are people of color,

either slaves or free. The society is much better than is common in country

situations; perhaps there is not a better country society in the United States.

But do not imagine this a Parisian or an academical society. It consists of

plain, honest, and rational neighbors, some of them well informed and men of

reading, all superintending their farms, hospitable and friendly, and speaking

nothing but English: The manners of every nation are the standard of 













          Correspondence          263







orthodoxy within itself. But these standards being arbitrary, reasonable people

in all allow free toleration for the manners, as for the religion of others.

Our culture is of wheat for market, and of maize, oats; peas, and clover, f or

the support of the f arm. We reckon it a good distribution to divide a farm

into three fields, putting one into wheat, half a one into maize, the other

half into oats or peas, and the third into clover, and to tend the fields

successively in this rotation. Some woodland in addition, is always necessary

to furnish fuel, fences, and timber for constructions. Our best farmers (such

as Mr. Randolph, my son-in-law) get from ten to twenty bushels of wheat to the

acre ; our worst (such as myself) from six to eighteen, with little or more

manuring. The bushel of wheat is worth in common times about one dollar. The

common produce of maize is from ten to twenty bushels, worth half a dollar the

bushel, which is of a cubic foot and a quarter, or, more exactly, of two

thousand one hundred and seventy-eight cubic inches. From these data you may

judge best for yourself of the size of the f arm which would suit your family :

bearing in mind, that while you can be furnished by the farm itself f or

consumption, with every article it is adapted to produce, the sale of your

wheat at market is to furnish the fund for all other necessary articles. I will

add that both soi? and climate are admirably adapted to the vine, which is the

abundant natural production of our forests, and that you cannot bring 













 264         Jefferson's Works







a more valuable laborer than one acquainted with both its culture and

manipulation into wine







Your only inquiry now unanswered is, the price of these lands. To answer this

with precision, would require details too long for a letter; the fact being,

that we have no metallic measure of values at present, while we are overwhelmed

with bank paper. The depreciation of this swells nominal prices, without

furnishing any stable index of real value. I will endeavor briefly to give you

an idea of this state of things by an outline of its history.







    In 1781 we had 1 bank, its capital $1,000,000







" 1791 "      6        "          $13,135,000







" 1794 "     17        "          $18,642,000







" 1796 "     24        "          $20,472,000







" 1803 "     34        "          $29,112,000







" 1804 "     66 their amount of capital not known.







 And at this time we have probably one hundred banks, with capitals amounting

to one hundred mil-' lions of dollars, on which they are authorized by law to

issue notes to three times that amount, so that our circulating medium may now

be estimated at from two to three hundred millions of dollars, on a population

of eight and a half millions. The banks were able, for awhile, to keep this

trash at par with metallic money, or rather to depreciate the metals to a par

with their paper, by keeping deposits of cash sufficient to exchange for such

of their notes as they were called on to pay in cash. But the circumstances of

the war draining away all our specie, 













             Correspondence          265







all these banks have stopped payment, but with a promise to resume specie

exchanges whenever circumstances shall produce a return of the metals. Some of

the most prudent and honest will possibly do this ; but the mass of them never

will nor can. Yet, having no other medium, we take their paper, of necessity,

for purposes of the instant, but never to lay by us. The government is now

issuing treasury notes for circulation, bottomed on solid funds, and bearing

interest. The banking confederacy (and the merchants bound to them by their

debts will endeavor to crush the credit of these notes ; but the country is

eager for them, as something they can trust to, and so soon as a convenient

quantity of them can get into circulation, the bank notes die. You may judge

that, in this state of things, the holders of bank notes will give free prices

for lands, and that were I to tell you simply the present prices of lands in

this medium, it would give you no idea on which you could calculate. But I will

state to you the progressive prices which have been paid for particular parcels

of land for some years back, which may enable you to distinguish between the

real increase of value regularly produced by our advancement in population,

wealth, and skill, and the bloated value arising from the present disordered

and dropsical state of our medium. There are two tracts of land adjoining me,

and another not far off, all of excellent quality, which happen to have been

sold at different epochs as follows: 













266            Jefferson's Works















One was sold in. 1793 for $4 an acre, in 1812 at $10, and is now rated $16.







    The 2d       "   1786 "    5 1/3  "           1803 "  $10,         "     " 

      $20







    The 3d       "   1797 "     7       "            1811 "  $16,        "    

"        $20.







  On the whole, however, I suppose we may estimate that the steady annual rise

of our lands is in a geometrical ratio of 5 per cent. ; that were our medium

now in a wholesome state, they might be estimated at from twelve to fifteen

dollars the acre; and I may add, I believe with correctness, that there is not

any part of the Atlantic States where lands of equal quality and advantages can

be had as cheap. When sold with a dwelling-house on them, little additional is

generally asked for the house. These buildings are generally of wooden

materials, and of indifferent structure and accommodation. Most of the hired

labor here is of people of color, either slaves or free. An able-bodied man has

sixty dollars a year, and is clothed and fed by the employer; a woman half

that. White laborers may be had, but they are less subordinate, their wages

higher, and their nourishment much more expensive. A good horse for the plough

costs fifty or sixty dollars. A draught ox twenty to twenty-five dollars. A

milch cow fifteen to eighteen dollars. A sheep two dollars. Beef is about five

cents, mutton and pork seven cents the pound. A turkey or goose fifty cents

apiece, a chicken eight and one-third cents ; a dozen eggs the same. Fresh

butter twenty to twenty-five cents the pound. And, to render as full as I can,

the information which may enable you to calculate for yourself, I enclose you a

Philadelphia price-current, giving 













            Correspondence          267







the prices in regular times of most of the articles of produce or manufacture,

foreign and domestic.







  That it may be for the benefit of your children and their descendants to

remove to a country where, for enterprise and talents, so many avenues are open

to fortune and fame, I have little doubt. But I should be afraid to affirm

that, at your time of life, and with habits formed on the state of society in

France, a change for one so entirely different would be for your personal

happiness. Fearful, therefore, to persuade, I shall add with sincere truth,

that I shall very highly estimate the addition of such a neighbor to our

society, and that there is no service within my power which I shall not render

with pleasure and promptitude. With this assurance be pleased to accept that of

my great esteem and respect.







  P. S. This letter will be handed you by Mr. Ticknor, a young gentleman of

Massachusetts, of great erudition and worth, and who will be gratified by the

occasion of being presented to the author of the Traite d'Economie Politique.















     TO FRANCIS C. GRAY, ESQ.







               MONTICELLO, March 4, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-Despatching to Mr. Ticknor my packet of letters for Paris, it

occurs to me that I committed an error in a matter of information which you

asked of me while here. It is indeed of little 













268         Jefferson's Works







importance, yet as well corrected as otherwise, and the rather as it. gives me

an occasion of renewing my respects to you. You asked me in conversation, what

constituted a mulatto by our law? And I believe I told you four crossings with

the whites. I looked afterwards into our law, and found it to be in these words

: " Every person, other than a negro, of whose grandfathers or grandmothers any

one shall have been a negro, shall be deemed a mulatto, and so every such

person who shall have one-fourth part or more of negro blood, shall in like

manner be deemed a mulatto; L. Virg'a 1792, December 17 : the case put in the

first member of this paragraph of the law is exempli gratia. The latter

contains the true canon, which is that one-fourth of negro blood, mixed with

any portion of white, constitutes the mulatto. As the issue has one-half of the

blood of each parent, and the blood of each of these may be made up of a

variety of fractional mixtures, the estimate of their compound in some cases

may be intricate; it becomes a mathematical problem of the same class with

those on the mixtures of different liquors or different metals ; as in these,

therefore, the algebraical notation is the most convenient and intelligible.

Let us express the pure blood of the white in the capital letters of the

printed alphabet, the pure blood of the negro in the small letters of the

printed alphabet, and any given mixture of either; by way of abridgment in MS.

letters.







Let the first crossing of a, pure negro, with ,A 













            Correspondence          269







pure white. The unit of blood of the issue being composed of the half of that

of each parent, will be a/2 +A/2. Call it, for abbreviation, h (half blood).







Let the second crossing be of h and B, the blood of the issue will be h/2+B/2,

or substituting for h/2 its equivalent, it will be a/4 + A/4 + B/2, call it q

(quarteroon) being 1/4 negro blood.







Let the third crossing be of q and C, their offspring will be

q/2+C/2=a/8+B/4+C/2, call this e (eighth), who having less than 1/4 of a, or of

pure negro blood, to wit 1/8 only, is no longer a mulatto, so that a third

cross clears the blood.







From these elements let us examine their compounds. For example, let h and q

cohabit, their issue will be h/2+q/2=a/4+A/4+a/8+A/8+B/4=a/8+A/8+B/4, wherein

we find 3/8 of a, or negro blood.







Let h and e cohabit, their issue will be h/2+e/2=a/4+

A/4+a/16+A/16+B/8+c/4=a/16+A/16+B/8+c/4, wherein 5/16 a makes still a mulatto.







Let q and e cohabit, the half of the blood of each will be

q/2+e/2=a/8+A/8+B/4+a/16+A/16+B/8+C/4=a/16+A/16+B/8+C/4 wherein 3/16 of a is no

longer a mulatto, and thus may every compound be noted and summed, the sum of

the fractions composing the blood of the issue being always equal to unit. It

is understood in natural history that a fourth cross of one race of animals

with another gives an issue equivalent for all sensible 













270            Jefferson's Works







purposes to the original blood. Thus a Merino ram being crossed, first with a

country ewe, second with his daughter, third with his granddaughter, and fourth

with the great-granddaughter, the last issue is deemed pure Merino, having in

fact but 1/16 of the country blood. Our canon considers two crosses with the

pure white, and a third with any degree of mixture, however small, as clearing

the issue of the negro blood. But observe, that this does not reestablish

freedom, which depends on the condition of the mother, the principle of the

civil law, partus sequitur ventrem, being adopted here. But if e be

emancipated, he becomes a free white man, and a citizen of the United States to

all intents and purposes. So much for this trifle by way of correction.







  I sincerely congratulate you on the peace, and more especially on the close

of our war with so much eclat. Our second and third campaigns here, I trust,

more than redeemed the disgraces of the first, and proved that although a

republican government is slow to move, yet, when once in motion, its momentum

becomes irresistible; and I am persuaded it would have been found so in the

last war, had it continued: Experience had just begun to elicit those among our

officers who had talents for war, and under the guidance of these one campaign

would have planted our standard on the walls of Quebec, and another on those of

Halifax. But peace is better for us all; and if it could be followed by a

cordial conciliation between us and England, it would ensure 













            Correspondence        271







the happiness and prosperity of both. The bag of wind, however, on which they

are now riding, must be suffered to blow out before they will be able soberly

to settle on their true bottom. If they adopt a course of friendship with us,

the commerce of one hundred millions of people, which some now born will live

to see here, will maintain them forever as a great unit of the European family.

But if they go on checking, irritating, injuring and hostilizing us, they will

force on us the motto " Carthago delenda est." And some Scipio Americanus will

leave to posterity the problem of conjecturing where stood once the ancient and

splendid city of London! Nothing more simple or certain than the elements of

this circulation. I hope the good sense of both parties will concur in

traveling rather the paths of peace, of affection, and reciprocations of

interest. I salute you with sincere and friendly esteem, and if the homage

offered to the virtues of your father can be acceptable to him, place mine at

his feet.















            TO L. H. GIRARDIN.







              MONTICELLO, March 12, 1815







  I return the three cahiers, which I have perused with the usual satisfaction.

You will find a few penciled notes merely verbal.







  But in one place I have taken a greater liberty than I ever took before, or

ever indeed had occasion to take. It is in the case of Josiah Philips, which I 













            Jefferson's Works







find strangely represented by Judge Tucker and Mr. Edmund Randolph, and very

negligently vindicated by Mr. Henry. That case is personally known to me,

because I was of the legislature at the time, was one of those consulted by Mr.

Henry, and had my share in the passage of the bill. I never before saw the

observations of those gentlemen, which you quote on this case, and will now

therefore briefly make some strictures on them.







Judge Tucker, instead of a definition of the functions of bills of attainder,

has given a diatribe against their abuse. The occasion and proper office of a

bill of attainder is this : When a person charged with a crime withdraws from

justice, or resists it by force, either in his own or a foreign country, no

other means of bringing him to trial or punishment being practicable, a special

act is passed by the legislature adapted to the particular case. This

prescribes to him a sufficient time to appear and submit to a trial by his

peers; declares that his refusal to appear shall be taken as a confession of

guilt, as in the ordinary case of an offender at the bar refusing to plead, and

pronounces the sentence which would have been rendered on his confession or

conviction in a court of law. No doubt that these acts of attainder have been

abused in England as instruments of vengeance by a successful over a defeated

party. But what institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands ?







Again, the judge says " the court refused to pass sentence of execution

pursuant to the directions of 













            Correspondence        273







the act." The court could not refuse this, because it was never proposed to

them; and my authority for this assertion shall be presently given.







  For the perversion of a fact so intimately known to himself, Mr. Randolph can

be excused only by our indulgence for orators who, pressed by a powerful

adversary, lose sight, in the ardor of conflict of the rigorous accuracies of

fact, and permit their imagination to distort and color them to the views of

the moment. He was Attorney General at the time, and told me himself, the first

time I saw him after the trial of Philips, that when taken and delivered up to

justice, he had thought it best to make no use of the act of attainder, and to

take no measure under it; that he had indicted him at the common law either for

murder or robbery (I forgot which and whether for both) ; that he was tried on

this indictment in the ordinary way, found guilty by the jury, sentenced and

executed under the common law ; a course which every one approves, because the

first object of the act of attainder was to bring him to fair trial. Whether

Mr. Randolph was right in this information to me, or when in the debate with

Mr. Henry, he represents this atrocious offender as sentenced and executed

under the act of attainder, let the record of the case decide.







  " Without being confronted with his accusers and witnesses, without the

privilege of calling for evidence in his behalf, he was sentenced to death, and

afterwards actually executed." I appeal to the







   VOL. XIV-18 













274            Jefferson's Works







universe to produce one single instance from the first establishment of

government in this State to the present day, where, in a trial at bar, a

criminal has been refused confrontation with his accusers and witnesses, or

denied the privilege of calling for evidence in his behalf ; had it been done

in this case, I would have asked of the Attorney General why he proposed or

permitted it. But without having seen the record, I will venture on the

character of our courts, to deny that it was done. But if Mr. Randolph meant

only that Philips had not these advantages on the passage of the bill of

attainder, how idle to charge the legislature with omitting to confront the

culprit with his witnesses, when he was standing out in arms and in defiance of

their authority, and their sentence was to take effect only on his own refusal

to come in and be confronted. We must either therefore consider this as a mere

hyperbolism of imagination in the heat of debate, or what I should rather

believe, a defective statement by the reporter of Mr. Randolph's argument. I

suspect this last the rather because this point in the charge of Mr. Randolph

is equally omitted in the defence of Mr. Henry. This gentleman must have known

that Philips was tried and executed under the common law, and yet, according to

his report, he rests his defence on a justification of the attainder only. But

all who knew Mr. Henry, know that when at ease in argument, he was sometimes

careless, not giving himself the trouble of ransacking either his memory or 













            Correspondence          275







imagination for all the topics of his subject, or his audience that of hearing

them. No man on earth knew better when he had said enough for his hearers.







  Mr. Randolph charges us with having. read the bill three times in the same

day. I do not remember the f act, nor whether this was enforced on us by the

urgency of the ravages of Philips, or of the time at which the bill was

introduced. I have some idea it Was at or near the close of the session; the

journals, which I have not, will ascertain the fact.







  After the particular strictures, I will proceed to propose, 1st, that the

word " substantially, " page 92 1. s., be changed for " which has been charged

with," (subjoining a note of reference. I Tucker's Blackst. Append., 292.

Debates of Virginia Convention.]







  2. That the whole of the quotations from Tucker, Randolph and Henry, be

struck out, and instead of the text beginning page 92, 1. 12, with the

words"bills of attainder, &c.," to the words "so often merited," page 95, 1. 4,

be inserted the following, to wit :







" This was passed on the following occasion. A certain Josiah Philips, laborer

of the parish of Lynhaven, in the county of Princess Anne, a man of daring and

ferocious disposition, associating with other individuals of a similar cast,

spread terror and desolation through the lower country, committing murders,

burning houses, wasting farms, and perpetrating other enormities, at the bare

mention of which humanity shudders. Every effort to appre-













            Jefferson's Works







hend him proved abortive. Strong in the number of his ruffian associates, or

where force would have failed resorting to stratagem and ambush, striking the

deadly blow or applying the fatal torch at the midnight hour, and in those

places which their insulated situation left almost unprotected, he retired with

impunity to his secret haunts, reeking with blood, and loaded with plunder. [So

far the text of Mr. Girardin is preserved.] The inhabitants of the counties

which were the theatre of his crimes, never secure a moment by day or by night,

in their fields or their beds, sent representations of their distresses to the

Governor, claiming the public protection. He consulted with some members of the

legislature then sitting, on the best method of proceeding against the

atrocious offender. Too powerful to be arrested by the sheriff and his posse

comitatus, it was not doubted but an armed force might be sent to hunt and

destroy him and his accomplices in their morasses and fastnesses wherever

found. But the proceeding concluded to be most consonant with the forms and

principles of our government, was that the legislature should pass an act

giving him a reasonable but limited day to surrender himself to justice, and to

submit to a trial by his peers. According to the laws of the land, to consider

a refusal as a confession of guilt, and divesting him as an outlaw of the

character of citizen, to pass on him the sentence prescribed by the law ; and

the public officer being defied, to make every one his deputy, and especially 













            Correspondence          277







those whose safety hourly depended on his destruction. The case was laid before

the legislature, the proofs were ample, his outrages as notorious as those of

the public enemy, and well known to the members of both houses from those

counties. No one pretended then that the perpetrator of crimes who could

successfully resist the officers of justice, should be protected in the

continuance of them by the privileges of his citizenship, and that baffling

ordinary process, nothing extraordinary could be rightfully adopted to protect

the citizens against him. No one doubted that society had a right to erase from

the roll of its members any one who rendered his own existence inconsistent

with theirs; to withdraw from him the protection of their laws, and to remove

him from among them by exile, or even by death if necessary. An enemy in lawful

war, putting to death in cold blood the prisoner he has taken, authorizes

retaliation, which would be inflicted with peculiar justice on the individual

guilty of the deed, were it to happen that he should be taken. And could the

murders and robberies of a pirate or outlaw entitle him to more tenderness ?

They passed the law, therefore, and without opposition. He did not come in

before the day prescribed; continued' his lawless outrages; was afterwards

taken in arms, but delivered over to the ordinary justice of the county. The

Attorney General for the commonwealth, the immediate agent of the government,

waiving all appeal to the act of attainder, indicted 













278             Jefferson's Works







him at the common law as a murderer and robber: He was arraigned on that

indictment in the usual forms, before a jury of his vicinage, and no use

whatever made of the act of attainder in any part of the proceedings. He

pleaded that he was a British subject, authorized to bear arms by a commission

from Lord Dunmore; that he was therefore a mere prisoner of war, and under the

protection of the law of nations. The court being of opinion that a commission

from an enemy could not protect a citizen in deeds of murder and robbery,

overruled his plea; he was found guilty by his jury, sentenced by the court,

and executed by the ordinary officer of justice, and all according to the forms

and rules of the common law."







I recommend an examination of the records for ascertaining the facts of this

case, for although my memory assures me of the leading ones, I am not so

certain in my recollection of the details. I am not sure of the character of

the particular crimes' committed by Philips, or charged in his indictment,

whether his plea of alien enemy was formally put in and overruled, what were

the specific provisions of the act of attainder, the urgency which caused it to

be read three times in one day, if the fact were, etc., etc. 













             Correspondence       279















      TO P. H. WENDOVER.1







        MONTICELLO, March 13, 1815.







  SIR,-Your favor of January the 30th was received after long delay on the

road, and I have to thank you for the volume of discourses which you have been

so kind as to send me. I have gone over them with great satisfaction, and

concur with the able preacher in his estimate of the character of the

belligerents in our late war, and lawfulness of defensive war. I consider the

war, with him, as " made on good advice " that is, for just causes, and its

dispensation as providential, inasmuch as it has exercised our patriotism and

submission to order, has planted and invigorated among us arts of urgent

necessity, has manifested the strong and the weak parts of our republican

institutions, and the excellence of a representative democracy compared with

the misrule of kings, has rallied the opinions of mankind to the natural rights

of expatriation, and of a common property in the ocean, and raised us to that

grade in the scale of nations which the bravery and liberality of our citizen

soldiers, by land and by sea, the wisdom of our institutions and their

observance of justice, entitled us to in the eyes of the world. All this Mr.

McLeod has well proved, and from these sources of argument particularly which

belong to his profession. On one question only I differ from him, and it is

that which constitutes the subject of his first discourse,







  1 This is endorsed "not sent.'' 













280            Jefferson's Works







the right of discussing public affairs in the pulpit. I add the last words,

because I admit the right in general conversation and in writing; in which last

form it has been exercised in the valuable book you have now favored me with.







  The mass of human concerns, moral and physical, is so vast, the field of

knowledge requisite for man to conduct them to the best advantage is so

extensive, that no human being can acquire the whole himself, and much less in

that degree necessary for the instruction of others. It has of necessity, then,

been distributed into different departments, each of which, singly, may give

occupation enough to the whole time and attention of a single individual. Thus

we have teachers of Languages, teachers of Mathematics, of Natural Philosophy,

of Chemistry, of Medicine, of Law, of History, of Government, etc. Religion,

too, is a separate department, and happens to be the only one deemed requisite

for all men, however high or low. Collections of men associate together, under

the name of congregations, and employ a religious teacher of the particular

sect of opinions of which they happen to be, and contribute to make up a

stipend as a compensation for the trouble of delivering them, at such periods

as they agree on, lessons in the religion they profess. If they want

instruction in other sciences or arts, they apply to other instructors ; and

this is generally the business of early life. But I suppose there is not an

instance of a single congregation which has employed 











          Correspondence           281







their preacher for the mixed purposes of lecturing them from the pulpit in

Chemistry,medicine, in Law, in the science and principles of Government, or in

anything but Religion exclusively. Whenever, therefore, preachers, instead of a

lesson in religion, put them off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on

chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or

conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their

audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them,

instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from

better sources in that particular art or science. In choosing our pastor we

look to his religious qualifications, without inquiring into his physical or

political dogmas, with which we mean to have nothing to do. I am aware that

arguments may be found, which may twist a thread of politics into the cord of

religious duties. So may they f or every other branch of human art or science.

Thus, for example, it is a religious duty to obey the laws of our country ; the

teacher of religion, therefore, must instruct us in those laws, that we may

know how to obey them. It is a religious duty to assist our sick neighbors ;

the preacher must, therefore, teach us medicine, that we znay do it

understandingly. It is a religious duty to preserve our own health ; our

religious teacher, then, must tell us what dishes are wholesome, and give us

recipes in cookery, that we may learn how to prepare them. And so, ingenuity,

by generalizing more and more, 













282       Jefferson's Works







rnay amalgamate all the branches of science into any one of them, and the

physician who is paid to visit the sick, may give a sermon instead of medicine,

and the merchant to whom money is sent for a hat, may send a handkerchief

instead of it. But notwithstanding this possible confusion of all sciences into

one, common sense draws lines between them sufficiently distinct for the

general purposes of life, and no one is at a loss to understand that a recipe

in medicine or cookery, or a demonstration in geometry, is not a lesson in

religion. I do not deny that a congregation may, if they please, agree with

their preacher that he shall instruct them in Medicine also, or Law, or

Politics. Then, lectures in these, from the pulpit, become not only a matter of

right, but of duty also. But this must be with the consent of every individual;

because the association being voluntary, the mere majority has no right to

apply the contributions of the minority to purposes unspecified in the

agrcement of the congregation. I agree, too, that on all other occasions, the

preacher has the right, equally with every other citizen, to express his

sentiments, in speaking or writing, on the subjects of Medicine, Law, Politics,

etc., his leisure time being his own, and his congregation not obliged to

listen to his conversation or to read his writings ; and no one would have

regretted more than myself, had any scruple as to this right withheld from us

the valuable discourses which have led to the expression of an opinion as to

the true limits of the right. I 













            Correspondence          283







feel my portion of indebtment to the reverend author for the distinguished

learning, the logic and the eloquence with which he has proved that religion,

as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our

government has been founded and its rights asserted.







These are my views on this question. They are in opposition to those of the

highly respected and able preacher, and are, therefore, the more doubtingly

offered. Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry to truth; and

that, I am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us both. We both value

too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish

its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.







  Unaccustomed to reserve or mystery in the expression of my opinions, I have

opened myself frankly on a question suggested by your letter and pre.sent. And

although I have not the honor of your acquaintance, this mark of attention, and

still more the sentiments of esteem so kindly expressed in your letter, are

entitled to a confidence that observations not intended for the public will not

be ushered to their notice, as has happened to me sometimes. Tranquillity, at

my age, is the balm of life. While I know I am safe in the honor and charity of

a McLeod, I do not wish to be cast forth to the Marats, the Dantons, and the

Robespierres of the priesthood; I mean the Parishes, the Ogdens, and the

Gardiners of Massachusetts. 













284         Jefferson's Works







 I pray y ou to accept the assurances of my esteem and respect.















      TO CAESAR A. RODNEY.







               MONTICELLO, March 16, 1815.







  MY DEAR FRIEND AND ANCIENT COLLEAGUE,Your letter of February the Igth has

been received with very sincere pleasure. It recalls to memory the sociability,

the friendship, and the harmony of action which united personal happiness with

public duties, during the portion of our lives in which we actcd together.

Indeed, the affectionate harmony of our Cabinet is among the sweetest of my

recollections. I have just received a letter of friendship from General

Dearborn. He writes me that he is now retiring from every species of public

occupation, to pass the remainder of life as a private citizen; and he promises

me a visit in the course of the summer. As you hold out a hope of the same

gratification, if chance or purpose could time your visits together, it would

make a real jubilee. But come as you will, or as you can, it will always be.

joy enough to me. Only you must give me a month's notice; because I go three or

four times a year to a possession ninety miles southwestward, and am absent a

month at a time, and the mortification would be indelible of losing such a

visit by a mistimed absence. You will find me in habitual good health, great

contentedness, enfeebled in body, impaired in memory, but without decay in my

friendships. 













             Correspondence        285







  Great, indeed, have been the revolutions in the world, since you and I have

had anything to do with it. To me they have been like the howlings of the

winter storm over the battlements, while warm in my bed. The unprincipled

tyrant of the land is f allen, his power reduced to its original nothingness,

his person only not yet in the mad-house, where it ought always to have been.

His equally unprincipled competitor, the tyrant of the ocean, in the madhouse

indeed, in person, but his power still stalking over the deep. "Quem Deus vult

perdere, prius dementat." The madness is acknowledged; the perdition of course

impending. Are we to be the instruments? A friendly, a just, and a reasonable

conduct on their part, might make us the main pillar of their prosperity and

existence. But their deep-rooted hatred to us Seems to be the means which

Providence permits to lead them to their final catastrophe.







"Nullam enim in terris gentem esse, nullum in f estiorem populum, nomini

Romano," said the General who erased Capua from the list of powers. What

nourishment and support would not England receive from an hundred millions of

industrious descendants, whom some of her people now born will live to see

here? What their energies are, she has lately tried. And what has she not to

fear from an hundred miilions of such men, if she continues her maniac course

of hatred and hostility to them? I hope in God she will change. There is not a

nation on the globe with whom I have more earnestly wished a friendly inter













286        Jefferson's Works







course on equal conditions. On no other would I hold out the hand of friendship

to any. I know that their creatures represent me as personally an enemy to

England. But fools only can believe this, or those who think me a fool. I am an

enemy to her insults and injuries. I am an enemy to the flagitious principles

of her administration, and to those which govern her conduct towards other

nations. But would she give to morality some place in her political code, and

especially would she exercise decency, and at least neutral passions towards

us, there is not, I repeat it, a people on earth with whom I would sacrifice so

much to be in friendship. They can do us, as enemies, more harm than any other

nation ; and in peace and in war; they have more means of disturbing us

internally. Their merchants established among us, the bonds by which our own

are chained to their feet, and the banking combinations interwoven with the

whole, have shown the extent of their control, even during a war with her. .

They are the workers of all the embarrassments our finances have experienced

during the war: Declaring themselves bankrupt, they have been able still to

chain the government to a dependence on them, and had the war continued, they

would have reduced us to the inability to command a single dollar. They dared

to proclaim that they would not pay their own paper obligations, yet our

government could not venture to avail themselves of this opportunity of

sweeping their paper from the circulation, and substituting 













            Correspondence         287







cheir own notes bottomed on specific taxes for redemption, which every one

would have eagerly taken and trusted, rather than the baseless trash of

bankrupt companies ; our government, I say, have still been overawed from a

contest with them, and has even countenanced and strengthened their influence,

by proposing new establishments, with authority to swindle yet greater sums

from our citizens. This is the British influence to which I am an enemy, and

which we must subject to our government, or it will subject us to that of

Britain.







  * * * * * * * * *







Come, and gratify, by seeing you once more, a friend who assures you with

sincerity of his constant and affectionate attachment and respect.















        TO GENERAL HENRY DEARBORN.







              MONTICELLO, March 17, 1815.







  MY DEAR GENERAL, FRIEND, AND ANCIENT COLLEAGUE,-I have received your favor of

February the 27th, with very great pleasure, and sincerely reciprocate

congratulations on late events. Peace was indeed desirable.; yet it would not

have been as welcome without the successes of New Orleans. These last have

established truths too important not to be valued; that the people of Louisiana

are sincerely attaclied to the Union ; that their city can be defended; that

the Western States make its defence their peculiar concern; that the militia

are 













288         Jefferson's Works







brave ; that their deadly aim countervails the manoeuvering skill of their

enemy ; that we have officers of natural genius now starting forward from the

mass; and that, putting together all our conflicts, we can beat the British by

sea and by land, with equal numbers. All this being now proved, I am glad of

the pacification of Ghent, and shall still be more so, if, by a reasonable

arrangement against impressment, they will make it truly a treaty of peace, and

not a mere truce, as we must all consider it, until the principle of the war is

settled. Nor, among the incidents of the war, will we forget your services.

After the disasters produced by the treason or the cowardice







                                 , or both, of Hull, and the follies of some

others, your capture of York and Fort George, first turned the tide of success

in our favor; and the subsequent campaigns sufficiently wiped away the

'disgrace of the first. If it were justifiable to look to your own happiness

only, your resolution to retire from all public business could not but be

approved. But you are too young to ask a discharge as yet, and the public

counsels too much needing the wisdom of our ablest citizens, to relinquish

their claim on you. And surely none needs your aid more than your own State.

Oh, Massachusetts ! how have I lamented the degradation of your apostasy!

Massachusetts, with whom I went with pride in 1776, whose vote was my vote on

every public question, and whose principles were then the standard of whatever

was free or fearless. But she was then under the counsels of the two 













             Correspondence         289







Adamses; while Strong, her present leader, was promoting petitions for

submission to British power and British usurpation. While under her present

counsels, she must be contented to be nothing; as having a vote, indeed, to be

counted, but not respected. But should the State once more buckle on her

republican harness, we shall receive her again as a sister, and recollect her

wanderings among the crimes only of the parricide party, which would have

basely sold what their fathers so bravely won from the same enemy. Let us look

forward, then, to the act of repentance, which, by dismissing her venal

traitors, shall be the signal of return to the bosom and to the principles of

her brethren ; and if her late humiliation can just give her modesty enough to

suppose that her Southern brethren are somewhat on a par with her in wisdom, in

information, in patriotism, in bravery, and even in honesty, although not in

psalm-singing, she will more justly estimate her own relative momentum in the

Union. With her ancient principles, she would really be great, if she did not

think herself the whole. I should be pleased to hear that you go into her

counsels, and assist in bringing her back to those principles, and to a sober

satisf action with her proportionable share in the direction of our aff airs.







  * * * * * * * * *







Be so good as to lay my homage at the feet of Mrs. Dearborn, and be assured

that I am ever and affectionately yours.







    VOL. XIV-19 





















TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES







       (JAMES MADISON).







               MONTICELLO, March 23, 1815







DEAR SIR,-I duly received your favor of the Iath, and with it the pamphlet on

the causes and conduct of the war, which I now return. I have read it with

great pleasure, but with irresistible desire that it should be published. The

reasons in favor of this are strong, and those against it are so easily gotten

over, that there appears to me no balance between them. I. We need it in

Europe. They have totally mistaken our character. Accustomed to rise at a

feather themselves, and to be always -fighting, they will see in our conduct,

fairly stated, that acquiescence under wrong, to a certain degree, is wisdom,

and not pusillanimity; and that peace and happiness are preferable to that

false honor which, by eternal wars, keeps their people in eternal labor, want,

and wretchedness. a. It is necessary for the people of England, who have been

deceived as to the causes and conduct of the war, and do not entertain a doubt,

that it was entirely wanton and wicked on our part, and under the order of

Bonaparte. By rectifying their ideas, it will tend to that conciliation which

is absolutely necessary to the peace and prosperity of both nations. 3. It is

necessary for our own people, who, although they have known the details as they

went along, yet have been so plied with false facts and false views by the

federalists,that some impres-







             Correspondence          291







sion has been left that all has not been right: It may be said that it will be

thought unfriendly. But truths necessary for our own character, must not be

suppressed out of tenderness to its calumniators. Although written, generally,

with great moderation, there may be some things in the pamphlet which may

perhaps irritate. The characterizing every act, for example, by its appropriate

epithet; is not necessary to show its deformity to an intelligent reader. The

naked narrative will present it truly to his mind, and the more strongly, from

its moderation, as he will perceive that no exaggeration is aimed at. Rubbing

down 'these roughnesses, and they are neither znany nor prominent, and

preserving the original date, might, I think, remove all the offensiveness, and

give more effect to the publication. Indeed, I think that a soothing

postscript, addressed to the interests, the prospects, and the sober reason of

both nations, would make it acceptable to both. The trifling expense of

reprinting it ought not to be considered a moment. Mr. Gallatin could have it

translated into French, and suffer it to get abroad in Europe without either

avowal or disavowal. But it would be useful to print some copies of an

appendix, containing all the documents referred to, to be preserved in

libraries, and to facilitate to the present and future writers of history, the

acquisition of the materials which test the truth it contains.







  I sincerely congratulate you on the peace; and more especially on the eclat

with which the war was, 













 292           Jefferson's Works







closed. The affair of New Orleans was fraught with useful lessons to ourselves,

our enemies, and our friends, and will powerfully influence our future

relations with the nations of Europe. It will show them we mean to take no part

in their wars, and count no odds when engaged in our own. I presume that,

having spared. to the pride of England her formal acknowledgment of the

atrocity of impressment in an article of the treaty, she will concur in a

convention for relinquishing it. Without this, she must understand that the

present is but a truce, determinable. on the first act of impressment of an

American citizen, committed by any officer of hers. Would it not be better that

this convention should be a separate. act, unconnected with any treaty of

commerce, and made an indispensable preliminary to all other treaty ? If

blended with a treaty of commerce, she will make it the price of injurious

concessions. Indeed, we are infinitely better without such treaties with any

nation. We cannot too distinctly detach ourselves from the European system,

which is essentially belligerent, nor too sedulously cultivate an American

system, essentially pacific. But if we go into commercial treaties at all, they

should be with all, at the same time, with whom we have important commercial

relations. France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, all

should proceed pari passu. Our ministers marching in phalanx on the same line,

and intercommunicating freely, each will be supported by the weight of the

whole mass, and the 













             Correspondence         293







facility with which the other nations will agree to equal terms of intercourse,

will discountenance the selfish higglings of England, or justify our rejection

of them. Perhaps, with all of them, it would be best to have but the single

article gentis amicissimce, leaving everything else to the usages and

courtesies of civilized nations. But all these things will occur to yourself,

with their counter-consideration.







  Mr. Smith wrote to me on the transportation of the library, and,

particularly, that it is submitted to your direction. He mentioned, also, that

Dougherty would be engaged to superintend it. No one will more carefully and

faithfully execute all those duties which would belong to a wagon master. But

it requires a character acquainted with books, to receive the library. I am now

employing as many hours of every day as my strength will permit, in arranging

the books, and putting every one in its place on the shelves, corresponding

with its order on the catalogue,'and shall have them numbered correspondently.

This operation will employ me a considerable time yet. Then I should wish a

competent agent to attend, and, with the catalogue in his hand, see that every

book is on the shelves, and have their lids nailed ori, one by one, as he

proceeds. This would take such a person about two days; after which,

Dougherty's business would be the mere mechanical removal, at convenience. I

enclose you a letter from Mr. Milligan, offering his service, which would not

cost more than eight or ten days' reason













294          Jefferson's Works







able compensation. This is necessary for my safety and your satisfaction, as.a

just caution for the public. You know that there are persons, both in and out

of the public councils, who will seize every occasion of imputation on either

of us, the more difficult to be repelled in this case, in which a negative

could not be proved. If you approve of it, therefore, as soon as I am through

the review, I will give notice to Mr. Milligan, or any other person you will

name, to come on immediately. Indeed it would be well worth while to add to his

duty, that of covering the books with a little paper, (the good bindings, at

least,) and filling the vacancies of the presses with paper parings, to be

brought from Washington. This would add little more to the time, as he could

carry on both operations at once.







  Accept the assurance of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.















            TO L. H. GIRARDIN.







              MONTICELLO; March 27, 1815.







I return your 14th chapter with only two or three unimportant alterations as

usual, and with a note suggested, of doubtful admissibility. I believe it would

be acceptable to the reader of every nation except England, and I do not

suppose that, even without it, your book will be a popular one there, however

you will decide for yourself.







As to what is to be said of myself, I of course am 













             Correspondence          295







not the judge. But my sincere wish is that the faithful historian, like the

able surgeon, would consider me in his hands, while living, as a dead subject,

that the same judgment may now be expressed which will be rendered hereafter,

so far as my small agency in human aff airs may attract f uture notice ; and I

would of choice now stand as at the bar of posterity, "Cum semel occidaris, et

de te ultima Minos Fecerit arbitria. " The only exact testimony of a man is his

actions, leaving the reader to pronounce on them his own judgment. In

anticipating this, too little is safer than too much ; and I sincerely assure

you that you will please me most by a rigorous suppression of all friendly

partialities. This candid expression of sentiments once delivered, passive

silence becomes the future duty.







  It is with real regret I inform you that the day oú delivering the library is

close at hand. A letter by last mail informs me that Mr. Milligan is ordered to

come on the instant I am ready to deliver. I shall complete the arrangement of

the books on Saturday. There will then remain only to paste on them their

numbers, which will be begun on Sunday. Of this Mr. Milligan has notice, and

may be expected every hour after Monday next. He will examine the books by the

catalogue, and nail up the presses, one by one, as he gets through them. But it

is indispensable for me to have all the books in their places when we begin to

number them, and it would be a great convenience to have all you can do without

now, to put 













            Jefferson's Works







them into the places they should occupy. Ancient history is numbered. Modern

history comes next. The bearer carries a basket to receive what he can bring of

those you are done with. I salute you with friendship and respect.















             TO DAVID BARROW.







                 MONTICELLO, May 1, 1815.







SIR,-I have duly received your favor of March 2oth, and am truly thankful for

the favorable sentiments expressed in it towards myself. If, in the course of

my life, it has been in any degree useful to the cause of humanity, the fact

itself bears its full reward. The particular subject of the pamphlet you

enclosed me was one of early and tender consideration with me, and had I

continued in the councils of my own State, it should never have been out of

sight. The only practicable plan I could ever devise is stated under the 14th

quaere of the Notes on Virginia, and it is still the one most sound in my

judgment. Unhappily it is a case for which both parties require 'long and

difficult preparation. The mind of the master is to be apprised by reflection,

and strengthened by the energies of conscience, against the obstacles of

self-interest to an acquiescence in the rights of others; that of the slave is

to be prepared by instruction and habit for self-government, and for the honest

pursuits of industry and social duty. Both of these courses of preparation 













             Correspondence        297







require time, and the former must precede the latter. Some progress is sensibly

made in it; yet not so much as I had hoped and expected. But it will yield in

time to temperate and steady pursuit, to the enlargement of the human mind, and

its advancement in science. We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and

the power of a superior agent. Our efforts are in His hand, and directed by it;

and He will give them their effect in His own time. Where the disease is most

deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern States

it was merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the Southern it is

incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, patience, and

perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected, and its

progress hastened, will be the last and fondest prayer of him who now salutes

you with respect and consideration.















      TO MONSIEUR DUPONT DE NEMOURS.







                MONTICELLO, May 15, 1815.







  MY DEAR FRIEND,-The newspapers tell us you are arrived in the United States.

I congratulate my country on this as a manifestation that you consider its

civil advantages as more than equivalent to the physical comforts and social

delights of a country which possesses both in the highest degree of any one on

earth You despair of your country, and so do I. A military despotism is now

fixed upon it 













298         Jefferson's Works







permanently, especially if the son of the tyrant should have virtues and

talents. What a treat would it be to me, to be with you, and to learn from you

all the intrigues, apostasies and treacheries. which have produced this last

death's blow to the hopes of France. For, although not in the will, there was

in the imbecility of the Bourbons a foundation of hope that the patriots of

France might obtain a moderate representative government. Here you will find

rejoicings on this event, and by a strange quid pro quo, not by the party

hostile to liberty, but by its zealous friends. In this they see nothing but

the scourge reproduced for the back of England they do not permit themselves to

see in it the blast of all the hopes of mankind, and that however it may

jeopardize England, it gives to her self-defence the lying countenance again of

being the sole champion of the rights of man, to which in all other nations she

is most adverse. I wrote to you on the 28th of February, by a Mr. Ticknor, then

proposing to sail for France, but the conclusion of peace induced him to go €

first to England. I hope he will keep my letter out of the post offices of

France ; for it was not written for the inspection of those'now in power. You

will now be a witness of our deplorable ignorance in finance and political

economy generally. I mentioned in my letter of February that I was endeavoring

to get your memoir on that subject printed. I have not yet succeeded. I am just

setting out to a distant possession of mine, and shall be absent three weeks.

God bless you. 













              Correspondence          299















              TO JOHN ADAMS.







                MONTICELLO, June 10, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-It is long since we have exchanged a letter, and yet what volumes

might have been written on the occurrences even of the last three months. In

the first place, peace, God bless it! has returned to put us all again into a

course of lawful and laudable pursuits; a new trial of the Bourbons has proved

to the world their incompetence to the functions of the station they have

occupied; and the recall of the usurper has clothed him with the semblance of a

legitimate autocrat. If adversity should have taught him wisdom, of which I

have little expectation, he may yet render some service to mankind, by teaching

the ancient dynasties that they can be changed for misrule, and by wearing down

the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. But it is not

possible he should love us; and of that our commerce had sufficient proof

during his power. Our rr€litary achievements, indeed, which he is capable of

estimating, may, in some degree, moderate the effect of his aversions; and he

may perhaps fancy that we are to become the natural enemies of England, as

England herself has so steadily endeavored to make us, and as some of our own

over-zealous patriots would be willing to proclaim; and, in this view, he may

admit a cold toleration of some intercourse and commerce between the two

nations. He has certainly had time to see the folly of turning the 













300        Jefferson's Works







industry of France from the cultures for which nature has so highly endowed

her, to those of sugar, cotton, tobacco, and others, which the same creative

power has given to other climates ; and, on the whole, if he can conquer the

passions of his tyrannical soul, if he has understanding enough to pursue from

motives of interest, what no moral motives lead him to, the tranquil happiness

and prosperity of his country, rather than a ravenous thirst for human blood,

his return may become of more advantage than injury to us. And if, again, some

great man could arise in England, who could see and correct the follies of his

nation in their conduct as to us, and by: exercising justice and comity towards

ours, bring both into a state of temperate and useful friendship, it is

possible we might thus attain the place we ought to occupy between these two

nations, without being degraded to the condition of mere partisans of either. .







  A little time will now inform us, whether France, within its proper limits,

is big enough for its ruler, on the one hand, and whether, on the other, the

allied powers are eit_her wicked or foolish enough to attempt the forcing on

the French a ruler and government which they refuse? Whether they will risk

their own thrones to re-establish that of the Bourbons ? If this is attempted,

and the European world again committed to war, will the jealousy of England at

the commerce which neutrality will give us, induce her again to add us to the

number of her enemies, rather than see us prosper in the pursuit of peace and 













            Correspondence          301







industry? And have our commercial citizens merited from their country its

encountering another war to protect their gambling enterprises ? That the

persons of our citizens shall be safe in freely traversing the ocean, that the

transportation of our own produce, in our own vessels, to the markets of our

choice, and the return to us of the articles we want for our own use, shall be

unmolested, I hold to be fundamental, and the gauntlet that must be for ever

hurled at him who questions it. But whether we shall engage in every war of

Europe, to protect the mere agency of our merchants and ship-owners in carrying

on the commerce of other nations, even were these merchants and ship-owners to

take the side of their country in the contest, instead of that of the enemy, is

a question of deep and serious consideration, with which, however, you and I

shall have nothing to do ; so we will leave it to those whom it will concern.







  I thank you for making known to me Mr. Ticknor and Mr. Gray. They are fine

young men, indeed, and if Massachusetts can raise a few more such, it is

probable she would be better counseled as to social rights and social duties.

Mr. Ticknor is, particularly, the best bibliograph I have met with, and very

kindly and opportunely offered me the means of reprocuring some part of the

literary treasures which I have ceded to Congress, to replace the devastations

of British vandalism at Washington. I cannot livc without books. But fewer will

suffice, where amusement, and not use, is the only future object. I am 













302         Jefferson's Works







about sending him a catalogue, to which less than his critical knowledge of

books would hardly be adequate.







  Present my high respects to Mrs. Adams, and accept yourself the assurance of

my affectionate attachment.















            TO W. H. TORRANCE.







                MONTICELLO, June 11, 1815.







  SIR,-I received a few days ago your favor of May 5th, stating a question on a

law of the State of Georgia which suspends judgments for a limited time, and

asking my opinion whether it may be valid under the inhibition of our

Constitution to pass laws impairing the obligations of contracts. It is more

than forty years since I have quitted the practice of the law, and been engaged

in vocations which furnished little occasion of preserving a familiarity with

that science. I am far, therefore, from being qualified to decide on the

problems it presents, and certainly not disposed to obtrude in a case where

gentlemen have been consulted of the first qualifications, and of actual and

daily familiarity with the subject, especially, too, in a question on the law

of another State. We have in this State a law resembling in some degree that

you quote, suspending executions until a year after the treaty of peace ; but

no question under it has been raised before the courts. It is 'also, I believe,

expected that when this shall expire in considera













            Correspondence          303







tion of the absolute impossibility of procuring coin to satisfy judgments, a

law will be passed, similar to that passed in England, on suspending the cash

payments of their bank, that provided that on refusal by a party to receive

notes of the Bank of England in any case either of past or future contracts,

the judgment should be suspended during the continuance of that act, bearing,

however, legal interest. They seemed to consider that it was not this law which

changed the conditions of the contract, but the circumstances which had arisen,

and had rendered its literal execution impossible ; by the disappearance of the

metallic medium stipulated by the contract, that the parties not concurring in

a reasonable and just accommodation, it became the duty of the legislature to

arbitrate between them; and that less restrained than the Duke of Venice by the

letter of decree, they were free to adjudge to Shylock a reasonable equivalent.

And I believe that in our States this umpirage of the legislatures has been

generally interposed in cases where a literal execution of contract has, by a

change of circumstances, become impossible, or, if enforced, would produce a

disproportion between the .subject of the contract and its price, which the

parties did not contemplate at the time of the contract.







The second question, whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority

to decide on the constitutionality of a law, has been heretofore a subiect of

consideration with me in the exercise of 













304            Jefferson's Works







official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has

given that power to them more than to the executive or legislative br anches.

Questions of property, of character and of crime being ascribed to the judges,

through a definite course of legal proceeding, laws involving such questions

belong, of course, to them; and as they decide on them ultimately and without

appeal, they of course decide for themselves. The constitutional validity of

the law or laws again prescribing executive action, and to be administered by

that branch ultimately and without appeal, the executive must decide for

themselves also, whether, under the Constitution, they are valid or not. So

also as to laws governing the proceedings of the legislature, that body must

judge for itsel f the constitutionality of the law, and equally without appeal

or control from its co-ordinate branches. And, in general, that branch which is

to act ultimately, and without appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor of

the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other co-ordinate

authorities. It may be said that contradictory decisions may arise in such

case, and produce inconvenience. This is possible, and is a necessary failing

in all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of the public functionaries, and

authority of public opinion, will generally produce accommodation. Such an

instance of difference occurred between the judges of England (in the time of

Lord Holt) and the House of Commons, but the prudence of those bodies pre













             Corresporiderice        305







vented inconvenience from it. So in the cases of Duane and of William Smith of

South Carolina, whose characters of citizenship stood precisely on the same

ground, the judges in a question of meum and tuum which came before them,

decided that Duane was not a citizen ; and in a question of membership, the

House of Representatives, under the same words of the same provision, adjudged

William Smith to be a citizen. Yet no inconvenience has ensued from these

contradictory decisions. This is what I believe myself to be sound. But there

is another opinion enter tained by some men of such judgment and information as

to lessen my confidence in my own. That is, that the legislature alone is the

exclusive expounder of the sense of the Constitution, in every part of it

whatever. And they allege in its support, that this branch has authority to

impeach and punish a member of either of the others acting contrary to its

declaration of the sense of the Constitution. It may indeed be answered, that

an act may still be valid although the party is punished for it, right or

wrong. However, this opinion which ascribes exclusive exposition to the

legislature, merits respect for its safety, there being in the body of the

nation a control over them, . which, if expressed by rejection on the

subsequent exercise of their elective franchise, enlists public opinion against

their exposi-tion, and encourages a judge or executive nn a future occasion to

adhere to their former opinion. Be- tween these two doctrines, every one has a







   VOL. XIV-20 













306           Jefferson's Works







right to choose, and I know of no third meriting any respect.







  I have thus, Sir, frankly, without the honor of your acquaintance, confided

to you my opinion; trusting assuredly that no use will be made of it which

shall commit me to the contentions of the newspapers. From that field of

disquietude my age asks. exemption, and permission to enjoy the privileged

tranquillity of a private and unmeddling citizen. In this confidence accept the

assurances of my respect and consideration.















       TO THOMAS LEIPER.







               MONTICELLO, June 12, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-A journey soon after the receipt of your favor of April the 17th,

and an absence from home of some continuance, have prevented my earlier

acknowledgment of it. In that came safely my letter of January the 2d, 1814. In

our principles of government we differ not at all; nor in the general object

and tenor of political measures. We concur in considering the government of

England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with

vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in

corruption, of deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it

endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the

world. In our estimate of Bonaparte, I suspect we differ. I view him as a

political engine only, and a very wicked one; 













             Correspondence            307







you, I believe, as both political and religious, and obeying, as an instrument,

an unseen hand. I still deprecate his becoming sole lord of the continent of

Europe, which he would have been, had he reached in triumph the gates of St.

Petersburg. The establishment in our day of another Roman empire, spreading

vassalage and depravity over the face of the globe, is not, I hope, within the

purposes of Heaven. Nor does the return of Bonaparte give me pleasure unmixed ;

I see in his expulsion of the Bourbons, a valuable lesson to the world, as

showing that its ancient dynasties may be changed for their misrule. Should the

allied powers presume to dictate a ruler and government to France, and follow

the example he had set of parceling and usurping to themselves their neighbor

nations, I hope he will give them another lesson in vindication of the rights

of independence and self-government, which himself had heretofore so much

abused; and that in this contest he will wear down the maritime power of

England to limitable and safe diznensions. So far, good. It cannot be denied,

on the other hand, that his successful perversion of the force (committed to

him for vindicating the rights and liberties of his country) to usurp its

government, and to enchain it under an hereditary despotism, is of baneful

effect in encouraging future usurpations, and deternng those under oppression

from rising to redress themselves. His restless spirit leaves no hope of peace

to the world; and his hatred of us is only a little less than that he 













308            Jefferson's Works







bears to England, and England to us. Our form of government is odious to him,

as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule ; and as much from

that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded

intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they

wanted from us, that is, cotton and tobacco. Whether the war we have had with

England, and the achievements of that war, and the hope that we may become his

instruments and partisans against that enemy, may induce him, in future, to

tolerate our commercial intercourse with his people, is still to be seen. For

my part, I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence ;

that those which are overgrown mav not advance beyond safe measures of power,

that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our

peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our

business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open

for what we can spare or want ; and the less we have to do with the amities or

enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may

shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble.

But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we

use our power, the greater it will be.







The federal misrepresentation of my sentiments, which occasioned my former

letter to you, was gross enough; but that and all others are exceeded by the 













            Correspondence          309







impudence and falsehood of the printed' extract you sent me from Ralph's paper.

That a continuanee of the embargo for two months longer would have prevented

our war ; that the non-importation law which succeeded it was a wise and

powerful measure, I have constantly maintained. My friendship for Mr. Madison,

my confidence in his wisdom and virtue, and my approbation of all his measures,

and especially of his taking up at length the gauntlet against England, is

known to all with whom I have ever conversed or corresponded on these measures.

The word f ederal, or its synonyma lie, may thereúore be written under every

word of Mr. Ralph's paragraph. I have ransacked my memory to recollect any

incident which might have given countenance to any particle of it, but I find

none. For if you will except the bringing into power and importance those who

were enemies to himself as well as to the principles of republican government,

I do not recollect a single measure of the President which I have not approved.

Of those under him, and of some very near him, there have been many acts of

which we have all disapproved, and he more than we. We have at times dissented

from the measures, and lamented the dilatoriness of Congress. I recollect an

instance the first winter of the war, when, from sloth of proceedings, an

embargo was permitted to run through the winter, while the enemy could not

cruise, nor consequently restrain the exportation of our whole produce, and was

taken off in the spring, as soon as they could 













 310           Jefferson's Works







resume their stations. But this procrastination is unavoidable. How can

expedition be expected from a body which we have saddled with an hundred

lawyers, whose trade is talking? But lies, to sow division among us, is so

stale an artifice of the federal prints, and are so well ur derstood, that they

need neither contradiction nor explanation. As to myself, my confidence in the

wisdom and integrity of the administration' is so entire, that I scarcely

notice what is passing, and have almost ceased to read newspapers. Mine remain

in our post office a week or ten days, sometimes, unasked for. I find more

amusement in studies to which I was always more attached, and from which I was

dragged by the events of the times in which I have happened to live.







  I rejoice exceedingly that our war with England was single-handed. In that of

the Revolutin, we had France, Spain, and Holland on our side, and the credit of

its success was given to them. On the la,te occasion, unprepared and

unexpecting war, we were compelled to declare it, and to receive the attack of

England, just issuing from a general war, fully armed, and freed from all other

enemies, and have not only made her sick of it, but glad to prevent, by peace,

the capture of her adjacent possessions, which one or two campaigns more would

infallibly have made ours. She has found that we can do her more injury than

any other enemy on earth, and henceforward will better estimate the value of

our peaee. But whether her government has power, in opposition 













            Correspondence         311







to the aristocracy of her navy, to restrain their piracies within the limits of

national rights, may well be doubted. I pray, therefore, for peace, as best for

all the worid, best for us, and best for me, who have already lived to see

three wars, and now pant for nothing more than to be permitted to depart in

peace. That you also, who have longer to live, may continue to enjoy this

blessing with health and prosperity, through as long a life as you desire, is

the prayer of yours affectionately.







 P. S. Hune the 14th.-Before I had sent my letter to the post office, I

received the new treaty of the allied powers, declaring that the French nation

shall not have Bonaparte, and shall have Louis XVIII. for their ruler. They are

all then as great rascals as Bonaparte himself. While he was in the wrong, I

wished him exactly as much success as would answer our purposes, and no more.

Now that they are wrong and he in the right, he shall have all my prayers for

success, and that he may dethrone every man of them.















            TO JAMES MAURY.







               MONTICELLO, June 15, 1815.







I congratulate you, my dear and ancient friend, on the return of peace, and the

restoration of intercourse between our two countries. What has passed may be a

lesson to both of the injury which either 













312            Jefferson's Works







can do the other, and the peace now opened may show what would be the value of

a cordial friendship; and I hope the first moments of it will be employed to

remove the stumbling block which must otherwise keep us eternal enemies. I mean

the impressment of our citizens. This was the sole object of the continuance of

the late war, which the repeal of the orders of council would otherwise have

ended at its beginning. If according to our estimates, England impressed into

her navy 6,ooo of our citizens, let her count the cost of the war, and a

greater number of men lost in it, and she will find this resource for manning

her navy the most expensive she can adopt, each of these men having cost her

$30,000 sterling, and a man of her own besides. On that point we. have thrown

away the scabbard, and the moment an European war brings her back to this

practice, adds us again to her enemies. But I hope an arrangement is already

made on this subject. Have you no statesmen who can look forward two or three

score years? It is but forty years since the battle of Lexington. One-third of

those now living saw that day, when we were about two millions of people, and

have lived to see this, when we are ten millions. Onethird of those now living,

who see us at ten millions, will live another forty years, and see us forty

millions; and looking forward only through such a portion of time as has passed

since you and I were scanning Virgil together, (which I believe is near three

score years,) we shall be seen to have a population 













             Correspondence          313







of eighty millions, and of not more than double the average density of the

present. What may not such a people be worth to England as customers and

friends ? and what might she not apprehend from such a nation ' as enemies ?

Now, what is the price we ask for our friendship? Justice, and the comity

usually observed between nation and nation. Would there not be more of dignity

in this, more character and satisfaction, than in her teasings and harassings,

her briberies and intrigues, to sow party discord among us, which can never

have more effect here than the opposition within herself has there ; which can

never obstruct the begetting children, the efficient source of growth ; and by

nourishing a deadly hatred, will only produce and hasten events which both of

us, in moments of sober reflection, should deplore and deprecate. One-half of

the attention employed in decent observances towards our government, would be

worth more to her than all the Yankee duperies played off upon her, at a great

expense on her part of money and meanness, and of nourishment to the vices and

treacheries of the Henrys and Hulls of both nations. As we never can be at war

with, any other nation, (for no other nation can get at us but Spain, and her

own people will manage her,) the idea may be generated that we are natural

enemies, and a calamitous one it will be to both. I hope in God her government

will come to a sense of this, and will see that honesty and interest are as

intimately connected in the public as in the private code 













314         Jefferson's Works







of morality. Her ministers have been weak enough to bclieve from the newspapers

that Mr. Madison and myself are personally her enemies. Such an idea is

unworthy a man of sense ; as we should have been unworthy our trusts could we

have felt such a motive of public action. No two men in the United States have

more sincerely wished for cordial friendship with her; not as her vassals or

dirty partisans, but as members of co-equal States, respecting each other, and

sensible of the good as well as the harm each is capable of doing the other. On

this ground there was never a moment we did not wish to embrace her. But

repelled by their aversions, feeling their hatred at every point of contact,

and justly indignant at its supercilious manifestations, that happened which

has happened, that will follow which must follow, in progressive ratio, while

such dispositions continue to be indulged. I hope they will see this, and do

their part towards healing the minds and cooling the temper of both nations.

The irritation here is great and general, because the mode of warfare both on

the maritime and inland frontiers has been most exasperating. We perceive the

English passions to be high also, nourished by the newspapers, that first of

all human contrivances for generating war. But it is the office of the rulers

on both sides to rise above these vulgar vehicles of passion ; to assuage angry

feelings, and by examples and expressions oú mutual regard in their public

intercourse, to lead their citizens into good temper with each 













             Correspondence          315







other. No one feels more indignation than myself when reflecting on the insults

and injuries of that country to this. But the interests of both require that

these should be left to history, and in the meantime be smothered in the living

mind. I have indeed little personal concern in it. Time is drawing her curtain

on me. But I should make my bow with more satisfaction, if I had more hope of

seeing our countries shake hands together cordially. In this sentiment I am

sure you are with me, and this assurance must apologize for my indulging myself

in expressing it to you, with that of my constant and affectionate friendship

and respect.















             TO JAMES MAURY.







               MONTICELLO, June 16, 1815.







  MY DEAR SIR,-Just as I was about to close my preceding letter, yours of April

agth is put into my hands, and with it the papers your kindness forwards to me.

I am glad to see in them. expressions of regard for our friendship and

intercourse from one side of the Houses of Parliament. But I would rather have

seen them from the other, if not from both. What comes from the opposition is

under-stood to be the converse of the sentiments of the government, and we

would not there, as they do here, give up the government for the opposition.

The views of the Prince and his ministers are unfortunately to be taken from

the speech af Earl Bathurst, 













316        Jefferson's Works







in one of the papers you sent me. But what is incomprehensible to me is that

the Marquis of Wellesley, advocating us, on the ground of opposition, says that

" the aggression which led to the war, was from the United States, not from

England." Is there a person in the world who, knowing the circumstances, thinks

this? The acts which produced the war were, 1st, the impressment of our

citizens by their ships of war, and, ad, the orders of council forbidding our

vessels to trade with any country but England, without going to England to

obtain a special license. On the first subject the British minister declared to

our charge, Mr. Russel, that this practice of their ships of war would not be

discontinued, and that no admissible arrangement could be proposed; and as to

the second, the Prince Regent, by his proclamation of April 21st, 1812,

declared in effect solemnly that he would not revoke the orders of council as

to us, on the ground that Bonaparte had revoked his decrees as to us; that, on

the contrary, we should continue under them until Bonaparte should revoke as to

all      € the world. These categorical and definite answers put an end to

negotiation, and were a declaration of a continuance of the war in which they

had already taken from us one thousand ships and six thousand seamen. We

determined then to defend ourselves, and to oppose further hostilities by war

on our side also. Now, had we taken one thousand British ships and six thousand

of her seamen without any declaration of war, would the Marquis of Wellesley

have 













            Correspondence         317







considered a declaration of war by Great Britain as an aggression on her part ?

They say we denied their maritime rights. We never denied a single one. It was

their taking our citizens, native as well as naturalized, for which we went

into war, and because they forbade us to trade with any nation without entering

and paying duties in their ports on both the outward and inward cargo. Thus to

carry a cargo of cotton from Savannah to St. Mary's, and take returns in

fruits, for example, our vessel was to go to England, enter and pay a duty on

her cotton there, return to St. Mary's, then go back to England to enter and

pay a duty on her fruits, and then return to Savannah, after crossing the

Atlantic four times, and paying tributes on both cargoes to England, instead of

the direct passage of a few hours. And the taking ships for not doing this, the

Marquis says, is no aggression. However, it is now all over, and I hope forever

over. Yet I should have had more confidence in this, had the friendly

expressions of the Marquis come from the ministers of the Prince. On the

contrary, we see them scarcely admitting that the war ought to have been ended.

Earl Bathurst shuffles together chaotic ideas merely to darken and cover the

views of the ministers in protracting the war ; the truth being, that they

expected to give us an exemplary scourging, to separate from us the States east

of the Hudson, take for their Indian allies those west of the Ohio, placing

three hundred thousand American citizens under the government oú the savages,

and to 













318         Jefferson's Works







leave the residuum a powerless enemy, if not submissive subjects. I cannot

conceive what is the use of your Bedlam when such men are out of it. And yet

that such were their views we have evidence, under the hand of their Secretary

of State in Henry's case, and of their Commissioners at Ghent. Even now they

insinuate the peace in Europe has not suspended the practices which produced

the war. I trust, however, they are speaking a different language to our

ministers, and join in the hope you express that the provocations which

occasioned the late rupture will not be repeated. The interruption of our

intercourse with England has rendered us one essential service in planting,

radically and firmly, eoarse manuf actures among us. I make in my family two

thousand yards of cloth a year, which I formerly bought fram England, and it

only employs a few women, children and invalids, who could do little on the

farm. The State generally does the same, and allowing ten yards to a person,

this amounts to ten millions of yards ; and if we are about the medium degree

of manufacturers in the whole Union, as I believe we are, the whole will amount

to one hundred millions of yards a year, which will soon reimburse us the

expenses of the war. Carding machines in every neighborhood, spinning machines

in large families and wheels in the small, are too radically established ever

to be relinquished. The finer fabrics perhaps, and even probably, will be

sought again in Europe, except broadcloth, which the vast 













              Correspondence       319







multiplication of merinos among us will enable us to make much cheaper than can

be done in Europe.







  Your practice of the cold bath thrice a week during the winter, and at the

age of seventy, is a bold one, which I should not, a priori, have pronounced

salutary. But all theory must yield to experience, and every constitution has

its own laws. I have for fifty years bathed my feet in cold water every morning

(as you mention), and having been remarkably exempted from colds (not having

had one in every seven vears of my life on an average), I have supposed it

might be ascribed to that practice. When we see two facts accompanying one

another for a long time, we are apt to suppose them related as cause and

effect:







Our tobacco trade is strangely changed. We no longer know how to fit the plant

to the market. Differences of from four to twelve dollars the hundred are now

made on qualities appearing to us entirely whimsical. The British orders of

council had obliged us to abandon the culture generally; we are now, however,

returning to it, and experience will soon decide what description of lands may

continue it to advantage. Those which produce the qualities under seven or

eight dollars, must, I think, relinquish it finally. Your friends here are well

as far as I have heard. So I hope you are; and that you may continue so as long

as you shall think the continuance of life itself desirable, is the prayer of

yours sincerely and affectionately. 













320         Jefferson's Works















 JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                   QUINCY, June 20, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-The fit of recollection came upon both of us so nearly at the same

time, that I may, some time or other, begin to think there is something in

Priestley's and Hartley's vibrations. The day before yesterday I sent to the

post office a letter to you, and last night I received your kind favor of the

Ioth.







  The question before the human race is, whether the God of Nature shall govern

the world by His own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by

fictitious miracles ? Or, in other words, whether authority is originally in

the people ? or whether it has descended for 1800 years in a succession of

popes and bishops, or brought down from heaven by the Holy Ghost in the form of

a dove, in a phial of holy oil?







Who shall take the side of God and Nature? Brahmans ? Mandarins ? Druids ? or

Tecumseh and his brother the prophet ? Or shall we become disciples of the

Philosophers? And who are the Philosophers? Frederic? Voltaire? Rousseau?

Buffon? Diderot? or Condorcet? These philosophers have shown themselves as

incapable of governing mankind, as the Bourbons or the Guelphs. Condorcet has

let the cat out of the bag. He has made precious confessions. I regret that I

have only an English translation of his " Outlines of an Historical View of the

Progress of the Human Mind. " But in pages 247, 248, and 249, you will find it

frankly







             Correspondence







acknowledged, that the philosophers of the eighteenth century, adopted all the

maxims, and practiced all the arts of the Pharisees, the ancient priests of all

countries, the Jesuits, the Machiavellians, etc., etc., to overthrow the

institutions that such arts had established. This new philosophy was, by his

own account, as insidious, fraudulent, hypocritical, and cruel, as the old

policy of the priests, nobles, and kings. When and where were ever found, or

will be found, sincerity, honesty, or veracity, in any sect or party in

religion, government, or philosophy ? Johnson and Burke were more of Catholics

than Protestants at heart, and Gibbon became an advocate for the Inquisition.







  There is no act of uniformity in the Church, or State, philosophic. As many

sects and systems among them, as among Quakers and Baptists. Bonaparte will not

revive Inquisitions, Jesui.ts or slave trade, for which habitudes the Bourbons

have been driven again into exile.







  We shall get along, with or without war. I have at last procured the Marquis

D'Argens' Occellus, Timaeus, and Julian. Three such volumes I never read. They

are a most perfect exemplification of Condorcet's previous confessions. It is

astonishing they have not made more noise in the world. Our Athanasians have

printed in a pamphlet in Boston, your letters and Priestley's from Belsham's

Lindsey. It will do you no harm. Our correspondence shall not again be so long

interrupted. Affectionately.







   VOL. XIV-21.. 













            Jefferson's Works







  Mrs. Adams thanks Mr. Jefferson for his friendly remembrance of her, and

reciprocates to him a thousand good wishes.







 P. S. Ticknor and Gray were highly delighted with their visit; charmed with

the whole family. Have you read Carnot? Is it not afflicting to see a man of

such large views, so many noble sentiments, and such exalted integrity, groping

in the dark for a remedy, a balance, or a mediator between independence and

despotism? How shall his ." love of country, " " his honor, " and his "

national spirit, " be produced ?







  I cannot write a hundredth part of what I wish to say to you.







      JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                   QUINCY, June 22, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-Can you give me any information concerning A. G. Camus? Is he a

Chateaubriand? or a Marquis D'Argens? Does he mean to abolish Christianity ? or

to restore the Inquisition, the Jesuits, the Pope and the Devil?







Within a few days I have received a thing as unexpected to me as an apparition

from the dead: Rapport 'a 1'Institut National. Par A. G. Camus, imprime par

ordre de 1'Institut, Pluviose An XI.







In page 55 of this report, he says, " Certain pieces which I found in the

chamber of accounts in Brussels, 













            Correspondence          323







gave me useful indications concerning the grand collection of the Bollandists;

and conducted me to make researches into the state of that work, unfortunately

interrupted at this day. It would add to the Institute to propose to government

the means of completing it; as it has done with success for the collection of

the historians of France, of diplomas and ordinances.1"







Permit me to dwell a few minutes on this important work.







  "Almost all the history of Europe, and a part of that of the east, from the

seventh century to the thirteenth, is in the lives of personages to whom have

been given the title of Saints. Every one may have remarked, that in reading

history, there is no event of any importance, in civil order, in which some

Bishop, some Abbe, some Monk, or some Saint, did not take a part. It is,

therefore, a great service, rendered by the Jesuits (known under the name of

the Bollandists) to those who would write history, to have formed the immense

collection, extended to fifty-two volumes in folio, known under the title of

the Acts of







  ' " The Committee of the Institute, for proposing and superintending the

literary labors, in the month of Frimaire, An XI., wrote to the Minister of the

Interior, requesting him to give orders to the Prefect of the Dyle, and to the

Prefect of the Two Nithes, to summon the citizens De Bue, Fonson, Heyten, and

all others who had taken any part in the sequel of the work of the Bollandists,

to confer with these persons, as well concerning the continuation of this work,

as concerning the cession of the materials destined for the continuation of it;

to promise to the continuators of the Bollandists the support of the French

government, and to render an account of their conferences." 













324            Jefferson's Works







the Saints. The service they have rendered to literature is considerably

augmented by the insertion, in their Acts of the Saints, of a great number of

diplomas and dissertations, the greatest part of which are models of criticism.

There is no man, among the learned, who does not interest himself in this great

collection. My intention is not to recall to your recollection the original

authors, or their first labors. We may easily know them by turning over the

leaves of the collection, or if we would find the result already written, it is

in the Historical Library of Mensel, T. 1, part 1, p. 306, or in the Manual of

Literary History, by Bougine, T. 2, p. 641.







  " I shall date what I have to say to you only from the epoch of the

suppression of the society, of which the Bollandists were members.







  "At that time, three Jesuits were employed in the collection of the Acts of

the Saints; to wit, the Fathers De Bie, De Bue, and Hubens. The Father

Gesquiere, who had also labored at the Acts of the Saints, reduced a particular

collection, entitled Select Fragments from Belgical Writers, and extracts or

references to matters contained in a collectinn entitled Museum of Bellarmine.

These four monks inhabited the house of the Jesuits at Antwerp. Independently

of the use of the library of the convent, the Bollandists had their particular

library, the most important portion of which was a state of the Lives of the

Saints for every day of the month, with indications of the books in which were

found those which 













            Correspondence          325







were already printed, and the original manuscripts, or the copies of

manuscripts, which were not yet printed. They frequently quote this particular

collection in their general collection. The greatest part of the copies they

had assembled, were the fruit of a journey of the Fathers Papebroch and

Henshen, made to Rome in 1660. They remained there till 1662. Papebroch and his

associate brought from Rome copies of seven hundred Lives of Saints, in Greek

or in Latin. The citizen La Serna has in his library a copy, taken by himself,

from the originals, of the relation of the journey of Papebroch to Rome, and of

the correspondence of Henshen with his colleagues. The relation and the

correspondence are in Latin. See Catalogue de la Serna, T. 3, N. 3903.







  "After the suppression of the Jesuits, the commissioners apposed their seals

upon the library of the Bollandists, as well as on that of the Jesuits of

Antwerp. But Mr. Girard, then Secretary of the Academy at Brussels, who is

still living, and who furnished me a part of the documents I use, charged with

the inventory and sale of the books, withdrew those of the Bollandists, and

transported them to Brussels.







  " The Academy of Brussels proposed to continue the Acts of the Saints under

its own name, and for this purpose to admit the four Jesuits into the number of

its members. The Father Gesquiere alone consented to this arrangement. The

other Jesuits obtained of government, through the intervention 













326        Jefferson's Works







of the Bishop of Newstadt, the assurance, that they might continue their

collection. In effect, the Empress Maria Theresa approved, by a decree of the

19th of June, 1778, a plan which was presented to her, for the continuation of

the works, both by the Bollandists and of Gesquiere. This plan is in ample

detail. It contains twenty articles, and would be usef ul to consult, if any

persons should resume the Acts of the Saints. The establishment of the Jesuits

was fixed in the Abbey of Candenberg, at Brussels; the library of the

Bollandists was transported to that place ; one of the monks of the Abbey was

associated with them ; and the Father Hubens being dead, was replaced by the

Father Berthod, a Benedictin, who died in 1789. The Abbey of Candenberg having

been suppressed, the government assigned to the Bollandists a place in the

ancient College of the Jesuits, at Brussels. They there placed their library,

and went there to live. There they published the fifty-first volume of their

collection in 1786, the fifth tome of the month of October, printed at

Brussels, at the printing press Imperial and Royal, (in typis Caesario reg€s.)

They had then two associates, and they flattered themselves that the Emperor

would continue to furnish the expense of their labors. Nevertheless, in 1788,

the establishment of the Bollandists was suppressed, and they even proposed to

sell the stock of the printed volumes; but, by an instruction (Avis) of the 6th

of December, 1788, the ecclesiastical commission superseded the sale, till the

result could 













             Correspondence        327







be known of a negotiation which the Father De Bie had commenced with the Abbe

of St. Blaise, to establish the authors, and transport the stock of the work,

as well as the materials for its continuation at St. Blaise.







  " In the meantime, the Abby of Tongerloo offered the government to purchase

the library and stock of the Bollandists, and to cause the work to be continued

by the ancient Bollandists, with the monks of Tongerloo associated with them.

These propositions were accepted. The Fathers De Bie, De Bue, and Gesqueire,

removed to Tongerloo ; the monks of Candenberg refused to follow them, though

they had been associated with them. On the entry of the French troops into

Belgium, the monks of Tongerloo quitted their Abby; the Fathers De Bie, and

Gesquiere, retired to Germany, where they died ; the Father De Bue retired to

the City Hall, heretofore Province of Hainault, his native country. He lives,

but is very aged. One of the monks of Tongerloo, who had been associated with

them, is the Father Heylen; they were not able to inform me of the place of his

residence. Another monk associated with the Bollandists of 1780, is the Father

Fonson, who resides at Brussels.







  " In the midst of these troubles, the Bollandists have caused to be printed

the fifty-second volume of the Acts of the Saints, the sixth volume of the

month of October. The fifty-first volume is not common in commerce, because the

sale of it has been 













328         Jefferson's Works







interrupted by the continual changes of the residence of the Bollandists. The

fifty-second volume, or the sixth of the same month of October, is much more

rare. Few persons know its existence.







  " The citizen La Serna has given me the two hundred and ninety-six first

pages of the volume, which he believes were printed at Tongerloo. He is

persuaded that the rest of the volume exists, and he thinks it was at Rome that

it was finished (termine).







  " The citizen De Herbonville, Prefect of the two Niths at Antwerp, has made,

for about eighteen months, attempts with the ancient Bollandists, to engage

them to resume their labors. They have not had success. Perhaps the present

moment would be the most critical, (opportune,) especially if the government

should consent to give to the Bollandists assurance of their safety.







  " The essential point would be to make sure of the existence of the

manuscripts which I have indicated ; and which, by the relation of the citizen

La Serna, filled a body of a library of about three toises in length, and two

in breadth. If these manuscripts still exist, it is easy to terminate the Acts

of the Saints; because we shall have all the necessary materials. If these

manuscripts are lost, we must despair to see this collection completed.







  " I have enlarged a little on this digression on the Acts of the Saints,

because it i's a work of great importance; and because these documents, which

cannot be obtained with any exactitude but upon the 













            Correspondence          329







spots, seem to me to be among the principal objects which your travellers have

to collect, and of which they ought to give you an account. "







Now, my friend Jefferson! I await your observations on this morsel. You may

think I waste my time and yours. I do not think so. If you will look into the "

Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique," under the words " Bollandus, Heinshernius,

and Papebrock, " you will find more particulars of the rise and progress of

this great work, "The Acts of the Saints."







I shall make only an observation or two.







  1. The Pope never suppressed the work, and Maria Theresa established it. It

therefore must be Catholic.







  2. Notwithstanding the professions of the Bollandists, to discriminate the

true from the false miracles, and the dubious from both, I suspect that the

false will be found the fewest, the dubious the next, and the true the most

numerous of all.







  3. From all that I have read, of the legends, of the lives, and writings of

the Saints, and even of the Fathers, and of ecclesiastical history in general,

I have no doubt that the Acta Sanctorum is the most enormous mass of lies,

frauds, hypocrisy, and imposture, that ever was heaped together on this globe.

If it were impartially consulted, it would do more to open the eyes of

rnankind, than all the philosophers of the 18th century, who were as great

hypocrites as any of the philosophers or theologians of antiquity. 













330        Jefferson's Works















  TO MONSIEUR CORREA DE SERRA.







               MONTICELLO, June 28, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-When I learned that you proposed to give a course of Botanical

lectures in Philadelphia, I feared it would retard the promised visit to

Monticello. On my return from Bedford, however, on the 4th instarit, I received

a letter from M. Dupont flattering me with the prospect that he and yourself

would be with us as soon as my return should be known. I, therefore, in the

instant wrote him of my return, and my hope of seeing you both shortly. I am

still without that pleasure, but not without the hope. Europe has been a second

time turned topsyturvy since we were together; and so many things have happened

there that I have lost my compass. As far as we can judge from appearances,

Bonaparte, from being a mere military usurper, seems to have become the choice

of his nation ; and the allies in their turn, the usurpers and spoliators of

the European world. The right of nations to self-government being my polar

star, my partialities are steered by it, without asking whether it is a

Bonaparte or an Alexander towards whom the helm is directed. Believing that

England has enough on her hands without us, and therefore has by this time

settled the question of impressment with Mr. Adams, I look on this new conflict

of the European gladiators, as from the higher forms of the amphitheatre,

wondering that man, like the wild beasts of the forest, should 













           Correspondence           331







permit himself to be led by his keeper into the arena, the spectacle and sport

of the lookers on. Nor do I see the issue of this tragedy with the sanguine

hopes of our friend M. Dupont. I fear, from the experience of the last

twenty-five years, that morals do not of necessity advance hand in hand with

the sciences. These, however, are speculations which may be adjourned to our

meeting at Monticello, where I will oontinue to hope that I may receive you

with our friend Dupont, and in the meantime repeat the assurances of my

affectionate friendship and respect.















  TO MADAME LA BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN.







                MONTICELLO, July 3, 1815.







  DEAR MADAM,-I considered your letter of November 10th, 12th, as an evidence

of the interest you were so kind as to take in the welf are of the United

States, and I was even flattered by your exhortations to avoid taking any part

in the war then raging in Europe, because they were a confirmation of the

policy I had myself pursued, and which I thought and still think should be the

governing canon of our republic. Distance, and difference of pursuits, of

interests, of connections and other circumstances, prescr ibe to us a different

system, having no object in common with Europe, but a peaceful interchange of

mutual comforts for mutual wants. But this may not always depend on ourselves;

and injuries may be so accumulated by an European power, as to pass all bounds

of 













332         Jefferson's Works







wise forbearance. This was our situation at the date of your letter. A long

course of injuries, systematically pursued by England, and finally, formal

declarations that she would neither redress nor discontinue their infliction,

had fixed the epoch which rendered an appeal to arms unavoidable. In the letter

oú May 28th; 1813, which I had the honor of writing you, I entered into such

details of these injuries, and of our unremitting endeavors to bring them to a

peaceable end, as the narrow limits of a letter perrnitted. Resistance on our

part at length brought our enemy to reflect, to calculate, and to meet us in

peaceable conferences at Ghent; but the extravagance of the pretensions brought

forward by her negotiators there, when first made known in the United States,

dissipated at once every hope of a just peace, and prepared us for a war of

utter extremity. Our government, in that state of things, respecting the

opinion of the world, thought it a duty to present to it a justification of the

course which was likely to be forced upon us; and with this view the pamphlet

was prepared which I now enclose. It was already printed, when (instead of

their ministers whom they hourly expected from a fruitless negotiation) they

received the treaty of pacification signed at Ghent and ratified at London.

They endeavored to suppress the pamphlet as now unreasonable-but the proof

sheets having been surreptitiously withdrawn, soon made, their appearance in

the public papers, and in the form now sent. This





















            Correspondence          333







vindication is so exact in its facts, so cogent in its reasonings, so

authenticated by the documents to which it appeals, that it cannot fail to

bring the world to a single opinion on our case. The concern you manifested on

our entrance into this contest, assures me you will take the trouble of reading

it ; which I wish the more earnestly, because it will fully explain the very

imperfect views which my letter had presented; and because we cannot be

indifferent as to the opinion which yourself personally shall ultimately form

of the course we have pursued.







  I learned with great pleasure your return to your native country. It is the

only one which offers elements of society analogous to the powers oú your mind,

and sensible of the flattering distinction of possessing them. It is true that

the great events which made an opening for your return, have been reversed. But

not so, I hope, the circumstances which may admit its continuance. On these

events I shall say nothing. At our distance, we hear too little truth and too

much falsehood to form correct judgments concerning them; and they are moreover

foreign to our umpirage. We wish the happiness and prosperity of every nation;

we did not believe either of these promoted by the former pursuits of the

present ruler of France, and hope that his return, if the nation wills it to be

permanent, may be marked by those changes whicli the solid good of his own

country, and the peace and well-being of the world, may call for. But these

things I leave to whom they 













334        Jefferson's. Works







belong; the object of this letter being only to convey to you a vindication of

my own country, and to have the honor on a new occasion of tendering you the

homage of my great consideration, and respectful attachment.















       TO ANDREW C. MITCHELL, ESQ.







               MONTICELLO, July 16, 1815.







I thank you, Sir, for the pamphlet which you have been so kind as to send me. I

have read it with attention and satisfaction. It is replete with sound views,

some of which will doubtless be adopted. Some may be checked by difficulties.

None more likely to be so than the proposition to amend the Constitution, so as

to authorize Congress to tax exports. The provision against this in the framing

of that instrument, was a sine qua non with the States of peculiar pr

oductions, as rice, indigo, cotton and tobacco, to which may now be added

sugar. A jealousy prevailing that to the few States producing these articles,

the justice of the others might not be a sufficient protection in opposition to

their interest, they moored themselves to'this anchor. Since the hostile

dispositi.ons lately manifested by the Eastern States, they would be lcss

willing than before to place themselves at their mercy ; and the rather, as the

Eastern States have no exports which can be taxed equivalently. It is possible,

however, that this difficulty might be got over; but the subject looking







             Correspondence        335







forward beyond my time, I leave it to those to whom its burdens and benefits

will belong, adding only my prayers for whatever may be best for our country,

and assurances to yourself of my great respect.















           TO WILLIAM WIRT, ESQ.







              MONTICELLO, August 5, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-Your favor of July 24th came to hand on the 31st, and I will proceed

to answer your inquiries in the order they are presented as far as I am able.







I have no doubt that the fifth of the Rhode Island resolutions of which you

have sent me a copy, is exactly the one erased from our journals. The Mr. Lees,

and especially Richard Henry, who was industrious, had a close correspondence,

I know, with the two Adamses, and probably with others in that and the other

Eastern States ; and I think it was said at the time that copies. were sent off

by them to the northward the very evening of the day on which they were passed.

I can readily enough believe these resolutions were written by Mr. Henry

himself. They bear the stamp of his mind, strong without precision. That they

were written by Johnson Who seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and

very possibly unfounded. But how Edmund Randolph should have said they were

written by William Fleming, and Mr. Henry should have written that he showed

them to William Fleming, is to me incomprehensible. 













336          Jefferson's Works







There was no William Fleming then but the judge now living, whom nobody will

ever suspect of taking the lead in rebellion. I am certain he was not then a

member, and I think was never a member until the Revolution had made some

progress. Of this, however, he will inform us with candor and truth. His eldest

brother, John Fleming, was a member, and a great speaker in debate. To him they

may have been shown. Yet I should not have expected this, because he was

extremely attached to Robinson, Peyton Randolph, etc., a.nd at their beck, and

had no independence or boldness of mind. However, he was attentive to his own

popularity, might have been overruled by views to that, and without correction

of the Christian name, Mr. Henry's note is sufficient authority to suppose he

took the popular side on that occasion. I remember nothing to the contrary. The

opposers of the resolutions were Robinson, Peyton Randolph, Pendleton, Wythe,

Bland, and all the cyphers of the aristocracy. No longer possessing the

journals, I cannot recollect nominally the others. They opposed them on the

ground that the same principles had been expressed in the petition, etc., of

the preceding year, to which an answer, not yet received, was daily expected,

that they were therein expressed in more conciliatory terms, and therefore more

likely to have good effect. The resolutions were carried chiefly by the vote of

the middle and upper country. To state the differences between the classes of

society and the lines of demarkation 













            Correspondence          337







which separated them, would be difficult. The law, you know, admitted none

except as to the twelve counsellors. Yet in a country insulated from the

European world, insulated from its sister colonies, with whom there was

scarcely any intercourse, little visited by foreigners, and having little

matter to act upon within itself, certain famiiies had risen to splendor by

wealth and the preservation of it from generation to generation under the law

entails ; some had produced a series of men of talents; families in general had

remained stationary on the grounds of their f oref athers, f or there was no

emigration to the westward in those days. The wild Irish, who had gotten

possession of the valley between the Blue Ridge and North Mountain, forming a

barrier over which none ventured to leap, and would still less venture to

settle among. In such a state of things, scarcely admitting any change of

station, society would settle itself down into several strata, separated by no

marked lines, but shading off imperceptibly from top to bottom, nothing

disturbing the order of their repose. There were then aristocrats, half-breeds,

pretenders, a solid independent yeomanry, looking askance at those above, yet

not venturing to jostle them, and last and lowest, a seculum of beings called

overseers, the most abject, degraded and unprincipled race, always cap in hand

to the Dons who employed them, and furnishing materials f or the exercise of

their pride, insolence and spirit of domination. Your characters are inimitably

and justly drawn. I am not certain if more







   VOL. XIV-22 













            Jefferson's Works







might not be said of Colonel Richard Bland. He was the most learned and logical

man of those who took prominent lead in public affairs, profound in

constitutional lore, a most ungraceful speaker, (as were Peyton Randolph and

Robinson, in a remarkable degree.) He wrote the first pamphlet on the nature of

the connection with Great Britain which had any pretension to accuracy of view

on that subject, but it was a singular one. He would set out on sound

principles, pursue them logically till he found them leading to the precipice

which he had to leap, start back alarmed, then resume his ground, go over it in

another direction, be led again by the correctness of his reasoning to the same

place, and again back about, and try other processes to reconcile right and

wrong, but finally left his reader and himself bewildered between the steady

index of the compass in their hand, and the phantasm to which it seemed to

point. Still there was more sound matter in his pamphlet than in the celebrated

Farmer's letters which were really but an ignis f atuus, misleading us from

true principles.







  Landon Carter's measure you may take from the first volume of the American

Philosophical transactions, where he has one or more long papers on the weavil,

and perhaps other subjects. His speeches, like his writings, were dull, vapid,

verbose, egotistical, smooth as the lullaby of the nurse, and commanding, like

that, the repose only of the hearer.







You ask if you may quote me, first, for the loan 













            Correspondence







office ; second, Philips' case ; and third, the addresses prepared for Congress

by Henry and Lee. For the two first certainly, because within my own knowledge,

especially citing the record in Philips case, which of itself refutes the

diatribes published on that subject; but not for the addresses, because I was

not present, nor know anything relative to them but by hearsay from others. My

first and principal information on that subject I know I had from Ben Harrison,

on his return from the first session of the old Congress. Mr. Pendleton, also,

I am tolerably certain, mentioned it to me ; but the transaction is too

distant, and my memory too indistinct, to hazard as with precision, even what I

think I heard from them. In this decay of memory Mr. Edmund Randolph must have

suffered at a much earlier period of life than myself. I cannot otherwise

account f or his saying to you that Robert Carter Nicholas came into the

legislature only on the death of Peyton Randolph, which was in 1776. Seven

years before that period, I went first into the legislature myself, to wit: in

1769, and Mr. Nicholas was then a member, and I think not a new one. I remember

it from an impressive circumstance. It was the first assembly of Lord

Botetourt, being called on his arrival. On receiving the Governor's speech, it

was usual to move resolutions as heads for an address. Mr. Pendleton asked me

to draw the resolutions, which I did. They were accepted by the house, and

Pendleton, Nicholas, myself and some others, were appointed a committee 













            Jefferson's Works







to prepare the address. The committee desired me to do it, but when presented

it was thought to pursue too strictly the diction of the resolutions, and that

their subjects were not sufficiently amplified. Mr. Nicholas chiefly objected

to it, and was desired by the committee to draw one more at large, which he did

with amplification enough, and it was accepted. Being a young man as well as a

young member, it made on me an impression ,proportioned to the sensibility of

that time of life.. On a similar occasion some years after, I had reason to

retain a remembrance of his presence while Peyton Randolph was living. On the

receipt of Lord North's propositions                                       , in

May or June,  1775, Lord Dunmore called the assembly. Peyton Randolph, then

President of Congress and Speaker of the House of Burgesses, left the former

body and carne home to hold the assembly, leaving in Congress the other

delegates who were the ancient leaders of our house. He therefore asked me to

prepare the answer to Lord North's propositions, which I did. Mr. Nicholas,

whose mind had as yet acquired no tone for that contest, combated the answer

from alpha to omega, and succeeded in diluting it in one or two small

instances. It was firmly supported, however, in committee of the whole, by

Peyton Randolph, who had brought with him the spirit of the body over which he

had presided, and it was carried, with very little alteration, by strong

majorities. I was the bearer of it myself to Congress, by whom, as it was the

first answer given to 













             Correspondence          341







those propositions by any legislature, it was received with peculiar

satisfaction. I am sure that from 1769, if not earlier, to 1775, you will find

Mr. Nicholas' name constantly in the journals, for he was an active member. I

think he represented James City county. Whether on the death of Peyton

Randolph. he succeeded him for Williamsburg, I do not know. If he did, it may

account for Mr. Randolph's error.







  You ask some account of Mr. Henry's mind







                                  , information and manners in 1759-60, when I

first became acquainted with him. We met at Nathan Dandridge's, in Hanover,

about the Christmas of that winter, and passed perhaps a fortnight together at

the revelries of the neighborhood and season. His manners had something of the

coarseness of the society he had frequented; his passion was fiddling, dancing

and pleasantry. He excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him. The

occasion perhaps, as much as his idle disposition, prevented his engaging in

any conversation which might give the measurc either of his mind or

information. Opportunity was not wanting, because Mr. John Campbell was there;

who had married Mrs. Spotswood, the sister of Colonel Dandridge. He was a man

of science, and often introduced conversations on scientific subjects. Mr.

Henry had a little before broke up his store, or rather it had broken him up,

and within three months after he came to Williamsburg for his license, and told

me, I think, he had read law not more than six weeks. I have by this time,

probably, tired you with these old 













342         Jefferson's Works







histories, and shall, therefore, only add the assurance of my great friendship

and respect.















             TO JOHN ADAMS.







              MONTICELLO, Augustt 1O, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-The simultaneous movements in our correspondence have been

remarkable on several occasions. It would seem as if the state of the air, or

state of the times, or some other unknown cause, produced a sympathetic effect

on our mutual recollections. I had sat down to answer your letters of June the

19th, 20th and 22d, with pen, ink and paper before me, when I received from our

mail that of July the 30th. You ask information on the subject of Camus. All I

recollect of him is, that he was one of the deputies sent to arrest Dumourier

at the head of his army, who were, however, themselves arrested by Dumourier,

and long detained as prisoners. I presume, therefore, he was a Jacobin. You

will find his character in the most excellent revolutionary history of

Toulongeon. I believe, also, he may be the same person who has given us a

translation of Aristotle's Natural History, from the Greek into French. Of his

report to the National Institute on the subject of the Bollandists, your letter

gives me the first information. I had supposed them defunct with the Society of

Jesuits, of which they were; and that their works, although above ground, were,

from their bulk and. insignificance, as effectually entombed on their 













            Correspondence          343







shelves, as if in the graves of their authors. Fiftytwo volumes in folio, of

the Acta Sanctorum in dogLatin, would be a formidable enterprise to the most

laborious German. I expect, with you, they are the most enormous mass of lies,

frauds, hypocrisy and imposture, that was ever heaped together on this globe.

By what chemical process M. Camus supposed that an extract of truth could be

obtained from such a farrago of falsehood, I must leave to the chemists and

moralists of the age to divine.







  On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who shall

write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it? Nobody;

except merely its external f acts ; all its councils, designs and discussions

having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no members, as far as

I know, having even made notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of

history, must forever be unknown. Botta, as you observe, has put his own

speculations and reasonings into the mouths of persons whom he names, but who,

you and I know, never made such speeches. In this he has followed the example

of the ancients, who made their great men deliver long speeches, all of them in

the same style, and in that of the author himself. The work is nevertheless a

good one, more judicious, more chaste, more classical, and more true than the

party diatribe of Marshall. Its greatest fault is in having taken too much from

him. I possessed the work, and often recurred to considerable portions of it, 













            Jefferson's Works







although I never read it through. But a very judicious and well-informed

neighbor of mine went through it with great attention, and spoke very highly of

it. I have said that no member of the old Congress, as far as I knew, made

notes of the discussion. I did not know of the speeches you mention of

Dickinson and Witherspoon.    But on the questions of Independence, and on the

two Articles of Confederation respecting taxes and votings€ I took. minutes of

the heads of the arguments. On the first, I threw all into one mass, without

ascribing to the speakers their respective arguments; pretty much in the manner

of Hume's summary digests of the reasonings in Parliament for and against a

measure. On the last, I stated the heads of the arguments used by each speaker.

But the whole of my notes on the question of Independence does not occupy more

than five pages, such as of this letter ; and on the other questions, two such

sheets. They have never been. communicated to any one. Do you know that there

exists in manuscript the ablest work of this kind ever yet executed, of the

debates of the constitutional convention of Philadelphia in 1788? The whole of

everything said and done there was taken down by Mr. Madison, with a labor and

exactness beyond comprehension.







I presume that our correspondence has been observed at the post offices, and

thus. has attracted notice. Would you believe, that a printer has had ' the

effrontery to propose to me the letting him pub













             Correspondence         345







lish it? These people think they have a right to everything, however secret or

sacred. I had not before heard of the Boston pamphlet with Priestley's letters

and mine.







  At length Bonaparte has got on the right side of a question. From the time of

his entering the legislative hall to his retreat to Elba, no man has execrated

him more than myself. I will not except even the members of the Essex Junto;

although for very different reasons; I, because he was warring against the

liberty of his own country, and independence of others; they, because he was

the enemy of England, the Pope, and the Inquisition. But at length, and as far

as we can judge, he seems to have become the choice of his nation. At least, he

is defending the cause of his nation, and that of all mankind, the rights of

every people to independence and self-government. He and the allies have now

changed sides. They are parceling out among themselves Poland, Belgium, Saxony,

Italy, dictating a ruler and government to France, and looking askance at our

republic, the splendid libel on their governments, and he is fighting for the

principles of national independence, of which his whole life hitherto has been

a continued violation. He has promised a free government to his own country,

and to respect the rights of others ; and although his former conduct inspires

little confidence in his promises, yet we had better take the chance of his

word for doing right, than the certainty of the wrong which his adversaries are

doing and 













346       Jefferson's Works







avowing. If they succeed, ours is only the boon of the Cyclops to Ulysses, of

being the last devoured.







Present me affectionately and respectfully to Mrs. Adams, and Heaven give you

both as much more of life as you wish, and bless it with health and happiness.







 P. S. August the 11th.-I had finished my letter yesterday, and this morning

receive the news of Bonaparte's second abdication. Very well. For him

personally, I have no feeling but reprobation. The representatives of the

nation have deposed him. They have taken the allies at their word, that they

had no object in the war but his removal. The nation is now free to give itself

a good government, either with or without a Bourbon; and France, unsubdued,

will still be a bridle on the enterprises of the combined powers, and a bulwark

to others.















     JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                 QUINCY, August 24, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-If I am neither deceived by the little information I have, or by my

wishes for its truth, I should say that France is the most Protestant country

of Europe at this time, though I cannot think it the most reformed. In

consequence of these reveries, I have imagined that Camus and the Institute

meant, by the revival and continuance of the A cta Sanctorum, to destroy the

Pope, and the Catholic Church 













                  Correspondence         347







     and Hierarchies, de f onde en comble, or in the lan-







guage of Frederick Pollair, D'Alembert, etc., "ecraser







le miserable "-" Crush the wretch. " This great







work must contain the most complete history of the







corruptions of Christianity that has ever appeared,







Priestley's not excepted; and his history of ancient







opinions not excepted.







       As to the History of the Revolution, my ideas may







be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean







by the Revolution ? The war ? That was no part







of the Revolution. It was only an effect, and con-







sequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of







the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775,







in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blaod







was drawn at Lexington. The records of thirteen







legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers, in all the







colonies ought to be consulted, during that period,







to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion







was enlightened and informed, concerning the au-







thority of Parliament over the colonies. The Con-







gress of 1774 resembled in some respects, though I







hope not in many, the Council of Nice in ecclesiastical







history. It assembled the priests from the east and







the west, the north and the south, who compared







notes, engaged in discussions and debates, and formed







results by one vote, and by two votes, which went







out to the world as unanimous.







       Mr. Madison's Notes of the Convention of 1787 or



1788 are consistent with his indefatigable character.







     I shall never see them, but I hope posterity will.























348          Jefferson's Works







   That our correspondence has been observed is no wonder; for your hand is

more universally known than your face. No printer has asked me for copies; but

it is no surprise that you have been requested. These gentry will print

whatever will sell ; and our correspondence is thought such an oddity by both

parties, that the printers imagine an edition would soon go off, and yield them

a profit. There has, however, been no tampering with your letters to me. They

have all arrived in good order.







  Poor Bonaparte! Poor Devil! What has, and what will become of him? Going the

way of King Theodore, Alexander, Caesar, Charles XIIth, Cromwell, Wat Tyler,

and Jack Cade, i. e., to a bad end. And what will become of Wellington ?

Envied, hated, despised, by all the barons, earls, viscounts, marquises, as an

upstart, a parvenue elevated over their heads. For these people have no idea of

any merit, but birth. Wellington must pass the rest of his days buffeted,

ridiculed, scorned and insulted by factions, as Marlborough and his Duchess

did. Military glory dazzles the eyes of mankind, and for a time eclipses all

wisdom and virtue, all laws, human and divine; and after this it would be

bathos to descend to services merely civil or political.







  Napoleon has imposed kings upon Spain, Holland, Sweden, Westphalia; Saxony,

Naples, etc. The combined emperors and kings are about to retaliate upon

France, by imposing a king upon her. These are all abominable examples,

detestable precedents. When 













             Corresp€ndence          349







will the rights of mankind, the liberties and independence of nations, be

respected ? When the perfectibility of the human mind shall arrive at

perfection: When the progress of Manillius' Ratio shall have not only eripuit

caelo fulmen, Fouvisque fulgores, but made mankind rational creatures.







  It remains to be seen whether the allies were honest in their declaration

that they were at war only with Napoleon.







  Can the French ever be cordially reconciled to the Bourbons again? If not,

whom can they find for a head? the infant, or one of the generals? Innumerable

difficulties will embarrass either project. I am,







as ever















          TO JUDGE SPENCER ROANE.







              MONTICELLO, October 12, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-I received in a letter from Colonel Monroe the enclosed paper

communicated, as he said, with your permission, and even with a wish to know my

sentiments on the important question it discusses. It is now more than forty

years since I have ceased to be habitually conversant with legal questions ;

and. my pursuits through that period have seldom required or permitted a

renewal of my former familiarity with them. My ideas at present, therefore, on

such questions, have no claim to respect but such as might be yielded to the

common auditors of a law argument. 













            Jefferson's Works







  I well knew that in certain federal cases the laws of the United States had

given to a foreign party, whether plaintiff or defendant, a right to carry his

cause into the federal court; but I did not know that where he had himself

elected the State judicature, he could, after an unfavorable decision there,

remove his case to the federal court, and thus take the benefit of two chances

where others have but one ; nor that the right of entertaining the question in

this case had been exercised or claimed by the federal judiciary after it had

been postponed on the party's first election. His failure, too, to place on the

record the particular ground which might give jurisdiction to the federal

court, appears to me an additional objection of great weight. The question is

of the first importance. The removal of it seems to be out of the analogies

which guide the two governments on their separate tracts, and claims the solemn

attention of both judicatures, and of the nation itself. I should fear to make

up a final opinion on it, until I could see as able a development of the

grounds oú the federal claim as that which I have now read against it. I

confess myself unable to úoresee what those grounds would be. The paper

enclosed must call them forth, and silence them too, unless they are beyond my

ken. I am glad, therefore, that the claim is arrested, and made the subject of

special and mature deliberation. I hope our courts will never countenance the

sweeping pretensions which have been set up under the words " general defence

and public 













            Correspondence          351







welfare." These words only express the motives which induced the Convention to

give to the ordinary legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate,

and which they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to

give them the unspecified also ; or why any specification ? They could not be

so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, " all and some. " And should this

construction prevail, all limits to the federal government are done away. This

opinion, formed on the first rise of the question, I have never seen reason to

change, whether in or out of power ; but, on the contrary, find it strengthened

and confirmed by five and twenty years of additional reflection and experience

:  and any countenance given to it by any regular organ of the government, I

should consider more ominous than anything which has yet occurred.







  I am sensible how much these slight observations, on a question which you

have so profoundly considered, need apology. They must find this in my zeal for

the administration of our government according to its true spirit, federal as

well as republican, and in my respect for any wish which you might be supposed

to entertain for opinions of so little value. I salute you with sincere and

high respect and esteem. 













352         Jefferson's Works















        TO CAPT. A. PARTRIDGE OF THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS,







      WEST POINT, NEW YORK.







             MONTICELLO, October 12, 1815.







  SIR,-I thank you for the statement of altitudes, which you have been so kind

as to send me of our northern mountains. It came opportunely, as I was about

making inquiries for the height of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Which

have the reputation of being the highest in our maritime States, and purpose

shortly to measure geometrically the height of the Peaks of Otter, which I

suppose the highest f rom theiy base, of any on the east side of the

Mississippi, except the White Mountains, and not far short of their height, if

they are but of 4,885 feet. The method of estimating heights by the barometer,

is convenient and useful, as being ready, and furnishing an approximation to

truth. Of what degree of accuracy it is susceptible we know not as yet; no

certain theory being established for ascertaining the density and weight of

that portion of the column of atmosphere contiguous to the mountain; from the

weight of which, nevertheless, we are to infer the height of the mountain. The

most plausible seems to be that which supposes the mercury of barometer divided

into horizontal lamina of equal thickness; and a similar column of the

atmosphere into lamina of equal weights. The former divisions give a set of

arithmetical, the latter of geometrical progressionals, Which being the

character of Logarithms and 













            Correspondence         353







their numbers, the tables of these furnish ready computations, needing,

however, the corrections which the state of the thermometer calls for. It is

probable that in taking heights in the vicinity of each other in this way,

there may be no considerable error, because the passage between them may be

quick and repeated. The height of a mountain from its base, thus taken, merits,

therefore, a very different degree of credit from that of its height above the

level of the sea, where that is distant. According, for example, to the theory

above mentioned, the height of Monticello from its base is 58o feet, and its

base 610 feet 8 inches, above the level of the ocean ; the former, from other

facts, I judge to be near the truth; but a knowledge of the different falls of

water from hence to the tide-water at Richmond, a distance of seventy-five

miles, enables us to say that the whole descent to that place is but 170 or 180

feet. From thence to the ocean may be a distance of one hundred miles ; it is

all tide-water, and through a level country. I know not what to conjecture as

the amount of descent, but certainly not 435 feet, as that theory would

suppose, nor the quarter part of it. I do not know by what rule Gerieral

Williams made his computations; he reckons the foot of the Blue Ridge, twenty

miles from here, but 100 feet above the tide-water at Richmond. We know the

descent, as before observed, to be at least 170 feet from hence, to which is to

be added that from the Blue Ridge to this place, a very hilly country, with con













354         Jefferson's Works stant and great waterfalls.  His estimate,

therefore, must be much below truth. Results so different prove that for

distant comparisons of height, the barometer is not to be relied on according

to any theory yet known. While, therefore, we give a good degree of credit to

the results of operations between the summit of a mountain and its base, we

must give less to those between its summit and the level of the







ocean.







  I will do myself the pleasure of sending you my estimate oú the Peaks of

Otter, which I count on undertaking in the course of the next month. In the

meantime accept the assurance of my great respect.















          TO DOCTOR GEORGE LOGAN.







             MONTICELLO, October 15,1815.







  DEAR SIR,-I thank you for the extract in yours of August I6th respecting the

Emperor Alexander. It arrived here a day or two after I had left this place,

from which I have been absent seven or eight weeks. I had from other

information formed the most favorable opinion of the virtues of Alexander, and

considered his partiality to this country as a prominent proof of them. The

magnanimity of his conduct on the first capture of Paris still magnified

everything we had believed of him; but how he will come oub of his present

trial remains to be seen. That the sufferings which France had inflicted on

other countries 













            Correspondence          355







justified severe reprisals, cannot be questioned; but I have not yet learned

what crimes of Poland, Saxony, Belgium, Venice, Lombardy and Genoa, had merited

for them, not merely a temporary punishment, but that of permanent subjugation

and a destitution of independence and self-government. The fable of Esop of the

lion dividing the spoils, is, I fear, becoming true history, and the moral code

of Napoleon and the English government a substitute for that of Grotius, of

Puffendorf, and even of the pure doctrine of the great author of our own

religion. We were safe ourselves from Bonaparte, because he had not the British

fleets at his command. We were safe from the British fleets, because they had

Bonaparte at their back; but the British fleets and the conquerors of Bonaparte

being now combined, and the Hartford nation drawn off to them, we have uncommon

reason to look to our own affairs. This, however, I leave to others, offering

prayers to heaven, the only contribution of old age, for the safety of our

country. Be so good as to present me affectionately to Mrs. Logan, and to

accept yourself the assurance of my esteem and respect.















           TO ALBERT GALLATIN.







             MONTICELLO, October 16, 1815.







  DEAR SIR,-A long absence from home must apologize for my so late

acknowledgment of your welcome favor of September 6th. Our storm of the 4th of

that 













356         Jefferson's Works







month gave me great uneasiness for you; for I was certain you must be on the

coast, and your actual arrival was unknown to me. It was such a wind as I have

not witnessed since the year 1769. It did, however, little damage with us, only

prostrating our corn, and tearing tobacco, without essential injury to either.

It could have been nothing compared with that of the 23d, off the coast of New

England, of which we had not a breath, but on the contrary, fine, fair weather.

Is this the judgment of God between us? I congratulate you sincerely on your

safe return to your own country, and without knowing your own wishes, mine are

that you would never leave it again. I know you would be useful to us at Paris,

and so you would anywhere ; but nowhere so useful as here. We are undone, my

dear Sir, if this banking mania be not suppressed. Aut Caythago, aut Roma

delenda est. The war, had it proceeded, would have upset our government; and a

new one, whenever tried, will do it. And so it must be while our money, the

nerve of war, is much or little, real or imaginary, 'as our bitterest enemies

choose to make it. Put down the banks, and if this country could not be carried

through the longest war against her most powerful enemy, without ever knowing

the want of a dollar, without dependence on the traitorous classes of her

citizens, without bearing hard on the resources of the people, or loading the

public with an indefinite burden of debt, I know nothing of my countrymen, Not

by any novel pro













             Correspondence          357







ject, not by any charlatanerie, but by ordinary and well-experienced means ; by

the total prohibition of all private paper at all times, by reasonable taxes in

war aided by the necessary emissions of public paper of circulating size, this

bottomed on special taxes, redeemable annually as this special tax comes in,

and finally within a moderate period,--even with the flood of private paper by

which we were deluged, would the treasury have ventured its credit in bills of

circulating size, as of five or ten dollars, etc., they would have been

greedily received by the people in preference to bank paper. But unhappily the

towns of America were considered as the riation of America, the dispositions of

the inhabitants of the former as those of the latter, and the treasury, for

want of confidence in the country, delivered itself bound hand and foot to bold

and bankrupt adventurers and pretenders to be money-holders, whom it could have

crushed at any moment. Even the last half-bold, half-timid threat of the

treasury, showed at once that these jugglers were at the feet of government.

For it never was, and is not, any confidence in their frothy bubbles, but the

want of all other medium, which induced, or now induces, the countyy people to

take their paper; and at this moment, when nothing else is to be had, no man

will receive it but to pass it away instantly, none for distant purposes. We

are now without any common measure of the value of property, and private

fortunes are up or down at the will of the worst of our citizens. Yet there is

no hope of 













35s       Jefferson's Works







relief from the legislatures who have immediate control over this subject. As.

little seems to be known of the principles of political economy as if nothing

had ever been written or practised on the subject, or as was known in old

times, when the Jews had their rulers under the hammer. It is an evil,

therefore, which we must make up our minds to meet and to endure as those of

hurricanes, earth,quakes and other casualties : let us turn over theref ore

another leaf.







  I grieve for France; although it cannot be denied that by the afflictions

with which she wantonly and wickedly overwhelmed other nations, she has merited

severe reprisals. For it is no excuse to lay the enormities to the wretch who

led to them, and who has been the author of more misery and suffering to the

world, than any being who ever lived before him. After destroying the liberties

of his country, he has exhausted all its resources, physical and moral, to

indulge his own maniac ambition, his own tyrannical and overbearing spirit. His

sufferings cannot be too great. But theirs I sincerely deplore, and what is to

be their term ? The will of the allies ? There is no more moderation,

forbearance, or even honesty in theirs, than in that of Bonaparte. They have

proved that their object, like his, is plunder. They, like him, are shuffliing

nations together, or into their own hands, as if all were right which they feel

a power to do. In the exhausted state in which Bonaparte has left France, I see

no period to her sufferings, until 













            Correspondence          359







this combination of robbers fall together by the ears. The French may then rise

up and choose their side. And I trust they will finally establish for

themselves a government of rational and well-tempered liberty. So much science

cannot be lost ; so much light shed over them can never fail to produce to them

some good, in the end. Till then, we may ourselves fervently pray, with the

liturgy a little parodied, " Give peace till that time, oh Lord, because there

is none other that will fight for us but only thee, oh God." It is rare that I

indulge in these poetical effusions ; but your former and latter relations with

both subjects have associated you with them in my mind, and led me beyond the

limits of attention I ordinarily give to them. Whether you go or stay with us,

you have always the prayers of yours affectionately.







 P. S. The two letters you enclosed me were from Warden and De Lormerie, and

neither from La Fayette, as you supposed.















     JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







               QUINCY, November 13, 1815.







DEAR SIR,-The fundamental article of my political creed is, that despotism, or

unlimitedsovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular

assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single

emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. 













           Jefferson's Works







  Accordingly, arbitrarv power, wherever it has resided, has never failed to

destroy all the records, memorials, and histories of former times which it did

not like, and to corrupt and interpolate such as it was cunning enough to

preserve or tolerate. We cannot therefore say with much confidence, what

knowledge or what virtues may have prevailed in some former ages in some

quarters of the world.







  Nevertheless, according to the few lights that remain to us, we may say that

the eighteenth century, notwithstanding all its errors and vices, has been, of

all that are past, the most honorable to human nature. Knowledge and virtues

were increased and diffused. Arts, sciences useful to men, ameliorating their

condition, were improved more than in any former equal period.







  But what are we to say now? Is the nineteenth century to be a contrast to the

eighteenth? Is it to extinguish all the lights of its predecessors ? Are the

Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index Expurgatorius, and the knights-errant of

St. Ignatius Loyola to be revived and restored to all their salutary powers of

supporting and propagating the mild spirit of Christianity? The proceedings of

the allies and their Congress at Vienna, the accounts from Spain, France, etc.,

the Chateaubriands and the Gentis, indicate which way the wind blows. The

priests are at their old work again. The Protestants are denounced, and another

St. Bartholomew's day threatened.







This, however, will probably, twenty-five years 













            Correspondence       361







hence, be honored with the character of " The effusions of a splenetic mind,

rather than as the sober reflections of an unbiased understanding. " I have

received Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Price, by William Morgan, F.R.S. In pages

151 and 155 Mr. Morgan says : " So well assured was Dr. Price of the

establishment of a free Gonstitution in France, and of the subsequent overthrow

of despotism throughout Europe, as the consequence of it, that he never failed

to express his ' gratitude to heaven for having extended his life to the

present happy period, in which after sharing the benefits of one revolution, he

has been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions, both glorious. But

some of his correspondents were not quite so sanguine in their expectations

from the last of the revolutions ; and among these, the late American

Ambassador, Mr. John Adams. In a long letter which he wrote to Dr. Price at

this time, so far from congratulating him on the occasion, he expresses himself

in terms of contempt, in regard to the French Revolution; and after asking

rather too severely what good was to be expected from a nation of Atheists, he

concluded with foretelling the destruction of a million of human beings as the

probable consequence of it. These harsh censures and gloomy predictions were

particularly ungrateful to Dr. Price, nor can it be denied that they must have

then appeared as the effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober

reflections of an unbiased understanding."







I know now that a candid public will think of this 













           Jefferson's Works







practice of Mr. Morgan, af ter the example of Mr. Belsham, who, finding private

letters in the cabinet of a great and good man, after his decease, written in

the utmost freedom and confidence of intimate friendship, by persons still

living, though after the lapse of a quarter of a century, produces them before

the world.







Dr. Disney had different feelings and a different judgment. Finding some

cursory letters among the papers of Mr. Hollis, he would not publish them

without my consent. In answer to his request, I submitted them to his

discretion, and might have done the same to Mr. Morgan ; indeed, had Mr. Morgan

published my letter entire, I should not have given him nor myself any concern

about it. But as in his summary he has not done the latter justice, I shall

give it with all its faults.







Mr. Morgan has been more discreet and complaisant to you than to me. He has

mentioned respectfully your letters from Paris to Dr. Price, but has given us

none of them. As I would give more for these letters than for all the rest of

the book, I am more angry with him for disappointing me, than for all he says

of me and my letter, which, scambling as it is, contains nothing but the sure

words of prophecy. I am, as usual, yours. 













            Correspondence         363















     TO WILLIAM BENTLEY.







            MONTICELLO, December 28,1815.







DEAR SIR,-At the date of your letter of October 3oth, I had just left home on a

journey from which I am recently returned. I had many years ago understood that

Professor Ebeling was engaged in a geographical work which would comprehend the

United States, and indeed I expected it was finished and published. I am glad

to learn that his candor and discrimination have been sufficient to guard him

against trusting the libel of Dr. Morse on this State. I wish it were in my

power to give him the aid you ask, but it is not. The whole forenoon with me is

engrossed by correspondence too extensive and laborious for my age. Health,

habit, and necessary attention to my farms, require me then to be on horseback

until a late dinner, and the society of my family and friends, with some

reading, furnish the necessary relaxations of the rest of the day. Add to this

that the cession of my library to Congress has lef t me without materials f or

such an undertaking. I wish the part of his work which gives the geography of

this country may be translated and published; that ourselves and the world may

at length have something like a dispassionate account of these States. Poor

human nature! when we are obliged to appeal € for the truth of mere facts from

an eye-witness to one whose faculties for discovering it are only an honest

candor and caution in sif ting the grain f rom its chaff ! 













364       Jefferson's Works







  The Professor's history of Hamburg is doubtless interesting and instructive,

and valuable as a corrective of the f alse inf ormation we derive f rom

newspapers. I should read it with pleasure, but I fear its transportation and

return would expose it to too much risk. Notwithstanding all the French and

British atrocities, which will forever disgrace the present era of history,

their shameless prostration of all the laws of morality which constitute the

security, the peace and comfort of man-notwithstanding the waste of human life,

and measure of human suffering which they have inflicted on the world-nations

hitherto in slavery have descried through all this bloody mist a glimmering of

their own rights, have dared to open their eyes, and to see that their own

power and their own will suffice for their emancipation. Their tyrants must now

give them more moderate forms of government, and they seem now to be sensible

of this themselves. Instead of the parricide treason of Bonaparte in emploving

the means confided to him as a republican magistrate to the overthrow of that

republic, and establishment of a military despotism in himself and his

descendants, to the subversion of the neighboring governments, and erection of

thrones for his brothers, his sisters and sycophants, had he honestly employed

that power in the establishment and support of the freedom of his own country,

there is not a nation in Europe which would not at this day have had a more

rational government, one in which the will of the 













Correspondence 365







people should have had a moderating and salutary influence. The work will now

be longer, will swell more rivers with blood, produce more sufferings and more

crimes. But it will be consummated; and that it may be will be the theme of my

constant prayers while I shall remain on the earth beneath, or in the heavens

above. To these I add sincere wishes for your health and happiness.















TO GEORGE FLEMING.







  MONTICELLO, DeCember 29, IBIS.







  SIR,-At the date of your favor of October 3oth, I had just left home on a

journey to a distant possession of mine, from which I am but recently returned,

and I wish that the matter of my answer could compensate for its delay. But,

Sir, it happens that of all the machines which have been employed to aid human

labor, I have made myself the least acquainted with (that which is certainly

the most powerful of all) the steam engine. In its original and simple form

indeed, as first constructed by Newcomen and Savary, it had been a subject of

my early studies; but once possessed of the principle, I ceased to follow up

the numerous modifications of the machinery for employing it, of which I do not

know whether England or our own country has produced the greatest number.

Hence, I am entirely incompetent to form a judgment of the comparative merit of

vours with those preceding it; and the cession of my library to







            Jefferson's Works







Congress has left me without any examples to turn to. I see, indeed, in yours,

the valuable properties of simplicity, cheapness and accommodation to the small

and more numerous calls of life, and the calculations of its power appear sound

and correct. Yet experience and frequent disappointment have taught me not to

be over-confident in theories or calculations, until actual trial of the whole

combination has stamped it with approbation. Should this sanction be added, the

importance of your construction will be enhanced by the consideration that a

smaller agent, applicable to our daily concerns, is infinitely more valuable

than the greatest which can be used only for great objects. For these interest

the few alone, the former the many. I once had an idea that it might perhaps be

possible to economize the steam of a common pot, kept boiling on the kitchen

fire until its accumulation should be sufficient to give a stroke, and although

the strokes might not be rapid, there would be enough of them in the day to

raise from an adj acent well the water necessary f or daily use ; to wash the

linen, knead the bread, beat the hominy, churn the butter, turn the spit, and

do all other household offfices which require only a regular mechanical motion.

The unproductive hands now necessarily employed in these might then increase

the produce of our fields. I proposed it to Mr. Rumsey, one of our greatest

mechanics, who believed in its possibility, and promised to turn his mind to







 it.  But his death soon after disappointed this hope. 













             Correspondence         367







Of how much more value would this be to ordinary life than Watts and Bolton's

thirty pair of mill-stones to be turned by one engine, of which I saw seven

pair in actual operation. It is an interesting part of your question, how much

fuel would be requisite for your machine ?







  Your letter being evidence of your attention to mechanical things, and to

their application to matters of daily interest, I will mention a trifle in this

way, which yet is not without value. I presume, like the rest of us in the

country, you are in the habit of household manuf acture, and that you will not,

like too many, abandon it on the return of peace, to enrich our late enemy, and

to nourish foreign agents in our bosom, whose baneful influence and intrigues

cost us so much embarrassment and dissension. The shirting for our laborers has

been an object of some difficulty. Flax is injurious to our lands, and of so

scanty produce that I have never attempted it. Hemp, on the other hand, is

abundantly productive, and will grow forever on the same spot. But the breaking

and beating it, which has been always done by hand, is so slow, so laborious,

and so much complained of by our laborers, that I had given it up and purchased

and manufactured cotton for their shirting. The advanced price of this,

however, now makes it a serious item of expense ; and in the meantime, a method

of removing the difficulty of preparing hemp occurred to me, so simple and so

cheap, that I return to its culture and manufacture To a person 













368         Jefferson's Works







having a threshing machine, the addition of a hempbreak will not cost more than

twelve or fifteen dollars. You know that the first mover in that machine is a

horizontal horse-wheel with cogs on its upper face. On these is placed a

wallower and shaft, which give motion to the threshing apparatus. On the

opposite side of this same wheel I place another wallower and shaft, through

which, and near its outer end, I pass a cross-arm of sufficient strength,

projecting on each







side fifteen inches in this form:























                . Nearly under the cross-arm is placed a very strong

hemp-break, much stronger and heavier than those for the hand. Its head block

particularly is massive, and four feet high, and near its upper end, in front,

is fixed a strong pin (which we may call its horn) ; by this the cross-arm

lifts and lets fall the break twice in every revolution of the wallower. A man

feeds the break with hemp stalks, and a little person holds under the head

block a large twist of the hemp which has been broken, resembling a twist of

tobacco, but larger, where it is more perfectly beaten than I have ever seen

done by hand. If the horse-wheel has one hundred and forty-four cogs; the

wallower eleven rounds; and the horse goes three times round in a minute, it

will give about eighty strokes in a minute. I had fixed a break to be moved by

the gate of my saw-mill, which broke and beat at the rate of two hundred pounds

a day. But the inconveniences of interrupting that, induced 













              Correspondence          369







  me to try the power of a horse, and I have found it







to answer perfectly. The power being less, so also probably will be the effect,

of which I cannot make a fair trial until I commence on my new crop. I expect

that a single horse will do the breaking and beating of ten men. Something of

this kind has been so long wanted by the cultivators of hemp, that as soon as I

can speak of its effect with certainty, I shall probably describe it

anonymously in the public papers, in order to forestall the prevention of its

use by some interloping patentee. I shall be happy to learn that an actual

experiment of your steam engine fulfils the expectations we form of it, and I

pray you to accept the assurances of my esteem and xespect.















      TO MONSIEUR DUPONT DE NEMOURS.







            MONTICELLO, DeCember 3I, IgIS,







Nothing, my very dear and ancient frierid, could have equaled the mortification

I felt on my arrival at home, and receipt of the information that I had lost

the happiness of your visit. The season had so far advanced, and the weather

become so severe







                                  , that together with the information given me

by Mr. Correa, so early as September, that your friends even then were

dissuading the journey, I had set it down as certain it would be postponed to a

milder season of the ensuing year. I had yielded, therefore, with the less

reluctance to a detention in Bedford by a







VOL. XIV-24 













            Jefferson's Works







slower progress of my workmen than had been counted on. I have never more

desired anything than a full and free conversation with you. I have not

understood the 'transactions in France during the years 14 and 15. From the

newspapers we cannot even conjecture the secret and real history; and I had

looked for it to your visit. A pamphlet (Le Conciliateur) received from M.

Jullien, had given me some idea of the obliquities and imbecilities of the

Bourbons, during their first restoration. Some manoeuvres of both parties I had

learnt from Lafayette, and more recently from Gallatin. But the note you

referred me to at page 36o of your letter to Say, has possessed me more

intimately of the views, the conduct and consequences of the last apparition

of, Napoleon. Still much is wanting. I wish to know what were the intrigues

which brought him back, and what those which finally crushed him? What parts

were acted by A, B, C, D, etc., some of whom I know, and some I do not? How did

the body of the nation stand affectioned, comparatively, between the fool and

the tyrant? etc., etc., etc. From the account my úamily gives me of your sound

health, and of the vivacity and vigor of your mind, I will still hope we shall

meet again, and that the fine temperature of our early summer, to wit, of May

and June, may suggest to you the salutary effects of exercise, and change of

air and scene. En attendant, we will turn to other subjects.







That your opinion of the hostile intentions of Great 













              Correspondence







Britain towards us is sound, I am satisfied, from her movements north and south

of us, as well as from her temper. She feels the gloriole of her late golden

achievements tarnished by our successes against her by sea and land ; and will

not be contented until f she has wiped it off by triumphs over us also. I rely,

" however, on the volcanic state of Europe to present other objects for her

arms and her apprehensions; and am not without hope we shall be permitted to

proceed peaceably in making children, and maturing and moulding our strength

and resources. It is impossible that France should rest under her present

oppressions and humiliations. She will rise in that gigantic strength which

cannot be annihilated, and will fatten her fields with the blood of her

enemies. I only wish she may exercise patience and forbearance until divisions

among them may give her a choice of sides. To the overwhelming power of England

I see but two chances of limit. The first is her bankruptcy, which will deprive

her of the golden instrument of all her successes. The other in that ascendency

which nature destines for us by immutable laws. But to hasten this last

consummation, we too must exercise patience and forbearance. For twenty years

to come we should consider peace as the summum bonum of our country. At the end

of that period we shall be twenty millions in number, and forty in energy, when

encountering the starved and rickety paupers and dwarfs of English workshops.

By that time I hope your grandson will have become 













372       Jefferson's Works







one of our High-admirals, and bear distinguished part in retorting the wrongs

of both his countries on the most implacable and cruel of their enemies. In

this hope, and because I love you, and all who are dear to you, I wrote to the

President in the instant of reading your letter of the 7th, on the subject of

his adoption into our navy. I did it because I was gratified in doing it, while

I knew it was unnecessary. The sincere respect and high estimation in which the

President holds you, is such that there is no gratification, within the regular

exercise of his functions, which he would withhold from you. Be assured then

that, if within that compass, this business is safe.







  Were you any other than who you are, I should shrink from the task you have

proposed to me, of undertaking to judge of the merit of your own translation of

the excellent letter on education. After having done all which good sense and

eloquence could do on the original, you must not ambition the double need of

English eloquence also. Did you ever know an instance of one who could write in

a foreign language with the elegance of a native? Cicero wrote Commentaries of

his own Consulship in Greek; they perished unknown, while his native

compositions have immortalized him with themselves. No, my dear friend; you

must not risk the success of your letter on foreignisms of style which may

weaken its effect. Some native pen must give it to our countrymen in a native

dress, faithful to its 













             Correspondence          373







original. You will find such with the aid of our friend Correa, who knows

everybody, and will readily think of some one who has time and talent for this

work. I have neither. Till noon I am daily engaged in a correspondence much too

extensive and laborious for my age. From noon to dinner, health, habit, and

business require me to be on horseback; and render the society of my family and

friends a necessary relaxation for the rest of the day. These occupations

scarcely leave time for the papers of the day ; and to renounce entirely the

sciences and belleslettres is impossible. Had not Mr. Gilmer just taken his

place in the ranks of the bar, I think we could have engaged him in this work.

But I am persuaded that Mr. Correa's intimacy with the persons of promise in

our country, will leave you without difficulty in laying this work of

instruction open to our citizens at large.







  I have not yet had time to read your Equinoctial Republics, nor the letter of

Say ; because I am still engrossed by the letters which had accumulated during

my absence. The latter I accept with thankfulness, and will speedily read and

return the former. God bless you, and maintain you in strength of body and

mind, until your own wishes shall be to resign both. 













            Jefferson's Works















    TO CAPTAIN A. PARTRIDGE.







             MONTICELLO, January 2, 1816.







SIR,-I am but recently returned from my journey to the neighborhood of the

Peaks of Otter, and find here your favors of November z3d and December 9th. I

have therefore to thank you for your meteorological table and the corrections

of Colonel Williams' altitudes of the mountains of Virginia, which I had not

before seen; but especially for the very able extract on barometrical measures.

The precision of the calculations, and soundness of the principles on which

they are founded, furnish, I am satisfied, a great approximation towards truth,

and raise that method of estimating heights to a considerable degree of

rivalship with the trigonometrical. The last is not without some sources of

inaccuracy, as you have truly stated. The admeasurement of the base is liable

to errors which can be rendered insensible only by such degrees of care as have

been exhibited by the mathematicians who have been employed in measuring

degrees on the surface of the earth. The measure of the angles by the wonderful

perfection to which the graduation of instruments has been brought by a Bird, a

Ramsden, a Troughton, removes nearly all distrust from that operation; and we

may add that the effect of refraction, rarely worth notice in short distances,

admits of correction by well-established laws ;. these sources of error once

reduced to be insensible, their geometrical employ-







             Correspondence          375







ment is certainty itself. No two men can differ on a principle of trigonometry.

Not so as to the theories of barometrical mensuration. On these have been great

differences of opinion, and among characters of just celebrity.







  Dr. Halley reckoned one-tenth inch of mercury equal to go feet altitude of

the atmosphere. Derham thought it equal to something less than go feet.

Cassini's tables to 24 degrees of the barometer allowed 676 toises of

altitudes.







  Mariole's, to the same. . . . . . . . . . . . 544 toises.







  Schruchzer's      " . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559 "







Nettleton's tables applied to a difference of.5975 of mercury, in a particular

instance have 512.17 feet of altitude, and Bonguor's and De Luc's rules, to the

same difference gave 579.5 feet. Sir Isaac Newton had established that at

heights in arithmetical progression the ratio of rarity in the air would be

geometrical, and this being the character of the natural numbers and their

logarithms, Bonguor adopted the ratio in his mensuration of the mountains of

South America, and stating in French lignes the height of the mercury of

different stations, took their logarithms to five places only, including the

index, and considered the resulting difference as expressing that of the

altitudes in French toises. He then applied corrections required by the effect

of the temperature of the moment on the air and mercury. His process, on the

whole, agrees very exactly with that estab













376          Jefferson's Works







lished in your excellent extract. In 1776 I observed the height of the mercury

at the base and summit of the mountain I live on, and by Nettleton's tables,

estimated the height at 512.17 feet, and called it about 500 feet in the Notes

on Virginia. But calculating it since on the same observations, according to

Bonguor's method with De Luc's improvements the result was 579.5 feet ; and

lately I measured the same height trigonometrically, with the aid of a base of

1,175 feet in a vertical plane with the summit, and at the distance of about

1,500 yards from the axis of the mountain, and made it 599.35 feet. I consider

this as testing the advance of the barometrical process towards truth by the

adoption of the logarithmic ratio of heights and densities ; and continued

observations and experiments will continue to advance it still more. But the

first character of a common measure of things being that of invariability, I

can never suppose that a substance so heterogeneous and variable as the

atmospheric fluid, changing daily and hourly its weight and dimensions to the

amount, sometimes, of one-tenth of the whole, can be applied as a standard of

measure to anything, with as much mathematical exactness, as a trigonometrical

process. It is still, however, a resource of great value for these purposes,

because its use is so easy, in comparison with the other, and especially where

the grounds are unfavorable for a base; and its results are so near the truth

as to answer all the common purposes of information. Indeed, I should in all 













              Correspondence







cases prefer the use of both, to warn us against gross error, and to put us,

when that is suspected, on a repetition of our process. When lately measuring

trigonometrically the height of the Peaks of Otter (as my letter of October

12th informed you I was about to do), I very much wished for a barometer, to

try the height of that also. But it was too far and hazardous to carry my own,

and there was not one in that neighborhood. On the subject of that

admeasurement, I must premise that my object was only to gratify a common

curiosity as to the height of those mountains, which we deem our highest, and

to furnish an a peu pres, sufficient to satisfy us in a comparison of them with

the other mountains of our own, or of other countries. I therefore neither

provided such instruments, nor aimed at such extraordinary accuracy in the

measures of my base, as abler operators would have employed in the more

important object of measuring a degree, or of ascertaining the relative

position of different places for astronomical or geographical purposes. My

instrument was a theodolite by Ramsden, whose horizontal and vertical circles

were of 31/2 inches radius, its graduation subdivided by noniuses to one-third,

admitting however by its intervals, a further subdivision by the eye to a

single minute, with two telescopes, the one fixed, the other movable, and a

Gunter's chain of four poles, accurately adjusted in its length, and carefully

attended on its application to the base line. The Sharp, or southern peak, was

first measured by a base of 













            Jefferson's Works







2806.32 feet in the vertical plane of the axis of the mountain. A base then

nearly parallel with the two mountains of 6589 feet was measured, and

observations taken at each end, of the altitudes and horizontal angles of each

apex, and such other auxiliary observations made as to the stations,

inclination of the base, etc., as a good degree of correctness in the result

would require. The ground of our bases was favorable, being an open plain of

close grazed meadow on both sides of the Otter river, declining so uniformly

with the descent of the river as to give no other trouble than an observation

of its angle of inclination, in order to reduce the base to the plane of the

horizon. From the summit of the Sharp peak I took also the angle of altitude of

the flat or northern one above it, my other observations sufficing to give

their distance from one another. The result was, the mean height of the Sharp

peak above the surface of







Otter river. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2946.5 inches.. Mean height of

the flat peak above the surface







of Otter river. . . . . . . . . . . , . . .. . 3103.5 inches. The distance

between the two summits,







                                             9507.73 inches.







  Their rhumb N. 33degrees 5o' E. the distance of the stations of observation

from the points in the bases of the mountains vertically under their summits

was, the shortest 19002.2 feet, the longest 24523.3 feet. These mountains are

computed to be visible to fifteen counties of the State, without the advantage

of coun













             Correspondence          379







ter-elevations, and to several more with that advantage. I must add that I have

gone over my calculations but once, and nothing is more possible than the

mistake of a figure now and then, in calculating so many triangles, which may

occasion some variation in the result. I mean, therefore, when I have leisure,

to go again over the whole. The ridge of mountains of which Monticello is one,

is generally low; there is one in it, however, called Peter's mountain,

considerably higher than the general ridge. This being within a dozen miles of

me, northeastwardly, I think in the spring of the year to measure it by both

processes, which may serve as another trial of the logarithmic theory. Should I

do this, you shall know the result. In the meantime accept assurances of my

great respect and esteem.















        TO COLONEL CHARLES YANCEY.







              MONTICELLO, January 6, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-I am favored with yours of December a4th, and perceive you have

many matters before you of great moment. I have no fear but that the

legislature will do on all of them what is wise and just. On the particular

subject of our river, in the navigation of which our county has so great an

interest, I think the power of permitting dams to be erected across it, ought

to be taken from the courts, so far as the stream has water enough for

navigation. The value of nur property is sensibly lessened by the dam 













380         Jefferson's Works







which the court of Fluvana authorized not long since to be erected, but a

little above its mouth. This power over the value and convenience of our lands

is of much too high a character to be placed at the will of a county court, and

that of a county, too, which has not a common interest in the preservation of

the navigation for those above them. As to the existing dams, if any conditions

are proposed more than those to which they were subjected on their original

erection, I think they would be allowed the alternative of opening a sluice for

the passage of navigation, so as to put the river into as good a condition for

navigation as it was before the erection of their dam, or as it would be if

their dam were away. Those interested in the navigation might then use the

sluices or make locks as should be thought best. Nature and reason, as well as

all our constitutions, condemn retrospective conditions as mere acts of power

against right.







  I recommend to your patronage our Central College. I look to it as a germ

from which a great tree may spread itself.







  There is before the assembly a petition of a Captain Miller which I have at

heart, because I have great esteem for the petitioner as an honest and useful

man. He is about to settle in our county, and to establish a brewery, in which

art I think him as skilful a man as has ever come to America. I wish to see

this beverage become common instead of the whiskey which kills one-third of our

citizens and 













                Correspondence         3s I







   ruins their families. He is staying with me until







he can fix himself, and I should be thankful for in-







formation from time to time of the progress of his







petition.







     Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water,







our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks,







more banks. The American mind is now in that







state of fever which the world has so often seen in







the history of other nations. We are under the bank







bubble, as England was under the South Sea bubble,







France under the Mississippi bubble, and as every







nation is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design,







or delusion may puff up in moments when off their







guard. We are now taught to believe that legerde-







main tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth







as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for common







sense to urge that nothing can produce but nothing;







that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher's







stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to







redeem man from the original sentence of his Maker,







" in the sweat of his brow shall he eat his bread. "







Not Quixote enough, however, to attempt to reason







Bedlam to rights, my anxieties are turned to the







most practicable means of withdrawing us from the







ruin into which we have run. Two hundred millions







of paper in the hands of the people, (and less can-







not be from the employment of a banking capital







known to exceed one hundred millions,) is a fearful



tax to fall at haphazard on their heads. The debt







which purchased our independence was but of eighty























382         Jefferson's Works







millions, of which twenty years of taxation had in 1809 paid but the one half.

And what have we purchased with this tax of two hundred millions which we are

to pay by wholesale but usury, swindling, and new forms of demoralization.

Revolutionary history has warned us of the probable moment when this baseless

trash is to receive its fiat. Whenever so much of the precious metals shall

have returned into the circulation as that every one can get some in exchange

for his produce, paper, as in the Revolutionary war, will experience at once an

universal rejection. When public opinion changes, it is with the rapidity of

thought. Confidence is already on the totter, and every one now handles this

paper as if playing at Robin's alive. That in the present state of the

circulation the banks should resume payments in specie, would require their

vaults to be like the widow's cruse. The thing to be aimed at is, that the

excesses of their emissions should be withdrawn as gradually, but as speedily,

too, as is practicable, without so much alarm as to bring on the crisis

dreaded. Some banks are said to be calling in their paper. But ought we to let

this depend on their discretion? Is it not the duty of the legislature to

endeavor to avert from their constituents such a catastrophe as the

extinguishment of two hundred millions of paper in their hands ? The difficulty

is indeed great ; and the greater, because the patient revolts against all

medicine. I am far from presuming to say that any plan can be relied on with

certainty, 













             Correspondence







because the bubble may burst from one moment to another ; but if it fails, we

shall be but where we should have been without any effort to save ourselves.

Different persons, doubtless, will devise different schemes of relief. One

would be to suppress instantly the currency of all paper not issued under the

authority of our own State or of the General Government; to interdict after a

few months the circulation of all bills of five dollars and under; after a few

months more, all of ten dollars and under; after other terms, those of twenty,

fifty, and so on to one hundred dollars, which last, if any must be left in

circulation, should be the lowest denomination. These might be a convenience in

mercantile transactions and transmissions, and would be excluded by their size

from ordinary circulation. But the disease may be too pressing to await such a

remedy. With the legislature I cheerfully leave it to apply this medicine, or

no medicine at all. I am sure their intentions are faithful;. and embarked in

the same bottom, I am willing to swim or sink with my fellow citizens. If the

latter is their choice, I will go down with them without a murmur. But my

exhortation would rather be " not to give up the ship."







I am a great friend to the improvements of roads, canals, and schools. But I

wish I could see some provision for the former as solid as that of the latter,

--something better than fog. The literary fund is a solid provision, unless

lost in the impending bankruptcy. If the legislature would add to that a per













            Jefferson's Works







petual tax of a cent a head on the population of the State, it would set agoing

at once, and forever maintain, a system of primary or ward schools, and an

university where might be taught, in its highest degree, every branch of

science useful in our time and country; and it would rescue us from the tax of

toryism, fanaticism, and indifferentism to their own State, which we now send

our youth to bring from those of New England. If a nation expects to be

ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and

never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to

command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no

safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe

with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to

read, all is safe. The frankness of this communication will, I am sure, suggest

to you a discreet use of it. I wish to avoid all collisions of opinion with all

mankind. Show it to Mr. Maury, with expressions of my great esteem. It pretends

to convey no more than the opinions of one of your thousand constituents, and

to claim no more attention than every other of that thousand.







I will ask you once more to take care of Miller and our College, and to accept

assurances of my esteem and respect. 













              Correspondence         385















       TO CHARLES THOMPSON.







              MONTICELLO, January 9, 1816.







  MY DEAR AND ANCIENT FRIEND,-An acquaintance of fifty-two years, for I think

ours dates from 1764, calls for an interchange of notice now and then that we

remain in existence, the monuments of another age, and examples of a friendship

unaffected by the jarring elements by which we have been surrounded, of

revolutions of government, of party and of opinion. I am reminded of this duty

by the receipt, through otzr friend Dr. Patterson, of your synopsis of the four

Evangelists. I had procured it as soon as I saw it advertised, and had become

familiar with its use; but this copy is the more valued as it comes from your

hand. This work bears the stamp of that accuracy which marks everything from

you, and will be useful to those who, not taking things on trust, recur for

themselves to the fountain of pure morals. I, too, have made a wee-little book

from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus ; it is a

paradigma of His doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and

arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or

subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen ; it

is a document in proof that I am a real Chyistian, that is to say, a disciple

of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me

infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw







386         Jefferson's Works







all their characteristic dogmas from what its Author never said nor saw. They

have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of

man, of which the great Reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews,

were He to return on earth, would not recognize one feature. If I had time, I

would add to my little book the Greek, Latin and French texts, in columns side

by side. And I wish I could subjoin a translation of Gosindi's Syntagma of the

doctrines of Epicurus, which, notwithstanding the calumnies of the Stoics and

caricatures of Cicero, is the most rational system remaining of the philosophy

of the ancients, as frugal of vicious indulgence, and fruitful of virtue as the

hyperbolical extravagances of his rival sects.







  I retain good health, am rather feeble to walk much, but ride with ease,

passing two or three hours a day on horseback, and every three or four months

taking in a carriage a journey of ninety miles to a distant possession, where I

pass a good deal of my time. My eyes need the aid of glasses by night, and with

small print in the day also ; my hearing is not quite so sensible as it used to

be ; no tooth shaking yet, but shivering and shrinking in body from the cold we

now experience, my thermometer having been as low as I2degrees this morning. My

greatest oppression is a correspondence afflictingly laborious, the extent of

which I have been long endeavoring to curtail. This keeps me at the drudgery of

the writing-table all the prime hours of the day, leaving for 













                Correspondence         3877







    the gratification of my appetite for reading, only







what I can steal from the hours of sleep. Could I







reduce this epistolary corvee within the limits of my







friends and affairs, and give the time redeemed from







it to reading and reflection, to history, ethics, mathe-







matics, my life would be as happy as the infirmities







of age would admit, and I should look on its consum-







mation with the composure of one "qui summum nec







me tuit diem nec optat."







So much as to myself, and I have given you this







string of egotisms in the hope of drawing a similar







one from yourself. I have heard from others that







you retain your health, a good degree of activity, and







all the vivacity and cheerfulness of your mind, but I







wish to learn it more minutely from yourself. How







has time affected your health and spirits? What are







your amusements, literary and social ? Tell me







everything about yourself, because all will be inter-







esting to me, who retains for you ever the same con-







stant and affectionate friendship and respect.















            TO BENJAMIN AUSTIN, ESQ.







                 MONTICELLO, January 9, 1816.







     DEAR SIR,-Your favor of December a 1st has been







received, and I am first to thank you for the pam-







phlet it covered. The same description of persons







which is the subject of that is so much multiplied







here too, as to be almost a grievance, and by their



numbers in the public councils, have wrested from 













388        Jefferson's Works







the public hand the direction of the pruning knife. But with us as a body, they

are republican, and mostly moderate in their views; so far, therefore, less

objects of jealousy than with you. Your opinions on the events which have taken

place in France, are entirely just, so far as these events are yet developed.

But they have not reached their ultimate termination. There is still an awful

void between the present and what is to be the last chapter of that history;

and I fear it is to be filled with abominations as frightful as those which

have already disgraced it. That na'tion is too high-minded, has too much innate

force, intelligence and elasticity, to remain under its present compression.

Samson will arise in his strength, as of old, and as of old will burst asunder

the withes and the cords, and the webs of the Philistines. But what are to be

the scenes of havoc and horror, and how widely they may spread between brethren

of the same house, our ignorance oú the interior feuds and antipathies of the

country places beyond our ken. It will end, nevertheless, in a representative

government, in a government in which the will of the people will be an

effective ingredient. This important element has taken root in the European

mind, and will have its growth ; their despots, sensible of this, are already

offering this modification of their gevernments, as if of their own accord.

Instead of the parricide treason of Bonaparte, in perverting the means confided

to him as a republican magistrate, to the subversion of that 













              Correspondence          389







 republic and erection of a military despotism for him-







self and his family, had he used it honestly for the







establishment and support of a free government in







his own country, France would now have been in







freedom and rest; and her example operating in a







contrary direction, every nation in Europe would







have had a government over which the will of the







people would have had some control. His atrocious







egotism has checked the salutary progress of prin-







ciple, and deluged it with rivers of blood which are







not yet run out. To the vast sum of devastation and







of human misery, of which he has been the guilty







cause, much is still to be added. But the object is







fixed in the eye of nations, and they will press on to







its accomplishment and to the general amelioration







of the condition of man. What a germ have we







planted, and how faithfully should we cherish the







parent tree at home !







  You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to con-







tinue our dependence on England for manufactures.







There was a time when I might have been so quoted







with more candor, but within the thirty years which







have since elapsed, how are circumstances changed!







We were then in peace. Our independent place







among nations was acknowledged. A commerce







which offered the raw material in exchange for the







same material after receiving the last touch of indus-







try, was worthy of welcome to all nations. It was



expected that those especially to whom manufac-







turing industry was important, would cherish the 













390         Jefferson's Works







friendship of such customers by every favor, by every inducement, and

particularly cultivate their peace by every act of justice and friendship.

Under this prospect the question seemed legitimate,whether, with such an

immensity of unimproved land, courting the hand of husbandry, the industry of

agriculture, or that of manufactures, would add most to the national wealth?

And the doubt was entertained on this consideration chiefly, that to the labor

of the husbandman a vast addition is made by the spontaneous energies of the

earth on which it is employed : for one grain of wheat committed to the earth,

she renders twenty, thirty, and even fifty fold, whereas to the labor of the

manufacturer nothing is added. Pounds of flax, in his hands, yield, on the

contrary, but pennyweights of lace. This exchange, too, laborious as it might

seem, what a field did it promise for the occupations of the ocean; what a

nursery for that class of citizens who were to exercise and maintain our equal

rights on that element? This was the state of things in 1785, when the " Notes

on Virginia" were first printed; when, the ocean being open to all nations, and

their common right in it acknowledged and exercised under regulations

sanctioned by the assent and usage of all, it was thought that the doubt might

claim some consideration. But who in 1785 could foresee the rapid depravity

which was to render the close of that century the disgrace of the history of

man ? Who could have imagined that the two most distinguished in the rank of

nations, 













             Correspondence          391







for science and civilization, would have suddenly descended from that honorable

eminence, and setting at defiance all those moral laws established by the

Author of nature between nation and nation, as between man and man, would cover

earth and sea with robberies and piracies, merely because strong enough to do

it with temporal impunity ; and that under this disbandment of nations from

social order, we should have been despoiled of a thousand ships, and have

thousands of our citizens reduced to Algerine slavery. Yet all this has taken

place. One of these nations interdicted to our vessels all harbors of the globe

without having first proceeded to some one of hers, there paid a tribute

proportioned to the cargo, and obtained her license to proceed to the port of

destination. The other declared them to be lawful prize if they had touched at

the port, or been visited by a ship of the enemy nation. Thus were we

completely excluded from the ocean. Compare this state of things with that of

'85, and say whether an opinion founded in the circumstances of that day can be

fairly applied to those of the present. We have experienced what we did not

then believe, that there exist both profligacy and power enough to exclude us

from the field of interchange with other nations : that to be independent for

the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the

manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. The former question is

suppressed, or rather assumes a new form. Shall we make our own comforts, or























392         Jefferson's Works







go without them, at the will of a foreign nation ? He, therefore, who is now

against domestic manufacture, must be for reducing us either to dependence on

that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in

dens and caverns. I am not one of these ; experience has taught me that

manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort; and if

those who quote me as of a different opinion, will keep pace with me in

purchasing nothing foreign where an equivalent of domestic fabric can be

obtained, without regard to difference of price, it will not be our fault if we

do not soon have a supply at home equal to our demand, and wrest that weapon of

distress from the hand which has wielded it. If it shall be proposed to go

beyond our own supply, the question of '85 will then recur, will our surplus

labor be then most beneficially employed in the culture of the earth, or in the

fabrications of art? We have time yet for consideration, before that question

will press upon us; and the maxim to be applied will depend on the

circumstances which shall then exist; for in so complicated a science as

political economy, no one axiom can be laid down as wise and expedient for all

times and circumstances, and for their contraries. Inattention to this is what

has called for this explanation, which reflection would have rendered

unnecessary with the candid, while nothing will do it with those who use the

former opinion only as a stalking horse, to cover 













              Correspondence         393







their disloyal propensities to keep us in eternal vassalage to a foreign and

unfriendly people.







  I salute you with assurances of great respect and esteem.















              TO JOHN ADAMS.







              MONTICELLO, January 11,1816.







DEAR SIR,-Of the last five months I have passed four at my other domicile, for

such it is in a considerable degree. No letters are forwarded to me there,

because the cross post to that place is circuitous and uncertain ; during my

absence, therefore, they are accumulating here, and awaiting acknowledgments.

This has been the fate of your favor of November 13th. '







I agree with you in all its eulogies on the eighteenth century. It certainly

witnessed the sciences and arts, manners and morals, advanced to a higher

degree than the world had ever before seen. And might we not go back to the

aera of the Borgias, by which time the barbarous ages had reduced national

morality to its lowest point of depravity, and observe that the arts and

sciences, rising from that point, advanced gradually through all the sixteenth,

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, softening and correcting the manners and

morals of man ? I think                                     , too, we may add

to the great honor of science and the arts, that their natural effect is, by

illuminating public opinion, to erect it into a censor, before which 













394        Jefferson's Works







the most exalted tremble for their future, as well as present fame. With some

exceptions only, through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, morality

occupied an honorable chapter in the political code of nations. You must have

observed while in Europe, as I thought I did, that those who administered the

governments of the greater powers at least, had a respect to faith, and

considered the dignity of their government as involved in its integrity. A

wound indeed was inflicted on this character of honor in the eighteenth century

by the partition of Poland. But this was the atrocity of a barbarous government

chiefly, in conjunction with a smaller one still scrambling to become great,

while one only of those already great, and having character to lose, descended

to the baseness of an accomplice in the crime. France, England, Spain, shared

in it only inasmuch as they stood aloof and permitted its perpetration.







How then has it happened that these nations, France especially and England, so

great, so dignified, so distingu'shed by science and the arts, plunged all at

once into all the depths of human enormity, threw off suddenly and openly all

the restraints of morality, all sensation to character, and unblushingly avowed

and acted on the principle that power was right? Can this sudden apostasy from

national rectitude be accounted for? The treaty of Pilnitz seems to have begun

it, suggested perhaps by the baneful precedent of Poland. Was it from the

terror of monarchs, alarmed at the light returning on them from 













             Correspondence          395







the west, and kindling a volcano under their thrones ? Was it a combination to

extinguish that light, and to bring back, as their best auxiliaries, those

enumerated by you, the Sorbonne, the Inquisition, the Index Expurgatorius, and

the knights of Loyola? Whatever it was, the close of the century saw the moral

world thrown back again to the age of the Borgias, to the point from which it

had departed three hundred years before. France, after crushing and punishing

the conspiracy of Pilnitz, went herself deeper and deeper into the crimes she

had been chastising. I say France and not Bonaparte ; for, although he was the

head and mouth, the nation furnished the hands which executed his enormities.

England, although in opposition, kept full pace with France, not indeed by the

manly force of her own arms, but by oppressing the weak and bribing the strong.

At length the whole choir joined and divided the weaker nations among them.

Your prophecies to Dr. Price proved truer than mine; and yet fell short of the

fact, for instead of a million, the destruction of eight or ten millions of

human .beings has probably been the effect of these convulsions. I did not, in

'8g, believe they would have lasted so long, nor have cost so much blood. But

although your prophecy has proved true so far, I hope it does not preclude a

better final result. That same light from our west seems to have spread and

illuminated the very engines employed to extinguish it. It has given them a

glimmering of their rights and their power. 













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The idea of representative government has taken root and growth among them.

Their masters feel it, and are saving themselves by timely offers of this

modification of their powers. Belgium, Prussia, Poland, Lombardy, etc., are now

offered a representative organization ; illusive probably at first, but it will

grow into power in the end. Opinion is power, and that opinion will come. Even

France will yet attain representative government. You observe it makes the

basis of ever y Constitution which has been. demanded or offered,-of that

demanded by their Senate ; of that offered by Bonaparte ; and of that granted

by Louis XVIII. The idea then is rooted, and will be established, although

rivers of blood may yet flow between them and their object. The allied armies

now couching upon them are first to be destroyed, and destroyed they will

surely be. 'A nation united can never be conquered. We have seen what the

ignorant, bigoted and unarmed Spaniards could do against the disciplined

veterans of their invaders. What then may we not expect from the power and

character of the French nation ? The oppressors may cut off heads after heads,

but like those of the Hydra they multiply at every stroke. The recruits within

a nation's own limits are proznpt and without number; while those of their

invaders from a distance are slow, limited, and must come to an end. I think, .

too, we perceive that all these allies do not see the same interest in the

annihilation of the power of France. There are certainly some symptoms of fore













             Correspondence         397







sight in Alexander that France might produce a salutary diversion of force were

Austria and Prussia to become her enemies. France, too, is the neutral ally of

the Turk, as having no interfering interests, and might be useful in

neutralizing and perhaps turning that power on Austria. That a re-acting

jealousy, too, exists with Austria and Prussia, I think their late strict

alliance indicates ; and I should not wonder if Spain should discover a

sympathy with them. Italy is so divided as to be nothing. Here then we see new

coalitions in embryo, which, after France shall in turn have suffered a just

punishment for her crimes, will not only raise her from the earth on which she

is prostrate, but give her an opportur€ty to establish a government of as much

liberty as she can bear--enough to ensure her happiness and prosperity. When

insurrection begins, be it where it will, all the partitioned countries will

rush to arms, and Europe again become an arena of gladiators. And what is the

definite object they will propose? A restoration certainly of the status quo

prius, of the state of possession of '8g. I see no other principle on which

Europe can ever again settle down in lasting peace. I hope your prophecies will

go thus far, as my wishes do, and that they, like the former, will prove to

have been the sober dictates of a superior understanding, and a sound

calculation of effects from causes well understood. Some future Morgan will

then have an opportunity of doing you justice, and of counterbalancing the

breach of confidence of























398         Jefferson's Works







which you so justly complain, and in which no one has had more frequent

occasion of fellow-feeling than myself. Permit me to place here my affectionate

respects to Mrs. Adams, and to add for yourself the assurances of cordial

friendship and esteem.















             TO DABNEX CARR.







             MONTICELLO, January 19, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-At the date of your letter of December the 1st, I was in Bedford,

and since my return, so many letters, accumulated during my absence, have been

pressing for answers, that this is the first moment I have been able to attend

to the subject of yours. While Mr. Girardin was in this neighborhood writing

his continuation of Burke's history, I had suggested to him a proper notice of

the establishment of the committee of correspondence here in 1773, and of Mr.

Carr, your father, who introduced it. He has doubtless done this, and his work

is now in the press. My books, journals of the times, etc., being all gone, I

have nothing now but an impaired memory to resort to for the more particular

statemerit you wish. But I give it with the more confidence, as I find that I

remember old things better than new. The transaction took place in the session

of Assembly of March, 1773. Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Frank Lee, your

father and myself, met by agreement, one evening, about the close of the

session, at the Raleigh Tavern, to consult on the measures which 













            Correspondence          399







the circumstances of the times seemed to call for. We agreed, in result, that

concert in the operations of the several colonies was indispensable ; and that

to produce this, some channel of correspondence between them must be opened ;

that theref ore, we would propose to our House the appointment of a committee

of correspondence, which should be authorized and instructed to write to the

Speakers of the House of Representatives of the several colonies, recommending

the appointment of similar committees on their part, who, by a communication of

sentiment on the transactions threatening us all, might promote a harmony of

action salutary to all. This was the substance, not pretending to remember the

words. We proposed the resolution, and your father was agreed on to make the

motion. He did it the next day, March the 12th, with great ability, reconciling

all to it, not only by the reasonings, but by the temper and moderation with

which it was developed. It was adopted by a very general vote. Peyton Randolph,

some of us who proposed it, and who else I do not remember, were appointed of

the committee. We immediately despatched letters by expresses to the Speakers

of all the other Assemblies. I remember that Mr. Carr and myself, returning

home together, and conversing on the subject by the way, concurred in the

conclusion that that measure must inevitably beget the meeting of a Congress of

Deputies from all the colonies, for the purpose of uniting all in the same

princ'ples and measures for the mainte













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nance of our rights. My memory cannot deceive me, when I affirm that we did it

in consequence of no such proposition from any other colony. No doubt the

resolution itself and the journals of the day will show that ours was original,

and not merely responsive to one from any other quarter. Yet, I am certain I

remember also, that a similar proposition, and nearly cotemporary, was made by

Massachusetts, and that our northern messenger passed theirs on the road. This,

too, may be settled by recurrence to the records of Massachusetts. . The

proposition was generally acceded to by the other colonies, and the first

effect, as expected, was the meeting of a Congress at New York the ensuing

year. The committee of correspondence appointed by Massachusetts, as quoted by

you from Marshall, under the date of 1770, must have been for a special

purpose, and functus officcio before the date of 1773, or Massachusetts herself

would not then have proposed another. Records should be exarnined to settle

this accurately. I well remember the pleasure expressed in the countenance and

conversation of the members generally, on this debut of Mr. Carr, and the hopes

they conceived as well from the talents as the patriotism it manifested. . But

he died within two months after, and in€ him we lost a powerful

fellow-laborer.. His character was of a high order. A spotless integrity, sound

judgment, handsome imagination, enriched by education and reading, quick and

clear in his conceptions, of correct and ready elocution, 













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impressing every hearer with the sincerity of the heart from which it flowed.

His firmness was inflexible in whatever he thought was right ; but when no

moral principle stood in the way, never had man more of the milk of human

kindness, of indulgence, of softness, of pleasantry of conversation and

conduct. The number of his friends, and the warmth of their affection, were

proofs of his worth, and of their estimate of it. To give to those now living,

an idea of the affliction produced by his death in the minds of all who knew

him, I liken it to that lately felt by themselves on the death of his eldest

son, Peter Carr, so like him in all his endowments and moral qualities, and

whose recollection can never recur without a deep-drawn sigh from the bosom of

any one who knew him. You mention that I showed you an inscription I had

proposed for the tombstone of your father. Did I leave it in your hands to be

copied? I ask the question, not that I have any such recollection, but that I

find it no longer in the place of its deposit, and think I never took it out

but on that occasion. Ever and affectionately yours.















TO DR. PETER WILSON, PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES,







  COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK.







             MONTICELLO, January 20, 1816.







  SIR,-Of the last five months, I have been absent four from home, which must

apologize for so very late an acknowledgment of your favor of November







  VOL. XIV-26 













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22d, and I wish the delay could be compensated by the matter of the answer. But

an unfortunate accident puts that out of my power. During the course of my

public life, and from a very early period of it, I omitted no opportunity of

procuring vocabularies of the Indian languages, and for that purpose formed a

model expressing such objects in nature as must be familiar to every people,

savage or civilized. This being made the standard to which all were brought,

would exhibit readily whatever affinities of language there be between the

several tribes. It was my intention, on retiring from public business, to have

digested these into some order, so as to show not only what relations of

language existed among our own aborigines, but by a collation with the great

Russian vocabulary of the languages of Europe and Asia, whether there were any

between them and the other nations of the continent. On my removal from

Washington, the package in which this collection was coming by water, was

stolen and destroyed. It consisted of between thirty and forty vocabularies, of

which I can, from memory, say nothing particular; but that I am certain more

than half of them differed as radically, each from every other, as the Greek

the Latin, and Icelandic. And even of those which seemed to be derived from the

same radix, the departure was such that the tribes speaking them could not

probably understand one another. Single words, or two or three together, might

perhaps be understood, but not a whole sentence of any extent or construction. 













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I think, therefore, the pious missionaries who shall go to the several tribes

to instruct them in the Christian religion will have to learn a language for

every tribe they go to ; nay, more, that they will have to create a new

language for every one, that is to say, to add to theirs new words for the new

ideas they will have to communicate. Law, medicine, chemistry, mathematics,

every science has a language of its own, and divinity not less than others.

Their barren vocabularies cannot be vehicles for ideas of the fall of man, his

redemption, the triune composition of the Godhead, and other mystical doctrines

considered by most Christians of the present date as essential elements of

faith. The enterprise is therefore arduous, but the more inviting perhaps to

missionary zeal, in proportion as the merit of surmounting it will be greater.

Again repeating my regrets that I am able to give so little satisfaction on the

subject of your inquiry, I pray you to accept the assurance of my great

consideration and esteem.















TO AMOS J. COOK, PRECEPTOR OF FRYEBURG ACADEMY







         IN THE DISTRICT OF MAINE.







             MONTICELLO, January 21,1816.







  SIR,-Your favor of December 18th was exactly a month on its way to this place

; and I have to thank you for the elegant and philosophical lines communicated

by the Nestor of our Revolution. Whether the style or sentiment be considered,

they were well 













            Jefferson's Works







worthy the trouble of being copied and communicated by his pen. Nor am I less

thankful for the happy translation of them. It adds another to the rare

instances of a rival to its original: superior indeed in one respect, as the

same outline of sentiment is brought within a compass of better proportion. For

if the original be liable to any criticism, it is that of giving too g`reat

extension to the same general idea. Yet it has a great authority to support it,

that of a wiser man than all of us. " I sought in my heart to give myself unto

wine ; I made me great works ; I builded me houses ; I planted me vineyards ; I

made me gardens, and orchards, and pools to water them; I got me servants and

maidens, and great possessions of cattle ; I gathered me also silver and gold,

and men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, and

musical instruments of all sorts ; and whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not

from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy. Then I looked on all the works

that my hands had wrought, and behold! all was vanity and vexation of spirit! I

saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness." The

Preacher, whom I abridge, has indulged in a much larger amplification of his

subject. I am not so happy as my friend and ancient colleague, Mr. Adams, in

possessing anything original, inedited, and worthy of comparison with the

epigraph of the Spanish monk. I can offer but humble prose, from the hand

indeed of the father of eloquence and philoso













            Correspondence          405







phy; a moral morsel, which our young friends under your tuition should keep

ever in their eye, as the ultimate term of your instructions, and of their

labors. " Hic, quisquis est, qui moderatione et constantia quietus animo est,

sibique ipse placatus; ut nec tabescat molest€s, nec frangatur timore, nec

sitienter quid expectens ardeat desiderio, nec alacritate futili gestiens

deliquescat; is est sapiens, quem quaerimus; is est beatus; cui nihil humanarum

rerum aut intolerabile ad dimittendum animum, aut nimis lactabile ad

efferendum, videri potest. " Or if a poetical dress will be more acceptable to

the fancy of the juvenile student:







   "Quisnam igitur liber? Sapiens, sibique imperiosus:







Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent:







Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores







Fortis, et in seipso totus teres, atque rotundus;







Externi ne quid valeat pcr laevc morari:







In quem manca ruit semper Fortuna."







  And if the Wise be the happy man, as these sages say, he must be virtuous

too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of

all academical emulation.







  You request something in the handwriting of General Washington. I enclose you

a letter which I received from him while in Paris, covering a copy of the new

Constitution; it is offered merely as what you ask, a specimen of his

handwriting.







  On the subject of your Museum, I fear I cannot flatter myself with being

useful to it. Were the 













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obstacle of distance out of the way, age and retirement have withdrawn me from

the opportunities of procuring objects in that line. With every wish for the

prosperity of your institution, accept the assurances of my great esteem and

respect.















          TO MR. THOMAS RITCHIE.







             MONTICELLO, January 21, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-In answering the letter of a Northern correspondent lately, I

indulged in a tirade against a pamphlet recently published in this quarter. On

revising my letter, however, I thought it unsafe to commit myself so far to a

stranger. I struck out the passage therefore, yet I think the pamphlet of such

a character as not to be unknown, or unnoticed by the people of the United

States. It is the most bold and impudent stride New England has ever made in

arrogating an ascendency over the rest of the Union. The first form of the

pamphlet was an address from the Reverend Lyman Beecher, chairman of the

Connecticut Society for the education of pious young men for the ministry. Its

matter was then adopted and published in a sermon by Reverend Mr. Pearson of

Andover in Massachusetts, where they have a theological college ; and where the

address " with circumstantial variations to adapt it to more general use " is

reprinted on a sheet and a half of paper, in so cheap a form as to be

distributed, I imagine, gratis, for it has a final 













             Correspondence         407







note indicating six thousand copies of the first edition printed. So far as it

respects Virginia, the extract of my letter gives the outline. I therefore send

it to you to publish or burn, abridge or alter, as you think best. You

understand the public palate better than I do. Only give it such a tit?e as may

lead to no suspicion from whom you receive it. I am the more induced to offer

it to you because it is possible mine may be the only copy in the State, and

because, too, it may be a pyopos for the petition for the establishment of a

theological society now before the legislature, and to which they.have shown

the unusual respect of hearing an advocate for it at their bar. From what

quarter this theological society comes forward I know not; perhaps from our own

tramontaine clergy, of New England religion .and politics ; perhaps it is the

entering wedge from its theological sister in Andover, for the body of "

qualified religious instructors " proposed by their pious brethren of the East

" to evangelize and catechize," to edify our daughters by weekly lectures, and

our wives by "family visits" from these pious young monks from Harvard and

Yale. However, do with this what you please, and be assured of my friendship

and respect. 













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       TO NATHANIEL MACON.







              MONTICELLO, January 22, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of the 7th, after being a fortnight on the road, reached

this the last night. On the subject of the statue of General Washington, which

the legislature of North Carolina has ordered to be procured, and set up in

their Capitol, I shall willingly give you my best information and opinions.







  1. Your first inquiry is whether one worthy the character it is to represent,

and the State which erects it, can be made in the United States ? Certainly it

cannot. I do not know that there is a single marble statuary in the United

States, but I am sure there cannot be one who would offer himself as qualified

to undertake this monument of gratitude and taste. Besides, no quarry of

statuary marble has yet, I believe, been opened in the United States, that is

to say, of a marble pure white, and in blocks of sufficient size, without vein

or flaw. The quarry of Carrara, in Italy, is the only one in the accessible

parts of Europe which furnishes such blocks. It was from thence we brought to

Paris that for the statue of General Washington, made there on account of this

State; and it is from there that all the southern and maritime parts of Europe

are supplied with that character of marble.







  2. Who should make it ? There can be but one answer to this. Qld Canova, of

Rome. No artist in Europe would place himself in a line with him; and 













            Correspondence         409







for thirty years, within my own knowledge, he has been considered by all

Europe, as without a rival. He draws his blocks from Carrara, and delivers the

statue complete, and packed for transportation, at







Rome; from thence it descends the Tiber, but whether it must go to Leghorn, or

some other shipping port, I do not know.







  3. Price, time, size, and style? It will probably take a couple of years to

be ready. I am not able to be exact as to the price. We gave Houdon, at Paris,

one thousand guineas for the one he made for this State; but he solemnly and

feelingly protested against the inadequacy of the price, and evidently

undertook it on motives of reputation alone. He was the first artist in France,

and being willing to come over to take the model of the General, which we could

not have got Canova to have done, that circumstance decided on his employment:

We paid him additionally for coming over about five hundred guineas ; and when

the statue was done, we paid the expenses of one of his under workmen to come

over arld set it up, which might, perhaps, be one hundred guineas more. I

suppose, therefore, it cost us, in the whole, eight thousand dollars. But this

was only of the size of life. Yours should be something larger. The difference

it makes in the impression can scarcely be conceived. As to the style or

costume, I am sure the artist, and every person of taste in Europe, would be

for the Roman, the effect of which is undoubtedly of a different order. Our

boots and regimentals have 













            Jefferson's Works







a very puny effect. Works of this kind are about one-third cheaper at Rome than

Paris ; but Canova's eminence will be a sensible ingredient in price. I think

that for such a statue, with a plain pedestal, you would have a good bargain

from Canova at seven or eight thousand dollars, and should not be surprised

were he to require ten thousand dollars, to which you would have to add the

charges of bringing over and setting up. The one-half of the price would

probably have to be advanced, and the other half paid on delivery.







  4. From what model ? Ciracchi made the bust of General Washington in plaster.

It was the finest which came from his hand, and my own opinion of Ciracchi was,

that he was second to no sculptor living except Canova ; and, if he had lived,

would have rivalled him. His style had beeri formed on the fine models of

antiquity in Italy, and he had caught their ineffable majesty of expression. On

his return to Rome, he made the bust of the General in. marble, from that in

plaster; it was sent over here, was universally considered as the best effigy

of hzm ever executed, was bought by the Spanish Minister for the King of Spain,

and sent to Madrid. After the death of Ciracchi, Mr. Appleton, our Consul at

Leghorn, a man of worth and taste, purchased of his widow the original plaster

with a view to profit by copies of marble and plaster froxn it. He still has it

at Leghorn ; and it is the only original from which the statue can be formed.

But the exterior of the figure 













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will also be wanting, that is to say, the outward lineaments of the body and

members, to enable the artist to give to them also their true forms and

proportions. There are, I believe, in Philadelphia, whole-length paintings of

General Washington, from which, I presume, old Mr. Peale or his son would

sketch on canvas the mere outlines at no great charge. This sketch, with

Ciracchi's bust, will suffice.







  5. Through whose agency? None so ready or so competent as Mr. Appleton

himself ; he has had relations with Canova, is a judge of price, convenient to

engage the work, to attend to its progress, to receive and forward it to North

Carolina. Besides the accommodation of the original bust to be asked from him,

he will probably have to go to Rome himself, to make the contract, and will

incur a great deal of trouble besides, from that time to the delivery in North

Carolina; and it should therefore be made a matter of interest with him to act

in it, as his time and trouble is his support. I imagine his agency from

beginning to end would not be worth less than from one to two hundred guineas.

I particularize .all these things, that you may not be surpriscd with

after-claps of expense, not counted on beforehand. Mr. Appleton has two nephews

at Baltimore, both in the mercantile line, and in correspondence with him.

Should the Governor adopt this channel of execution, he will have no other

trouble than that of sending to them his communications for Mr. Appleton, and

making the remittances agreed on as shall be convenient to 













            Jefferson's Works







himself. A letter from the Secretary of State to Mr. Appleton, infnrming him

that any service he can render the State of North Carolina in this business,

would be gratifying to his government, would not be without effect.







  Accept the assurance of my great esteem and respect.















           TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.







             MONTICELLO, January 24, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of the 16th experienced great delay on the road, and to

avoid that of another mail, I must answer very briefly.







  My letter to Peter Carr contains all I ever wrote on the subject of the

College, a plan for the institution being the only thing the trustees asked or

expected from me. Were it to go into execution, I should certainly interest

myself further and strongly in procuring proper professors.







  The establishment of a Proctor is taken from the practice of Europe, where an

equivalent officer is made a part, and is a very essential one, of every such

institution; and as the nature oú his functions requires that he should always

be a man of discretion, understanding, and integrity, above the common level,

it was thought that he would never be less worthy of being trusted with the

powers of a justice, within the limits of institutfon here, than the

neighboring justices generally are; and the vesting him 













             Correspondence          413







with the conservation of the peace within that limit, was intended, while it

should equally secure its object, to shield the young and unguarded student

from the disgrace of the common prison, except where the case was an aggravated

one. A confinement to his own room was meant as an act of tenderness to him,

his parents and friends; in fine, it was to give them a complete police of

their own, tempered by the paternal attentions of their tutors. And, certainly,

in no country is such a provision more called for than in this, as has been

proved from times of old, from the regular annual riots and battles between the

students of William and Mary with the town boys, before the Revolution, quorum

pars fui, and the many and more serious affrays of later times. Observe, too,

that our bill proposes no exclusion of the ordinary magistrate, if the one

attached to the institution is thought to execute his power either partially or

remissly.







  The transfer of the power to give commencement to the Ward or Elementary

Schools from the court and aldermen to the visitors, was proposed because the

experience of twenty years has proved that no court will ever begin it. The

reason is obvious. The members of the courts are the wealthy members of the

counties ; and as the expenses of the schools are to be defrayed by a

contribution proportioned to the aggregate of other taxes which every one pays,

they consider it as a plan to educate the poor at the expense of the rich. It

proceeded, too, from a hope that the example and good effects being exhibited 













414         Jefferson's Works







in one county, they would spread from county to county and become general. The

modification of the law, by authorizing the alderman to require the expense of

tutorage from such parents as are able, would render trifling, if not wholly

prevent, any call on the county for pecuniary aid. You know that nothing better

than a log-house is required for these schools, and there is not a neighborhood

which would not meet and build this themselves for the sake of having a school

near them.







  I know of no peculiar advantage which Charlottesville offers for Mr.

Braidwood's school of deaf and dumb. On the contrary, I should think the

vicinity of the seat of government most favorable to it. I should not like to

have it made a member of our College. The objects of the two institutions are

fundamentally distinct. The one is science, the other mere charity. It would be

gratuitously taking a boat in tow which may impede, but cannot aid the motion

of the principal institution.







  Ever and affectionately yours.















        TO REVEREND NOAH wORCESTER.







             MONTICELLO, January 29, 1816.







  SIR,-Your letter bearing date October 1Bth, 1816, came only to hand the day

before yesterday, which is mentioned to explain the date of mine. I have to

thank you for the pamphlets accompanying it, to wit, the Solemn Review, the

Friend of Peace or Special 













            Correspndence         415







Interview, and the Friend of Peace, No. 2 ; the first of these I had received

through another channel some months ago. I have not read the two last steadily

through, because where one assents to propositions as soon as announced it is

loss of time to read the arguments in support of them. These numbers discuss

the first branch of the causes of war, that is to say, wars undertaken for the

point of honor, which you aptly analogize with the act of duelling between

individuals, and reason with justice from the one to the other. Undoubtedly

this class of wars is, in the general, what you state them to be, " needless,

unjust and inhuman, as well as anti-Christian." The second branch of this

subject, to wit, wars undertaken on account of wrong done, and which may be

likened to the act of robbery in private life, I presume will be treated of in

your future numbers. I observe this class mentioned in the Solemn Review, p.

10, and the question asked, " Is it common for a nation to obtain a redress of

wrongs by war?" The answer to this question you will of course draw from

history. In the meantime, reason will answer it on grounds of probability, that

where the wrong has been done by a weaker nation, the stronger one has

generally been able to enf orce redress ; but where by a stronger nation,

redress by war has been neither obtained nor expected by the weaker. On the

contrary, the loss has been increased by the expenses of the war in blood and

treasure. Yet it may have obtained another object equally securing itself from

future 













416         Jefferson's Works







wrong. It may have retaliated on the aggressor losses of blood and treasure far

beyond the value to him of the wrong he had committed, and thus have made the

advantage of that too dear a purchase to leave him in a disposition to renew

the wrong in future. In this way the loss by the war may have secured the

weaker nation from loss by future wrong. The case you state of two boxers, both

of whom get a " ternble bruising, " is apposite to this. He of the two who

committed the aggression on the other, although victor in the scuffle, yet

probably finds his aggression not worth the bruising it has cost him. To

explain this by numbers, it is alleged that Great Britain took from us before

the late war near one thousand vessels, and that during the war we took from

her fourteen hundred. That before the war she seized and made slaves of six

thousand of our citizens, and that in the war we killed more than six thousand

of her subjects, and caused her to expend such a sum as amounted to four or

five thousand guineas a head for every slave she made. She might have purchased

the vessels she took for less than the value of those she lost, and have used

the six thousand of her men killed for the purposes to which she applied ours,

have saved the four or five thousand guineas a head, and obtained a character

of justice which is valuable to a nation as to an individual. These

considerations, therefore, leave her without inducement to plunder property and

take men in future on such dear terms. I neither affirm nor deny the truth of 













              Correspondence







these allegations, nor is their truth material to the question. They are

possible, and therefore present a case which will claim your consideration in a

discussion of the general question whether any degree of injury can render a

recourse to war expedient? Still less do I propose to draw to myself any part

in this discussion. Age and its effects both on body and mind, has weaned my

attentions from public subjects, and left me unequal to the labors of

correspondence beyond the limits of my personal concerns. I retire, therefore,

from the question, with a sincere wish that your writings may have effect in

lessening this greatest of human evils, and that you may retain life and health

to enjoy the contemplation of this happy spectacle ; and pray you to be assured

of my great respect.















            TO JOSEPH C. CABELL.







            MONTICELLO, February 2d,1816.







DEAR SIR,-Your favors of the 23d and 24th ultimo, were a week coming to us. I

instantly enclosed to you the deeds of Captain Miller, but I understand that

the postmaster, having locked his mail before they got to the office, would not

unlock it to give them a passage.







Having been prevented from retaining my collection of the acts and journals of

our legislature by the lumping manner in which the Committee of Congress chose

to take my library, it may be useful to our







            Jefferson's Works public bodies to know what acts and journals I

had, and where they can now have access to them. I therefore enclose you a copy

of my catalogue, which I pray you to deposit in the Cnuncil office for public

use. It is in the eighteenth and twenty-fourth chapters they will find what is

interesting to them. The form of the catalogue has been much injured in the

publication ; for although they have preserved my division into chapters, they

have reduced the books in each chapter to alphabetical order, instead of the

chronological or analytical arrangements I had given them. You will see

sketches of what were my arrangements at the heads of some of the chapters.







  The bill on the obstructions in our navigable waters appears to me proper ;

as do also the amendments proposed. I think the State should reserve a right to

the use of the waters for navigation, and that where an individual landholder

impedes that use, he shall remove that impediment, and leave the subject in as

good a state as nature formed it. This I hold to be the true principle ; and to

this Colonel Green's amendments go. All I ask in my own case is, that the

legislature will not take from me my own works. I am ready to eut my dam in any

place. and at any moment requisite, so as to remove that impediment, if it be

thought one, and to leave those interested to make the most of the natural

circumstances of the place. But I hope they will never take from me my canal,

made through the body of my own lands, at an expense of twenty thousand















              Correspondence         419







dollars, and which is no impediment to the navigation of the river. I have

permitted the riparian proprietors above (and they not more than a dozen or

twenty) to use it gratis, and shall not withdraw the permission unless they so

use it as to obstruct too much the operations of my mills, of which there is

some likelihood.







  Doctor Smith, you say, asks what is the best elementary book on the

principles of government? None in the world equal to the Review of Montesquieu,

printed at Philadelphia a few years ago. It has the advantage, too, of being

equally sound and corrective of the principles of political economy; and all

within the compass of a thin 8vo. Chipman's and Priestley's Principles of

Government, and the Federalists, are excellent in many respects, but for

fundamental principles not comparable to the Review. T have no objections to

the printing my letter.to Mr. Carr, if it will promote the interests of

science; although it was not written with a view to its publication.







  My letter of the a4th ultimo conveyed to you the grounds of the two articles

objected to in the College bill. Your last presents one of them in a new point

of view, that of the commencement of the ward schools as likely to render the

law unpopular to the country. It must be a very inconsiderate and rough process

of execution that would dn this. Mv idea of the mode of carrying it into

execution would be this : Declare the county ipso facto divided into 













            Jefferson's Works







wards for the present, by the boundaries of the militia captaincies ; somebody

attend the ordinarv muster of each company, having first desired the captain to

call together a full one. There explain the object of the law to the people of

the company, put to their vote whether they will have a school established, and

the most central and convenient place for it; get them to meet and build a log

school-house; have a roll taken of the children who would attend it, and of

those of them able to pay. These would probably be sufficient to support a

common teacher, instructing gratis the few unable to pay. If there should be a

deficiency, it would require too trifling a contribution from the county to be

complained of ; and especially as the whole county would participate, where

necessary, in the same resource. Should the company, by its vote, decide that

it would have no school, let them remain without one. The advantages of this

proceeding would be that it would become the duty of the alderman elected by

the county, to take an active part in pressing the introduction of schools, and

to look out for tutors. If, however, it is intended that







  , the State government shall take this business into its own hands, and

provide schools for every county, then by all means strike out this provision

of our bill. I would never wish that it should be placed on a worse footing

than the rest of the State. But if it is believed that these elementary schools

will be better rnanaged by the Governor and Council, the commissioners of the

literary fund, or any other general 













             Correspondence         421







authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward; it is a

belief against all experience. Try the principle one step further, and amend

the bill so as to commit to the Governor and Council the management of all our

farms, our mills, and merchants' stores. No, my friend, the way to have good

and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the

many, distributing to every orle exactly the functions he is competent to. Let

the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its

foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights,

laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally ; the

counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the

interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from

the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in

the administration of every man's farm by himself ; by placing under every one

what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. What has

destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever

existed under the sun ? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers

into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of

the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. And I do believe that if the Almighty has

not decreed that man shall never be free, (and it is a blasphemy to believe

it,) that the secret will be found to be in the making himself the depository

of the 













             Jefferson's Works







powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating

only what is beyond his competence by a synthetical process, to higher and

higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in

proportion as the trustees become more and more oligarchical. The elementary

republics of the wards, the county republics, the State republics, and the

republic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities, standing each on

the basis of law, holding every one its delegated share of powers, and

constituting truly a svstem of fundamental balances and checks for the

government. Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic,

or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a partici.pator in the

government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every

d ay ; when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of

some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of

his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.

How powerfully did we feel the energy of this organization in the case of

embargo? I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the

New England townships. There was not an individual in their States whose body

was not thrown with all its momentum into action ; and although the whole of

the other States were known to be in favor of the measure, yet the organization

of this little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the Union. What would

the unwieldy counties of the 













             Correspondence         423







Middle, the South, and the West do ? Call a county meeting, and the drunken

loungers at and about the court-houses would have collected, the distances

being too great for the good people and the industrious generally to attend.

The character of those who really met would have been the measure of the weight

they would have had in the scale of public opinion. As Cato, then, concluded

every speech with the words, " Carthago delenda est, " so do I every opinion,

with the injunction, " divide the counties into wards." Begin them only for a

single purpose; they will soon show for what others they are the best

instruments. God bless you, and all our rulers, and give them the wisdom, as I

am sure they have the will, to fortify us against the degeneracy of our

government, and the concentration of all its powers in the hands of the one,

the few, the well-born or the many.















     JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                QUINCY, February 2, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-I know not what to think of your letter of the 11th of January, but

that it is one of the most consolatory I ever received.







  To trace the commencement of the Reformation, I suspect we must go farther

back than Borgia, or even Huss or Wickliffe, and I want the Acta Sanctorum to

assist me in this research. That stupendous monument of human hypocrisy and

fanaticism, the 













           Jefferson's Works







church of St. Peter at Rome, which was a century and a half in building,

excited the ambition of Leo the Xth, who believed no more of the Christian

religion than Diderot, to finish it; and finding St. Peter's pence

insufficient, he deluged all Europe with indulgences for sale, and excited

Luther to controvert his authority to grant them. Luther, and his associates

and followers, went less than half way in detecting the corruptions of

Christianity, but they acquired reverence and authority among their followers

almost as absolute as that of the Popes had been.







To enter into details would be endless ; but I agree with you, that the natural

effect of science and arts is to erect public opinion into a censor, which must

in some degree be respected by all.







There is no difference of opinion or feeling between us, concerning the

partition of Poland, the intended partitions of Pilnitz, or the more daring

partitions of Vienna.







Your question " How the apostasy from national rectitude can be accounted for ?

" is too deep and wide for my capacity to answer. I leave Fisher Ames to

dogmatize up the affairs of Europe and mankind. I have done too much in this

way. A burned child dreads the fire. I can only say at present, that it should

seem that human reason, and human conscience, though I believe there are such

things, are not a match for human passions, human imaginations, and human

enthusiasm. You, however, I believe, have hit one mark, " the fires the govern-







            Correspondence          425







ments of Europe felt kindling under their seats ; " and I will hazard a shot at

another, the priests of all nations imagined they felt approaching such flames,

as they had so often kindled about the bodies of honest men. Priests and

politicians, never before, so suddenly and so unanimously concurred in

reestablishing darkness and ignorance, superstition and despotism. The morality

of Tacitus is the morality of patriotism, and Britain and France have adopted

his creed; i. e., that all things were made for Rome. "Fura negat sibi lata,

nihil non arrogat armis, " said Achilles. "Laws were not made for me," said the

Regent of France, and his cardinal minister Du Bois. The universe was made for

me, says man. Jesus despised and condemned such patriotism; but what nation, or

what Christian, has adopted His system? He was, as you say, ' ` the most

benevolent Being that ever appeared on earth. " France and England Bourbons and

Bonaparte, and all the sovereigns at Vienna, have acted on the same principle.

"All things were made for my use. So man for mine, replies a pampered goose. "

The philosophers of the eighteenth century have acted on the same principle.

When it is to combat evil, 'tis lawful to employ the devil. Bonus populus vult

decipi, decipiatur. They have employed the same falsehood, the same deceit,

which philosophers and priests of all ages havc employed for their own selfish

purposes. We now know how their efforts have succeeded. The old deceivers have

triumphed over the new. Truth must be more 













426        Jefferson's Works







respected than it has ever been, before any great im. provement can be expected

in the condition of mankind. As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew " from history

and from practice," I believe them true. From the whole nature of man, moral,

intellectual, and physical, he did not draw them.







  We must come to the principles of Jesus. But when will all men and all

nations do as they would be done by? Forgive all injuries, and love their

enemies as themselves? I leave those profound philosophers, whose sagacity

perceives the perfectibility of human nature ; and those illuminated

theologians, who expect the Apocalyptic reign;-to enjoy their transporting

hopes, provi.ded always that they will not engage us in Crusades and French

Revolutions, nor burn us for doubting. My spirit of prophecy reaches no farther

than New England GUESSES.







  You ask, how it has happened that all Europe has acted on the principle, "

that Power was Right. " I know not what answer to give you, but this, that

Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de tyes bon f oi, believes itself

right. Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, .beyond the

comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God service, when it is

violating all His laws. Our passions, ambition, avarice, love, resentment,

etc.., possess so much metaphysical subtlety, and so much overpowering

eloquence, that they insinuate themselves into the understanding and the

conscience, and convert both to their party; and I may be deceived as much as 













             Correspondence           427







any of them, when I say, that Power must never be trusted without a check.







  Morgan has misrepresented my guess. There is not a word in my letter about "

a million of human beings." Civil wars, of an hundred years, throughout Europe;

were guessed at ; and this is broad enough for your ideas; for eighteen or

twentv millions would be a moderate computation for a century of civil wars

throughout Europe. I still pray that a century of civil wars may not desolate

Europe, and America too, south and north.







  Your speculations into futurity in Europe are so probable, that I can suggest

no doubt to their disadvantage. All will depend on the progress of knowledge.

But how shall knowledge advance? Independent of temporal and spiritual power,

the course of science and literature is obstructed and discouraged by so many

causes that it is to be feared their motions will be slow. I have just finished

reading four volumes of D'Israeli's-two on the " Calamities, " and two on the "

Quarrels of Authors. " These would be sufficient to show that, slow rises

genius by poverty €and envy oppressed. Even Newton, and Locke, and Grotius,

could not escape. France could furnish four other volumes of the woes and wars

of authors.







My compliments to Mrs. Randolph, her daughter Ellen, and all her other children

; and believe me, as ever.







To which Mrs. Adams adds her affectionate regard, 













428        Jefferson's Works







and a wish that distance did not separate souls congenial.















           TO THOMAS W. MAURY.







             MONTICELLO, February 3, 1816.







DEAR SIR,-Your favor of the 24th ultimo was a week on its way to me, and this

is our first subsequent mail day. Mr. Cabell had written to me also on the want

of the deeds in Captain Miller's case ; and as the bill was in that House, I

enclosed them immediately to him. I forgot, however, to desire that they might

be returned when done with, and must, therefore, ask this friendly attention of

you.







  You ask me for observations on the memorandum you transcribe, relating to a

map of the States, a mineralogical survey and statistical tables. The field is

very broad, and new to me. I have never turned my mind to this combination of

objects, nor am I at all prepared to give an opinion on it. On what principles

the association of objects may go that far and not farther, whether we could

find a character who would undertake the mineralogical survey, and who is

qualified for it, whether there would be room for its designations on a

well-filled geographical map, and also for the statistical details, I cannot

say. The best mineralogical charts I have seen, have had nothing geographical

but the water-courses, ranges of hills, and most remarkable places, and have

been colored, so as to present to the eye the mineralogical 













             Correspondence          429







ranges. For the articles of a statistical table, I think the last census of

Congress presented what was proper, as far as it went, but did not go far

enough. It required detailed accounts of our manufactures, and an enumeration

of our people, according to ages, sexes, and colors. But to this should be

added an enumeration according to their occupations. We should know what

proportion of our people are employed in agriculture, what proportion are

carpenters, smiths, shoemakers, tailors, bricklayers, merchants, seamen, etc.

No question is more curious than that of the distribution of society into

occupations, and none more wanting. I have never heard of such tables being

effected but in the instance of Spain, where. it was first done under the

administration, I believe, of Count D'Aranda, and a second time under the Count

de Florida Blanca, and these have been considered as the most curious and

valuable tables in the world. The combination of callings with us would

occasion some difficulty, manv of our tradesmen being, for instance,

agriculturists also; but they might be classed under their principal

occupation. On the geographical branch I have refiected occasionally. I suppose

a person would be employed in every county to put together the private surveys,

either taken from the surveyors' books or borrowed from the proprietors, to

connect them by supplementary surveys, and to survey the public roads, noting

towns, habitations, and remarkable places, by which means a special delineation

of water-courses, 













430         Jefferson's Works







roads, etc., will be obtained. But it will be further indispensable to obtain

the latitudes and longitudes of principal points in every county, in order to

correct the errors of the topographical surveys, to bring them together, and to

assign to each county its exact space on the map. These observations of

latitude and longitude might be taken f or the whole State, by a single person

well qualified, in the course of a couple of years. I could offer some ideas on

that subject to abridge and facilitate the operations, and as to the

instruments to be used ; but such details are probably not within the scope of

your inquiries,they would be in time if communicated to those who will have the

direction of the work. I am sorry I am so little prepared to offer anything

more satisfactory to your inquiries than these extempore hints. But I have no

doubt that what is best will occur to those gentlemen of the legislature who

have had the subject under their contemplation, and who, impressed with its

importance, are exerting themselves to procure its execution: Accept the

assurance of my great esteem and respect.















            TO JAMES MONROE.







             MONTICELLO, February 4, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-Your letter concerning that of General Scott is received, and his

is now returned. I am very thankful for these communications. From forty years'

experience of the wretched guess-work of the 













            Correspondence             431







newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as

to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice. A

ray, therefore, now and then, from the fountain of light, is like sight

restored to the blind. It tells me where I am ; and that to a mariner who has

long been without sight of land or sun, is a rallying of reckoning which places

him at ease. The ground you have taken with Spain is sound in every part. It is

the true ground, especially, as to the South Americans. When subjects are able.

to maintain themselves in the field, they are then an independent power as to

all neutral nations, are entitled to their commerce, and to protection within

their limits. Every kindness which can be shown the South Americans, every

friendly office and aid within the limits of the law of nations, I would extend

to them, without fearing Spain or her Swiss auxiliaries. For this is but an

assertion of our own independence. But to join in their war, as General Scott

proposes, and to which even some members of Congress seem to squint, is what we

ought not to do as yet. On the question of our interest in their independence,

were that alone a sufficient motive of action, much may be said on both sides.

When they are free, they will drive every article of our produce from every

market, by underselling it, and change the condition of our existence, forcing

us into other habits and pursuits. We shall, indeed, have in exchange some

commerce with them, but in what I know not, for we shall have















432         Jefferson's Works







nothing to offer which they cannot raise cheaper; and their separation from

Spain seals our everlasting peace with her. On the other hand, so long as they

are dependent, Spain, from her jealousy, is our natural enemy, and always in

either open or secret hostility with us. These countries, too, in war, will be

a powerful weight in her scale, and, in peace, totally shut to us. Tnterest

then, on the whole, would wish their independence, and justice makes the wish a

duty. They have a right to be free, and we a right to aid them, as a strong man

has a right to assist a weak one assailed by a robber or murderer. That a war

is brewing between us and Spain cannot be doubted. When that disposition is

matured on both sides, and open rupture can no longer be deferred, then will be

the time for our joining the South Americans, and entering into treaties of

alliance with them. There will then be but one opinion, at home or abroad, that

we shall be justifiable in choosing to have them with us, rather than against

us. In the meantime, they will have organized regular governments, and perhaps

have formed themselves into one or more confederacies; more than one I hope, as

in single mass they would be a very formidable neighbor. The geography of their

country seems to indicate three : 1. What is north of the Isthmus. 2. What is

south of it on the Atlantic ; and 3. The southern part on the Pacific. In this

form, we might be the balancing power. A propos of the dispute with Spain, as

to the boundary of Louisiana. On our acquisition of 













            Correspondence          433







that country, there was found in possession of the family of the late Governor

Messier, a most valuable and original MS. history of the settlement of

Louisiana by the French, written by Bernard de la Harpe, a principal agent

through the whole of it. It commences with the first permanent settlement of

1699, (that by de la Salle in 1684, having been broken up,) and continues to

1723, and shows clearly the continual claim of France to the Province of Texas,

as far as the Rio Bravo, and to all the waters running into the Mississippi,

and how, by the roguery of St. Denis, an agent of Crozat, the merchant, to whom

the colony was granted for ten years, the settlements of the Spaniards at

Nacadoches, Adais, Assinays, and Natchitoches, were fraudulently invited and

connived at. Crozat's object was commerce, and especially contraband, with the

Spaniards, and these posts were settled as convenient smuggling stages on the

way to Mexico. The history bears such marks of authenticity as place it beyond

question. Governor Claiborne obtained the MS. for us, and thinking it too

hazardous to risk its loss by the way, unless a copy were retained, he had a

copy taken. The original having arrived safe at Washington, he sent me the

copy, which I now have. Is the original still in your office ? or was it among

the papers burnt by the British? If lost, I will send you my copy; if

preserved, it is my wish to deposit the copy for safe keeping with the

Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, where it will be safer than on my

shelves. I do not







  VOL. XIV-28 













434        Jefferson's Works







mean that any part of this letter shall give to yourself the trouble of an

answer; only desire Mr. Graham to see if the original still exists in your

office, and to drop me a line saying yea or nay; and I shall know what to do.

Indeed the MS. ought to be printed; and I see a note to my copy which shows it

has been in contemplation, and that it was computed to be of twenty sheets at

sixteen dollars a sheet, for three hundred and twenty copies, which would sell

at one dollar apiece, and reimburse the expense.







  On the question of giving to La Motte the consulship of Havre, I know the

obstacle of the Senate. Their determination to appoint natives only is

generally proper, but not always. These places are for the most part of little

consequence to the public; and if they can be made resources of profit to our

ex-military worthies, they are so far advantageous. You and I, however, know

that one of these new novices, knowing nothing of the laws or authorities of

his port, nor speaking a word of its language, is of no more account than the

fifth wheel of a coach. Had the Senate a power of removing as well as of

rejecting; I should have fears, from their foreign antipathies, for my old

friend Cathalan, Consul at Marseilles. His father was apppointed by Dr.

Franklin, early in the Revolutionary war, but being old, the business was done

by the son. On the establishment of our present government, the commission was

given by General Washington to the son, at the request of the father. He has

been the consul now twenty-six years, and 













            Correspondence          435







has done its duties nearly forty years. He is a man of understanding, integrity

and zeal, of high mercantile standing, an early citizen of the United States,

and speaks and writes our language as fluently as French. His conduct in office

has been without a fault. I have known him personally and intimately. for

thirty years, have a great and affectionate esteem for him, and should feel as

much hurt were he to be removed as if removed myself from an office. But I

trust he is out of the reach of the Senate, and secure under the wings of the

executive government. Let me recommend him to your particular care and

patronage, as well deserving it, and end the trouble of reading a long letter

with assurances of my constant and affectionate friendship.















         TO BENJAMIN AUSTIN, ESQ.







             MONTICELLO, February 9, 1816.







  SIR,-Your favor of January 25th is just now received. I am in general

extremely unwilling to be carried into the newspapers, no matter what the

subject; the whole pack of the Essex kennel would open upon me. With respect,

however, to so much of my letter of January gth as relates to manufactures, I

have less repugnance, because there is perhaps a degree of duty to avow a

change of opinion called for by a change of circumstances, and especially on a

point now become peculiarly interesting:







What relates to Bonaparte stands on different 













436          Jefferson's Works







ground. You think it will silence the misrepresentations of my enemies as to my

opinions of him. No, Sir; it will not silence them. They had no ground either

in my words or actions for these misrepresentations before, and cannot have

less afterwards; nor will they calumniate less. There is, however, a

consideration respecting our own friends, which may merit attention. I have

grieved to see even good republicans so infatuated as to this man, as to

consider his downfall as calamitous to the cause of liberty. In their

indignation against England which is just, they seem to consider all her

enemies as our friends, when it is well known there was not a being on earth

who bore us so deadly a hatred. In fact, he saw nothing in this world but

himself, and looked on the people under him as his cattle, beasts for burden

and slaughter. Promises cost him nothing when they could serve his purpose. On

his return from Elba, what did he not promise ? But those who had credited them

a little, soon saw their total insignificance, and, satisfied they could not

fall under worse hands, refused every effort after the defeat of Waterloo.

Their present sufferings will have a term; his iron despotism would have had

none. France has now a family of fools at its head, from whom, whenever it can

shake off its foreign riders, it will extort a free Constitution, or dismount

them and establish some other on the solid basis of national right. To whine

after this exorcised demon is a disgrace to republicans, and must have arisen

either from wanb 













             Correspondence          437







of reflection, or the indulgence oú passion against principle. If anything I

have said could lead them to take correcter views, to rally to the polar

principles of genuine republicanism, I could consent that that part oú my

letter also should go into a newspaper. This I leave to yourself and such

candid friends as you may consult. There is one word € in the letter, however,

which decency towards the allied sovereigns requires should be softened.

Instead of despots, call them rulers. The first paragraph, too, of seven or

eight lines, must be wholly omitted. Trusting all the rest to your discretion,

I salute you with great esteem and respect.















      JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.







                   QUINCY, March 2, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-I cannot be serious! I am about to write you the most frivolous

letter you ever read.







  Would you go back to your cradle and live over again your seventy years? I

believe you would return me a New England answer, by asking me another

question: Would you live your eighty years over again ?







  I am not prepared to give you an explicit answer; the question involves so

many considerations of metaphysics and physics, of theology and ethics, of

philosophy and history, of experience and romance, of tragedy, comedy and f

arce, that I would not give my opinion without writing a volume to justify it, 













438             Jefferson's Works







  I have lately lived over again, in part, from 1753, when I was junior

sophister at college, till 1769, when I was digging in the mines as a barrister

at law, for silver and gold, in the town of Boston; and got as much of the

shining dross for my labor as my utmost avarice at that time craved.







  At the hazard of all the little vision that is left me, I have read the

history of that period of sixteen years, in the volumes of the Baron de Grimm.

In a late letter to you, I expressed a wish to see a history of quarrels and

calamities of authors in France, like that of D'Israeli in England. I did not

expect it so soon ; but now I have it in a manner more masterly than I ever

hoped to see it. It is not only a narration of the incessant great wars between

the ecclesiastics and the philosophers, but of the little skirmishes and

squabbles of Poets, Musicians, Sculptors, Painters, Architects, Tragedians,

Comedians, Opera-Singers and Dancers, Chansons, Vaudevilles, Epigrams,

Madrigals, Epitaphs, Anagrams, Sonnets, etc. No man is more sensible than I am

of the service to science and letters, Humanity, Fraternity and Liberty, that

would have been rendered by the Encyclopedists and Economists, by Voltaire,

D'Alembert, Buffon, Diderot, Rousseau, La Lande, Frederick and Catherine, if

they had possessed common sense. But they were all totally destitute of it.

They all seemed to think that all Christendom was convinced as they were, that

all religion was " visions Judaicques, " and that their effulgent lights had

illuminated all the world. They 













            Correspondence           439







seemed to believe, that whole nations and continents had been changed in their

principles, opinions, habits and feelings, by the sovereign grace of their

almighty philosophy, almost as suddenly as Catholics and Calvinists believe in

instantaneous conversion. They had not considered the force of early education

on the millions of minds who had never heard of their philosophy. And what was

their philosophy? Atheism; pure, unadulterated Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert,

Frederick, De La Lande and Grimm, were indubitable Atheists. The universe was

matter only, and eternal; spirit was a word without a meaning; liberty was a

word without a meaning. There was no liberty in the universe ; liberty was a

word void of sense. Every thought, word, passion, sentiment, feeling, all

motion, and action was necessary. All beings and attributes were of eternal

necessity; conscience, morality, were all nothing but fate.







  This was their creed, and this was to perfect human nature, and convert the

earth into a paradise of pleasure.







  Who, and what is this fate? He must be a sensible fellow. He must be a master

of science. He must be a master of spherical trigonometry and great circle

sailing. He must calculate eclipses in his head by intuition. He must be master

of the scicnce oú in~ finitesimal-" Le science des infinimens petits. " He must

involve and extract all the roots by intuition, and be. familiar with all

possible or imaginable sections of the cone. He must be a master of arts, 













440            Jefferson's Works







mechanical and imitative. He must have more eloquence than Demosthenes, more

wit than Swift or Voltaire, more humor than Butler or Trumbull, and what is

more comfortable than all the rest, he must be good natured; for this is upon

the whole a good world. There is ten times as much pleasure as pain in it.







Why then should we abhor the word God, and fall in love with the word Fate ? We

know there exists energy and intellect enough to produce such a world as this,

which is a sublime and beautiful one, and a very benevolent one,

notwithstanding all our snarling; and a happy one, if it is not made otherwise

by our own fault. Ask a mite, in the centre of your mammoth cheese, what he

thinks of the "-----------"







I should prefer the philosophy of Timaus, of Locris, before that of Grimm and

Diderot, Frederick and D'Alembert: I should even prefer the Shasta of

Hindostan, or the Chaldean, Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Christian, Mahometan,

Tubonic, or Celtic theology. Timaeus and Picellus taught that three principles

were eternal, God, Matter and Form. God was good, and had ideas. Matter was

necessity. Fate deadwithout ideas-without form, without feeling-perverse,

untractible; capable, however, of being cut into forms, spheres, circles,

triangles, squares, cubes, cones, etc. The ideas of the good God labored upon

matter to bring it into form; but matter was fate, necessity, dulness,

obstinacy-and would not always conform to the ideas of the good God who desired

to 













            Correspondence          441







make the best of all possible worlds ; but Matter, Fate, Necessity, resisted,

and would not let Him complete His idea. Hence all the evil and disorder, pain,

misery and imperfection of the universe.







  We all curse Robespierre and Bonaparte, but were they not both such restless,

vain, extravagant animals as Diderot and Voltaire? Voltaire was the greatest

literary character, and Bonaparte the greatest military character of the

eighteenth century. There is all the difference between them. Both equally

heroes and equally cowards.







  When you ask my opinion of a University-it would have been easy to advise

Mathematics, experimental Philosophy, Natural History, Chemistry and Astronomy,

Geography and the Fine Arts ; to the exclusion of Metaphysics and Theology. But

knowing the eager impatience of the human mind to search into eternity and

infinity, the first cause and last end of all things-I thought best to leave it

its liberty to inquire till it is convinced, as I have been these fifty years,

that there is but one Being in the universe who comprehends it ; and our last

resource is resignation.







  This Grimm must have been in Paris when you were there. Did you know him, or

hear of him?







  I have this moment received two volumes more, but these are f rom 1777 to

1782 ,-leaving the chain broken from 1769 to 1777. I hope hereafter to get the

two intervening volumes. I am your old friend. 













442          Jefferson's Works







                TO-------.1







               MONTICELLO, March 13, 1816.







  A writer in the National Intelligencer of February 24th, who signs himself

B., is endeavoring to shelter under the cloak of General Washington, the

present enterprise of the Senate to wrest from the House of Representatives the

power, gi.ven them by the Constitution, of participating with the Senate in the

establishment and continuance of laws on specified subjects. Their aim is, by

associating an Indian chief, or foreign government, in form of a treaty, to

possess themselves of the power of repealing laws become obnoxious to them,

without the assent of the third branch, although that assent was necessary to

make it a law. We are then to depend for the secure possession of our laws; not

on our immediate representatives chosen by ourselves, and amenable to ourselves

every other year, but on Senators chosen by the legislatures, amenable to them

only, and that but at intervals of six years, which is nearly the common

estimate fora termforlife. But no actof thatsainted worthy, no thought of

General Washington, ever countenanced a change of our Cnnstitution so vital as

would be the rendering insignificant the popular, and giving to the

aristocratical branch of our govcrnment, the power of depriving us of our laws.







The case for which General Washington is quoted is that of his treaty with the

Creeks, wherein was a stipulation that their supplies of goods should con-







, This unaddressed letter signed "A" on the original draft in Jefferson's

handwriting. 













             Correspondence         443







tinue to be imported duty free. The writer of this article was then a member of

the legislature, as he was of that which afterwards discussed the British

treaty, and recollects the facts of the day, and the ideas which were afl.oat.

The goods for the supplies of the Creeks were always imported into the Spanish

ports of St. Augustine, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, etc., (the United

States not owning then one foot of coast on the gulf of Mexico, or south of St.

Mary's,) and from these ports they were carried directly into the Creek

country, without ever entering the jurisdiction of the United States. In that

country their laws pretended to no more force than in Florida or Canada. No

officer of their customs could go to levy duties in the Spanish or Creek

countries, out of which these goods never came. General Washington's

stipulation in that treaty, therefore, was nothing more than that our laws

should not levy duties where we have no right to levy them, that is, in foreign

ports, or foreign countries. These transactions took place while the Creek

deputation was in New York, in the month of July, 1790, and in March preceding

we had passed a law delineating specially the line between their country and

ours. The onlv subject of curiosity is how so nugatory a stipulation should

have been placed in a treaty? It was from the fears of Mr. Gillevray, who was

the head of the deputation, who possessed from the Creeks themselves the

exclusive right to supply them with goods, and to whom this monopoly was the

principal source of income. 













 444           Jefferson's Works







  The same writer quotes from a note in Marshall's history, an opinion of Mr.

Jefferson, given to General Washington on the same occasion of the Creek

treaty. Two or three little lines only of that opinion are given us, which do

indeed express the doctrine in broad and general terms. Yet we know how often a

few words withdrawn from their place may seem to bear a general meaning, when

their context would show that their meaning must have been limited to the

subject with respect to which they were used. If we could see the whole

opinion, it might probably appear that its foundation was the peculiar

circumstances of the Creek nation. We may say too, on this opinion, as on that

of a judge whose positions beyond the limits of the case before him are

considered as obiter sayings, never to be relied on as authority.







  In July, 'go, moreover, the government was but just getting under way. The

duty law was not passed until the succeeding month of August. This question of

the effect of a treaty was then of the first impression; and none of us, I

suppose, will pretend that on our first reading of the Constitution we saw at

once all its intentions, all the bearings of every word of it, as fully and as

correctly as we have since understood them, after they have become subjects of

public investigation and discussion ; and I well remember the fact that,

although Mr. Jefferson had retired from office before Mr. Jay's mission, and

the question on the British treaty, yet during its discussion we were well

assured of his entire concurrence in opinion with







            Correspondence           445







Mr. Madison and others who maintained the rights of the House of

Representatives, so that, if on a prima f acie view of the question, his

opinion had been too general, on stricter investigation and more mature

consideration, his ultimate opinion was with those who thought that the

subjects which were confided to the House of Representatives in conjunction

with the President and Senate, were exceptions to the general treaty power

given to the President and Senate alone ; (according to the general rule that

an instrument is to be so construed as to reconcile and give meaning and effect

to all its parts ;) that whenever a treaty stipulation interferes with a law of

the three branches, the consent of the third branch is necessary to give it eff

ect ; and that there is to this but the single exception of the question of war

and peace. There the Constitution expressly requires the concurrence of the

three branches to commit us to the state of war, but permits two of them; the

President and Senate, to change it to that of peace, for reasons as obvious as

they are wise. I think then I may affirm, in contradiction to B., that the

present attempt of the Senate is not sanctioned by the opinion either of

General Washington or of Mr. Jefferson.







  I meant to confine mvself to the case of the Creek treaty, and not to go into

the general reasoning, for after the lngical and demonstrative arguments of Mr.

Wilde of Georgia, and others on the floor of Congress, if any man remains

unconvinced I pretend not the powers of convincing him, 













446          Jefferson's Works















  TO GOVERNOR WILSON C. NICHOLAS.







                 MONTICELLO, April 2, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-Your favor of March and has been received. It finds me more

laboriously and imperiously engaged than almost on any occasion of my life. It

is not, therefore, in my power to take into immediate consideration all the

subjects it proposes; they cover a broad surface, and will require some

development. They respect,







I. Defence.







  II. Education.







  III. The map of the State.







  This last will comprise,







I. An astronomical survey, to wit, Longitudes and Latitudes.







  a. A geometrical survey of the external boundaries, the mountains and rivers.







               ,







3. A topographical survey of the counties.







  4. A mineralogical survey.







  Each of these heads requires distinct consideration. I will take .them up one

at a time, and communicate my ideas as leisure will permit.







  I. On the subject of Defence, I will state to you what has been heretofore

contemplcted and proposed. Some time before I retired from office, when the

clouds between England and the United States thickened so as to threaten war at

hand, and while we were fortifying various assailable points on our sea-board,

the defence of the Chesapeake became, as 













            Correspondence          447







it ought to have been, a subject of serious consideration, and the problem

occurred, whether it could be defended at its mouth? its effectual defence in

detail being obviously impossible. My idea was that we should find or prepare a

station near its mouth for a very great force of vessels of annoyance of such a

character as to assail, when the weather and position of an enemy suited, and

keep or withdraw themselves into their station when adverse. These means of

annoyance were to consist of gun-boats, row-boats, floating batteries,

bomb-ketches, fire-ships, rafts, turtles, torpedoes, rockets, and whatever else

' could be desired to destroy a ship becalmed, to which could now be added

Fulton scows. I thought it possible that a station might be made on the middle

grounds, (which are always shallow, and have been known to be uncovered by

water,) by a circumvallation of stones dropped loosely on one another, so as to

take their own level, and raised sufficiently high to protect the vessels

within them from the waves and boat attacks. It is by such a wall that the

harbor of Cherbourg has been made. The middle grounds have a firmer bottom, and

lie two or three miles from the ship channel on either side, and so near the

Cape as to be at hand úor any enemy moored or becalmed within them. A survey of

them was desired, and some officer of the navy received orders on the subject,

who being opposed to our possessing anything below a frigate or line of battle

ship, either visited or did not visit them, and verbally expressed his opinion 













448         Jefferson's Works







of impracticability. I state these things from memory, and may err in small

circumstances, but not in the general impression.







  A second station offering itself was the mouth of Lynhaven river, which

having but four or five feet water, the vessels would be to be adapted to that,

or its entrance deepened; but there it would be requisite to have, first, a

fort protecting the vessels within it, and strong enough to hold out until a

competent force of militia could be collected for its relief. And second, a

canal uniting the tide-waters of Lynhaven river and the eastern branch, three

or four miles apart only of low level country. This would afford to the vessels

a retreat for their own safety, and a communication with Norfolk and Albemarle

Sound, so as to give succor to these places if attacked, or receive it from

them for a special enterprise. It was believed that such a canal would then

have cost about thirty thou. sand dollars.







This being a case of personal as well as public interest, I thought a private

application not improper, and indeed preferable to a more general one, with an

executive needing no stimulus to do what is right; and therefore, in May and

June, 1813, I took the liberty of writing to them on this subject, the defence

of Chesapeake; and to what is before stated I added some observations on the

importance and pressure of the case. A view of the map of the United States

shows that the Chesapeake receives either the whole or important waters of five

of the most producing 













             Correspondence             449







of the Atlantic States, to wit : North Carolina, (for the Dismal Canal makes

Albemarle Sound a water of the Chesapeake, and Norfolk its port of

exportation,) Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York. We know that the

waters of the Chesapeake, from the Genesee to the Sawra towns and Albemarle

Sound, comprehend two-fifths of the .population of the Atlantic States, and

furnish probably more than half their exported produce; ' that the loss of

James river alone, in that year, was estimated at two hundred thousand barrels

of flour, fed away to horses or sold at half-price, which was a levy of a

million of dollars on a single one of these numerous waters, and that levy to

be repeated every year during the war; that this :'mportant country can all be

shut up by two or three ships of the enemy, lying at the mouth of the bay; that

an injury so vast to us and so cheap to the enemy, must forever be resorted to

by them, and maintained constantly through every war; that this was a hard

trial of the spirit of the Middle States, a trial which, backed by impossible

taxes, might produce a demand for peace on any terms; that when it was

considered that the Union had already expended four millions of dollars for the

defence of the single city of New York, and the waters of a single river, the

Hudson, (which we entirely approved, and now we might probably add four more

since expended on the same spot,) we thought it very' moderate' for so great a

portion of the country, the population; the Wealth, and contributing industry

and strength of







   VOL. XIV-29 













              Jefferson's Works







the Atlantic States, to ask a few hundred thousand dollars, to save the

harassment of their militia, conflagrations of their towns and houses,

devastations of their farms, and annihilation of all the annual fruits of their

labor. The idea of defending the bay at its mouth was approved, but the

necessary works were deemed inexecutable during a war, and an answer more

cogent was furnished by the fact that our treasury and credit were bnth

exhausted. Since the war, I have learned (I cannot say how) that the Executive

has taken up the subject and sent on an engineer to examine and report the

localities, and that this engineer thought favorably of the middle grounds. But

my recollection is too indistinct but to suggest inquiry to you. After having

once taken the liberty of soliciting the executive on this subject, I do not

think it would be respectful for me to do it a second time, nor can it be

necessary with persons who need only suggestions of what is right, and not

importunities to do it. If the subject is brought before them, they can readily

recall or recur to my letters, if worth it. But would it not be advisable in

the first place, to have surveys made of the middle grounds and the grounds

between the tide-waters of Lynhaven and the eastern branch, that your

representations may be made on known f acts ? These would be parts only of the

surveys you are authorized to make, and might, for so good a reason, be

anticipated and executed before the general work can be done.























             Correspondence          451







  Perhaps, however, the view is directed to a defence by frigates or ships of

the line, stationed at York or elsewhere. Against this, in my opinion, both

reason and experience declaim. Had we half a dozen seventy-fours stationed at

York, the enemy would place a dozen at the capes. This great force called there

would enable them to make large detachments against Norfolk when it suited

them, to harass and devastate the bay coasts incessantly, and would oblige us

to keep large armies of militia at York to defend the ships, and at Norfolk to

defend that. The experience of New London proves how certain and destructive

this blockade would be; for New London owed its blockade and the depredations

on its coasts to the presence of a frigate sent there for its defence; and did

the frigate at Norfolk bring us defence or assault ?







  II. Education.-The President and Directors of the literary fund are desired

to digest and report a system of public education, comprehending the

establishment of an university, additional colleges or academies, and schools.

The resolution does not define the portions of science to be taught in each of

these inst tutions, but the first and last admit no doubt. The university must

be intended for all useful sciences, and the schools mean elementary ones, for

the instruction of the people, answering to our present English schools; the

middle term, colleges or academies, may be more conjectural. But we must

understand from it some middle grade of education. Now, 













452            Jefferson's Works







when we advert that the ancient classical languages are considered as the

foundation preparatory for all the sciences; that we have always had schools

scat€€ tered over the country for teaching these languages, which often were

the ultimate term of education; that these languages are entered on at the age

of nine or ten years, at which age parents would be unwilling to send their

children from every part of the State to a central and distant university, and

when we observe that the resolution supposes there are to be a plurality of

them, we may well conclude that the Greek and Latin are the objects of these

colleges. It is probable, also, that the legislature might have under their eye

the bill f or the more general diffusion of knowledge, printed in the revised

code of 1779, which proposed these three grades of institution, to wit : an

university, district colleges, or grammar schools, and county or ward schools.

I think, therefore, we may say that the object of these colleges is the

classical languages, and that they are intended as the portico of entry to the

university. As to their numbers, I know no better rule to be assumed than to

place one within a day's ride of every man's door, in consideration of the

infancy of the pledges he has at it. This would require one for every eight

miles square.







  Supposing this the object of the colleges, the report will have to present

the plan of an university, analyzing the sciences€, selecting those which are

useful, grouping them into professorships, commen













            Correspondence         453







surate each with the time and faculties of one man, and prescribing the regimen

and all other necessary details. On this subject I can offer nothing new. A

letter of mine to Peter Carr, which was published during the last session of

Assembly, is a digest of all the information I possess on the subject, from

which the Board will judge whether they can extract anything useful; the

professorship of the classical languages being of course to be expunged, as

more effectually supplied by the establishment of the colleges.







As the buildings to be erected will also enter into their report, I would

strongly recommend to their consideration, instead of one immense building, to

have a small one for every professorship, arranged at proper distances around a

square, to admit extension, connected by a piazza, so that they may go dry from

one school to another. This village form is preferable to a single great

building for many reasons, particularly on account of fire, health, economy,

peace and quiet. Such a plan had been approved in the case of the Albemarle

College, which was the subject of the letter above mentioned; and should the

idea be approved by the Board, more may be said hereafter on the opportunity

these small buildings will afford, of exhibiting models in architecture of the

purest forms of antiquity,. furnishing to the student examples of the precepts

he will be taught in that art.







  The Elementary or Ward schools are the last branch of this subject ; on this,

too, my ideas have been long 













454          Jefferson's Works







deposited in the bill for the d ffusion of knowledge, before ment oned, and

time anrl reflection have continued to strengthen them as to the general

principle, that of a division of every county into wards, with a school in each

ward. The details of the bill will of course be varied as the difference of

present circumstances from those of that day will require.







  My partiality for that division is not founded in views of education solely,

but infinitely more as the means of a better administration of our government,

and the eternal preservation of its republican principles. The example of this

most admirable of all human contrivances in government, is to be seen in our

Eastern States; and its powerful effect in the order and economy of their

internal affairs, and the momentum it gives them as a nation, is the single

circumstance which distinguishes them so remarkably from every other national

association. In a letter to Mr. Adams a few years ago, I had occasion to

explain to him the structure of our scheme of education as proposed in the bill

for the diffusion of knowledge, and the views of this particular sectiun of it

; and in another lately to Mr. Cabell, on the occasion of the bill for the

Albemarle College, I also took a view of the political effects of the proposed

division into wards, which being more easily copied than thrown into new form

here, I take the liberty of enclosing extracts from them. Should the Board of

Directors approve of the plan, and make ward divisions the substratum of their

elementary schools, 













             Correspondence         455







their report may furnish a happy occasion of introducing them, leaving all

their other uses to be adapted from time to time hereafter as occasions shall

occur.







  With these subjects I shall close the present letter, but that it may be

necessary to anticipate on the next one so far as respects proper persons for

carrying into execution the astronomical and geometrical surveys, I know no one

in the State equal to the first who could be engaged in it ; but my

acquaintance in the State is very limited. There is a person near Washington

possessing every quality which could be desired, among our first mathematicians

and astronomers, of good bodily activity, used to rough living, of great

experience in field operations, and of the most perfect integrity. I speak of

Isaac Briggs, who was Surveyor-General south of Ohio, and who was employed to

trace the route from Washington to New Orleans, below the mountains, which he

did with great accuracy by observations of longitude and latitude only, on a

journey thither. I do not know that he would undertake the present work, but I

have learnt that he is at this time disengaged ; I know he is poor, and was

always moderate in his views. This is the most important of all the surveys,

and if done by him, I will answer for this part of your work standing the test

of time and criticism. If you should desire it, I could write and press him to

undertake it; but it would be necessary to say something about compensation.







  John Wood, of the Petersburg Academy, has writ













456          Jefferson's Works







ten to me that he would be willing to undertake the geometrical survey of the

external boundaries, and internal divisions. We have certainly no abler

mathematician; and he informs me he has had good experience in the works of the

field. He is a great walker, and is, therefore, probably equal to the bodily

fatigue, which is a material qualification. But he is so much better known

where you are, that I need only mention his readiness to undertake, and your

own personal knowledge or inquiries will best determine what should be done. It

is the part of the work above the tide-waters which he would undertake; that

below, where soundings are to be taken, requiring nautical apparatus and

practice.







Whether he is a mineralogist or not, I do not know. It would be a convenient

and economical association with that of the geometrical survey.







I am obliged to postpone for some days the consideration of the remaining

subjects of your letter. Accept the assurance of my great esteem and high

consideration.















          TO MR. JOSEPH MILLIGAN.







                MONTICELLO, April 6, 1816.







SIR,-Your favor of March 6th did not come to hand until the 15th. I then

expected I should finish revising the translation of Tracy's book within a

week, and could send the whole together. I got through it, but, on further

consideration, thought I ought to 













            Correspondence          457







read it over again, lest any errors should have been left in it. It was

fortunate I did so, for I found several little errors. The whole is now done

and forwarded by this mail, with a title, and something I have written which

may serve for a Prospectus, and indeed for a Preface also, with a little

alteration. You will see from the face of the work what a horrible job I have

had in the revisal. It is so defaced that it is absolutely necessary you should

have a fair copy taken, and by a person of good understanding, for that will be

necessary to decipher the erasures, interlineations, etc., of the translation.

The translator's orthography, too, will need great correction, as you will find

a multitude of words shamefully misspelt; and he seems to have had no idea of

the use of stops : he uses the comma very commonly for a full stop; and as

often the full stop, followed by a capital letter, for a comma. Your copyist

will, therefore, have to stop it properly quite through the work. Still, there

will be places where it cannot be stopped correctly without reference to the

original; for I observed many instances where a member of a sentence might be

given either to the preceding or following one, grammatically, which would yet

make the sense very different, and could, therefore, be rectified only by the

original. I have, therefore, thought it would be better for you to send me the

proof sheets as they come out of the press. We have two mails a week, which

leave this Wednesdays and Saturdavs, and you should always receive it by return

of the first 













458         Jefferson's Works







mail. Only observe that I set out for Bedford in five or six days, and shall

not be back till the first week in May.







  The original construction of the style of the translation was so bungling,

that although I have made it render the author's sense faithfully, yet it was

impossible to change the structure of the sentences to anything good. I have

endeavored to apologize for it in the Prospectus; as also to prepare the reader

for the dry, and to most of them, uninteresting character of the preliminary

tracts, advising him to pass at once to the beginning of the main work, where,

also, you will see I have recommended the beginning the principal series of

pages. In this I have departed from the order of pages adopted by the author.







  My name must in nowise appear connected with the work. I have no objection to

your naming me in conversation, but not in print, as the person to whom the

original was communicated. Although the author puts his name to the work, yet,

if called to account for it by his government, he means to disavow it, which

its publication at such a distance will enable him to do. But he would not

think himself at liberty to do this if avowedly sanctioned by me here. The best

open mark of approbation I can give is to subscribe for a dozen copies; or if

you would prefer it, you may place on your subscription paper a letter in these

words : " Sir, I subscribe with pleasure for a dozen copies of the invaluable

book you are about to publish on Political Economy. I should 













            Correspondence          459







be happy to see it in the hands of every American citizen. "







The Ainsworth, Ovid, Cornelius Nepos and Virgil, as also of the two books below

mentioned,l and formerly written for, I fear I shall not get, the Ovid and

Nepos I sent to be bound, in time for the pocket in my Bedford trip. Accept my

best wishes and respects.







 TITLE.-"A Treatise on Political Economy by the Count Destutt Tracy, member of

the Senate and Institute of France, and of the American Philosophical Society,

to which is prefixed a supplement to a preceding work on the Understanding or

Elements of Ideology, by the same author, with an analytical table, and an

introduction on the faculty of the will, translated from the unpublished

Frerich original. "







 Prospectus.-Political Economy in modern times assumed the form of a regular

science first in the hands of the political sect in France, called the

Economists. They made it a branch only of a comprehensive system on the natural

order of societies. Quesnai first, Gournay, Le Frosne, Turgot and Dupont de

Nemours, the enlightened, philanthropic, and venerable citizen, now of the

United States, led the way in these developments, and gave to our inquiries the

direction they have since observed. Many sound







 , Moore's Greek Grammar, translated by Ewen. Mair's Tyro's Dic. tionary. 













            Jefferson's Works







and valuable principles established by them, have received the sanction of

general approbation. Some, as in the infancy of a science might be expected,

have been brought into question, and have furnished occasion for much

discussion. Their opinions on production, and on the proper subjects of

taxation, have been particularly controverted ; and whatever may be the merit

of their principles of taxation, it is not wonderful they have not prevailed;

not on the questioned score of correctness, but because not acceptable to the

people, whose will must be the supreme law. Taxation is in fact the most

difficult function of government-and that against which their citizens are most

apt to be refractory. The general aim is therefore to adopt the mode most

consonant with the circumstances and sentiments of the countrv.







  Adam Smith, first in England, publi.shed a rational and systematic work on

Political Economy, adopting generally the ground of the Economists, but

differing on the subjects before specified. The system being novel, much

argument and detail seemed then necessary to establish principles which now are

assented to as soon as proposed. Hence his book, admitted to be able, and of

the first degree of merit, has yet been considered as prolix and tedious.







  In France, John Baptist Say has the merit of producing a verysuperior work on

the subject of Political Economy. His arrangement is luminous, ideas clear,

style perspicuous, and the whole subject brought within half the volume of

Smith's work. Add to this 













            Correspondence            461







considerable advances in correctness and extension of principles.







The work of Senator Tracy, now announced, comes forward with all the lights of

his predecessors in the science, and with the advantages of further experience,

more discussion, and greater maturity of subjects. It is certainly

distinguished by important traits ; a cogency of logic which has never been

exceeded in any work, a rigorous enchainment of ideas, and constant recurrence

to it to keep it in the€ reader's view, a fearless pursuit of truth

whithersoever it leads, and a diction so correct that not a word can be changed

but for the worse; and, as happens in other cases, that the more a subject is

understood, the more briefly it may be explained, he has reduced, not indeed

all the details, but all the elements and the system of principles within the

compass of an 8vo, of about 4oo pages. Indeed we might say within two-thirds of

that space, the one-third being taken up with some preliminary pieces now to be

noticed.







  lVIr. Tracy is the author of a treatise on the Elements of Ideology, justly

considered as a production of the first order in the science of our thinking f

aculty, or of the understanding. Considering the present work but as a second

section to those Elements under the titles of Analytical Table, Supplement, and

Introduction, he gives in these preliminary pieces a supplement to the

Elements, shows how the present work stands on that as its basis, presents a

summary view of it, and, before entering on the formation, dis-























462            Jefferson's Works







tribution, and employment of property and personality, a question not new

indeed, yet one which has not hitherto been satisfactorily settled. These

investigations are very metaphysical, profound, and demonstrative, and will

give satisfaction to minds in the habit of abstract speculation. Readers,

however, not disposed to enter into them, after reading the summary view,

entitled, " on our actions, " will probably pass on at once to the commencement

of the main subject of the work, which is treated of under the following heads:







Of Society.







Of Production, or the formation of our riches.







Of Value, or the measure of utility.







Of change of form, or fabrication.







Of change of place, or commerce.







Of Money.







Of the distribution of our riches.







Of Population.







Of the employment of our riches, or consumption.







Of public revenue, expenses and debts..







Although the work now offered is but a translation, it may be considered in

some degree as the original, that having never been published in the country in

which it was written. The author would there have been submitted to the

unpleasant alternative either of mutilating his sentiments, where they were

either free or doubtful, or of risking himself under the ursettled regimen of

the press. A manuscript copy communicated to a friend here has enabled him to 













             Correspondence          463







give it to a country which is afraid to read nothing, and which may be trusted

with anything, so long as its reason remains unfettered by law.







  In the translation, fidelity has been chiefly consulted. A more correct style

would sometimes have given a shade of sentiment which was not the author's, and

which, in a work standing in the place of the original, would have been unjust

towards him. Some Gallicisms have, therefore, been admitted, where a single

word gives an idea which would require a whole phrase of dictionary English.

Indeed, the horrors of Neologism, which startle the purist, have given no alarm

to the translator. Where brevity, perspicuity, and even euphony can be promoted

by the introduction of a new word, it is an improvement to the language. It is

thus the English language has been brought to what it is ; one-half of it

having been innovations, made at different times, from the Greek, Latin,

French, and other languages. And is it the worse for these? Had the

preposterous idea of fixing the language been adopted by our Saxon ancestors,

of Pierce Plowman, of Chaucer, of Spenser, the progress of ideas must have

stopped with that of the language. On the contrary, nothing is more evident

than that as we advance in the knowledge of new things, and of new combinations

of old ones, we must have new words to express them. Were Van Helmont, Stane,

Scheele, to rise from the dead at this time, they would scarcely understand one

word of their own science. Would it have been better, 













            Jefferson's Works







then, to have abandoned the science of Chemistry, rather than admit innovatians

in its terms ? What a wonderful accession of copiousness and force has the

French language attained, by the innovations of the last thirty years ! And

what do we not owe to Shakespeare for the enrichment of the language, by his

free and magical creation of wor'ds? In giving a loose to Neologism, indeed,

uncouth words will sometimes be offered; but the public will judge them, and

receive or rejeet, as sense or sound shall suggest, and authors will be

approved or condemned according to the use they make of this license, as they

now are from their use of the present vocabulary. The claim of the present

translation, however, is limited to its duties of fidelity and justice to the

sense of its original ; adopting the author's own word only where no term of

our own language would convey his meaning.







       (A Note communicated to the Editor.)







 Our author's classification of taxes being taken from those practised in

France, will scarcely be intelligible to an American reader; to whom the nature

as well as names of some of them must be unknown. The taxes with which we are

familiar, class themselves readily according to the basis on which they rest.

1. Capital. 2. Income. 3. Consumption. These may be considered as commensurate

; Consumption being generally equal to Income, and Income the annual profit of

Capital. A government may select either of these bases for the establishment 













             Correspondence          465







 of its system of taxation and so frame it as to reach the faculties of every

member of the society; and to draw from him his equal proportion of the'public

contributions ; and, if this be correctly obtained, it is the perfection of the

function of taxation. But when once a government has assumed its basis, to

select and tax special articles from either of the other classes, is double

taxation. For example, if the system be established on the basis of Income, and

his just proportion on that scale has been already drawn from every one, to

step into the field of Consumption, and tax special articles in that, as

broadcloth or homespun, wine or whiskey, a coach or a wagon, is doubly taxing

the same article. For that portion of Income with which these articles are

purchased, having already paid its tax as Income, to pay another tax on the

thing it purchased, is paying twice for the same thing; it is an aggrievance on

the citizens who use these articles in exoneration of those who do not,

contrary to the most sacred of the duties of a government, to do equal and

impartial justice







to all its citizens.







  How far it may be the interest and the duty of all to submit to this

sacrifice on other grounds, for instance, to pay for a time an impost on the

importation of certain articles, in order to encourage their manufacture at

home, or an excise on others injurious to the morals or health of the citizens,

will depend on a series of considerations of another order, and beyond the

proper limits of this note. The reader, in















YOL. XIV-30 













466             Jefferson's Works







deciding which basis of taxation is most eligible for the local circumstances

of his country, will, of course, avail himself of the weighty observations of

our author.







  To this a single observation shall yet be added. Whether property alone, and

the whole of what each citizen possesses, shall be subject to contribution, or

only its surplus after satisfying his first wants, or whether the faculties of

body and mind shall contribute also from their annual earnings, is a question

to be decided. But, when decided, and the principle settled, it is to be

equally and fairly applied to all. To take from one, because it is thought that

his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to

spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and

skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, " the

guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits

acquired by it." If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous

to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in

equal degree ; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while

extrataxation violates it. ,















              TO JOHN ADAMS.







                MoNTIcELLo, April 8, 1816.







DEAR SIR,-I have to acknowledge your two favors of February the 16th and March

the 2d, and to join 













            Correspondence          467







sincerely in the sentiment of Mrs. Adams, and regret that distance separates us

so widely. An hour of conversation would be worth a volume of letters. But we

must take things as they come.







You ask, if I would agree to live my seventy or rather seventy-three years over

again? To which I say, yea. I think with you, that it is a good world on the

whole; that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleasure

than pain dealt out to us. There are, indeed, (who might say nay) gloomy and

hypochondriac minds, inhabitants of diseased bodies, disgusted with the

present, and despairing of the future; always counting that the worst will

happen, because it may happen. To these I say, how much pain have cost us the

evils which have never happened ! My temperament is sanguine. I steer my bark

with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes faii;

but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy. There are, I acknowledge,

even in the happiest life, some terrible convulsions, heavy set-offs against

the opposite page of the account. I have often wondered for what good end the

sensations of grief could be intended. All our other passions, within proper

bounds, have an useful object. And the perfection of the moral character is,

not in a stoical apathy, so hypocritically vaunted, and so untruly too, because

impossible, but in a just equilibrium of all the passions. I wish the

pathologists then would tell us what is the use of grief in the econ













468          Jefferson's Works







omy, and of what good it is the cause, proximate or remote.







  Did I know Baron Grimm while at Paris? Yes, most intimately. He was the

pleasantest and most conversable member of the diplomatic corps while I was

there; a man of good fancy, acuteness, irony, cunning and egoism. No heart, not

much of any science, yet enough of every one to speak its language; his forte

was belles-lettres, painting and sculpture. In these he was the oracle of

society, and as such, was the Empress Catharine's private correspondent and

factor, in all things not diplomatic. It was through him I got her permission

for poor Ledyard to go to Kamschatka, and cross over thence to the western

coast of America, in order to penetrate across our continent in the opposite

direction to that afterwards adopted for Lewis and Clarke; which permission she

withdrew after he had got within two hundred miles of Kamschatka, had him

seized, brought back, and set down in Poland. Although I never heard Grimm

express the opinion directly, yet I always supposed him to be of the school of

Diderot, D Alembert, D Holbach; the first of whom committed his system of

atheism to writing in "Le bon sens, " and the last in his "Systeme de la

Nature. " It was a numerous school in the Catholic countries, while the

infidelity of the Protestant took generally the form of theism. The former

always insisted that it was a mere question of definition between them, the

hypostasis of which, on both sides, 













             Correspondence         469







was "Nature," or "the Univeyse; " that both agreed in the order of the existing

system, but the one supposed it from eternity, the other as having begun in

time. And when the atheist descanted on the unceasing motion and circulation of

matter through the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, never resting, never

annihilated, always changing form, and under all f orms gif ted with the power

of reproduction ; the theist pointing " to the heavens above, and to the earth

beneath, and to the waters under the earth, " asked, if these did not proclaim

a first cause, possessing intelligence and power ; power in the production, and

intelligence in the design and constant preservation of the system ; urged the

palpable existence of final causes ; that the eye was made to see, and the ear

to hear, arid not that we see because we have eyes, and hear because we have

ears; an answer obvious to the senses, as that of walking across the room, was

to the philosopher demonstrating the non-existence of motion. It was in

D'Holbach's conventicles that Rousseau imagined all the machinations against

him were contrived; and he left, in his Confessions, the most biting anecdotes

of Grimm. These appeared after I left France; but I have heard that poor Grim`m

was so much afflicted by them, that he kept his bed several weeks. I have never

seen the Memoirs of Grimm. Their volume has kept them out of our market.







  I have lately been amusing myself with Levi's book, in answer to Dr.

Priestley. It is a curious and























 470          Jefferson's Works







tough work. His style is inelegant and incorrect, harsh and petulant to his

adversary, and his reasoning flimsy' enough. Some of his doctrines were new to

me, particularly that of his two resurrections ; the first, a particular one of

all the dead, in body as well as soul, who are to live over again, the Jews in

a state of perfect obedience to God, the other nations in a state of corporeal

punishment for the sufferings they have inflicted on the Jews. And he explains

this resurrection of the bodies to be only of the original stamen of Leibnitz,

or the human calus in semine masculino, considering that as a mathematical

point, insusceptible of separation or division. The second resurrection, a

general one of souls and bodies, eternally to enjoy divine glory in the

presence of the Supreme Being. He alleges that the Jews alone preserve the

doctrine of the unity of God. Yet their God would be deemed a very indifferent

man with us; and it was to correct their anamorphosis of the Deity, that Jesus

preached, as well as to establish the doctrine of a future state. However, Levi

insists, that that was taught in the Old Testament, and even bv Moses himself

and the praphets. He agrees that an anointed prince was prophesied and

promised; but denies that the character and history of Jesus had any analogy

with that of the person promised. He must be fearfully embarrassing to the

Hierophants of f abricated Christianity ; because it is their own armor in

which he clothes himself for the attack. For example, he takes passages of

Scripture from 













             Correspondence          471







their context, (which would give them a very different meaning,) strings. them

together, and makes them point towards what object he pleases; he interprets

them figuratively, typically, analogically, hyperbolically ; he calls in the

aid of emendation, transposition, ellipse, metonymy, and every other figure of

rhetoric ; the name of one man is taken f or another, one place for another,

days and weeks for months and years ; and finally, he avails himself all his

advantage over his adversaries by his superior knowledge of the Hebrew,

speaking in the very language of the divine communication, while they can only

fumble on with conflicting and disputed translations. Such is this war of

giants. And how can such pigmies as you and I decide between them? For myself,

I confess that my head is not formed tantas componere lites. And as you began

yours of March the 2d, with a declaration that you were about to write me the

most frivolous letter I had ever read, so I will close mine by saying, I have

written you a full match for it, and by adding my affectionate respects to Mrs.

Adams, and the assurance of my constant attachment and consideration for

yourself.















      TO GOVERNOR WILSON C. NICHOLAS.







             POPLAR FOREST, April 19, 1816.







  DEAR SIR,-In my letter of the 2d instant, I stated, according to your

request, what occurred to me on the subjects of Defence and Education; and I

will 













472            Jefferson's Works







now proceed to do the same on the remaining subject of yours of March 22d, the

construction of a general map of the State. For this the legislature directs

there shall be,







I. A topographical survey of each county.







  II. A general survey of the outlines of the State, and its leading features

of rivers and mountains.







  III. An astronomical survey for the correction and collection of the others,

and







IV. A mineralogical survev.







  I. Although the topographical survey of each county is referred to its court

in the first instance, yet such a control is given to the Executive as places

it effectively under his direction ; that this control must be freely and

generally exercised, I have no doubt. Nobody expects that the justices of the

peace in every county are so familiar with the astronomical and geometrical

principles to be employed in the execution of this work, as to be competent to

decide what candidate possesses them in the highest degree, or in any degree ;

and indeed I think it would be reasonable, considering how much the other

affairs of the State must engross of the time of the Governor and Council, for

them to make it a pre-requisite for every candidate to undergo an examination

bv the mathematical professor of William and Mary College, or some other

professional character, and to ask for a special and confidential report of the

grade of qualification of each candidate examined. If one, completely

gualified, can be found for every half dozen 













            Correspondence          473







counties, it will be as much, perhaps, as can be expected.







  Their office will be to survey the Rivers, Roads, and Mountains.







  1. A proper division of the surveys of the Rivers between them and the

general surveyor, might be to ascribe to the latter so much as is navigable,

and to the former the parts not navigable, but yet sufficient for working

machinery, which the law requires. On these they should note confluences, other

natural and remarkable objects, towns, mills or other ' machines, ferries,

bridges, crossings of roads, passages through mountains, mines, quarries, etc.-







2. In surveying the Roads, the same objects should be noted, and every

permanent stream crossing them, and these streams should be laid down according

to the best information they can obtain, to their confluence with the main

stream.







  3. The Mountains, others than those ascribed to the general surveyor, should

be laid down by their names and bases, which last will be generally designated

by the circumscription of water-courses and roads on both sides, without a

special survey around them. Their gaps are also required to be noted.







  4. On the Boundaries, the same objects should be noted. Where a boundary

falls within the operations of the general surveyor, its survey by them should

be dispensed with, and where it is common to two counties, it might be ascribed

wholly to one, or divided between the surveyors respectively. All 













474         Jefferson's WorkS







these surveys should be delineated on the same scale, which the law directs, I

believe, (for I have omitted to bring the copy of it with me to this place, )

if it has not fixed the scale. I think about half an inch to the mile would be

a convenient one, because it would generally bring the map of a county within

the compass of a sheet of paper. And here I would suggest what would be a great

desideratum for the public, to wit, that a single sheet map of each county

separately, on a scale of half an inch to the mile, be engraved and struck off.

There are few housekeepers who would not wish to possess a map of their own

county, many would purchase those of their circumjacent counties, and many

would take one of every county, and form them into an atlas, so that I question

if as many copies of each particular map would not be sold as of the general

one. But these should not be made until they receive the astronomical

corrections, without which they can never be brought together and joined into

larger maps, at the will of the purchaser.







Their instrument should be a Circumferenter, with cross spirit levels on its

face, a graduated rim, and a double index, the one fixed, the other movable,

with a nonius on it. The needle should never be depended on for an angle.







  II. The General Survey divides itselú into two distinct operations ; the one

on the tide-waters, the other above them.























On the tide-waters the State will have little to do. 













             Correspondence          475







some time before the war, Congxess authorized the Executive to have an accurate

survey made of the whole sea-coast of the United States, comprehending, as well

as I remember, the principal bays and harbors. A Mr. Hassler, a mathematician

of the first order from Geneva, was engaged in the execution, and was sent to

England to procure proper instruments. He has lately returned with such a set

as never before crossed the Atlantic, and is scarcely possessed by any nation

on the continent of Europe. We shall be furnished, then, by the General

Government; with a better survey than we can make, of our sea-coast, Chesapeake

Bay, probably the Potomac, to the Navy Yard at Washington, and possibly of

James river to Norfolk, and York river to Yorktown. I am not, however, able to

say that these, or what other, are the precise limits of their intentions. The

Secretary of the Treasury would probably inform us. Above these limits,

whatever they are, the surveys and soundings will belong to the present

undertaking of the State; and if Mr. Hassler has time, before he commences his

general work, to execute this for us, with the use of the instruments of the

United States, it is impossible we can put it into any train of execution

equally good; and any compensation he may require, will be less than. it would

cost to purchase instruments of our own, and have the work imperfectly done by

a less able hand. If we are to do it ourselves, I acknowledge myself too little

familiar with the methods of surveying a coast and taking 













476        Jefferson's Works







soundings, to offer anything on the subject approved by practice. I will pass

on, therefore, to the general survev of the Rivers above the tide-waters, the

Mountains, and the external Boundaries. '







I. Rivers.-I have already proposed that the general survey shall comprehend

these from the tidewaters as far as they are navigable only, and here we shall

find one-half of the work already done, and as ably as we may expect to do it.

In the great controversy between the Lords Baltimore and Fairfax, between whose

territories the Potomac, from its mouth to its source, was the chartered

boundary, the question was which branch, from Harper's ferry upwards, was to be

considered as the Potomac ? Two able mathematicians, therefore, were brought

over from England at the expense of the parties, and under the sanction of the

sentence pronounced between them, to survey the two branches, and ascertain

which was to be considered as the main stream. Lord Fairfax took advantage of

their being here to get a correct survey by them of his whole territory, which

was bounded by the Potomac, the Rappahanoc, as was believed, in the most

accurate manner. Their survey was doubtless filed and recorded in Lord

Fairfax's office, and I presume it still exists among his land papers. He

furnished a copy of that survey to Colonel Fry and my father; who entered it,

on a reduced scale, into their map, as far as latitudes and admeasurements

accurately horizontal could produce exactness, I expect this survey is to be

relied







             Correspondence               477







on. But it is lawful to doubt whether its longitudes may not need verification

; because at that day the corrections had not been made in the lunar tables,

which have since introduced the method of ascertaining the longitude by the

lunar distances; and that by Jupiter's satellites was impracticable in

ambulatory survey. The most we can count on is, that they may have employed

some sufficient means to ascertain the longitude of the first source of the

Potomac, the meridian of which was to be Lord Baltimore's boundary. The

longitudes, therefore, should be verified and corrected, if necessary, and this

will belong to the Astronomical survey.







  The other rivers only, then, from their tide-waters up as far as navigable,

remain for this operator, and on them the same objects should be noted as

proposed in the county surveys ; and, in addition, their breadth at remarkable

parts, such as the confluence of other streams, falls, and ferries, the

soundings of their main channels, bars, rapids, and principal sluices through

their f alls, their current at various places, and, if it can be done without

more cost than advantage, their fall between certain stations.







  II. Mountains.-I suppose the law contemplates, in the general survey, only

the principal continued ridges, and such insulated mountains as being correctly

ascertained in their position, and visible from many and distant places, may,

by their bearings, be useful correctives for all the surveys, and especially

for those of the counties. Of the continued ridges, 













478           Jefferson's Works







the Alleghany, North Mountain, and Blue Ridge, are principal ; ridges of

partial lengths .. may be left to designation in the county surveys. Of

insulated mountains, there are the Peaks of Otter, in Bedford, which I believe

may be seen from about twenty counties; Willis' Mountains, in Buckingham, which

from their detached situation, and so far below all other mountains, may be

seen over a great space of countr ' Peter s Mountain, in Albemarle, which, from

its eminence above all others of the southwest ridge, may be seen to a great

distance, probably to Willis' Mountain, and with that and the Peaks of Otter,

furnishes a very extensive triangle; and doubtless there are many unknown to

me, which, being truly located, offer valuable indications and correctives for

the county surveys. For example, the sharp peak of Otter being precisely fixed

in position by its longitude and latitude, a simple observation of latitude

taken at any place from which that peak is visible, and an observation of the

angle it makes with the meridian of the place, furnish a right-angled spherical

triangle, of which the portion of meridian intercepted between the latitudes of

the place and peak, will be on one side. With this and the given angles, the

other side, constituting the difference of longitude, may be calculated, and

thus by a correct position of these commanding points, that of every place from

which any one of them is visible, may, by observations of latitude and bearing,

be ascertained in longitude also. If two such objects be visible from 













            Correspondence          479







the same place, it will afford, by another triangle, a double correction.







  The gaps in the continued ridges, ascribed to the general surveyor, are

required by the law to be noted ; and so also are their heights. This must

certainly be understood with some limitation, as the height of every knob in

these ridges could never be desired. Probably the law contemplated only the

eminent mountains in each ridge, such as would be conspicuous objects of

observation to the country at great distances, and would offer the same

advantages as the insulated mountains. Such eminences in the Blue Ridge will be

more extensively useful than those of the more western ridges. The height of

gaps also, over which roads pass, were probably in view.







  But how are these heights to be taken, and from what base? I suppose from the

plain on which they stand. But it is difficult to ascertain the precise

horizontal line of that plain, or to say where the ascent above the general

face of the country begins. Where there is a river or other considerable

stream, or extensive meadow plains near the foot of a mountain, which is much

the case in the valleys dividing the western ridges, I suppose that may be

fairly considered in the level of its base, in the intendment of the law. Where

there is no such term of commencement, the surveyor must judge, as well as he

can from his view, what point is in the general level of the adjacent country.

How are these heights to be 













 480        Jefferson's Works







taken, and with what instrument ? Where a good base can be found, the

geometrical admeasurement is the most satisfactory. For this, a theodolite must

be provided of the most perfect construction, by Ramsden-Troughton if possible;

and for horizontal angles it will be the better of two telescopes. But such

bases are rarely to be found. When none such, the height may still be measured

geometrically, by ascending or descending the mountain with the theodolite;

measuring its face from station to station, noting its inclination between

these stations, and the hypothenusal difference of that inclination, as

indicated on the vertical arc of the theodolite. The sum of the perpendiculars

corresponding with the hypothenusal measures, is the height of the mountain.

But a barometrical admeasurement is preferable to this; since the late

improvements in the theory, they are to be depended on nearly as much as the

geometrical, and are much more convenient and expeditious. The barometer should

have a sliding nonius, and a thermometer annexed, with a screw at the bottom to

force up the column of mercury solidly. Without this precaution they cannot be

transported at all; and even with it, they are in danger from every severe

jolt. They go more safely on a baggage-horse than in a carriage. The heights

should be measured on both sides, to show the rise of the country at every

ridge.







  Observations of longitude and latitude should be taken by the surveyor at all

confluences of consider-























             Correspondence          48 z







able streams, and on all mottntains of which he measures the heights, whether

insulated or in ridges; for this purpose, he should be furnished with a good

Hadley's circle of Borda's construction, with three limbs of nonius indexes ;

if not to be had, a sextant of brass, and of the best construction, may do, and

a chronometer ; to these is to be added a Gunter's chain, with some appendix

for plumbing the chain.







  III. The External Boundaries of the State, to wit : Northern, Eastern,

Southern and Western. The Northern boundary consists of, 1st, the Potomac; 2d,

a meridian from its source to Mason and Dixon's line ; 3d, a continuation of

that line to the meridian of the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, and 4th,

of that meridian to its intersection with the Ohio. 1st. The Potomac is

supposed, as before mentioned, to be surveyed to our hand. ad. The meridian,

from its source to Mason and Dixon's line, was, I believe, surveyed by them

when they rttn the dividing line between Lord Baltimore and Penn. I presume it

can be had from either Annapolis or Philadelphia, and I think there is a copy

of it, which I got from Dr. Smith, in an atlas of the library of Congress.

Nothing better can be done by us. 3d. The continuation of Mason and Dixon's

line and the meridian from its termination to the Ohio, was done by Mr.

Rittenhouse and others, and copies of their work are doubtless in our offices

as well as in those of Pennsylvania. What has been done by Rittenhouse can be

better done by no one.







   VOL. XIV-31 













482            Jefferson's Works







 The Eastern boundary being the sea-coast, we have before presumed will be

surveyed by the general government.







  The Southern boundary. This has been extended and marked in different parts

in the chartered latitude of 36o 31' by three different sets of Commissioners.

The eastern part by Dr. Byrd and other commissioners from Virginia and North

Carolina : the middle by Fry and Jefferson from Virginia, and Churton and

others from North Carolina; and the western by Dr. Walker and Daniel Smith, now

of Tennessee. Whether Byrd's survey now exists, I do not know. His journal is

still in possession of some one of the Westover family, and it would be well to

seek for it, in order to judge of that portion of the line. Fry and Jefferson's

journal was burnt in the Shadwell house about fifty years ago, with all the

materials of their map. Walker and Smith's survey is probably in our offices ;

there is a copy of it in the atlas before mentioned; but that survey was made

on the spur of a particular occasion, and with a view to a particular object

only. During the Revolutionary war, we were informed that a treaty of peace was

on the carpet in Europe, on the principle of uti possidetis; and we despatched

those gentlemen immediately to ascertain the intersection of our Southern

boundary with the Mississippi, and ordered Colonel Clarke to erect a hasty fort

on the first bluff above the line, which was€done as an act of possession. The

intermediate line, between that and the termination 













             Correspondence          483







of Fry and Jefferson's line, was provisionary only and not made with any

particular care. That, then, requires to be re-surveyed as far as the

Cumberland mountain. But the eastern and middle surveys will only need, I

suppose, to have their longitudes rectified by the astronomical surveyor.







The Western boundary, consisting of the Ohio, Big Sandy and Cumberland

mountain, having been established while I was out of the country, I have never

had occasion to inquire whether they were actually surveyed, and with what

degree of accuracy. But this fact being well known to yourself particularly,

and to others who have been constantly present in the State, you will be more

competent to decide what is to be done in that quarter. I presume, indeed, that

this boundary will constitute the principal and most difficult part of the

operations of the General Surveyor.







  The injunctions of the act to note the magnetic variations merit diligent

attention. The law of those variations is not yet sufficiently known to satisfy

us that sensible changes do not sometimes take place at small intervals of time

and place. To render these observations of the variations easy, and to

encourage their frequency, a copy of a table of amplitudes should be furnished

to every surveyor, by which, wherever he has a good eastern horizon, he may, in

a few seconds, at sunrise, ascertain the variation. This table is to be found

in the book called the " Mariner's Compass Rectified ; " but more exactly in

the " Con













  484        Jefferson's Works







naissance des Tems" for 1778 and 1788, all of which are in the library of

Congress. It may perhaps be found in other books more easily procured, and will

need to be extracted only from 36 1/2o to 40o degrees of latitude. III. The

Astronomical Survey. This is the most important of all the operations; it is

from this alone we are to expect real truth. Measures and rhumbs taken on the

spherical surface of the earth, cannot be represented on a plane surface of

paper without astro= nomical corrections; and, paradoxical as it may seem, it

is nevertheless true, that we cannot know the relative position of two piaces

on the earth, but by interrogating the sun, moon, and stars. The observer must,

therefore, correctly fix, in longitude and latitude, all remarkable points from

distance to distance. Those to be selected of preference are the confluences,

rapids, falls and ferries of water-courses, summits of mountains, towns,

court-houses, and angles 'of counties, and where these points are more than a

third or half a degree distant, they should be supplied by observations of

other points, such as mills, bridges, passes through mountains, etc., for in

our latitudes, half a degree makes a difference of three-eighths of a mile in

the length of the degree oú longitude. These points first laid down, the

intermediate delineations to be transferred from the particular surveys to the

general map, are adapted to them by contractions or dilatations. The observ er

will need a best Hadley's circle of Broda's construe













             Correspondence          485







tion, by Troughton, if possible, (for. they are since Ramsden's time,) and a

best chronometer.







  Very possibly an equatorial may be needed. This instrument set to the

observed latitude, gives the meridian of the place. In the lunar observations

at sea this element cannot be had, and in Europe by Land, these observations

are not resorted to for longitudes, because at their numerous fixed

observations they are prepared for the better method of Jupiter's satellites.

But here, where our geography is still to be fixed by a portable apparatus

only, we are obliged to resort, as at sea, to the lunar observations, with the

advantage, however, of a fixed meridian. And although the use of a meridian in

these observations is a novelty yet, placed under new circumstances, we must

countervail their advantages by whatever new resources they offer. It is

obvious that the observed distance of the moon from the meridian of the place,

and her calculated distance from that of Greenwich at the same instant, give

the difference of meridians, without dependence on any measure of time ; by

addition of the observations, if the moon be between the two meridians, by

subtraction if east or west of both ; the association, therefore, of this

instrument with the circular one, by introducing another element, another

process and another instrument, furnishes a test of the observations with the

Hadley, adds to their certainty, and, by its corroborations, dispenses with

that multiplication of observations which is necessary with the Had













486             Jefferson's Works







ley when used alone. This idea, however, is suggested by theory only; and it

must be left to the judgment of the observer who will be employed, whether it

would be practicable and useful. To him, when known, I shall be glad to give

further explanations. The cost of the equatorial is about the same with that of

the circle, when of equal workmanship.







  Both the surveyor and astronomer should journalize their proceedings daily,

and send copies of their journals monthly to the Executive, as well to prevent

loss by accident, as to make known their progress.







  IV. Mineralogical Survey.-I have never known in the United States but one

eminent mineralogist, who could have been engaged on hire. This was a Mr.

Goudon from France, who came over to Philadelphia six or seven years ago. Being

zealously devoted to the science, he proposed to explore the new field which

this country offered ; but being scanty in means, as I understood, he meant to

give lectures in the winter which might enable him to pass the summer in

mineralogical rambles. It is long since I have heard his name mentioned, and

therefore do not know whether he is still at Philadelphia, or even among the

living. The literary gentlemen of that place can give the information, or

perhaps point out some other equal to the undertaking.







  I believe I have now, Sir, gone over all the subjects of your letter,-which I

have done with less reserve to multiply the chances of offering here and there

something which might be useful, Its greatest merit, 













             Correspondence            487







however, will be that of evidencing my respect for your commands, and of adding

to the proofs of my great consideration and esteem.















      TO MONSIEUR DUPONT DE NEMOURS.







             POPLAR FOREST, Aprll 24, 1816.







I received, my dear friend, your letter covering the Constitution for your

Equinoctial republics, just as I was setting out for this place. I brought it

with me, and have read it with great satisfaction. I suppose it well formed for

those for whom it was intended, and the excellence of every government is its

adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it. For us it would not do.

Distinguishing between the structure of the government and the moral principles

on which you prescribe its administration, with the latter we concur cordially,

with the former we should not. We of the United States, you know, are

constitutionally and conscientiously democrats. We consider society as one of

the natural wants with which man has been crea.ted; that he has been endowed

with faculties and qualities to effect its satisfaction by concurrence of

others having the same want; that when, by the exercise of these faculties, he

has procured a state of society, it is one of his acquisitions which he has a

right to regulate and con. trol, jointly indeed with ail those who have

concurred in the procurement, whom he cannot exclude from its use or direction

more than they him. We think 













488        Jefferson's Works







experience has proved it safer, for the mass of individuals composing the

society, to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful

powers to which they are competent, and to delegate those to which they are not

competent to deputies named, and removable for unfaithful conduct, by

themselves immediately. Hence, with us, the people (by which is meant the mass

of individuals composing the society) being competent to judge of the facts

occurring in ordinary life, they have retained the functions of judges of

facts, under the name of jurors; but being unqualified for the management of

affairs requiring intelligence above the common level, yet competent judges of

human character, thev chose, for their management, representatives, some by

themselves immediately, others by electors chosen by themselves. Thus our

President is chosen by ourselves, directly in practice, for we vote for A as

elector only on the condition he will vote for B, our representatives by

ourselves immediately, our Senate and judges of law through electors chosen by

ourselves. And we believe that this proximate choice and power of removal is

the best security which experience has sanctioned for ensuring an honest

conduct in the functionaries of society. Your three or four alembications have

indeed a seducing appearance. We should conceive, prima f acie, that the last

extract would be the pure alcohol of the substance, three or four times

rectified. But in proportion as they are : more and more sublimated, they are

also farther and 













            Correspondence           489







farther removed from the control of the society; and the human character, we

believe, requires in general constant and immediate control, to prevent its

being biased from right by the seductions of self-love. Your process produces,

therefore, a structure of government from which the fundamental principle of

ours is excluded. You first set down as zeros all individuals not having lands,

which are the greater number in every society of long standing. Those holding

lands are permitted to manage in person the small affairs of their commune or

corporation, and to elect a deputy for,the canton; in which election, too,

every one's vote is to be an unit, a plurality, or a fraction, in proportion to

his landed possessions. The assemblies of cantons, then, elect for the

districts; those of districts for circles; and those of circles for the

national assemblies. Some of these highest councils, too, are in a considerable

degree self-elected, the regency partially, the judiciary entirely, and some

are for life. Whenever, therefore, an esprit de corps, or of party, gets

possession of them, which experience shows to be inevitable, there are no means

of breaking it up, for they will never elect but those of their own spirit.

Juries are allowed in criminal cases only. I acknowledge myself strong in

affection to our own form, yet both of us act and think from the same motive,

we both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental

affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without

nurses ; and I as adults whom I freely leave 













490            Jefferson's Works







to self-government. And you are xight in the case referred to you; my criticism

being built on a state of society not under your contemplation. It is, in fact,

like a critic on Homer by the laws of the Drama.







  But when we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be

administered, w e come to what is proper for all conditions of society. I meet

you there in all the benevolence and rectitude of your native character; and I

love myself always most where I concur most with you. Liberty, truth, probity,

honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of your society. I

believe with you that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of

the human constitution ; that there exists a right independent of force; that a

right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we

are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those

means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings ; that no

one has a right to obstruct another, exercising his faculties innocently for

the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature; that justice is the

fundamental law of society; that the majority, oppressing an individual, is

guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the

strongest, breaks up the foundations of society; that action by the citizens in

person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by

representatives, chosen immediately, and removable by themselves, consti













             Correspondence          491







tutes the essence of a republic ; that all governments are more or less

republican in proportion as this principle enters more or less into their

composition ; and that a government by representation is capable of, extension

over a greater surface of country than one of any other form. These, my friend,

are the essentials in which you and I agree ; however, in our zeal for their

maintenance, we may be perplexed and divaricate, as to the structure of society

most likely to secure them.







  In the Constitution of Spain, as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a

principle entirelv new to me, and not noticed in yours, that no person, born

after that day, should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could

read and write. It is .impossible sufficientlv to estimate the wisdom of this

provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the

administration of the government, constant ralliance to the principles of the

Constitution, and pr ogressive amendments with the progressive advances of the

human mind, or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual. Enlighten

the people generally, and tvranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish

like evil spirits at the dawn of day. , Although I do not, with some

enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state

of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I

believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of all, in matters of.

government and religion ; and that the diffusion of 













 492        Jefferson's Works







knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be

effected. The Constitution of the Cortes had defects enough; but when I saw in

it this amendatory provision, I was satisfied all would come right in time,

under its salutary operation. No people have more need of a similar provision

than those for whom you have felt so much interest. No mortal wishes them more

success than I do. But if what I have heard of the ignorance and bigotry of the

mass be true, I doubt their capacity to understand and to support a free

government; and fear that their emancipation from the foreign tyranny of Spain,

will result in a military despotism at home. Palacios may be great ; others may

be great ; but it is the multitude which possesses f orce ; and wisdom must

yield to that. For such a condition of society, the Constitution you have

devised is probably the best imaginable. It is certainly calculated to solicit

the best talents ; although perhaps not well guarded against the egoism of its

functionaries. But that egoism will be light in comparison with the pressure of

a military despot, and his army of Janissaries. Like Solon to the Athenians,

you have given to your Columbians, not the best possible government, but the

best they can bear. By-the-bye, I wish you had called them the Columibian

republics, to distinguish them from our American republics. Theirs would be the

most honorable name, and they best entitled to it ; f or Columbus discovered

their continent, but never saw ours.







            Correspondence          493







  To them liberty and happiness ; to you the meed of wisdom and goodness in

teaching them how to attain them, with the affectionate respect and friendship

of Th. J.